ent. But there are so many points of resemblance that Plotinus's system, corrected where it is most in error, might become the philosophy of Spinoza. That is, Plotinus sunders the finite from the infinite, degrades nature, because he does not see that by very definition there can be no separation between the First and all that necessarily overflows from it.

The First of Plotinus corresponds to the infinitely perfect Substance of Spinoza in so far as Spinoza is unable to tell us what are the other attributes of God besides the two we know. The attributes of thought and extension in Spinoza's system are represented by Thought and its products in Neo-Platonism, although Thought and Nature are erroneously sundered from the First. In both systems it is eternal intuition which reveals the infinite background. In both systems the life of purification from and control of the emotions leads the way to the perfect life of thought. Spinoza does not forget that the love of God is intellectual, hence he makes good his account of the divine beatitude. Plotinus has all the essentials wherewith to bridge over the chasm to the infinite but he has lost the clue to their unification. Each gives back his own. temperament coloured by the thought of his age, and each confesses that for him the vision, the experience, the love, was itself more real than

the faulty report which the most explicit language could convey.

The question whether either Plotinus or Spinoza offered a satisfactory explanation of concrete human life is of course another matter. Our present interest is limited to the evidences of a higher or eternal order and the striking diversities of method which our two seers display. It is once more made clear that there is a reality in mystic intuition to which we must accord a high place. But it is no less clear that the negations of mysticism are entirely unnecessary. There is nothing in the intuition of the eternal that cannot be rationally unified. If Spinoza fails in part, Plato and Emerson point the way to success. No study of the divine order is more instructive than the one which thus reveals the harmony underlying widely contrasted systems of thought.

CHAPTER X

L

THE OPTIMISM OF LEIBNIZ

EIBNIZ is the typical harmoniser and optimist. There were optimists before his time, and Leibniz was himself greatly indebted to Plato. In England, Shaftesbury was independently developing a similar doctrine at the same time, and it is probable that the popular exposition of optimism, Pope's Essay on Man, was more directly derived from Shaftesbury than from the more thoroughly wrought theory of Leibniz. But it was Leibniz who reaped the full benefits of the age of mechanical philosophy and developed optimism into a complete system. Shaftesbury was not primarily interested in the development of a metaphysical system, and Pope was no philosopher. The Essay on Man is commonly supposed to be purely optimistic, but close examination shows that it contains pessimistic notions derived from the satirical author of The Fable of the Bees, Mandeville, who in part anticipated the pessimism

1 Shaftesbury's Moralists was published in 1709; the Theodicée of Leibniz was published in 1710.

of Schopenhauer. It is to Leibniz that we must turn for the source of many popular optimisms. To study his philosophy is, in fact, not only to see optimism at the best advantage, but to carry the theory as far as it can be carried. The study is of fundamental significance for students of the various conceptions of the divine order.

Leibniz was rather more a man of the world than most of the seers who have had the great insight into the divine beauty. He was a man of varied interests, not only a philosopher but a statesman, scientific scholar, theologian, historian, and the like. He was educated for the law, and held numerous positions, finally that of librarian at Hanover. He travelled extensively and knew many of the most famous men of his time, among them Spinoza. From earliest boyhood he was not only a wide reader but a thorough student. His philosophy was, therefore, no mere eclecticism or æsthetic combination of pleasing elements; it was a closely thought-out system, based on precise logical principles, the work of a great mind. Leibniz was great in all the subjects to which he devoted attention, and has long been famous as a mathematical genius and discoverer as well as a philosopher. Indeed, he was one of the few most remarkable intellectual men of all time, and author of an almost incredible number of treatises on history, politics, mathematics, and philosophy, some

of which still lie in the library at Hanover in manuscript form, awaiting the time when some one shall complete the task of translating and editing his works. His was a universal mind, not content with any one pursuit, or any single point of view. He was so deeply interested in his scholarly pursuits that he would sometimes sit for several days at a time in his chair, and have his food brought to him at favourable intervals.

Born in Leipzig, in 1646, the son of a professor of philosophy, Leibniz so early evinced fondness for learned books that at the age of six or seven his father's library was thrown open to him, and by the time he was fourteen he had sketched out his system of philosophy. He found good in all the books he read, and he read not to confute but to learn. His biographer tells us that "he spoke well of everybody, and made the best of everything." He enjoyed the society of men of all types, and believed he could learn even from the least enlightened. Yet he read not only to master, but if possible to add something to, every science he studied. He was equally at home in several languages, and wrote learned works in Latin, French, and German. His great desire seems to have been to cultivate all sides of his nature, to be an all-round great man. His own life was thus typical of his philosophy.

It is seldom that the love of exact method and of