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We have but to notice one point more, and our task is done so far as it serves to make plain the standpoint from which Leibniz criticised Locke. There is, we have seen, the greatest possible continuity and complexity in the realm of monads. There is no break, quantitative nor qualitative. It follows that the human soul has no gulf set between it and what we call nature. It is only the highest, that is to say the most active and the most representative, of all monads. It stands, indeed, at the head of the scale, but not outside it. From the monad which reveals its presence in that stone which with blinded eyes we call dead, through that which acts in the plant, in the animal, up to that of man, there is no chasm, no interruption. Nay, man himself is but one link in the chain of spiritual beings which ends only in God. All monads are souls; the soul of man is a monad which represents the universe more distinctly and adequately. The law which is enfolded in the lower monads is developed in it and forms a part of its conscious activity. The universe, which is confusedly mirrored by the perception of the lower monad, is clearly brought out in the conscious apperception of man. The stone is representative of the whole world. An all-knowing intelligence might read in it relations to every other fact the world, might see exemplified the past history of the world, and prefigured the events to come. For the stone is not an isolated existence, it is an inter-organic member of a system. Change the slightest fact in the world, and in some way it is affected. The law of the universe is one of completed reciprocity, and this law must be mirrored in every existence of the universe. Increase the activity, the representative power, until it becomes turned back, as it were, upon itself, until the monad not only is a mirror, but knows itself as one, and you have man. The soul of man is the world come to consciousness of itself. The realm of monads in what we call the inorganic world and the lower organic realm shows us the monad let and hindered in its development. These realms attempt to speak forth the law of their being, and reveal the immanent presence of the universe; but they do not hear their own voice, their utterance is only for others. In man the universe is manifested, and is manifested to man himself.
The reader, impatient of what may have seemed an over-long introduction, has perhaps been asking when he was to be brought to the subject under consideration,—the relations of Leibniz to Locke. But it has been impossible to come to this question until we had formed for ourselves an outline of the philosophical position of Leibniz. Nowhere in the "Nouveaux Essais" does Leibniz give a connected and detailed exposition of his philosophy, either as to his standpoint, his fundamental principles, or his method.
Some preliminary view of his position is therefore a necessity. The demand for this preliminary exposition becomes more urgent as we recognize that Leibniz's remarks upon Locke are not a critique of Locke from the standpoint of the latter, but are the application of his own philosophical conclusions. Criticism from within, an examination of a system of thought with relation to the consistency and coherency of its results, the connection between these results and the method professedly employed, investigation which depends not at all upon the position of the critic, but occupies itself with the internal relations of the system under discussion,—such criticism is a product of the present century. What we find in the "Nouveaux Essais" is a comparison of the ideas of Locke with those of Leibniz himself, a testing of the former by the latter as a standard, their acceptance when they conform, their rejection when they are opposed, their completion when they are in partial harmony.
The value of this sort of criticism is likely to be small and evanescent. If the system used as a standard is meagre and narrow, if it is without comprehensiveness and flexibility, it does not repay after-examination. The fact that the "Nouveaux Essais" of Leibniz have escaped the oblivion of the philosophical criticism of his day is proof, if proof still be needed, of the reasoned basis, the width of grasp, the fertility of suggestion which characterize the thought of Leibniz. But the fact that the criticism is, after all, external and not internal has made necessary the foregoing extended account of his method and general results.
On the other hand, what of Locke? How about him who is the recipient of the criticism? I assume that no extended account of his ideas is here necessary, and conceive myself to be justified in this assumption by the fact that we are already better acquainted with Locke. This acquaintance, indeed, is not confined to those who have expressly studied Locke. His thought is an inheritance into which every English-speaking person at least is born. Only he who does not think escapes this inheritance. Locke did the work which he had to do so thoroughly that every Englishman who will philosophize must either build upon Locke's foundations, or, with conscious purpose, clear the ground before building for himself. And it would be difficult to say that the acceptance of Locke's views would influence one's thought more than their rejection. This must not, of course, be taken too literally. It may be that one who is a lineal descendant of Locke in the spiritual generations of thought would not state a single important truth as Locke stated it, or that those who seek their method and results elsewhere have not repudiated the thought of Locke as expressly belonging to him.
But the fundamental principles of empiricism: its conception of intelligence as an individual possession; its idea of reality as something over against and distinct from mind; its explanation of knowledge as a process of action and reaction between these separate things; its account of our inability to know things as they really are,—these principles are congenital with our thinking. They are so natural that we either accept them as axiomatic, and accuse those who reject them of metaphysical subtlety, or, staggered perchance by some of their results, give them up with an effort. But it is an effort, and a severe one; and there is none of us who can tell when some remnant of the conception of intelligence as purely particular and finite will catch him tripping. On the other hand, we realize much better than those who have behind them a Leibniz and a Kant, rather than a Locke and a Hume, the meaning and the thorough-going necessity of the universality of intelligence. Idealism must be in some ways arbitrary and superficial to him who has not had a pretty complete course of empiricism.
Leibniz seems to have been impressed with the Essay on the Human Understanding at its first appearance. As early as 1696 we find him writing a few pages of comment upon the book. Compared with his later critique, these early "reflections" seem colorless, and give the impression that Leibniz desired to minimize his differences from Locke rather than to set them forth in relief. Comparatively slight as were his expressions of dissent, they appear to have stung Locke when they reached him. Meantime Locke's book was translated into French, and made its way to a wider circle of readers. This seems to have suggested to Leibniz the advisability of pursuing his comments somewhat further; and in the summer of 1703 he produced the work which now occupies us. A letter which Leibniz wrote at about this time is worth quoting at large for the light which it throws upon the man, as well as for suggesting the chief points in which he differed from Locke. Leibniz writes:—
