L E I L E I 423
In these proofs Leibnitz seems to have in view an extramundane power to whom the monads owe their reality, though such a conception evidently breaks the continuity and harmony of his system, and can only be externally connected with it. But he also speaks in one place at any rate[1] of God as the "universal harmony"; and the historians Erdmann and Zeller are of opinion that this is the only sense in which his system can be consistently theistic. Yet it would seem that to assume a purely active and therefore perfect monad as the source of all things is in accordance with the principle of continuity and with Leibnitz's conception of the gradation of existences. In this sense he sometimes speaks of God as the first or highest of the monad (p. 678), and of created substances proceeding from Him continually by "fulgurations" (p. 708) or by "a sort of emanation as we produce our thoughts."[2]
The positive properties or perfections of the monads, Leibnitz holds, exist eminenter, i.e., without the limitation that attaches to created monads (p. 716), in God their perception as His wisdom or intellect, and their appetite as His absolute will or goodness (p. 654); while the absence of all limitation is the divine independence or power, which again consists in this, that the possibility of things depends on His intellect, their reality on His will (p. 506). The universe in its harmonious order is thus the realization of the divine end, and as such must be the best possible (p. 506). The teleology of Leibnitz becomes necessarily a Theodicée. God created a world to manifest and communicate His perfection (p. 524), and, in choosing this world out of the infinite number that exist in the region of ideas (p. 515), was guided by the principium melioris (p. 506). With this thoroughgoing optimism Leibnitz has to reconcile the existence of evil in the best of all possible worlds.[3] With this end in view he distinguishes (p. 655) between (1) metaphysical evil or imperfection, which is unconditionally willed by God as essential to created beings; (2) physical evil, such as pain, which is conditionally willed by God as punishment or as a means to greater good (cf. p. 510); and (3) moral evil, in which the great difficulty lies, and which Leibnitz makes various attempts to explain. He says that it was merely permitted not willed by God (p. 655), and, that being obviously no explanation, adds that it was permitted because it was foreseen that the world with evil would nevertheless be better than any other possible world (p. 350). He also speaks of the evil as a mere set-off to the good in the world, which it increases by contrast (p. 149), and at other times reduces moral to metaphysical evil by giving it a merely negative existence, or says that their evil actions are to be referred to men alone, while it is only the power of action that comes from God, and the power of action is good (p. 658).
The great problem of Leibnitz's Théodicée thus remains unsolved. The suggestion that evil consists in a mere imperfection, like his idea of the monads proceeding from God by a continual emanation, was too bold and too inconsistent with his immediate apologetic aim to be carried out by him. Had he done so his theory would have transcended the independence of the monads with which it started, and found a deeper unity in the world than that resulting from the somewhat arbitrary assertion that the monads reflect the universe.
The philosophy of Leibnitz, in the more systematic and abstract form it received at the hands of Wolf, ruled the schools of Germany for nearly a century, and largely determined the character of the critical philosophy by which it was superseded. On it Baumgarten laid the foundations of a science of festhetic. Its treatment of theological questions heralded the German Aufklärung. And on many special points – in its physical doctrine of the conservation of force, its psychological hypothesis of unconscious perception, its attempt at a logical symbolism – it has suggested ideas fruitful for the progress of science.
Literature. – No complete edition of the works of Leibnitz has been yet published. We have (1) the Opera omnia, by Dutens, Geneva, 1768, which does not contain all the works known at the time; (2) Leibnizens gesammelte Werke, by G. H. Pertz, Berlin, 1843-63 (first series, History, 4 vols.; second series, Philosophy, vol. i., correspondence with Arnauld, &c., edited by G. L. Grotefend; third series, Mathematics, 7 vols.. edited by C. J. Gerhardt); (3) that of M. Foucher de Careil, 7 vols., Paris, 1859-75, the same editor having previously issued Lettres et Opuscules inédits de Leibniz, Paris, 1854-57; (4) the magnificent edition of Onno Klopp, Die Werke von Leibniz gemäss seinem handschriftlichen Nachlasse in der Königlischen Bibliothek zu Hannover, first series, Historico-Political and Political Writings, 10 vols., 1864-77. The Œuvres de Leibniz, by A. Jacques, 2 vols., Paris, 1842, may also be mentioned. The philosophical writings have been published by Raspe (Amsterdam and Leipsic, 1765), by J. E. Erdmann (Leibnitii Opera philosophica quæ exstant Latina, Gallica, Germanica omnia, Berlin. 1840), and by P. Janet. 2 vols.. Paris, 1866. The edition begun in 1875 by C. J. Gerhardt (Die philosophische Schriften von G. W. Leibniz), of which 4 vols. have been published, will, when finished, be the most complete. Leibnitz's Deutsche Schriften have been edited by G. E. Guhrauer (Berlin, 1838-40), and the (chiefly mathematical) Briefwechsel zwischen Leibniz unit Wolf, by C. J. Gerhardt (Halle, 1860). The Systema theologicum, first published by Émery, Paris. 1819. was translated into English by C. W. Russell, D.D., Maynooth, in 1850; an English edition of the correspondence with Clarke was published by the latter, London, 1717.
The materials for the life of Leibnitz, in addition to his own works, are the biographical notes of Eckhart (not published till 1779). the Éloge by Fontenelle
1 Werke, ed. Klopp, iii. 259; cf. Op. phil., p. 716.
2 Werke, ed. Pertz. 2d ser., i. 167.
3 "Si c'est ici le meilleur des mondes possibles, que sont donc les autres?" – Voltaire, Candide, ch. vi.
