Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/438

422 the clock of the universe to make it go right. The sum of matter, like the sum of motive force, remains ever the same. Whatsoever has occurred or ever shall occur in the material world is ideally determinable mathematically. In a word, the material world is a mechanism, only infinitely more ingenious than any mechanism contrived by man, and composed of an infinity of parts inclosed one in the other.

Alongside of this machine of the corporeal world, Leibnitz supposed a spirit world—the world of his monads—whose ideas, from their creation down, keep pace with the changes of the corporeal world and answer to them; but between them and the corporeal world no reciprocal action of cause and effect is possible. On this theory, when we suppose we are working for ends, or that we have sensations produced by external causes, such ideas are preëstablished phantasms of our soul-monad, which is ever presenting to itself exactly the course of things that is passing outside at the same instant, and that seemingly, but not in reality, works through or upon the monad. Once only, miracles apart, has anything been done in the universe for an end, according to Leibnitz, and that was when God created the universe as perfect as he could. How Leibnitz supposed it possible to reconcile his theory with freedom of will, is a question which does not concern us here.

Thus, there was no doubt in Leibnitz's mind that material particles may, in virtue of the forces imparted to them, constitute an apparently teleological universe. Nay, all difference between his and our theory of the material universe vanishes if God created the world infinite ages ago. But even if God created the universe at the finite time—t, the course of events necessitated by Leibnitz's theory corresponds perfectly with what it would be in our theory, onward from the instant—t. For, inasmuch as Leibnitz looks on the condition of the universe at each instant as a function of time, God could, according to him, create the world in the instant—t only in that condition in which it was at that time, according to our view.

Take away from Leibnitz's theory of the universe the illusory appendage of the monadology, of preëstablished harmony, and of optimism, and the only solid nucleus that remains is his mechanical conception of the material world, and his perception of the impossibility of explaining on supernatural grounds a material fact, or, conversely, of explaining on mechanical grounds a spiritual fact. His having, over and over again, clearly and sharply expressed this perception—indeed, it was this perception that forced him to resort to the hopeless idea of preëstablished harmony—may well be esteemed to be Leibnitz's special service to metaphysics, though he himself, and his followers, hitherto make that claim rather for those more brilliant speculations. Certain it is that matter, as we have to do with matter in physico-mathematical studies, is not all, not the substance of things. But what there is over and above matter is hidden from us; and when we strive to set up before