Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/366

 352 EGBERT LATTA : between the empirical order of events, which is the work of imagination, and the real order of existence, as it is known by reason. Mere perception or the history of events which has no higher principle of order than memory, mere sequence in short, is dismissed absolutely as illusion. But, on the other hand, veritas norma sui et falsi est. 1 Falsity presupposes, truth, imagination presupposes understanding. But there is no positive relation between them. Without understand- ing and truth there can be no imagination and falsity ; but without imagination and falsity there might be understanding and truth. Leibniz, on the other hand, makes the difference between sense or imagination and understanding one of degree. The difference between them is ultimately an in- finitely little one, or rather they are elements in a continuous series of perceptions, differing from one another by infinitely little degrees of clearness and distinctness. And, just as every finite number may be resolved into an infinite series, so every finite perception is made up of an infinity of petites perceptions, which are relatively obscure and confused. Every perception thus "contains" or "involves infinity," and the notion of perception is stretched out so as to include every kind of relation, whether conscious or unconscious. Accord- ingly the relation between sense (or imagination) and under- standing comes to be reciprocal. Each presupposes the other. Understanding is the evolution of sense, while sense is the involution of understanding. To this extent the positive view of Leibniz transcends the negative position of Spinoza. But Leibniz does not see clearly all that is involved in his method. For instance, the infinity of petites perceptions into which Leibniz resolves a particular sense-perception is an infinity of elements, each of which is and is not a sense- perception, each of which belongs in some way to sense but does not belong to sense-consciousness. Now (as we saw when dealing with the relation between the finite and the infinite) this means that the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious is not ultimate, that it is an expression of some deeper unity, that the conscious and the unconscious are inseparable elements in a system. Consequently in the petite perception we ought to find that which determines the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious, i.e., the comprehensive unity in difference, which expresses itself in them. Such a unity would be the unity or system of reason or of self-consciousness, which reveals itself in the distinction between conscious and unconscious, subject and 1 Eth., ii., 43, Schol.