Crambe regretted extremely thatSubstantial Forms, a race of harmless beings which had lasted for many years and had afforded a comfortable subsistence to many poor philosophers, should now be hunted down like so many wolves, without the possibility of retreat. He considered that it had gone much harder with them than with theEssences, which had retired from the schools into the apothecaries' shops, where some of them had been advanced into the degree ofQuintessences. He thought there should be a retreat for poorsubstantial formsamongst the gentlemen-ushers at court; and that there were, indeed, substantial forms, such as forms of prayer and forms of government, without which the things themselves could never long subsist….
Metaphysics were a large field in which to exercise the weapons which logic had put in their hands. Here Martin and Crambe used to engage like any prizefighters. And as prize-fighters will agree to lay aside a buckler, or some such defensive weapon, so Crambe would agree not to usesimpliciterandsecundum quid, if Martin would part withmaterialiterandformaliter. But it was found, that, without the defensive armor of these distinctions, the arguments cut so deep that they fetched blood at every stroke. Their theses were picked out of Suarez, Thomas Aquinas, and other learned writers on those subjects…. One, particularly, remains undecided to this day,— 'An praeteressereale actualis essentiae sit alindessenecessarium quo res actualiter existat?' In English thus: 'Whether, besides the real being of actual being, there be any other being necessary to cause a thing to be?' [8]
[Footnote 8: Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. Chap. VII.]
Arrived at maturity, Leibnitz rose at once to classic eminence. He became a conspicuous figure, he became a commanding power, not only in the intellectual world, of which he constituted himself the centre, but in part also of the civil. It lay in the nature of his genius to prove all things, and it lay in his temperament to seekrapportwith all sorts of men. He was infinitely related;—not an individual of note in his day but was linked with him by some common interest or some polemic grapple; not asavantor statesman with whom Leibnitz did not spin, on one pretence or another, a thread of communication. Europe was reticulated with the meshes of his correspondence. "Never," says Voltaire, "was intercourse among philosophers more universal;Leibnitz servait à l'animer." He writes now to Spinoza at the Hague, to suggest new methods of manufacturing lenses,—now to Magliabecchi at Florence, urging, in elegant Latin verses, the publication of his bibliographical discoveries,—and now to Grimaldi, Jesuit missionary in China, to communicate his researches in Chinese philosophy. He hoped by means of the latter to operate on the Emperor Cham-Hi with theDyadik; [9] and even suggested saidDyadikas a key to the cipher of the book "Ye Kim," supposed to contain the sacred mysteries of Fo. He addresses Louis XIV., now on the subject of a military expedition to Egypt, (a magnificent idea, which it needed a Napoleon to realize,) now on the best method of promoting and conserving scientific knowledge. He corresponds with the Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels, with Bossuet, and with Madame Brinon on the Union of the Catholic and Protestant Churches, and with Privy-Counsellor von Spanheim on the Union of the Lutheran and Reformed,—with Père Des Bosses on Transubstantiation, and with Samuel Clarke on Time and Space,—with Remond de Montmort on Plato, and with Franke on Popular Education,— with the Queen of Prussia (his pupil) on Free-will and Predestination, and with the Electress Sophia, her mother, (in her eighty-fourth year,) on English Politics,—with the cabinet of Peter the Great on the Slavonic and Oriental Languages, and with that of the German Emperor on the claims of George Lewis to the honors of the Electorate,—and finally, with all thesavansof Europe on all possible scientific questions.
[Footnote 9: A species of binary arithmetic, invented by Leibnitz, in which the only figures employed are 0 and 1.—See KORTHOLT'SG.C. Leibnitii Epistolae ad Divarsos, Letter XVIII.]
[Transcriber's note: without this notation and its underlying logic, the development of modern computers would have not been practical.]
