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 442 J. T. MEEZ'S LEIBNIZ. him decide for the individualistic solution of the great problem " (p. 179). At the same time it should be remembered that Leibniz suggested that these points of view might be brought together in a way which was, however, never worked out by him. He saw, moreover, as Mr. Merz points out (p. 98), that the solution of the problem could never be reached by explaining one set of circum- stances or phenomena mechanically and another set by final causes. And, the author says : "The development of opinions during two hundred years has proved that Leibniz was right. The system of interpolation and compromise, such as that attempted by Clarke, has become impossible. The world of mechanical laws, further extended, has left no room for the world of tiual causes, living in the governing mind of a Deity ; and the only way out of the embarrassment is to resort to some process of remodelling the notions." This is what Leibniz tried to do, not in the way adopted by his great contemporary Spinoza in reducing the notion of teleology to a subjectively-biassed explanation of the facts of mechanical sequence, but by the theory that, when we trace physical laws to their source, we find that their nature and position can only be explained by reference to an ideal or rational causality working for a purpose or end. Leibniz thus expressly rejected the method of compromise, and held at once to the thorough- going mechanical connexion of natural events and to the view that nature and its laws are expressive of purpose. But he left the theory without fully establishing what it required to have established that the notion of mechanical sequence is in itself incomplete and one- sided and contains an implicit reference to the notion of final cause. This want of conclusive logical connexion seems to be regarded by the author as due, not so much to the incompleteness of Leibniz's speculative analysis, as to the necessity of making certain cardinal assumptions before it is possible to think philo- sophically or at any rate to come by a system. " Leibniz," he says, " was a philosopher, and as such he had certain primary principles which biassed him in favour of certain conclusions " (p. 141) ; and Locke is referred to as representing an " opposite and equally legitimate" school of thought to Leibniz's (p. 153). Yet it may well be that these and other opposed theories are only equally legitimate in so far as capable of reconciliation from a higher point of view. The history of philosophy has been a succession of more and more comprehensive efforts after such reconciliation. Leibniz's own thought was an attempt to com- bine opposed methods : as the author suggestively puts it, using the words of Lotze, " to calculate and predict phenomena, but also to understand and interpret them" (p. 183). The one-sidedness of Leibniz's own philosophy consists, ac- cording to Mr. Merz, in its " apotheosis of logical method " (p. 188) ; and he thinks that it was Schelling, more than any other