CHAPTER 2

Leibniz

278. Leibniz was of an admirable, reasonable and conciliatory nature. Finding himself in disagreement with Locke, he adopted an extremely friendly and magnanimous approach, instead of intensifying and exaggerating the difference in their views. He was as accommodating as possible and adopted an approach which should always characterise two men of dissenting views when they are not imbued with a spirit of hostility and vanity but motivated by a genuine desire to understand one another and to pursue the truth together.

I have already pointed out that no reasonable person can dissent (unless motivated by a sense of pique or a desire to contradict) (cf. 235) when Locke states: 'I accept that man possesses a faculty of thought, a faculty for passing from sensations to ideas and thus forming judgments and rational arguments.' Consequently, this view needs to be taken as a common starting point from which to lead one's opponent to a deeper investigation. In other words, one should inquire how this faculty of thought is formed so that it can carry out the operations which Locke himself attributes to it. The aim is to see whether it is necessary to accept some innate element as essential in such a way that the being of the faculty depends upon it. Locke is not refuted over the general principle underpinning his system, but simply invited to deepen his inquiry into the human understanding. This was Leibniz's attitude, which he displayed with a spirit of magnanimity on a par with truth and power.

279. In the New Essays which Leibniz wrote on Human Understanding (published posthumously), Philalete, who defends Locke's position, accepts the view of Theophilus - a pseudonym for Leibniz himself - that our potency for thought is innate. Theophilus raises no objection but merely points out to him that 'true faculties are never simple possibilities', and that 'they always contain both tendency and action'.(192)

Because Locke identified the potency for thought as a faculty for reflection upon one's own sensations and on the operations of the soul, Leibniz goes along with him and happily sets about analysing this faculty of reflection. In doing so, he finds that its acceptance does not necessarily imply contradiction of the theory of innate ideas properly understood, but rather an approach to it.

Leibniz writes of Locke:

Further on, he touches on this feeling of his in other words:

From these passages, it is perfectly obvious that Leibniz felt, although somewhat confusedly, the difficulty we have been examining. He realised that a faculty for thought, shorn completely of any notion, was inevitably a contradiction. It would mean speaking of a faculty without a faculty, of a potency that is not a potency. The simple acceptance of an innate potency of thought in an innate intellect (he says to Locke) means acceptance of some innate notion or idea through which the intellective soul can exert its power on the sensations it has received and on itself(198) - provided, of course, that 'intellect' has been thoroughly understood.

280. However Leibniz, although shrewd enough to realise that it was impossible to explain how the soul could think without some innate element, did not come to a knowledge of this truth by a close analysis of the nature of the power of the intellectual potency. He deduced it from a highly speculative principle, that is, from the common nature of all the potencies which he realised he knew well.

In one passage, he says

281. Thus Leibniz recognises the danger of all these analogies when discussing the soul. It is precisely by the use of such imagery that the followers of Locke endeavour to explain their system although they then go on to claim in all earnestness that only their method of argument is strict and rigorous. According to them, all their opponents are guilty of resorting to imagination rather than reasoning, merely because they disagree with them and are unhappy with the sense-based analogies to which Locke's followers contentedly resort. In fact, if we rule out such gross analogies (this is the force of Leibniz's argument) as windows of the soul, of wax, of the tabula rasa, and consider the soul as it is, as a mere potency for thought, we will see, if we look carefully, that we must inevitably attribute to it some act because there is no potency of any kind without its particular act. Now, if this act is to correspond to the potency to which it belongs, the act of the faculty of knowledge must contain some type of knowledge, some innate notion or idea which forms the term and object of the act. In this way, the argument Leibniz uses to recognise the need to accept an innate element in the human spirit was similar to Aristotle's proof that the origin of human knowledge could not be explained without positing an acting intellect, that is, an intellect which would be originally and naturally in act. 'A perception is only produced from another perception, as movement arises naturally only from movement.' Brucker expounds the Leibnizian theory in words which would appear to have come from the mouth of Aristotle himself.(200)

282. Nevertheless, there is a difference between Aristotle and Leibniz. Aristotle realised the need of his acting intellect from a study of the particular potency of knowledge. He saw that the actual ideas of this potency could not be explained unless it was in act from the beginning. Leibniz, on the other hand, realised the need to allocate some primal act to the intellect from his examination of the nature of potencies in general. According to him, they were inevitably endowed with some act in order to be potencies.

