The System of Leibniz
I. LIFE OF LEIBNIZ
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz was born at Leipzig on 21
June (1 July), 1646. In 1661 he entered the University
of Leipzig as a student of philosophy and law, and in
1666 obtained the degree of Doctor of Law at Altdorf.
The following year he met the diplomat Baron von
Boineburg, at whose suggestion he entered the
diplomatic service of the Elector of Mainz. The years
1672 to 1676 he spent as diplomatic representative of
Mainz at the Court of Louis XIV. During this time he
paid a visit to London and made the acquaintance of the
most learned English mathematicians, scientists, and
theologians of the day. While at Paris he became
acquainted with prominent representatives of
Catholicism, and began to interest himself in the
questions which were in dispute between Catholics and
Protestants. In 1676 he accepted the position of
librarian, archivist, and court councillor to the Duke
of Brunswick. The remaining years of his life were
spent at Hanover, with the exception of a brief
interval in which he journeyed to Rome and to Vienna
for the purpose of examining documents relating to the
history of the House of Brunswick. He died at Hanover
on 14 Nov., 1716.
As a mathematician Leibniz claims with Newton the
distinction of having invented (in 1675) differential
calculus. As a scientist he appreciated and encharged
the use of observation and experiment: "I prefer," he
said, "a Leeuwenhoek who tells me what he sees to a
Cartesian who tells me what he thinks." As a historian
he emphasized the importance of the study of documents
and archives. As a philologist he laid stress on the
value of the comparative study of languages, and made
some contributions to the history of German. As a
philosopher he is undoubtedly the foremost German
thinker of the eighteenth century, Kant being generally
reckoned among nineteenth-century philosophers.
Finally, as a student of statecraft he realized the
importance of freedom of conscience and made
persistent, well-meant, though unsuccessful efforts to
reconcile Catholics and Protestants.
II. LEIBNIZ AND CATHOLICISM
When Leibniz became librarian and archivist of the
House of Brunswick in 1676, the Duke of Brunswick was
Johann Friedrich, a recent convert to Catholicism.
Almost immediately Leibniz began to exert himself in
the cause of reconciliation between Catholics and
Protestants. At Paris he had come to know many
prominent Jesuits and Oratorians, and now he began his
celebrated correspondence with Bossuet. With the
sanction of the duke and the approval, not only of the
vicar Apostolic, but of Innocent XI, the project to
find a basis of agreement between Protestants and
Catholics in Hanover was inaugurated. Leibniz soon took
the place of Molanus, president of the Hanoverian
Consistory, as the representative of the Protestant
claims. He tried to reconcile the Catholic principle of
authority with the Protestant principle of free
enquiry. He favoured a species of syncretic
Christianity first proposed at the University of
Helmstadt, which adopted for its creed an eclectic
formula made up of the dogmas supposed to have been
held by the primitive Church. Finally he drew up a
statement of Catholic doctrine, entitled "Systema
Theologicum", which he tells us met the approval not
only of Bishop Spinola of Wiener-Neustadt, who
conducted, so to speak, the case for the Catholics, but
also of "the Pope, the Cardinals, the General of the
Jesuits, the Master of the Sacred Palace and others."
The negotiations were continued even after the death of
Duke Johann Friedrich in 1679. Leibniz, it should be
understood, was actuated as much by patriotic motives
as he was by religious considerations. He saw clearly
that one of the greatest sources of weakness in the
German States was the lack of religious unity and the
absence of the spirit of toleration. Indeed, the role
he played was that of a diplomat rather than that of a
theologian. However, his correspondence with Bossuet
and Pelisson and his acquaintance with many prominent
Catholics produced a real change in his attitude
towards the Church, and, although he adopted for his
own creed a kind of eclectic rationalistic
Christianity, he ceased in 1696 to frequent Protestant
services. The causes of the failure of his negotiations
have been variously summed up by different historians.
One thing seems clear: Louis XIV, who, through Bossuet,
professed his approval of Leibniz's project, had very
potent political reasons for placing obstacles in the
way of Leibniz's irenic efforts. Leibniz, it should be
added, met with little success in his other plan of
conciliation, namely, his scheme for the union of
Protestants among themselves.
