Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil · Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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16: 'The deceived and the deceiver are his.' v. 17: 'He maketh the judges fools'; v. 24: 'He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness'; v. 25: 'He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.' God said of the King of Assyria (Isa. x. 6), 'Against the people will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.' And Jeremiah said (Jer. x. 23), 'O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' And God said (Ezek. iii. 20), 'When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die.' And the Saviour said (John vi. 44), 'No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.' And St. Peter (Acts ii. 23), 'Jesus having been delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken.' And Acts iv.
27, 28, 'Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.' And St. Paul (Rom. ix. 16), 'It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.' And v. 18: 'Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth'; v. 19: 'Thou wilt say then unto me, why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?'; v. 20: 'Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?' And 1 Cor. iv. 7: 'For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?' And 1 Cor. xii. 6: 'There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.' And Eph. ii. 10: 'We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.' And Phil. ii. 13: 'It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.' One may add to these passages all those which make God the author of all grace and of all good [401] inclinations, and all those which say that we are as dead in sin.
10. Here now are the neutral passages, according to Mr. Hobbes. These are those where Holy Scripture says that man has the choice to act if he wills, or not to act if he wills not. For example Deut. xxx. 19: 'I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.' And Joshua xxiv. 15: 'Choose you this day whom ye will serve.' And God said to Gad the prophet (2 Sam. xxiv. 12), 'Go and say unto David: Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three things; choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.' And Isa. vii. 16: 'Until the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good.' Finally the passages which Mr. Hobbes acknowledges to be apparently contrary to his opinion are all those where it is indicated that the will of man is not in conformity with that of God. Thus Isa. v. 4: 'What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?' And Jer. xix. 5: 'They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal; which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.' And Hos. xiii. 9: 'O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.' And I Tim. ii. 4: 'God will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.' He avows that he could quote very many other passages, such as those which indicate that God willeth not iniquity, that he willeth the salvation of the sinner, and generally all those which declare that God commands good and forbids evil.
11. Mr. Hobbes makes answer to these passages that God does not always will that which he commands, as for example when he commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, and that God's revealed will is not always his full will or his decree, as when he revealed to Jonah that Nineveh would perish in forty days. He adds also, that when it is said that God wills the salvation of all, that means simply that God commands that all do that which is necessary for salvation; when, moreover, the Scripture says that God wills not sin, that means that he wills to punish it. And as for the rest, Mr. Hobbes ascribes it to the forms of expression used among men. But one will answer him that it would be to God's discredit that his revealed will [402] should be opposed to his real will: that what he bade Jonah say to the Ninevites was rather a threat than a prediction, and that thus the condition of impenitence was implied therein; moreover the Ninevites took it in this sense.
One will say also, that it is quite true that God in commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son willed obedience, but did not will action, which he prevented after having obtained obedience; for that was not an action deserving in itself to be willed. And it is not the same in the case of actions where he exerts his will positively, and which are in fact worthy to be the object of his will. Of such are piety, charity and every virtuous action that God commands; of such is omission of sin, a thing more alien to divine perfection than any other. It is therefore incomparably better to explain the will of God as I have explained it in this work. Thus I shall say that God, by virtue of his supreme goodness, has in the beginning a serious inclination to produce, or to see and cause to be produced, all good and every laudable action, and to prevent, or to see and cause to fail, all evil and every bad action. But he is determined by this same goodness, united to an infinite wisdom, and by the very concourse of all the previous and particular inclinations towards each good, and towards the preventing of each evil, to produce the best possible design of things. This is his final and decretory will. And this design of the best being of such a nature that the good must be enhanced therein, as light is enhanced by shade, by some evil which is incomparably less than this good, God could not have excluded this evil, nor introduced certain goods that were excluded from this plan, without wronging his supreme perfection. So for that reason one must say that he permitted the sins of others, because otherwise he would have himself performed an action worse than all the sin of creatures.
