Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/362

 348 ROBEET LATTA: are similar, but the emphasis is on opposite sides. A com- parison between Spinoza's "Attributes" and the qualities which Leibniz attributes to his Monads may serve to illustrate this. Spinoza speaks of substance as constans infinitis attri- butis, 1 which means that substance must contain every possible kind of reality. Each of these attributes " expresses eternal and infinite essence," i.e., each expresses the whole and in its own way expresses it completely. There is no degree in their expression of the whole (as, for example, there is degree in the perfection with which the Monads express the whole). And an attribute is defined as id quod intellectus de substantia percipit tanquam ejusdem essentiam constituens. 2 The human understanding, because of its finitude, perceives only two of these attributes, and we are thus left to infer that an infinite understanding must perceive the infinite attributes. But the infinite attributes do not limit one another. One idea limits another and one body limits another ; but thought does not limit extension nor extension thought. Accordingly the infinite attributes must mean simply the totality of abstract possibilities for an infinite intellect. That is to say, they are very much the same as Leibniz's infinity of " possible " ideas or essences in the understanding of God. Ultimately, then, there is no connexion between the attri- butes. They do not form part of one system ; otherwise they would limit one another. In Leibniz's language they would not merely be "possible" but " compossible ". Yet they are held to be parallel expressions of substance, and this parallelism seems to imply that they do belong to the same system, that they are differences within its unity. On the other hand, when Leibniz attributes to every substance two fundamental qualities, " perception " and " appetition," he is defining substance as system within system. Per- ception is simply a name for the relation of one term or element to every other element in the system, while appetition is a name for the development of the system from within itself. Ultimately it is implied in Leibniz's view that appetition means simply change of perception, variety of relationship. But the perception and appetition are attri- buted by Leibniz, not to one substance or to one ultimate system of things, but to each of an infinite number of sub- stances, which are indeed regarded as related to one another, but which are so externally related, so independent in their own being, that each lives its own life as if there existed nothing but God and itself. Thus the notion of system is 1 Eth., I, 11, and def. 6. 2 Ibid., i., def. 4.