III. LEIBNIZ AND LEARNED SOCIETIES
In 1700 Leibniz, through the munificence of his royal
pupil Princess Sophie Charlotte, wife of Frederick the
First of Prussia, founded the Society (afterwards
called the Academy) of Sciences of Berlin, and was
appointed its first president. In 1711, and again in
1712 and 1716 he was accorded an interview with Peter
the Great, and suggested the formation of a similar
society at St. Petersburg. In 1689, during his visit to
Rome, he was elected a member of the pontifical
Accademia Fisico-Mattematica .
IV. LEIBNIZ'S WORKS
Since the discovery in 1903 of fifteen thousand letters
and unedited fragments of Leibniz's works at Hanover,
the learned world has come to realize the full force of
a saying of Leibniz himself: "He who knows me by my
published works alone does not know me at all" (Qui me
non nisi editis novit, non novit). The works published
during his lifetime or immediately after his death are,
for the most part, treatises on particular portions of
his philosophy. None of them gives an adequate account
of his system in its entirety. The most important are
* "Disputatio metaphysica de principio individui,"
* "La monadologie ","Essais de theodicee", and
* "Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain," a reply,
chapter by chapter, to Locke's "Essay".
Of Leibniz's treatises on religious topics the most
important are:
* "Dialogus de religione rustici", a fragment, dated
Paris, 1673, and treating of predestination;
* "Dialogue effectif sur la liberte de l'homme, et sur
l'origine du mal," dated 1695, and treating of the same
topic;
* "Letters" to Arnauld and others on
transubstantiation,
* Letters, tracts, opuscula, etc., of an irenic
character, e. g. "Variae definitiones ecclesiae" "De
persona Christi", "Appendix, de resurrectione
corporum", "De cultu sanctorum", letters to Pelisson,
Bossuet, Mme de Brinon, etc.
* contributions to mystical theology, e.g. "Von der
wahren Theologia Mystica", "Dialogues" on the
psychology of mysticism.
V. LEIBNIZ'S PHILOSOPHY
As a philosopher Leibniz exhibited that many-sidedness
which characterized his mental activity in general. His
sympathies were broad, his convictions were eclectic,
and his aim was not so much that of the synthetic
thinker who would found a new system of philosophy, as
that of a philosophic diplomatist who would reconcile
all existing systems by demonstrating their essential
harmony. Consequently, his starting-point is very
different from that of Descartes. Descartes believed
that his first duty was to doubt all the conclusions of
all his predecessors; Leibniz was of the opinion that
his duty was to show how near all his predecessors had
come to the truth. Descartes was convinced, or at least
assumed the conviction, that all the philosophers who
went before him were in error, because they appeared to
be involved in inextricable contradictions- Leibniz was
equally well convinced that all the great systems agree
fundamentally, and that their unanimity on essentials
is a fair indication that they are in the right.
Leibniz therefore resolved, not to isolate himself from
the philosophical, scientific, and literary efforts of
his predecessors and contemporaries, but, on the
contrary, to utilize everything that the human mind had
up to his time achieved, to discover agreement where
discord and contradiction semed to reign, and thus to
establish a permanent peace among contending schools.
Even thinkers so widely separated as Plato and
Democritus, Aristotle and Descartes, the Scholastics
and modern physicists, hold certain doctrines in
common, and Leibniz makes it the business of his
philosophy to single out those doctrines, explain the
manifold bearings of each, remove apparent
contradictions, and so accomplish a diplomatic triumph
where others had like Descartes, but made confusion
worse confounded. The philosophy, to which Leibniz thus
ascribed irenics as one of its chief aims, is a partial
idealism. Its principal tenets are:
* The doctrine of monads,
* pre-established harmony,
* the law of continuity, and
* optimism.
(1) The Doctrine of Monads
Like Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz attaches great
importance to the notion of substance. But, while they
define substance as independent existence, he defines
substance in terms of independent action. The notion of
substance as essentially inert (see OCCASIONALISM) is
fundamentally erroneous. Substance is essentially
active: to be is to act. Now, since the independence of
substance is an independence in regard to action, not
in regard to existence, there is no reason for
maintaining, as Descartes and Spinoza maintained, that
substance is one. Substance is, indeed, essentially
individual, because it is a centre of independent
action but it is no less essentially manifold, since
actions are many and varied. The independent, manifold
centres of activity are called monads. The monad has
been compared to the atom, and is, indeed, like it in
many respects. Like the atom, it is simple (devoid of
parts), indivisible, and indestructible. However, the
indivisibility of the atom is not absolute but only
relative to our power of analysing it chemically, while
the indivisibility of the monad is absolute, the monad
being a metaphysical point, a centre of force,
incapable of being analysed or separated in any way.
