Cartésiens modernes, que les idées des qualités sensibles que Dieu donne, selon eux, à l'âme, à l'occasion des mouvemens du corps, n'ont rien qui représente ces mouvemens, ou qui leur ressemble; de sorte qu'il étoit purement arbitraire que Dieu nous donnât les idées de la chaleur, du froid, de la lumière et autres que nous expérimentons, ou qu'il nous en donnât de tout-autres à cette même occasion."[1]
If the body was exposed to the flame, there was no more reason, according to this theory, why the soul should be conscious of pain than of pleasure, except that God had so ordained. Such a supposition was shocking to our philosopher, who could tolerate no arbitrariness in God and no gap or discrepancy in nature, and who, therefore, sought to explain, by the nature of the soul itself and its kindred monads, the correspondence for which so violent an hypothesis was embraced by the Cartesians.
We have left ourselves no room to speak as we would of Leibnitz as theosopher. It was in this character that he obtained, in the last century, his widest fame. The work by which he is most commonly known, by which alone he is known to many, is the "Théodicée,"—an attempt to vindicate the goodness of God against the cavils of unbelievers. He was one of the first to apply to this end the cardinal principle of the Lutheran Reformation,—the liberty of reason. He was one of the first to treat unbelief, from the side of religion, as an error of judgment, not as rebellion against rightful authority. The latter was and is the Romanist view. The former is the Protestant theory, but was not then, and is not always now, the Protestant practice. Theology then was not concerned to vindicate the reason or the goodness of God. It gloried in his physical strength by which he would finally crush dissenters from orthodoxy. Leibnitz knew no authority independent of Reason, and no God but the Supreme Reason directing Almighty Good-will. The philosophic conclusion justly deducible from this view of God, let cavillers say what they will, is Optimism. Accordingly, Optimism, or the doctrine of the best possible world, is the theory of the "Théodicée." Our limits will not permit us to analyze the argument of this remarkable work. Bunsen says, "It necessarily failed because it was a not quite honest compound of speculation and divinity."[2]
Few at the present day will pretend to be entirely satisfied with its reasoning, but all who are familiar with it know it to be a treasury of wise and profound thoughts and of noble sentiments and aspirations. Bonnet, the naturalist, called it his "Manual of Christian Philosophy"; and Fontenelle, in his eulogy, speaks enthusiastically of its luminous and sublime views, of its reasonings, in which the mind of the geometer is always apparent, of its perfect fairness toward those whom it controverts, and its rich store of anecdote and illustration. Even Stewart, who was not familiar with it, and who, as might be expected, strangely misconceives and misrepresents the author, is compelled to echo the general sentiment. He pronounces it a work in which are combined together in an extraordinary degree "the acuteness of the logician, the imagination of the poet, and the impenetrable yet sublime darkness of the metaphysical theologian." The Italics are ours. Our reason for doubting Stewart's familiarity with the "Théodicée," and with Leibnitz in general, is derived in part from these phrases. We do not believe that any sincere student of Leibnitz has found him dark and impenetrable. Be it a merit or a fault, this predicate is inapplicable. Never was metaphysician more explicit and more intelligible. Had he been disposed to mysticize and to shroud himself in "impenetrable darkness," he would have found it difficult to indulge that propensity in French. Thanks to the strict régime and happy limitations of that idiom, the French is not a language in which philosophy can