However, to infer the need to accept some innate notion from the nature of potency in general, as Leibniz did, is to take too rarefied a view and fail to grasp the question: 'Does the formation of human cognitions require something innate for its conception and explanation?' Leibniz does not get to the very heart of the matter, but tries to explain it by means of some extrinsic principle. This is a thoroughly risky approach which, as we shall see, produces some flaws in Leibniz's system. Leibniz saw the difficulty, therefore, but only in a general way. He saw that the formation of ideas demanded some preceding idea, but did not see the proper, particular approach in which I outlined this need. At least, he did not see clearly that the faculty for forming ideas was inevitably a faculty which presupposed some idea by means of which it formed judgments and, through judgments, all other ideas.

283. Here then are Leibniz's conclusions:

The senses cannot produce the soul's primal perceptions; the body cannot exercise any activity on the soul;(201) no created ens can truly act upon another; nor can the potency of these entia go outside its own sphere, that is, move out of itself by its action and enter other entia; all changes undergone by an ens, therefore, only proceed from some principle within itself which has the ability to develop according to a determined pattern of changes; these changes, harmonised by God through certain fixed laws compatible with the changes in other entia, make us believe that some, which stably precede others, are causes of the others, although they are, in fact, merely co-existent. This was the theory of Leibniz's famous pre-established harmony.

The principle that all changes undergone by an ens proceed solely from an inner force of that ens, which develops and unfolds in a determined series of movements, was used by Leibniz to express the origin of ideas which are represented to our mind successively as a series of alterations or changes occurring in it.
Leibniz, therefore, imagined that all ideas were already in our mind from the beginning because of the nature of the mind. However, they would be present insensibly without our being aware of them. He called these ideas perceptions, to distinguish them from apperceptions which also were ideas, but ideas of which we had already become conscious.

284. He maintains, therefore, that ideas are different from thought. Consequently, they may be found in the soul without any actual thought, that is, without any act of attention by the soul on the idea itself:

Philalete, Locke's disciple offers the usual objection to this:
But is it not true that the idea is the object of thought?

Theophilus answers:

285. Thus, Leibniz admitted two innate elements in the mind: 1. the non-sensible ideas of all things; 2. certain instincts by means of which we are moved to reflect upon the ideas themselves, actually to think of them and thus to acquire consciousness or apperception of them. Because these instincts differ in each person from birth, they produce a series of different thoughts in each, and serve to prompt each person to reflect upon some rather than other innate ideas found in the depth of the spirit.

In short, Leibniz pictured each idea as a kind of tiny potency on its own, as an ens having power to incline the mind to itself. Because of this, he often calls ideas instincts, attitudes, dispositions, and so on, as though they were vying to acquire a higher degree of enlightenment in the mind and to arouse themselves by producing actual consciousness of themselves in us. Because the activity of these instincts differs from person to person, people are internally stimulated to one thought rather than others, that is, to reflect actually upon certain ideas rather than upon them all.(206)
Leibniz, therefore, made ideas emerge from the depths of our spirit. But let us see once more how he explained that some ideas were contained in others, and how we are able to come to a distinct awareness of new ideas solely by the development of a single idea.

286. First, we should recall another Leibnizian principle derived from his meditations on the nature of potencies in general. He was unable to conceive of potencies and entia other than purely simple ones, that is, without parts.
But because these were all inevitably different from one another, he could not picture any difference other than that of perceptions in simple entia.
He therefore attributed perceptions to all his simple entities, called monads, although he did not attribute consciousness of perceptions to them all.

287 On this assumption, the original connection between ideas in the human soul is the following.
First, the soul has the ideas of those simple entia or monads of which its body is composed and from which it is derived. These ideas we can call A, B, C, D, etc. But the soul cannot have the idea A except by picturing to itself all A's perceptions, which determine and individualise A. The soul, therefore, in perceiving A perceives all A's perceptions.

Let us now assume that A's perceptions are the perceptions of the monads a, b, c, d, etc. The soul which has A represented in itself, necessarily has a representation of the other series of monads a, b, c, d, etc. The same argument may be applied to B, C, D, etc. in particular, and then to a, b, c, d, etc. in particular. Indeed, each of these monads also has the perception of other monads so that, in perceiving a, b, c, d, etc. the monads whose representations they possess are also perceived as enclosed within them.

