Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil · Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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When the ancients spoke of that which is [Greek: eph' hêmin], or when we speak of that which depends upon us, of spontaneity, of the inward principle of our actions, we do not exclude the representation of external things; for these representations are in our souls, they are a portion of the modifications of this active principle which is within us. No agent is capable of acting without being _predisposed_ to what the action demands; and the reasons or inclinations derived from good or evil are the dispositions that enable the soul to decide between various courses. One will have it that the will is alone active and supreme, and one is wont to imagine it to be like a queen seated on her throne, whose minister of state is the understanding, while the passions are her courtiers or favourite ladies, who by their influence often prevail over the counsel of her ministers. One will have it that the understanding speaks only at this queen's order; that she can vacillate between the arguments of the minister and the suggestions of the favourites, even rejecting both, making them keep silence or speak, and giving them audience or not as seems good to her. But it is a personification or mythology somewhat ill-conceived.
If the will is to judge, or take cognizance of the reasons and inclinations which the understanding or the senses offer it, it will need another understanding in itself, to understand what it is offered. The truth is that the soul, or the thinking substance, understands the reasons and feels the inclinations, and decides according to the predominance of the representations modifying its active force, in order to shape the action. I have no need here to apply my system of Pre-established Harmony, which shows our independence to the best advantage and frees us from the physical influence of objects. For what I have just said is sufficient to answer the objection. Our [422] author, even though he admits with people in general this physical influence of objects upon us, observes nevertheless with much perspicacity that the body or the objects of the senses do not even give us our ideas, much less the active force of our soul, and that they serve only to draw out that which is within us. This is much in the spirit of M. Descartes' belief that the soul, not being able to give force to the body, gives it at least some direction. It is a mean between one side and the other, between physical influence and Pre-established Harmony.
17. Fifthly, the objection is made that, according to my opinion, sin would neither be censured nor punished because of its deserts, but because the censure and the chastisement serve to prevent it another time; whereas men demand something more, namely, satisfaction for the crime, even though it should serve neither for amendment nor for example. So do men with reason demand that true gratitude should come from a true recognition of the past benefit, and not from the interested aim of extorting a fresh benefit. This objection contains noble and sound considerations, but it does not strike at me. I require a man to be virtuous, grateful, just, not only from the motive of interest, of hope or of fear, but also of the pleasure that he should find in good actions: else one has not yet reached the degree of virtue that one must endeavour to attain. That is what one means by saying that justice and virtue must be loved for their own sake; and it is also what I explained in justifying 'disinterested love', shortly before the opening of the controversy which caused so much stir.
Likewise I consider that wickedness is all the greater when its practice becomes a pleasure, as when a highwayman, after having killed men because they resist, or because he fears their vengeance, finally grows cruel and takes pleasure in killing them, and even in making them suffer beforehand. Such a degree of wickedness is taken to be diabolical, even though the man affected with it finds in this execrable indulgence a stronger reason for his homicides than he had when he killed simply under the influence of hope or of fear. I have also observed in answering the difficulties of M. Bayle that, according to the celebrated Conringius, justice which punishes by means of _medicinal_ penalties, so to speak, that is, in order to correct the criminal or at least to provide an example for others, might exist in the opinion of those who do away with the freedom that is exempt from necessity. True [423] retributive justice, on the other hand, going beyond the medicinal, assumes something more, namely, intelligence and freedom in him who sins, because the harmony of things demands a satisfaction, or evil in the form of suffering, to make the mind feel its error after the voluntary active evil whereto it has consented. Mr. Hobbes also, who does away with freedom, has rejected retributive justice, as do the Socinians, drawing on themselves the condemnation of our theologians; although the writers of the Socinian party are wont to exaggerate the idea of freedom.
18. Sixthly, the objection is finally made that men cannot hope for felicity if the will can only be actuated by the representation of good and evil. But this objection seems to me completely null and void, and I think it would be hard to guess how any tolerable interpretation was ever put upon it. Moreover, the line of reasoning adopted to prove it is of a most astounding nature: it is that our felicity depends upon external things, if it is true that it depends upon the representation of good or evil. It is therefore not in our own power, so it is said, for we have no ground for hoping that outward things will arrange themselves for our pleasure. This argument is halting from every aspect. _There is no force in the inference: one might grant the conclusion: the argument may be retorted upon the author_. Let us begin with the retort, which is easy. For are men any happier or more independent of the accidents of fortune upon this argument, or because they are credited with the advantage of choosing without reason? Have they less bodily suffering? Have they less tendency toward true or apparent goods, less fear of true or imaginary evils?