(read to the French Academy in 1717), the "Eulogium," by Wolf, in the Acta Eruditorium for July 1717, and the "Supplementum" to the same by Feller, published in his Otium Hannoveranum, Leipsic, 1718. The best biography is that of G. E. Guhrauer, G. W. Freiherr von Leibnitz, 2 vols., Breslau 1842 (Nachträge, Breslau, 1846). A shorter Life of G. W. von Leibnitz, on the basis of the German work of Guhrauer, has been published by J. M. Mackie, Boston, 1845. More recent works are those of L. Grote, Leibniz und seine Zeit, Hanover, 1869; E. Pfleiderer, Leibniz als Patriot, Staatsmann, und Bildungsträger, Leipsic, 1870; and the slighter volume of F. Kirchner, G. W. Leibniz: sein Leben und Denken, Köthen, 1876.
The monographs and essays on Leibnitz are too numerous to mention, but reference may be made to Feuerbach Darstellung, Entwicklung, und Kritik der Leibnitz'schen Phil. 2d ed., Leipsic, 1844; Nourrisson, La philosophie de Leibniz, Paris, 1860; R. Zimmermann, Leibnitz und Herbart: eine Vergleichung ihrer Monadologieen, Vienna, 1849; O. Caspari, Leibniz' Philosophie beleuchtet vom Gesichtspunkt der physikalischen Grundbegriffe von Kraft und Stoff, Leipsic, 1870; G. Hartenstein, "Locke's Lehre von der menschl. Erk. in Vergl. mit Leibniz's Kritik derselben," in the Abhandl. d. philol.-hist. Cl. d. K. Sächs. Gesells. d. Wiss., vol. iv., Leipsic, 1861; G. Class, Die metaph. Voraussetzungen des Leibnitzischen Determinismus, Tübingen, 1874; F. B. Kvêt, Leibnitzens Logik, Prague, 1857; the essays on Leibnitz in Trendelenburg's Beiträge, vols. ii. and iii., Berlin, 1855, 1867; L. Neff, Leibniz als Sprachforscher, Heidelberg, 1870-71; J. Schmidt, Leibniz und Baumgarten, Halle, 1875; D. Nolen, La Critique de Kant et la Métaphysique de Leibniz, Paris, 1875; and the exhaustive work of A. Pichler, Die Theologie des Leibniz, Munich. 1869-70.
The best complete accounts of the philosophy of Leibnitz are those of Erdmann, Gesch. d. neuern Phil. ii. 2 (abridged in his Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., 3d ed., 1878, pp. 144-170); of Kuno Fischer, Gesch. d. neuern Phil., vol. ii., 2d ed., 1867; and of E. Zeller, Deutsche Philosophie seit Leibniz, 1873, pp. 84-195. Fischer's volume contains an excellent biography. (W. R. SO.)
LEICESTER, an inland county of England, is bounded Plate VI.
N. by Nottinghamshire, E. by Lincolnshire and Rutland,
S.E. by Northamptonshire, S.W. by Warwickshire, and
N.W. by Derbyshire. It lies between 52 24 and 52
59 N. lat,, and between 39 and 1 37 W. long. It
has the form of an irregular hexagon, its greatest length
being about 44 miles, and its greatest breadth about 40
miles. The area comprehends 511,719 acres, or nearly
800 square miles.
The surface of the county is an undulating table-land, the highest eminences being the rugged Charnwood hills in the north-west, one of which, Bardon Hill, has an elevation of 902 feet. The county belongs chiefly to the basin of the Trent, which forms for a short distance its boundary with Derbyshire. The principal tributary of the Trent in Leicestershire is the Soar, from whose old desig nation the Leire the county is said to derive its name, and which rises near Hinckley and flows beyond Kegworth. The Wreak, which under the name of the Eye rises on the borders of Rutland, flows south-westward to the Soar, and is connected with the canal navigation. Besides the Soar the other tributaries of the Trent are the Anker, the Devon, and the Mease. The Avon after receiving the Swift passes into Warwickshire to join the Severn, and the Welland forms for some distance the boundary between Leicester and Northampton. The principal canals are the Union and Grand Union, which with their various branches are connected with the Grand Junction canal in Northamptonshire, and the Ashby-de-la-Zouch canal, which crosses the western corner of the county to Nuneaton, where it joins the Coventry canal.
Geology. – An irregularly shaped district of country south of the valley of the Trent and adjoining Derbyshire is occupied by Carboniferous rocks, forming the Leicestershire coal-field. In the north-west Charnwood forest is formed of crystalline and slaty rocks, of special interest to geologists, since, as they contain no fossils and occupy an isolated position, it is impossible to determine their age, although they have been variously classed as Cambrian, Silurian, and Laurentian. Further south, the remainder of the county to the west of the river Soar is occupied chiefly by red sandstone rocks of Triassic age, while to the east a blue clay of the same age, mixed with marl, predominates. In several districts, especially in the north-east, there are beds of limestone of Oolite age, and drift deposits overlie all the other formations. At Whitwick there is a remarkable vein of dolerite lying between the Coal-measures and the New Red Sandstone. The Coal-measures, which underlie the New Red Sandstone, are workable in the western and eastern districts of Moira and Coleorton, the total area of productive coal extending to 15 square