It is now easy to see that such an argument enables us to scan successfully all the monads in the universe and observe that the perceptions of these monads are enclosed in each other just as seeds seem to be indefinitely enfolded in one other. Consequently, the mind which perceives A, B, C, etc. perceives in them the whole universe. This is the representation of the universe which Leibniz attributed to all his monads. In this representation, the perceptions which had more instinctive impact, or greater power to attract the soul's attention as individuals, were given greater prominence.(207) Such a picture of the universe which Leibniz called the Scheme of the monad was - as we might gather from our previous discussion - necessarily different in each monad, because the first perceptions in each were completely different, together with the order in which the first monads enclosed and enfolded the others.

288. One issue which escaped Locke's notice was that of tiny perceptions or, to put it more correctly, of unreflected perceptions.
This phenomenon was carefully observed by Leibniz whose lofty intellect found in it a rich philosophical seam; here, I think, lies his greatest merit in our difficulty.
Locke so radically ignores the existence within us of feeling experiences and information which remain in us untouched by reflection that he would exclude from the soul any kind of virtual knowledge. Leibniz observes:

289. The German philosopher establishes the fact of unreflected perceptions when he says:

290. This argument proves not only the fact, but the need for the fact, to ensure that some thought of ours is completed. Leibniz makes the same point in confirmation of his theory and bolsters it by reflections which I consider worthy of attention. Such a fact is easily lost sight of and it is of the utmost importance in the history of philosophy. It cannot be over-emphasised.

Leibniz says in one passage:(210)

In another passage, he adds:

291. Locke's objection to innate ideas, that is, if they existed, we would be aware of them from the very first days of our existence because things of which we are unaware can have no virtual existence in our spirit, is utterly frivolous. This is belied by the extremely obvious fact noted and exploited by Leibniz, that is, the existence of some perceptions of which we are not actually aware. Examples of this are ideas which, although not actually present to the spirit, can be recalled at will, or present themselves to us through association with fortuitous incidents to which they are bound and referred. Similarly, we continually receive perceptions which because of their faintness or weakness, or of their number, or some other cause, elude our attention as they come and go within us without our noticing them. In a word, it is one thing for some idea or perception to exist in our spirit and quite another for us to be actually thinking about it. It can be present without our thinking of it. We have it, therefore, but we do not know we have it. Not knowing that we have it, we cannot talk about it. We can, in fact, think and assert that we do not have an idea while we do, in fact, possess it.

This, says Leibniz, is the way I assume that all ideas of things exist in the human soul: they are present within us as nonsensible perceptions(215) like the statue already faintly designed in white marble by slender reddish, yellowish or other coloured veins which can be used as a guide by the stone-cutter to extract it. The artist uses this trick of nature in the marble to design the statue. In Leibniz's view, therefore, the development of the intellectual faculties would consist entirely in the soul's efforts to ensure that the ideas it contained in outline were rendered more noticeable and strong by reflection, which enables us to become aware of them, actually to intuit them, and to be able to discuss them with others.

292. Leibniz makes great play of this multitude of slight perceptions originating within us; he uses them to explain almost all facts of the spirit.

293. Leibniz tells us in certain passages that he posits in the spirit more that is innate than Plato did. He admits not only remembrance, but presentiment.
However, we do not have to take this statement of Leibniz as literally true. Presentiment of the future comes as much from Plato's ideas as from Leibniz's tiny perceptions; and there were several Platonists who deduced from ideas not only presentiment but prophecy, divination and enthusiasm.

294. If, therefore, we consider the two systems in themselves, and ignore their consequences, I think we can say that Leibniz posited less that was innate in the human mind than Plato did.
Plato claimed that, here below, our mind bears within it all ideas. We are like people who learn, but then forget. We have all ideas, completely formed, but have forgotten them. All we need do is recall them. On the other hand, Leibniz describes them as the tiniest vestiges of ideas, like veins in marble or the delicate fissuring in a wooden board. Leibniz's innate ideas are the outlines of ideas rather than fully finished ideas; it is the instinctive activity of the mind which brings them into existence and perfects them. To do this, it requires more than the mere act of remembrance.(217)

295. I have no doubt that Leibniz, if he focused upon the fact of ideas and had been content to explain it, would have inevitably been led to the correct solution by his perceptive mind.
However, instead of concentrating directly on the acts of the intellective potency, he focused, as I said, on potencies in general. This led him to accept the presence in the mind of more that is innate than is actually required. What happened was this.
Because he had not established sufficiently the nature of the intellective potency and of ideas, he was unable to avail himself of the intimate link between ideas which enables one to generate another. One consequence of this is that the vestiges of all ideas need not be admitted as innate. Leibniz could have accepted as innate the one, single idea which gives birth to all others.