Are they any less enslaved by sensual pleasure, by ambition, by avarice? less apprehensive? less envious? Yes, our gifted author will say; I will prove it by a method of counting or assessment. I would rather he had proved it by experience; but let us see this proof by counting. Suppose that by my choice, which enables me to give goodness-for-me to that which I choose, I give to the object chosen six degrees of goodness, when previously there were two degrees of evil in my condition; I shall become happy all at once, and with perfect ease, for I should have four degrees surplus, or net good. Doubtless that is all very well; but unfortunately it is impossible. For what possibility is there of giving these six degrees of goodness to the object? To that end we must needs have the power to change our taste, or the things, as we please. That would be almost as if I could say to [424] lead, Thou shalt be gold, and make it so; to the pebble, Thou shalt be diamond; or at the least, Thou shalt look like it. Or it would be like the common explanation of the Mosaical passage which seems to say that the desert manna assumed any taste the Israelites desired to give to it.
They only had to say to their homerful, Thou shalt be a capon, thou shalt be a partridge. But if I am free to give these six degrees of goodness to the object, am I not permitted to give it more goodness? I think that I am. But if that is so, why shall we not give to the object all the goodness conceivable? Why shall we not even go as far as twenty-four carats of goodness? By this means behold us completely happy, despite the accidents of fortune; it may blow, hail or snow, and we shall not mind: by means of this splendid secret we shall be always shielded against fortuitous events. The author agrees (in this first section of the fifth chapter, sub-sect. 3, § 12) that this power overcomes all the natural appetites and cannot be overcome by any of them; and he regards it (§§ 20, 21, 22) as the soundest foundation for happiness.
Indeed, since there is nothing capable of limiting a power so indeterminate as that of choosing without any reason, and of giving goodness to the object through the choice, either this goodness must exceed infinitely that which the natural appetites seek in objects, these appetites and objects being limited while this power is independent or at the least this goodness, given by the will to the chosen object, must be arbitrary and of such a kind as the will desires. For whence would one derive the reason for limits if the object is possible, if it is within reach of him who wills, and if the will can give it the goodness it desires to give, independently of reality and of appearances? It seems to me that may suffice to overthrow a hypothesis so precarious, which contains something of a fairy-tale kind, _optantis ista sunt, non invenientis_. It therefore remains only too true that this handsome fiction cannot render us more immune from evils. And we shall see presently that when men place themselves above certain desires or certain aversions they do so through other desires, which always have their foundation in the representation of good and evil.
I said also 'that one might grant the conclusion of the argument', which states that our happiness does not depend absolutely upon ourselves, at least in the present state of human life: for who would question the fact that we are liable to meet a thousand accidents which human prudence cannot evade? How, for example, can I [425] avoid being swallowed up, together with a town where I take up my abode, by an earthquake, if such is the order of things? But finally I can also deny the inference in the argument, which states that if the will is only actuated by the representation of good and evil our happiness does not depend upon ourselves. The inference would be valid if there were no God, if everything were ruled by brute causes; but God's ordinance is that for the attainment of happiness it suffices that one be virtuous. Thus, if the soul follows reason and the orders that God has given it, it is assured of its happiness, even though one may not find a sufficiency thereof in this life.
19. Having thus endeavoured to point out the disadvantages of my hypothesis, our gifted author sets forth the advantages of his own. He believes that it alone is capable of saving our freedom, that all our felicity rests therein, that it increases our goods and lessens our evils, and that an agent possessing this power is so much the more complete. These advantages have almost all been already disproved. We have shown that for the securing of our freedom it is enough that the representations of goods and of evils, and other inward or outward dispositions, should incline us without constraining us. Moreover one does not see how pure indifference can contribute to felicity; on the contrary, the more indifferent one is, the more insensitive and the less capable of enjoying what is good will one prove to be. Besides the hypothesis proves too much. For if an indifferent power could give itself the consciousness of good it could also give itself the most perfect happiness, as has been already shown. And it is manifest that there is nothing which would set limits to that power, since limits would withdraw it from its pure indifference, whence, so our author alleges, it only emerges of itself, or rather wherein it has never been.
