Theodicy | Page 4

heart of it, but we will make no claims to sufficient
interpretation of Leibniz's thought-processes.

Leibniz, then, like all the philosophers of the seventeenth century, was
reforming scholasticism in the light of a new physical science. The
science was mathematical in its form, mechanistical in its doctrine, and
unanswerable in its evidence--it got results. But it was metaphysically
intractable, and the doctrines of infinite and finite substance which it
generated furnish a gallery of metaphysical grotesques; unless we are to
except Leibniz; his system is, if nothing else, a miracle of ingenuity,
and there are moments when we are in danger of believing it.
It is a natural mistake for the student of seventeenth-century thought to
underestimate the tenacity of scholastic Aristotelianism. Descartes, we
all know, was reared in it, but then Descartes overthrew it; and he had
done his work and died by the time that Leibniz was of an age to
philosophize at all. We expect to see Leibniz starting on his shoulders
and climbing on from there. We are disappointed. Leibniz himself tells
us that he was raised in the scholastic teaching. His acquaintance with
Descartes's opinions was second-hand, and they were retailed to him
only that they might be derided. He agreed, like an amiable youth, with
his preceptors.
The next phase of his development gave him a direct knowledge of
Cartesian writings, and of other modern books beside, such as those of
the atomist Gassendi. He was delighted with what he read, because of
its fertility in the field of physics and mathematics; and for a short time
he was an enthusiastic modern. But presently he became dissatisfied.
The new systems did not go far enough, they were still scientifically
inadequate. At the same time they went too far, and carried
metaphysical paradox beyond the limits of human credulity.
[13] There is no mystery about Leibniz's scientific objections to the
new philosophers. If he condemned them here, it was on the basis of
scientific thought and observation. Descartes's formulation of the laws
of motion could, for example, be refuted by physical experiment; and if
his general view of physical nature was bound up with it, then so much
the worse for the Cartesian philosophy. But whence came Leibniz's
more strictly metaphysical objections? Where had he learned that
standard of metaphysical adequacy which showed up the inadequacy of

the new metaphysicians? His own disciples might be satisfied to reply,
that he learnt it from Reason herself; but the answer will not pass with
us. Leibniz reasoned, indeed, but he did not reason from nowhere, nor
would he have got anywhere if he had. His conception of metaphysical
reason was what his early scholastic training had made it.
There are certain absurd opinions which we are sure we have been
taught, although, when put to it, we find it hard to name the teacher.
Among them is something of this sort. 'Leibniz was a scholarly and
sympathetic thinker. He had more sense of history than his
contemporaries, and he was instinctively eclectic. He believed he could
learn something from each of his great predecessors. We see him
reaching back to cull a notion from Plato or from Aristotle; he even
found something of use in the scholastics. In particular, he picked out
the Aristotelian "entelechy" to stop a gap in the philosophy of his own
age.' What this form of statement ignores is that Leibniz was a
scholastic: a scholastic endeavouring, like Descartes before him, to
revolutionize scholasticism. The word 'entelechy' was, indeed, a piece
of antiquity which Leibniz revived, but the thing for which it stood was
the most familiar of current scholastic conceptions. 'Entelechy' means
active principle of wholeness or completion in an individual thing.
Scholasticism was content to talk about it under the name of
'substantial form' or 'formal cause'. But the scholastic interpretation of
the idea was hopelessly discredited by the new science, and the
scholastic terms shared the discredit of scholastic doctrine. Leibniz
wanted a term with a more general sound. 'There is an _X_', he wanted
to say, 'which scholasticism has defined as substantial form, but I am
going to give a new definition of it.' Entelechy was a useful name for X,
the more so as it had the authority of Aristotle, the master of
scholasticism.
Under the name of entelechy Leibniz was upholding the soul of [14]
scholastic doctrine, while retrenching the limbs and outward flourishes.
The doctrine of substantial form which he learnt in his youth had had
something in it; he could not settle down in the principles of Descartes
or of Gassendi, because both ignored this vital something. Since the
requirements of a new science would not allow a return to sheer

scholasticism, it was necessary to find a fresh philosophy, in which
entelechy and mechanism might be accommodated