As I said, the problem consists in explaining how we first begin to form judgments. If there is only one innate idea, we already have enough, because use of this one idea enables us to have, at our convenience, a series of judgments. These judgments can produce other ideas with which we form further judgments, and so on. It is necessary, therefore, to examine closely the genealogy of ideas. This leads us to see that they all come from one stock, a first idea, the essence of ideas, through which alone we come to possess in its fullness the faculty of judgment. Leibniz was not greatly interested in this kind of inquiry and, as a result, was unable to reduce innate ideas to a single, primal idea, the head and origin of all others.

I do not mean that Leibniz did not see how one idea was deduced from another. I am saying that he did not make as much use of this principle as he could have done. If he had done so, a single idea, with the addition of sensations, would have been sufficient to serve as a source of all other ideas and cognitions. Instead Leibniz posited in the soul the perception of the universe and of all the individual things which the universe embraces - an infinite number, according to Leibniz [App.,  no. 24].

296. Leibniz was prevented from seeing this, I repeat, by his concentration on general metaphysical principles rather than on the human being to whom those principles were to apply.
This resulted, I feel, in his failure to grasp fully the distinction, so difficult to understand, between sensations and ideas.
Having established his principle that the body could not exercise any real action upon the spirit, he was obliged to derive ideas as well as sensations from the same internal energy of the human soul. After this, it was easy to confuse the two or to be casual about establishing their completely different natures.

297. 'Sensation,' he maintains, 'occurs in us when we apperceive an external object,'(218) that is, not only when we perceive it in line with the distinction he makes between perceive and apperceive, but rather when we are aware that we perceive it.
But sensation, although it has a term, has no object, which pertains to the understanding. Leibniz confuses the two orders.

298. Next, we are aware of our perception when we are thinking about it. If, therefore, sensation is not, in fact, perception but being aware of perception, it becomes thought itself. This confusion between sensation and thought threatens once more to confuse the order of real things and the order of ideal things.
In fact, sensation refers to something real; thought reflects upon what is real and compares it with what is ideal [App., no. 25]. Consequently, every thought contains something universal. Sensation, on the other hand, contains nothing universal; all is particular and real.

299. This explains why Leibniz, in so many passages, inadvertently confuses the world of real entia with the world of abstractions, and in his argument moves back and forward from one to the other without noticing clearly the infinite distance between them.
The following is one example of such imprecision.(219)

Having distinguished between necessary and non-necessary truths, Leibniz is unaware that the former can be only universal truths, that is, truths which involve the mere possibility of things, if we exclude the case of God who is the only real, necessary ens. Consequently, wanting to prove that necessary truths cannot be deduced from the senses, he goes on as follows: 'If some happenings can be foreseen before we have any proof of them, it is obvious that we must have contributed something of our own to foresee them.(220)

Fundamentally, this argument contains a precious truth, but an error needs to be noted. Leibniz was well aware that our imagination cannot extend to anything not previously perceived by the senses. He knew it perfectly well, and immediately adds: 'The senses are necessary for all our actual cognitions although they are not sufficient to provide us with them all.'(221) But he asks: 'Among the things of which we actually have an idea when we are stimulated by the senses, is there any instance in which we can foresee with complete security and necessity that such a thing, such an occurrence, will take place?' If we can have such foresight, he says, it cannot come from the senses. They only furnish examples and instances and an argument by induction and analogy which never constitutes necessity.

Even so, he continues, there is no doubt that we do sometimes have the faculty to foresee events. It follows that we must also have something innate which furnishes us with this necessity which is not derived from the senses. Yes, but how does he prove to us that we have the faculty to foresee events with apodictic certainty? [App., no. 26]. He cites the example of Euclid who, from the principles he lays down, induces necessary consequences. Here, Leibniz has certainly confused the world of abstractions with the world of realities. Euclid's example is valid for the world of abstractions; he simply deduced abstract truths from abstract principles. But predicting future events pertains to the world of realities, and the possibility of such prediction cannot be inferred from the possibility of deriving the truths of pure geometry from their principles.

Leibniz, therefore, unduly extends the potency of a priori reasoning. In other words, he is not content with establishing the limits of its dominion within the reign of abstract truths or of mere possibilities, all of which are immutable and necessary. He allows them to descend to the world of real things(222) where they are suitable for foreseeing some events with absolute certainty, although their necessity is merely hypothetical.