Finally one does not see wherein the perfection of pure indifference lies: on the contrary, there is nothing more imperfect; it would render knowledge and goodness futile, and would reduce everything to chance, with no rules, and no measures that could be taken. There are, however, still some advantages adduced by our author which have not been discussed. He considers then that by this power alone are we the true cause to which our actions can be imputed, since otherwise we should be under the compulsion of external objects; likewise that by this power alone can one ascribe to oneself the merit of one's own felicity, and feel pleased with [426] oneself. But the exact opposite is the case: for when one happens upon the action through an absolutely indifferent movement, and not as a result of one's good or bad qualities, is it not just as though one were to happen upon it blindly by chance or hazard? Why then should one boast of a good action, or why should one be censured for an evil one, if the thanks or blame redounds to fortune or hazard?
I think that one is more worthy of praise when one owes the action to one's good qualities, and the more culpable in proportion as one has been impelled to it by one's evil qualities. To attempt to assess actions without weighing the qualities whence they spring is to talk at random and to put an imaginary indefinable something in the place of causes. Thus, if this chance or this indefinable something were the cause of our actions, to the exclusion of our natural or acquired qualities, of our inclinations, of our habits, it would not be possible to set one's hopes upon anything depending upon the resolve of others, since it would not be possible to fix something indefinite, or to conjecture into what roadstead the uncertain weather of an extravagant indifference will drive the vessel of the will.
20. But setting aside advantages and disadvantages, let us see how our learned author will justify the hypothesis from which he promises us so much good. He imagines that it is only God and the free creatures who are active in the true sense, and that in order to be active one must be determined by oneself only. Now that which is determined by itself must not be determined by objects, and consequently the free substance, in so far as it is free, must be indifferent with regard to objects, and emerge from this indifference only by its own choice, which shall render the object pleasing to it. But almost all the stages of this argument have their stumbling-blocks. Not only the free creatures, but also all the other substances and natures composed of substances, are active. Beasts are not free, and yet all the same they have active souls, unless one assume, with the Cartesians, that they are mere machines. Moreover, it is not necessary that in order to be active one should be determined only by oneself, since a thing may receive direction without receiving force.
So it is that the horse is controlled by the rider and the vessel is steered by the helm; and M. Descartes' belief was that our body, having force in itself, receives only some direction from the soul. Thus an active thing may receive from outside some determination or direction, capable of changing that [427] direction which it would take of itself. Finally, even though an active substance is determined only by itself, it does not follow that it is not moved by objects: for it is the representation of the object within it which contributes towards the determination. Now the representation does not come from without, and consequently there is complete spontaneity. Objects do not act upon intelligent substances as efficient and physical causes, but as final and moral causes. When God acts in accordance with his wisdom, he is guided by the ideas of the possibles which are his objects, but which have no reality outside him before their actual creation. Thus this kind of spiritual and moral motion is not contrary to the activity of the substance, nor to the spontaneity of its action.
Finally, even though free power were not determined by the objects, it can never be indifferent to the action when it is on the point of acting, since the action must have its origin in a disposition to act: otherwise one will do anything from anything, _quidvis ex quovis_, and there will be nothing too absurd for us to imagine. But this disposition will have already broken the charm of mere indifference, and if the soul gives itself this disposition there must needs be another predisposition for this act of giving it. Consequently, however far back one may go, one will never meet with a mere indifference in the soul towards the actions which it is to perform. It is true that these dispositions incline it without constraining it. They relate usually to the objects; but there are some, notwithstanding, which arise variously _a subjecto_ or from the soul itself, and which bring it about that one object is more acceptable than the other, or that the same is more acceptable at one time than at another.
21. Our author continually assures us that his hypothesis is true, and he undertakes to show that this indifferent power is indeed found in God, and even that it must be attributed to him of necessity. For (he says) nothing is to God either good or bad in creatures. He has no natural appetite, to be satisfied by the enjoyment of anything outside him. He is therefore absolutely indifferent to all external things, since by them he can neither be helped nor hindered; and he must determine himself and create as it were an appetite in making his choice. And having once chosen, he will wish to abide by his choice, just as if he had been prompted thereto by a natural inclination. Thus will the divine will be the cause of goodness in beings. That is to say, there will be goodness in the objects, not by their [428] nature, but by the will of God: whereas if that will be excluded neither good nor evil can exist in things. It is difficult to imagine how writers of merit could have been misled by so strange an opinion, for the reason which appears to be advanced here has not the slightest force.