12. I find that the Bishop of Derry is at least justified in saying, article XV, in his Reply, p. 153, that the opinion of his opponents is contrary to piety, when they ascribe all to God's power only, and that Mr. Hobbes ought not to have said that honour or worship is only a sign of the power of him whom one honours: for one may also, and one must, acknowledge and honour wisdom, goodness, justice and other perfections. _Magnos facile laudamus, bonos libenter._ This opinion, which despoils God of all goodness and of all true justice, which represents him as a Tyrant, wielding an absolute power, independent of all right and of all equity, and [403] creating millions of creatures to be eternally unhappy, and this without any other aim than that of displaying his power, this opinion, I say, is capable of rendering men very evil; and if it were accepted no other Devil would be needed in the world to set men at variance among themselves and with God; as the Serpent did in making Eve believe that God, when he forbade her the fruit of the tree, did not will her good.
Mr. Hobbes endeavours to parry this thrust in his Rejoinder (p. 160) by saying that goodness is a part of the power of God, that is to say, the power of making himself worthy of love. But that is an abuse of terms by an evasion, and confounds things that must be kept distinct. After all, if God does not intend the good of intelligent creatures, if he has no other principles of justice than his power alone, which makes him produce either arbitrarily that which chance presents to him, or by necessity all that which is possible, without the intervention of choice founded on good, how can he make himself worthy of love? It is therefore the doctrine either of blind power or of arbitrary power, which destroys piety: for the one destroys the intelligent principle or the providence of God, the other attributes to him actions which are appropriate to the evil principle. Justice in God, says Mr. Hobbes (p. 161), is nothing but the power he has, which he exercises in distributing blessings and afflictions. This definition surprises me: it is not the power to distribute them, but the will to distribute them reasonably, that is, goodness guided by wisdom, which makes the justice of God.
But, says he, justice is not in God as in a man, who is only just through the observance of laws made by his superior. Mr. Hobbes is mistaken also in that, as well as Herr Pufendorf, who followed him. Justice does not depend upon arbitrary laws of superiors, but on the eternal rules of wisdom and of goodness, in men as well as in God. Mr. Hobbes asserts in the same passage that the wisdom which is attributed to God does not lie in a logical consideration of the relation of means to ends, but in an incomprehensible attribute, attributed to an incomprehensible nature to honour it. It seems as if he means that it is an indescribable something attributed to an indescribable something, and even a chimerical quality given to a chimerical substance, to intimidate and to deceive the nations through the worship which they render to it. After all, it is difficult for Mr. Hobbes to have a different opinion of God and of wisdom, since he admits only material substances. If Mr. Hobbes were still alive, I would beware of ascribing to him opinions which might do him injury; but it [404] is difficult to exempt him from this.
1. It is a pity that M. Bayle should have seen only the reviews of this admirable work, which are to be found in the journals. If he had read it himself and examined it properly, he would have provided us with a good opportunity of throwing light on many difficulties, which spring again and again like the head of the hydra, in a matter where it is easy to become confused when one has not seen the whole system or does not take the trouble to reason according to a strict plan. For strictness of reasoning performs in subjects that transcend imagination the same function as figures do in geometry: there must always be something capable of fixing our attention and forming a connexion between our thoughts. That is why when this Latin book, so learned and so elegant of style, printed originally in London and then reprinted in Bremen, fell into my hands, I judged that the seriousness of the matter and the author's merit required an attention which readers might fairly expect of me, since we are agreed only in regard to half of the subject.
Indeed, as the work contains five chapters, and the fifth with the appendix equals the rest in size, I have observed that the first four, where it is a question of evil in general and of physical evil in particular, are in harmony with my principles (save for a few individual passages), and that they sometimes even develop with force and eloquence some points I had treated but slightly because M. Bayle [406] had not placed emphasis upon them. But the fifth chapter, with its sections (of which some are equal to entire chapters) speaking of freedom and of the moral evil dependent upon it, is constructed upon principles opposed to mine, and often, indeed, to those of M. Bayle; that is, if it were possible to credit him with any fixed principles. For this fifth chapter tends to show (if that were possible) that true freedom depends upon an indifference of equipoise, vague, complete and absolute; so that, until the will has determined itself, there would be no reason for its determination, either in him who chooses or in the object; and one would not choose what pleases, but in choosing without reason one would cause what one chooses to be pleasing.