As I said, given the nature of his system, Leibniz was bound to do this. In accepting that the spirit contained the innate representation of all things in the universe, he presupposed in the nature of such a spirit not only ideas but the perceptions of all the real things which go to make up the entire universe. It was natural, therefore, for him to admit that the human spirit drew from itself and, as he put it, from its own depth concrete as well as abstract truths (concrete truths relate to real things). This is the origin of Leibnizian presentiment, that is, the faculty of foreseeing events by means of reasoning.

300. From what I have said, it can be established that Leibniz

1. Posited too much of what is innate by accepting as innate all ideas and the very perceptions of real things. A single idea is sufficient to explain the formation of all other ideas, granted the presence of sensations to the spirit,(223) as we shall see.

2. Extended unduly the force of a priori reasoning. He was not content with granting it the abstract fields of possibility and the real fields of probability, but attributed to it the right to descend, by necessary reasoning, to real contingent things, which it would sometimes foresee with certainty without any need for experiment. Leibniz's system therefore is excessive relative to both its heads, remembrance and presentiment.

Leibniz's remembrance goes too far because, although it does not consist, as Plato's did, in the simple recall of ideas but rather in activity which intensifies the light perfecting and fulfilling them, nevertheless it still remains a potency which does nothing except give greater prominence to what previously exists in the soul. On the other hand, it seems obvious at first glance - and emerges more clearly after analysis - that the potency for reasoning consists also in generating new ideas or concepts by means of the judgments which this potency first makes on sensations. It can form these judgments as soon as it is given a single, completely universal idea to use as an examplar or norm to judge whatever sensations put before it. Nothing more is required to explain such a marvellous feature of the spirit as reasoning.

Leibnizian presentiment goes too far because the mind can never deduce any future occurrence except by conjecture or under certain conditions. For example, if the sun rises tomorrow with nothing to impede its action, I foresee that it will shed its light near and far.

(192) Bk. 2, c. 1. This remark of Leibniz is fairly important but is not the whole picture; the tendency to action does not originate in the subject; the great man did not get as far as the object.

(193) Leibniz distinguished between perception and apperception; the former indicates a modification of our soul of which we are not conscious; the latter, a modification of which we are aware.

(194) In this passage, I merely wish to reveal the German philosopher's stance relative to his opponent. In fact, my impression is that Leibniz's argument falls down because he uses the phrase innate ideas in different senses. In the passage I am quoting here, he would seem to mean purely the matter of ideas or ideas acquired from the first moment of our existence. What he says is: 1. we bear within us the matter of our ideas; 2. from the very first moment of our existence we bear within us our intellect; 3. our intellect cannot be inactive because it obviously has its matter to hand. It is inevitable then that it continues to receive all these ideas from the first moment of its existence. However, in many other passages, innate ideas for Leibniz seem to mean ideas so essential to the intellect itself that without them there could be no concept of intellect. It is at these points that he describes ideas as virtually active in the intellect. It is essential not to change these senses which are inevitably confused if words are used in different ways. It is, in fact, quite different to inquire whether there are innate ideas in one sense, or whether there are innate ideas in another sense. To inquire whether our understanding, as soon as it exists, has matter on which to operate and thus to form ideas immediately, is more a question of fact than anything else. It is not absurd to imagine it without these ideas, at least by some abstraction. On the other hand, to enquire whether the intellect itself is the intuition of some idea and a potency for using that idea to reason - so that denial of the idea is denial of the intellect, - is a question which involves the nature of the understanding, not fact.

(195) Nouveaux Essais, etc., Preface.

(196) Even this argument of Leibniz is not sufficiently precise. If he is speaking here universally about the idea of being, of substance, etc. our soul could not furnish it to our understanding better than the senses can because the soul, too, is a particular ens, substance, etc., like bodies. Substance, as universal, the object of our mind, possesses something not found in bodies or in the soul. This 'something' is its universality.

(197) Nouveaux Essais, etc., bk. 2, c. 1.

(198) This sentiment, too, is expressed in the previous quotations from Leibniz, although not so clearly because it is mixed up with other things.

(199) Nouveaux Essais, etc., bk. 2, c. 1.

(200) Period 3, part 2, bk. 1, c. 8.

(201) This is not due to the intrinsically distinct natures of body and soul. For Leibniz, the body was merely a union of simple monads, each with its perceptions, so that, in one sense, he calls them souls. He ruled out any physical impulse because of his general principle: 'No created ens can exercise a real action upon some other ens and effect a change in it.' All changes in every ens were due inevitably to a principle within the ens itself. This was the concept of the potency for action which Leibniz had formed for himself. Nevertheless, he sometimes appears to forget his general principle, which underpins his whole system, and halts before the disparate nature of body and spirit.