Again, according to the Atomists, all atoms are alike:
according to Leibniz no two monads can be exactly
alike. Finally, the most important difference between
the atom and the monad is this: the atom is material,
and performs only material functions; the monad is
immaterial and, in so far as it represents other
monads, functions in an immaterial manner. The monads
therefore, of which all substances are composed, and
which are, in reality, the only substances existing,
are more like souls than bodies. Indeed, Leibniz does
not hesitate to call them souls and to draw the obvious
inference that all nature is animated (panpsychism).
The immateriality of the monad consists in its power of
representation. Each monad is a microcosm, or universe
in miniature. It is, rather, a mirror of the entire
universe, because it is in relation with all other
monads, and to that extent reflects them all, so that
an all-seeing eye looking at one monad could see
reflected in it all the rest of creation. Of course,
this representation is different in different kinds of
monads. The uncreated monad, God, mirrors all things
clearly and adequately. The created monad which is the
human soul-the "queen-monad"-represents consciously but
not with perfect clearness. And, according as we
descend the scale from man to the lowest mineral
substance, the region of clear representation
diminishes and the region of obscure representation
increases. The extent of clear representation in the
monad is an index of its immateriality. Every monad,
except the uncreated monad, is, therefore partly
material and partly immaterial. The material element in
the monad corresponds to the passivity of materia
prima, and the immaterial element to the activity of
the forma substantialis. Thus, Leibniz imagined, the
Scholastic doctrine of matter and form is reconciled
with modern science. At the same time, he imagined, the
doctrine of monads embodies what is true in the atomism
of Democritus and does not exclude what is true in
Plato's immaterialism.
The universe, therefore, as Leibniz represented it, is
made up of an infinite number of indivisible monads
which rise in a scale of ascending immaterialism from
the lowest particle of mineral dust up to the highest
created intellect. The lowest monad has only a most
imperfect glimmering of immateriality, and the highest
has still some remnant of materiality attached to it.
In this way the doctrine of monads strives to reconcile
materiaiism and idealism by teaching that everything
created is partly material and partly immaterial. For
matter is not separated from spirit by an abrupt
difference, such as Descartes imagined to exist between
body and mind. Neither are the functions of the
immaterial generically different from the functions of
material substance. The mineral, which attracts and is
attracted, has an incipient or inchoate power of
perception; the plant, which in so many different ways
adapts itself to its environment, is in a sense aware
of its surroundings, though not conscious of them. The
animal by its power of sensation rises by imperceptible
steps above the mentality of the Plant and between the
highest or most "intelligent" anii mals and the lowest
savages there is no very violent break in the
continuity of the development of mental power. All this
Leibniz maintains without any thought, apparently, of
genetic dependence of man on animal, animal on plant,
or plant on mineral. He has no theory of descent or
ascent. He merely records the absence of "breaks" in
the plan of continuity, as it presents itself to his
mind. He is not concerned with the problem of origins,
but rather with the Cartesian problem of the alleged
antithesis between mind and matter. How to bridge the
imaginary chasm between mind which thinks, and matter
which is extended, was the problem to which all the
philosophers of the eighteenth century addressed
themselves. Spinoza merged mind and matter in the one
infinite substance; the materialists merged mind in
matter; the immaterialists merged matter in mind; Hume
denied the terms of the problem, when he reasoned away
both matter and mind and left only appearances.
Leibniz, diplomat and peacemaker, toned matter up and
toned mind down until they gave forth what he
considered unison. Or, if we are to go back to the
original figure of speech, he spanned the chasm by his
definition of substance as action. Representation is
action; representation is a function of so-called
material things as well as of those which are generally
called immaterial. Representation, rising from the most
rudimentary "little perception" (petite perception) in
the mineral up to "apperception" in the human soul, is
the bond of substantial continuity, the bridge that
joins together the two kinds of substances, matter and
mind which Descartes so inconsiderately separated.
There is no doubt that Leibniz was conscious of this
aim of his philosophy. His opposition to "immoderate
Cartesianism" was openly acknowledged in his
philosophical treatises as well as in his lectures. He
looked upon Spinoza's conclusions as being the logical
outcome of Descartes's erroneous definition of
substance. "Spinoza", he wrote, "simply said out loud
what Descartes was thinking, but did not dare to
express". But while he had in view the refutation of
extreme Cartesianism, he must have intended also by
means of his doctrine of monads to stem the current of
materialism which had set in in England and was soon to
sweep before it in France many of the ideas which he
cherished.