2. This principle of choice without cause or reason, of a choice, I say, divested of the aim of wisdom and goodness, is regarded by many as the great privilege of God and of intelligent substances, and as the source of their freedom, their satisfaction, their morality and their good or evil. The fantasy of a power to declare one's independence, not only of inclination, but of reason itself within and of good and evil without, is sometimes painted in such fine colours that one might take it to be the most excellent thing in the world. Nevertheless it is only a hollow fantasy, a suppression of the reasons for the caprice of which one boasts. What is asserted is impossible, but if it came to pass it would be harmful. This fantastic character might be attributed to some Don Juan in a St. Peter's Feast, and a man of romantic disposition might even affect the outward appearances of it and persuade himself that he has it in reality. But in Nature there will never be any choice to which one is not prompted by the previous representation of good or evil, by inclinations or by reasons: and I have always challenged the supporters of this absolute indifference to show an example thereof. Nevertheless if I call fantastic this choice whereto one is determined by nothing, I am far from calling visionaries the supporters of that hypothesis, especially our gifted author. The Peripatetics teach some beliefs of this nature; but it would be the greatest injustice in the world to be ready to despise on that account an Occam, a Suisset, a Cesalpino, a Conringius, men who still advocated certain scholastic opinions which have been improved upon to-day.
3. One of these opinions, revived, however, and introduced by [407] degenerate scholasticism, and in the Age of Chimeras, is vague indifference of choice, or real chance, assumed in our souls; as if nothing gave us any inclination unless we perceived it distinctly, and as if an effect could be without causes, when these causes are imperceptible. It is much as some have denied the existence of insensible corpuscles because they do not see them. Modern philosophers have improved upon the opinions of the Schoolmen by showing that, according to the laws of corporeal nature, a body can only be set in motion by the movement of another body propelling it. Even so we must believe that our souls (by virtue of the laws of spiritual nature) can only be moved by some reason of good or evil: and this even when no distinct knowledge can be extracted from our mental state, on account of a concourse of innumerable little perceptions which make us now joyful and now sad, or again of some other humour, and cause us to like one thing more than another without its being possible to say why.
Plato, Aristotle and even Thomas Aquinas, Durand and other Schoolmen of the sounder sort reason on that question like the generality of men, and as unprejudiced people always have reasoned. They assume that freedom lies in the use of reason and the inclinations, which cause the choice or rejection of objects. But finally some rather too subtle philosophers have extracted from their alembic an inexplicable notion of choice independent of anything whatsoever, which is said to do wonders in solving all difficulties. But the notion is caught up at the outset in one of the greatest difficulties, by offending against the grand principle of reasoning which makes us always assume that nothing is done without some sufficient cause or reason. As the Schoolmen often forgot to apply this great principle, admitting certain prime occult qualities, one need not wonder if this fiction of vague indifference met with applause amongst them, and if even most worthy men have been imbued therewith. Our author, who is otherwise rid of many of the errors of the ordinary Schoolmen, is still deluded by this fiction: but he is without doubt one of the most skilful of those who have supported it. _Si Pergama dextra_ _Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent._
He gives it the best possible turn, and only shows it on its good side. He knows how to strip spontaneity and reason of their advantages, [408] transferring all these to vague indifference: only through this indifference is one active, resisting the passions, taking pleasure in one's choice, or being happy; it appears indeed that one would be miserable if some happy necessity should oblige us to choose aright. Our author had said admirable things on the origin and reasons of natural evils: he only had to apply the same principles to moral evil; indeed, he believes himself that moral evil becomes an evil through the physical evils that it causes or tends to cause. But somehow or other he thinks that it would be a degradation of God and men if they were to be made subject to reason; that thus they would all be rendered passive to it and would no longer be satisfied with themselves; in short that men would have nothing wherewith to oppose the misfortunes that come to them from without, if they had not within them this admirable privilege of rendering things good or tolerable by choosing them, and of changing all into gold by the touch of this wondrous faculty.
