Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/112

96 the Monadology. Both agree that the intelligible world, beyond time and space, contains a multiplicity is composed of simple substances, thinking spirits, ideas. Since these are without parts, no change can be produced in them from without. Quantitatively alike, the variety of nature demands that they differ in quality. This distinguishing quality or essence is thought, whose continuity conditions the uninterrupted existence of substance, and whose logically implied change is of relations and affections. The universal Substance and Intelligence of Plotinus, just as the God of Leibniz, implies and is implied in all simple substances, each one of which contains potentially all the changes that can ever occur in it. Each is a microcosm, an element in an indissoluble system, a totality, whose own essence is its sufficient raison d'être, 'a living perpetual mirror of the universe.' Applying this thought to epistemology, Plotinus, foreshadowing his German disciple, takes an important step towards a rational solution of the problem. It follows from the nature of substance, that knowledge of any one thing implies all the other things with which that one is in relation, and so knowledge is entire in each of its parts. There are no isolated facts; every fragment of truth is essentially truth as a whole. Otherwise science would not be a system. The (purely ideal) influence exerted upon one substance by another can only be accounted for by supposing that the universal Intelligence, in regulating each thing at the beginning, had regard to all the others, and found in each substance reasons compelling its accommodation to all the rest. But this accommodation is radically exclusive of all contingency and liberty. It is merely a matter of logical or mathematical determination, an eternal necessity, without any moral or teleological significance. Indeed, prevision in the engendering Intelligence is useless, since only one alternative, determined by the nature of a substance, is possible. The world of spirits is beautiful simply because it cannot be otherwise : every part of an organism is necessarily what it is because of its existence in and for the whole. An appearance of freedom is given to man's actions, in the sense that they result from the exercise of his own right reason; but his reason is, in turn, determined by the nature of his mind. The establishment of the relationship of the two doctrines under discussion is of considerable interest and importance. Not only does the system of Leibniz become clearer when viewed in the light of neo-Platonic pantheism, but the theory of Intelligence, thought of as capable of its later development, is seen to possess more depth and originality than is ordinarily attributed to it. That Leibniz, fond of displaying his vast erudition and of quoting the thoughts of others which even remotely confirmed his own, should have omitted to cite Plotinus, is no doubt due to the fact that this writer had been read at a time when the influence of his profound thought was not consciously recognized.