Theodicy | Page 2

Leibniz his own age knew
was the Leibniz of the Theodicy. Then in the second place, the
Theodicy itself is peculiarly rich in historical material. It reflects the
world of men and books which Leibniz knew; it expresses the
theological setting of metaphysical speculation which still
predominated in the first years of the eighteenth century.
Leibniz is remembered for his philosophy; he was not a professional
philosopher. He was offered academic chairs, but he declined them. He
was a gentleman, a person of means, librarian to a reigning prince, and

frequently employed in state affairs of trust and importance. The
librarian might at any moment become the political secretary, and offer
his own contributions to policy. Leibniz was for the greater part of his
active life the learned and confidential servant of the House of
Brunswick; when the Duke had nothing better to do with him, he set
him to research into ducal history. If Leibniz had a profession in
literature, it was history rather than philosophy. He was even more
closely bound to the interests of his prince than John Locke was to
those of the Prince of Orange. The Houses of Orange and of Brunswick
were on the same side in the principal contest which divided Europe,
the battle between Louis XIV and his enemies. It was a turning-point of
the struggle when the Prince of Orange supplanted Louis's Stuart
friends on the English throne. It was a continuation of the same
movement, when Leibniz's master, George I, succeeded to the same
throne, and frustrated the restoration of the Stuart heir. Locke returned
to England in the wake of the Prince of Orange, and became the [9]
representative thinker of the régime. Leibniz wished to come to the
English court of George I, but was unkindly ordered to attend to the
duties of his librarianship. So he remained in Hanover. He was then an
old man, and before the tide of favour had turned, he died.
Posterity has reckoned Locke and Leibniz the heads of rival sects, but
politically they were on the same side. As against Louis's political
absolutism and enforced religious uniformity, both championed
religious toleration and the freedom of the mind. Their theological
liberalism was political prudence; it was not necessarily for that reason
the less personally sincere. They had too much wisdom to meet bigotry
with bigotry, or set Protestant intolerance against Catholic absolutism.
But they had too much sympathy with the spirit of Europe to react into
free thinking or to make a frontal attack on revealed truth. They took
their stand on a fundamental Christian theism, the common religion of
all good men; they repudiated the negative enormities of Hobbes and
Spinoza.
The Christian was to hold a position covered by three lines of defences.
The base line was to be the substance of Christian theism and of
Christian morals, and it was to be held by the forces of sheer reason,

without aid from scriptural revelation. The middle line was laid down
by the general sense of Scripture, and the defence of it was this.
'Scriptural doctrine is reconcilable with the findings of sheer reason,
but it goes beyond them. We believe the Scriptures, because they are
authenticated by marks of supernatural intervention in the
circumstances of their origin. We believe them, but reason controls our
interpretation of them.' There remained the most forward and the most
hazardous line: the special positions which a Church, a sect, or an
individual might found upon the scriptural revelation. A prudent man
would not hold his advance positions in the same force or defend them
with the same obstinacy as either of the lines behind them. He could
argue for them, but he could not require assent to them.
One cannot help feeling, indeed, the readiness of these writers to fall
back, not only from the front line to the middle line, but from the
middle line itself to the base line. Leibniz, for example, writes with
perfect seriousness and decency about the Christian scheme of
redemption, but it hardly looks like being for him a crucial deliverance
from perdition. It is not the intervention of Mercy, by which alone He
possesses himself of [10] us: it is one of the ways in which supreme
Benevolence carries out a cosmic policy; and God's benevolence is
known by pure reason, and apart from Christian revelation.
In one politically important particular the theological attitude of
Leibniz differed from that of Locke. Both stood for toleration and for
the minimizing of the differences between the sects. This was a serious
enough matter in England, but it was an even more serious matter in
Germany. For Germany was divided between Catholics and Protestants;
effective toleration must embrace them both. English toleration might
indulge a harmless Catholic minority, while rejecting the