It seems to me as though an attempt is being made to justify this opinion by the consideration that all creatures have their whole being from God, so that they cannot act upon him or determine him. But this is clearly an instance of self-deception. When we say that an intelligent substance is actuated by the goodness of its object, we do not assert that this object is necessarily a being existing outside the substance, and it is enough for us that it be conceivable: for its representation acts in the substance, or rather the substance acts upon itself, in so far as it is disposed and influenced by this representation. With God, it is plain that his understanding contains the ideas of all possible things, and that is how everything is in him in a transcendent manner. These ideas represent to him the good and evil, the perfection and imperfection, the order and disorder, the congruity and incongruity of possibles; and his superabundant goodness makes him choose the most advantageous. God therefore determines himself by himself; his will acts by virtue of his goodness, but it is particularized and directed in action by understanding filled with wisdom. And since his understanding is perfect, since his thoughts are always clear, his inclinations always good, he never fails to do the best; whereas we may be deceived by the mere semblances of truth and goodness. But how is it possible for it to be said that there is no good or evil in the ideas before the operation of God's will? Does the will of God form the ideas which are in his understanding? I dare not ascribe to our learned author so strange a sentiment, which would confuse understanding and will, and would subvert the current use of our notions. Now if ideas are independent of will, the perfection or imperfection which is represented in them will be independent also.
Indeed, is it by the will of God, for example, or is it not rather by the nature of numbers, that certain numbers allow more than others of various exact divisions? that some are more fitted than others for forming battalions, composing polygons and other regular figures? that the number six has the advantage of being the least of all the numbers that are called perfect? that in a plane six equal circles may touch a seventh? that of all equal bodies, the sphere has the least surface? that [429] certain lines are incommensurable, and consequently ill-adapted for harmony? Do we not see that all these advantages or disadvantages spring from the idea of the thing, and that the contrary would imply contradiction? Can it be thought that the pain and discomfort of sentient creatures, and above all the happiness and unhappiness of intelligent substances, are a matter of indifference to God? And what shall be said of his justice? Is it also something arbitrary, and would he have acted wisely and justly if he had resolved to condemn the innocent? I know that there have been writers so ill-advised as to maintain an opinion so dangerous and so liable to overthrow religion. But I am assured that our illustrious author is far from holding it.
Nevertheless, it seems as though this hypothesis tends in that direction, if there is nothing in objects save what is indifferent to the divine will before its choice. It is true that God has need of nothing; but the author has himself shown clearly that God's goodness, and not his need, prompted him to produce creatures. There was therefore in him a reason anterior to the resolution; and, as I have said so many times, it was neither by chance nor without cause, nor even by necessity, that God created this world, but rather as a result of his inclination, which always prompts him to the best. Thus it is surprising that our author should assert here (ch. 5, sect. 1, sub-sect. 4, § 5) that there is no reason which could have induced God, absolutely perfect and happy in himself, to create anything outside him, although, according to the author's previous declarations (ch. 1, sect. 3, §§ 8, 9), God acts for an end, and his aim is to communicate his goodness. It was therefore not altogether a matter of indifference to him whether he should create or not create, and creation is notwithstanding a free act. Nor was it a matter of indifference to him either, whether he should create one world rather than another; a perpetual chaos, or a completely ordered system. Thus the qualities of objects, included in their ideas, formed the reason for God's choice.
22. Our author, having already spoken so admirably about the beauty and fittingness of the works of God, has tried to search out phrases that would reconcile them with his hypothesis, which appears to deprive God of all consideration for the good or the advantage of creatures. The indifference of God prevails (he says) only in his first elections, but as soon as God has chosen something he has virtually chosen, at the same time, all [430] that which is of necessity connected therewith. There were innumerable possible men equally perfect: the election of some from among them is purely arbitrary (in the judgement of our author). But God, once having chosen them, could not have willed in them anything contrary to human nature. Up to this point the author's words are consistent with his hypothesis; but those that follow go further. He advances the proposition that when God resolved to produce certain creatures he resolved at the same time, by virtue of his infinite goodness, to give them every possible advantage. Nothing, indeed, could be so reasonable, but also nothing could be so contrary to the hypothesis he has put forward, and he does right to overthrow it, rather than prolong the existence of anything so charged with incongruities incompatible with the goodness and wisdom of God.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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