(2) The Doctrine of Pre-established Harmony
"Every present state of a simple substance is a natural
consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that
its present is always the cause of its future"
("Monadologie," thesis xxii). "The soul follows its own
laws, and the body has its laws. They are fitted to
each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony
among all substances, since they are all
representations of one and the same universe" (op.
cit., thesis lxxviii) . From Descartes's doctrine that
matter is essentially inert, Malebranche (q. v.) had
drawn the conclusion that material substances cannot be
true causes, but only occasions of the effects produced
by God (Occasionalism). Leibniz wished to avoid this
conclusion. At the same time, he had reduced all the
activity of the monad to immanent activity. That is he
had defined substance as action, and explained that the
essential action of substance is representation He saw
clearly, then, that there can be no interaction among
monads. The monad, he said, has "no windows" through
which the activity of other monads can enter it. The
only recourse left him is to maintain that each monad
unfolds its own activity, pursues, as it were, its
career of representation independently of other monads.
This would make each monad a monarch. If, however,
there were no control of the activities of the monad,
the world would be a chaos, not the cosmos that it is.
We must, therefore, conceive that God at the beginning
of creation so arranged things that the changes in one
monad correspond perfectly to those in the other monads
which belong to its system. In the case of the soul and
body, for instance, neither has a real influence on the
other: but, just as two clocks may be so perfectly
constructed and so accurately adjusted that, though
independent of each other, they keep exactly the same
time, so it is arranged that the monads of the body put
forth their activity in such a way that to each
physical activity of the monads of the body there
corresponds a psychical activity of the monad of the
soul. This is the famous doctrine of pre-established
harmony. "According to this system", says Leibniz,
"bodies act as if (to suppose the impossible) there
were no souls at all, and souls act as if there were no
bodies, and yet both body and soul act as if the one
were influencing the other" (op. cit., thesis lxxxii).
Thus the monad is not really a monarch, but a subject
of God's Kingdom, which is the universe, "the true city
of God".
If we take this doctrine literally, and deny all
influence of one monad on another, we are forced at
once to ask: How, then, is it possible for the monad to
represent, if it is not acted upon? Leibniz's answer
would be that he denied to the monad all communication
from without, he affirmed that the monad has no windows
on the outside, but he did not deny that in the heart
of the monad is a door that opens on the Infinite and
from that side it is in communication with all other
monads. Here Leibniz passes over the problem from
metaphysics to mysticism. If harmony is unity in
diversity, the unity in the pre-established harmony is
not so much a unity of source, as a unity of final
destiny. All things "co-operate" in the universe not
only because God is the Source from whom they all
spring, but still more so because God is the End
towards which they are all tending, and the Perfection
which they are all striving to attain.
(3) Law of Continuity
From the description of the monads given above, it is
clear that all kinds and conditions of created things
shade off by gradual differences, the lower appearing
to be merely an inferior degree of the higher. There
are no "breaks" in the continuity of nature, no "gaps"
between mineral plant, animal, and man. The counter-
view is the law of indiscernibles. There can be no
meaningless duplication in nature. No two monads can be
exactly alike. No two objects, no two events can be
entirely similar, for, if they were, they would not,
Leibniz thinks, be two but one. The application of
these principles led Leibniz to adopt the view that,
while every thing differs from every other thing, there
are no true opposites. Rest, for instance, may be
considered as infinitely minute motion; the fluid is a
solid with a lower degree of solidity, animals are men
with infinitely small reason, and so forth The
application to the theory of the differential calculus
is obvious.
(4) Optimism
In the center of the vast harmonious system of monads
which we call the universe is God, the original,
infinite monad. His power, His wisdom, His goodness are
infinite. When, therefore, He created the system of
monads, He created them as good as they could possibly
be, and established among them the best possible kind
of harmony. The world, therefore, is the best possible
world, and the supreme law of finite being is the lex
melioris. The Will of God must realize what His
understanding recognizes as more perfect. Leibniz
represents the possible monads as present for all
eternity in the mind of God- in them was the impulse
towards actualization- and the more perfect the
possible monad the more strongly did it possess this
impulse. There went on, therefore, so to speak, a
competition before the throne of God, in which the best
monads conquered, and, as God could not but see that
they were the best, He could not but will their
realization. Behind the lex melioris is therefore, a
more fundamental law, the law of sufficient reason,
which is that "things or events are real when there is
a sufficient reason for their existence." This is a
fundamental law of thought, as well as a primary law of
being.