(202) Nouveaux Essais, etc., bk. 1.

(203) If the word thought is reserved to indicate a reflective act, I agree; but I cannot conceive idea without intuition.

(204) Nouveaux Essais, etc., bk. 2, c. 1. In this passage, Leibniz says that the soul is the object of the intellect insofar as it contains ideas, because ideas are the proximate object of the intellect. Agreed: but this is quite different from saying, as he does elsewhere, that the intellect forms the ideas of being, substance, etc. because the soul perceives that it is all these things. In this second case, the soul is the real object of the intellect just as its object is all the physical things it knows. Confusing these quite different things is a frequent mistake in our philosopher.

(205) Nouveaux Essais, etc., bk. 1, c. 1.

(206) 'Every feeling is the perception of a truth and a natural feeling is the perception of an innate truth which is very often indistinct' (Nouveaux Essais, etc., bk. 1, c. 2).

(207) See the Theses for Prince Eugenio published by Leibniz in 1714.

(208) Nouveaux Essais, etc., bk. 1, c. 1.

(209) Nouveaux Essais, etc., bk. 2, c. 1.

(210) Nouveaux Essais, etc., bk. 1, c. 1.

(211) The word perception has an extremely wide connotation in Leibniz's philosophy, and comprises all thoughts.

(212) Not because they are too slight (if we are speaking of ideas) but because they are not subjected to reflection. Sensations may be slight; ideas cannot be slight, though they can be unobserved or not considered closely and with concentration by the mind.

(213) Leibniz therefore assumes that the slight sounds, by means of which we acquire an apperception of the complex of many sounds, are heard. If so, he would seem to be in clear contradiction with himself here and in other places where he describes perception as a true sensation. However, assuming that we do actually feel the perception without reflecting on it, I would maintain that occasionally this perception may be produced perfectly well by a great number of lesser perceptions but not by an infinite number, as will be seen from the comments I make in the next note. If such were the case, the act of the spirit would be simple, but would terminate in what is multiple, or the multiple would be perceived in what is simple, and again, many would be perceived by one. This fact cannot be more difficult to accept than that of the union of two terms in judgment.

(214) Nouveaux Essais, etc., Preface.

(215) The phrase, non-sensible perceptions, indicates that in this passage Leibniz is not self-consistent. As I remarked earlier, he sometimes describes perceptions as felt by us, though devoid of apperception. However, it should be noted that sensation is quite different from the thought which we have of sensation. We are aware of having sensation only because we think about it. Without thought, we would have sensations in the soul (quite distinct from the external impression upon our body), but not know that it was taking place. Animals have sensation unaccompanied by thought.

(216) Nouveaux Essais, etc., Preface.

(217) Philatele, in the work already quoted, objects to Theophilus that proofs derived from sense experience are needed if we are to grant the existence of innate ideas. Theophilus replies: 'This question is decided in the way we prove we have imperceptible bodies and invisible movements, although certain persons ridicule the notion. Thus there are perceptions which are so slight that they cannot be apperceived and recalled, but are known through certain consequences' (N. Essais, etc., bk. 2, c. 1).

(218) Nouveaux Essais, etc. bk. 2, c. 19. Leibniz's definition shows that his perception is something lacking sense. This is the opposite of what he has said elsewhere. I cannot myself agree with him: an unthought, unadverted sensation is a perception for me in so far as it apprehends a foreign term. If it is adverted to or thought, it could usefully be called apperception.

(219) I have quoted others earlier in the footnote to 280 [cf. App., no. 22].

(220) N. Essais, etc., Preface. The argument is perfectly sound if we bear in mind that even a forecast based on a mere conjecture requires universals in the human spirit, in the same way as any comparison between one thing and another. Anything common in a number of things is always a universal, an idea.

(221) N. Essais, etc., ibid.

(222) Leibniz, if he had merely attributed to a priori reasoning the demonstration of the existence of God, would have been within proper limits. God is the necessary reality, and the presence in reason of a necessary principle from which to deduce the necessary reality is not absurd. But contingent things could have only moral necessity, which Leibniz was actually pursuing. But I shall be dealing with this issue later.

(223) In Leibniz's view, organic sensation seems merely to be the occasion when we become aware of the idea, present within us, of an external ens. Such an occasion stimulates the act of the instinctive energy with which Leibniz endows ideas.