4. We will examine it in closer detail presently; but it will be well to profit beforehand by the excellent ideas of our author on the nature of things and on natural evils, particularly since there are some points in which we shall be able to go a little further: by this means also we shall gain a better understanding of the whole arrangement of his system. The first chapter contains the principles. The writer calls substance a being the idea of which does not involve the existence of another. I do not know if there are any such among created beings, by reason of the connexion existing between all things; and the example of a wax torch is not the example of a substance, any more than that of a swarm of bees would be. But one may take the terms in an extended sense. He observes aptly that after all the changes of matter and after all the qualities of which it may be divested, there remain extension, mobility, divisibility and resistance.
He explains also the nature of notions, and leaves it to be understood that _universals_ indicate only the resemblances which exist between _individuals_; that we understand by _ideas_ only that which is known through an immediate sensation, and that the rest is known to us only through relations with these ideas. But when he admits that we have no idea of God, of spirit, of substance, he does not appear to have observed sufficiently that we have immediate apperception of substance and of spirit in our apperception of ourselves, and that the idea of God is found in[409] the idea of ourselves through a suppression of the limits of our perfections, as extension taken in an absolute sense is comprised in the idea of a globe. He is right also in asserting that our simple ideas at least are innate, and in rejecting the _Tabula rasa_ of Aristotle and of Mr. Locke. But I cannot agree with him that our ideas have scarce any more relation to things than words uttered into the air or writings traced upon paper have to our ideas, and that the bearing of our sensations is arbitrary and _ex instituto_, like the signification of words. I have already indicated elsewhere why I am not in agreement with our Cartesians on that point.
5. For the purpose of advancing to the first Cause, the author seeks a criterion, a distinguishing mark of truth; and he finds it in the force whereby our inward assertions, when they are evident, compel the understanding to give them its consent. It is by such a process, he says, that we credit the senses. He points out that the distinguishing mark in the Cartesian scheme, to wit, a clear and distinct perception, has need of a new mark to indicate what is clear and distinct, and that the congruity or non-congruity of ideas (or rather of terms, as one spoke formerly) may still be deceptive, because there are congruities real and apparent. He appears to recognize even that the inward force which constrains us to give our assent is still a matter for caution, and may come from deep-rooted prejudices. That is why he confesses that he who should furnish another criterion would have found something very advantageous to the human race. I have endeavoured to explain this criterion in a little _Discourse on Truth and Ideas_, published in 1684; and although I do not boast of having given therein a new discovery I hope that I have expounded things which were only confusedly recognized. I distinguish between truths of fact and truths of reason.
Truths of fact can only be verified by confronting them with truths of reason, and by tracing them back to immediate perceptions within us, such as St. Augustine and M. Descartes very promptly acknowledged to be indubitable; that is to say, we cannot doubt that we think, nor indeed that we think this thing or that. But in order to judge whether our inward notions have any reality in things, and to pass from thoughts to objects, my opinion is that it is necessary to consider whether our perceptions are firmly connected among themselves and with others that we have had, in such fashion as to manifest the rules of mathematics and other truths of [410] reason. In this case one must regard them as real; and I think that it is the only means of distinguishing them from imaginations, dreams and visions. Thus the truth of things outside us can be recognized only through the connexion of phenomena. The criterion of the truths of reason, or those which spring from conceptions, is found in an exact use of the rules of logic. As for ideas or notions, I call _real_ all those the possibility of which is certain; and the _definitions_ which do not mark this possibility are only _nominal_. Geometricians well versed in analysis are aware what difference there is in this respect between several properties by which some line or figure might be defined. Our gifted author has not gone so far, perhaps; one may see, however, from the account I have given of him already, and from what follows, that he is by no means lacking in profundity or reflexion.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.