The four doctrines here outlined may be said to sum up
Leibniz's metaphysical teaching. They find their
principal application in his psychology and his
theodicy.
(5) Psychology
In the "Nouveaux Essais," which were written in
refutation of Locke's "Essay", Leibniz develops his
doctrines regarding the human soul and the origin and
nature of knowledge. The power of representation, which
is common to all monads, makes its first appearance in
souls as perception. Perception, when it reaches the
level of consciousness, becomes apperception. The
Cartesians "have fallen into a serious error in that
they treat as non-existent those perceptions of which
we are not conscious." Perception is found in all
monads; in those monads which we call souls there is
apperception, but there is a large subconscious region
of souls in which there are perceptions. Perceptions
are the source of apperceptions. They are the source
also of volitions, because impulse, or appetite, is
nothing but the tendency of one perception towards
another. From perception, therefore, which is found in
everything, up to intelligence and volition, which are
peculiar to man there are imperceptibly small grades of
differentiation.
Whence, then, come our ideas? The question is already
answered in Leibniz's general principles. Since
intelligence is only a differentiation of that immanent
action which all monads possess, our ideas must be the
result of the self-activity of the monad called the
human soul. The soul has "no doors or windows" towards
the side facing the external world. No ideas can come
from that direction. All our ideas are innate. The
Aristotelian maxim, "there is nothing in the intellect
that was not previously in the senses," must be amended
by the addition of the phrase, "except the intellect
itself". The intellect is the source as well as the
subject of all our ideas. These ideas, however
subjective their origin, have objective value, because,
by virtue of the harmony pre-established from the
beginning of the universe, the evolution of the psychic
monad from virtual to actual knowledge is paralleled by
the evolution in the outside world of the physical
monad from virtual to actual activity.
Leibniz has no difficulty in establishing the
immateriality of the soul. All monads are immaterial or
rather, partly immaterial and partly material. The
human soul is no exception- its "immateriality" is not
absolute, but only relative, in the sense that in it
the region of clear representation is so much greater
than the region of obscure representation that the
latter is practically a negligible quantity. Similarly,
the immortality of the human soul is not absolutely
speaking, a unique privilege. All monads are immortal.
Each monad being an independent self-active, source of
action, neither dependent on other monads nor
influenced by them, it can continue acting without
interference forever. The human soul is peculiar in
this, that its consciousness (apperception) enables it
to realize this independence, and therefore the soul's
consciousness of its immortality is what makes human
immortality to be different from every other
immortality.
(6) Theodicy
The work entitled "Theodicee", a treatise on natural
theology, was intended as a refutation of the
Encyclopeedist, Bayle, who had tried to show that
reason and faith are incompatible. In it Leibniz takes
up:
* the existence of God
* the problem of evil, and
* the question of optimism.
Existence of God
Leibniz, true to his eclectic temperament, admits the
validity of all the various arguments for the existence
of God. He adduces the argument from the contingency of
finite being, recasts the ontological argument used by
Descartes (see GOD), and adds the argument from the
nature of the necessity of our ideas. The third of
these arguments is really Platonic in its origin. Its
validity depends on the fact that our ideas are
necessary, not merely in a hypothetical, but in an
absolute and categorical sense, and on the further
contention that a necessity of that kind cannot be
explained unless we grant that an absolutely necessary
Being exists.
(b) Problem of Evil
This problem is discussed at length in the "Theodicee"
and in many of Leibniz's letters. The law of continuity
requires that there be no abrupt differences among
monads. God, therefore, although He wished to create
the best possible world, and did, in fact, create the
best world that was in se possible, could not create
monads which were all perfect, each in its own kind. He
was under no necessity of His own Nature, but He was
obliged, as it were, by the terms of the problem, to
lead up to perfection by passing through various
degrees of imperfection. Leibniz distinguishes
metaphysical evil, which is mere finiteness, or
imperfection in general, physical evil, which is
suffering, and moral evil, which is sin. God permits
these to exist, since the nature of the universe
demands variety and gradation, but He reduces them to
the minimum, and makes them to serve a higher purpose,
the beauty and harmony of creation as a whole. Leibniz
faces resolutely the problem of reconciling the
existence of evil with the goodness and omnipotence of
God. He reminds us that we see only a part of God's
creation, that part, namely, which is nearest to
ourselves, and, for that reason, makes the largest
demand on our sympathy. We should learn he says, to
look beyond our own immediate environment, to observe
the larger and more perfect world above us. Where our
sympathies are involved, we should not allow the
prevalence of evil to overpower our feelings, but
should exercise our faith and our love of God, where we
can view God's works more impersonally, we should
realize that evil and imperfection are always and
everywhere made to serve the purpose of harmony,
symmetry, and beauty.
