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Corresponding to the three forms of the social organism (as we should now call the "natural community"), are the three kinds of jus,—jus strictum, equity, and piety. Each of these has its corresponding prescript. That of jus strictum is to injure no one; of equity, to render to each his own; and of piety, to make the ethical law the law of conduct. Jus strictum includes the right of war and peace. The right of peace exists between individuals till one breaks it. The right of war exists between men and things. The victory of person over thing is property. Things thus come to possess the right of the person to whom they belong as against every other person; that is, in the right of the person to himself as against the attacks of another (the right to peace) is included a right to his property. Jus strictum is, of course, in all cases, enforceable by civil law and the compulsory force which accompanies it. Equity, however, reaches beyond this to obligation in cases where there is no right of compulsion. Its law is, Be of aid to all, but to each according to his merits and his claims. Finally comes piety. The other two stages are limited. The lowest is negative, it wards off harm; the second aims after happiness, but only within the limits of earthly existence. That we should ourselves bear misery, even the greatest, for the sake of others, and should subject the whole of this existence to something higher, cannot be proved excepting as we regard the society, or community, of our spirits with God. Justice with relation to God comprehends all virtues. Everything that is, is from God; and hence the law of all conduct is to use everything according to its place in the idea of God, according to its function in the universal harmony. It thus not only complements the other two kinds of justice but is the source of their inner ethical worth. "Strict justice" may conflict with equity. But God effects that what is of use to the public well-being—that is, to the universe and to humanity—shall be of use also to the individual. Thus from the standpoint of God the moral is advantageous, and the immoral hurtful. Kant's indebtedness to Leibniz will at once appear to one initiated into the philosophy of the former.
Leibniz never worked out either his ethics or his political philosophy in detail; but it is evident that they both take their origin and find their scope in the fact of man's relationship to God, that they are both, in fact, accounts of the methods of realizing a universal but not a merely formal harmony. For harmony is not, with Leibniz, an external arrangement, but is the very soul of being. Perfect harmony, or adaptation to the universe of relations, is the end of the individual, and man is informed of his progress toward this end by an inner sentiment of pleasure.
It may be added that Leibniz's sthetic theory, so far as developed, rests upon the same basis as his ethical,—namely, upon membership in the "city of God," or community of spiritual beings. This is implied, indeed, in a passage already quoted, where he states the close connection of beauty with harmony and perfection. The feeling of beauty is the recognition in feeling of an order, proportion, and harmony which are not yet intellectually descried. Leibniz illustrates by music, the dance, and architecture. This feeling of the harmonious also becomes an impulse to produce. As perception of beauty may be regarded as unexplained, or confused, perception of truth, so creation of beauty may be considered as undeveloped will. It is action on its way to perfect freedom, for freedom is simply activity with explicit recognition of harmony.
We cannot do better than quote the conclusion of the matter from Leibniz's "Principles of Nature and of Grace," although, in part, it repeats what we have already learned. "There is something more in the rational soul, or spirit, than there is in the monad or even in the simple soul. Spirit is not only a mirror of the universe of creatures, but is also an image of the divine being. Spirit not only has a perception of the works of God, but is also capable of producing something which resembles them, though on a small scale. To say nothing of dreams, in which we invent without trouble and without volition things upon which we must reflect a long time in order to discover in our waking state,—to say nothing of this, our soul is architectonic in voluntary actions; and, in discovering the sciences in accordance with which God has regulated all things (pondere, mensura, numero), it imitates in its department and in its own world of activity that which God does in the macrocosm. This is the reason why spirits, entering through reason and eternal truths into a kind of society with God, are members of the city of God,—that is, of the most perfect state, formed and governed by the best of monarchs, in which there is no crime without punishment, and no good action without reward, and where there is as much of virtue and of happiness as may possibly exist. And this occurs not through a disturbance of nature, as if God's dealing with souls were in violation of mechanical laws, but by the very order of natural things, on account of the eternal, pre-established harmony between the kingdoms of nature and grace, between God as monarch and God as architect, since nature leads up to grace, and grace makes nature perfect in making use of it."
No better sentences could be found with which to conclude this analysis of Leibniz. They resound not only with the grandeur and wide scope characteristic of his thought, but they contain his essential idea, his pre-eminent "note,"—that of the harmony of the natural and the supernatural, the mechanical and the organic. The mechanical is to Leibniz what the word signifies; it is the instrumental, and this in the full meaning of the term. Nature is instrumental in that it performs a function, realizes a purpose, and instrumental in the sense that without it spirit, the organic, is an empty dream. The spiritual, on the other hand, is the meaning, the idea of nature. It perfects it, in that it makes it instrumental to itself, and thus renders it not the passive panorama of mere material force, but the manifestation of living spirit.
In the exposition now completed we have in general taken for granted the truth and coherency of Leibniz's fundamental ideas, and have contented ourselves with an account of the principles and notions that flow from these ideas. The time has come for retracing our steps, and for inquiring whether the assumed premises can be thus unquestioningly adopted. This final chapter, therefore, we shall devote to criticism of the basis of Leibniz's philosophy, not attempting to test it by a comparison with other systems, but by inquiring into its internal coherency, and by a brief account of the ways in which his successors, or at least one of them, endeavored to make right the points in which he appeared to fail.
The fundamental contradiction in Leibniz is to be found, I believe, between the method which he adopted—without inquiry into its validity and scope—and the subject-matter, or perhaps better the attitude, to which he attempted to apply this method; between, that is to say, the scholastic formal logic on the one hand and the idea of inter-relation derived from the development of scientific thought, on the other. Leibniz never thought of investigating the formal logic bequeathed by scholasticism, with a view to determining its adequacy as philosophic method. He adopted, as we have seen, the principles of identity and contradiction as sole principles of the only perfect knowledge. The type of knowledge is that which can be reduced to a series of identical propositions, whose opposite is seen to be impossible, because self-contradictory. Only knowledge in this form can be said to be demonstrative and necessary. As against Locke he justified the syllogistic method of the schoolmen as the typical method of all rational truth.
