Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/82

Rh 4. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), like his three predecessors, Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza, is convinced of the importance of the mechanical explanation of nature. His three predecessors regarded the mechanical principles as self-evident and as given once for all, and assumed the task of interpreting the various elements of reality in harmony with the principle of mechanical causality. Leibnitz however subjects the principle of causality to a profounder analysis by inquiring into its presuppositions and seeking to refer it back to something still more fundamental. It is only after he has succeeded in this that he proceeds to the definition of the relation between matter and mind. The motive for this investigation was in part purely theoretical, due to the fact that Leibnitz discovered gaps and inconsistencies in his predecessors, in part practical, due to his desire to bring the modern explanation of nature into more perfect harmony with his religious presuppositions. He attempted to accomplish both at a single stroke, by means of a single idea, the idea of continuity.

Even as a boy, in the library of his father, who was a professor in Leipzig, Leibnitz had become familiar with the writings of Scholasticism. When he afterwards became acquainted with the natural science and philosophy of his own day he felt as if “transported into another world.” He saw that the new ideas could not be refuted, but neither could he surrender the conviction that nature is ultimately regulated by prescience, that is to say, that the mechanism must be grounded in teleology. His mathematical ideas were influenced profoundly by the physicist Huygens during a visit in Paris, and he afterwards likewise drew personally close to Spinoza. From 1676 onwards he lived at Hannover as councillor and