(c) Optimism
Leibniz is, therefore, an optimist, both because he
maintains as a general metaphysical principle that the
world which exists is the best possible world, and
because in his discussion of the problem of evil he
tries to trace out principles that will "justify the
ways of God to man" in a manner compatible with God's
goodness. It had become the fashion among materialists
and freethinkers to draw an over-gloomy picture of the
universe as a place of pain, suffering, and sin, and to
ask triumphantly: "How can a good God, if He is
omnipotent, permit such a state of things?" Leibniz's
answer, though not entirely original, is correct. Evil
should be considered in relation not to the parts of
reality, but to reality as a whole. Many evils are "in
other respects" good. And, when, in the final resort,
we cannot see a definite rational solution of a
perplexing problem, we should fall back on faith,
which, especially in regard to the problem of evil,
aids reason.
(7) Leibniz's Ethics
We have seen that, although the monad is by definition
independent, and, therefore, a monarch in its own
realm, vet, by virtue of preestablished harmony the
multitude of monads which make up the universe are
organized into a kingdom of spirits, of which God is
the Supreme Ruler, a city of God, governed by Divine
Providence, or, more correctly still, a family, of
which God is the Father. Now, there is "a harmony
between the physical realm of nature and the moral
realm of grace" (" Monadologie ", thesis lxxxviii);
monads making progress along natural lines towards
perfection are progressing at the same time along moral
lines towards happiness. The essential perfection of a
monad is, of course, perfect distinctness of
representation. The more the human soul progresses in
distinctness of ideas, the more insight it obtains into
the the connection of all things and the harmony of the
whole universe. From this realization springs the
impulse to love others, that is to seek the happiness
of others as well as one's own. The road to happiness
is, therefore through an increase of theoretical
insight into tie universe and through an increase in
love which naturally follows an increase of knowledge.
The moral man, while he thus promotes his own happiness
by seeking the happiness of others, fulfils at the same
time the Will of God. Goodness and piety are,
therefore, identical.
VII. INFLUENCE OF LEIBNIZ
Through his controversy with Clarke concerning the
nature of space and the existence of atoms, and also on
account of the rivalry between himself and Newton in
respect to the discovery of the calculus, Leibniz came
to be well known to the learned world in England at the
end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the
eighteenth. His residence in Paris brought him into
contact with the great men of the court of Louis XIV,
as well as with almost all the writers of that age who
were distinguished either in the world of science or in
that of theology. It was, however, in his own country
that he became best known as a philosopher. The
multiplicity of his interests and the variety of the
tasks he set himself to accomplish were unfavourable to
the systematic development of his philosophical
doctrines. It was due to the efforts of his follower
Christian Wolff (1679-1754), who reduced his teachings
to more compact form, that he exerted the influence
which he did on the movement known as the German
Illumination. In point of fact, until Kant began the
public exposition of his critical philosophy, Leibniz
was the dominant mind in the world of philosophy in
Germany. And his influence was, on the whole, salutary.
It is true that his philosophy is unreal. His
fundamental conception, that of substance, is more
worthy of a poet and a mystic than of a philosopher and
a scientist -- nevertheless, like Plato, he is to be
judged by the loftiness of his speculations, not by his
lack of scientific precision. He did his share in
stemming the tide of materialism, and helped to
preserve spiritual and aesthetic ideals until such time
as they could be treated constructively, as they were
by the greatest thinkers in the nineteenth century.
WILLIAM TURNER Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
[New Advent Catholic Website]
http://www.knight.org/advent
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright �
1996 by New Advent, Inc., P.O. Box 281096, Denver,
Colorado, USA, 80228. (
[email protected])
If you would like to contribute to this worthwhile
project, please contact Kevin Knight by e-mail at
(knight.org/advent). For more information please
download the file cathen.txt/.zip.
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