Of this world-wide correspondence a portion related to the sore subject of his litigated claim to originality in the discovery of the Differential Calculus,—a matter in which Leibnitz felt himself grievously wronged, and complained with justice of the treatment he received at the hands of his contemporaries. The controversy between him and Newton, respecting this hateful topic, would never have originated with either of these illustrious men, had it depended on them alone to vindicate their respective claims. Officious and ill-advised friends of the English philosopher, partly from misguided zeal and partly from levelled malice, preferred on his behalf a charge of plagiarism against the German, which Newton was not likely to have urged for himself. "The new Calculus, which Europe lauds, is nothing less," they suggested, "than your fluxionary method, which Mr. Leibnitz has pirated, anticipating its tardy publication by the genuine author. Why suffer your laurels to be wrested from you by a stranger?" Thereupon arose the notoriousCommercium Epistolicum, in which Wallis, Fatio de Duillier, Collins, and Keill were perversely active. Melancholy monument of literary and national jealousy! Weary record of a vain strife! Ideas are no man's property. As well pretend to ownership of light, or set up a claim to private estate in the Holy Ghost. The Spirit blows where it lists. Truth inspires whom it finds. He who knows best to conspire with it has it. Both philosophers swerved from their native simplicity and nobleness of soul. Both sinned and were sinned against. Leibnitz did unhandsome things, but he was sorely tried. His heart told him that the right of the quarrel was on his side, and the general stupidity would not see it. The general malice, rejoicing in aspersion of a noble name, would not see it. The Royal Society would not see it,—nor France, until long after Leibnitz's death. Sir David Brewster's account of the matter, according to the German authorities, Gerhardt, Guhrauer, and others, is one-sided, and sins bysuppressio veri, ignoring important documents, particularly Leibnitz's letter to Oldenburg, August 27, 1676. Gerhardt has published Leibnitz's own history of the Calculus as a counter-statement. [10] But even from Brewster's account, as we remember it, (we have it not by us at this writing.) there is no more reason to doubt that Leibnitz's discovery was independent of Newton's than that Newton's was independent of Leibnitz's. The two discoveries, in fact, are not identical; the end and application are the same, but origin and process differ, and the German method has long superseded the English. The question in debate has been settled by supreme authority. Leibnitz has been tried by his peers. Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, Poisson, and Biot have honorably acquitted him of plagiarism, and reinstated him in his rights as true discoverer of the Differential Calculus.
[Footnote 10: Historia et Oriffo Calculi Differenttalis, a G. G.LEIBNITIO conscripts.]
[Transcriber's note: this controversy rages in academia to this day.]
The one distinguishing trait of Leibnitz's genius, and the one predominant fact in his history, was what Feuerbach calls his [Greek: polupraguoshinae], which, being interpreted, means having a finger in every pie. We are used to consider him as a man of letters; but the greater part of his life was spent in labors of quite another kind. He was more actor than writer. He wrote only for occasions, at the instigation of others, or to meet some pressing demand of the time. Besides occupying himself with mechanical inventions, some of which (in particular, his improvement of Pascal's Calculating Machine) were quite famous in their day,—besides his project of a universal language, and his labors to bring about a union of the churches,— besides undertaking the revision of the laws of the German Empire, superintending the Hanoverian mines, experimenting in the culture of silk, directing the medical profession, laboring in the promotion of popular education, establishing academies of science, superintending royal libraries, ransacking the archives of Germany and Italy to find documents for his history of the House of Brunswick, a work of immense research [11],—besides these, and a multitude of similar and dissimilar avocations, he was deep in politics, German and European, and was occupied all his life long with political negotiations. He was a courtier, he was adiplomat, was consulted on all difficult matters of international policy, was employed at Hanover, at Berlin, at Vienna, in the public and secret service of ducal, royal, and imperial governments, and charged with all sorts of delicate and difficult commissions,—matters of finance, of pacification, of treaty and appeal. He was Europe's factotum. A complete biography of the man would be an epitome of the history of his time. The number and variety of his public engagements were such as would have crazed any ordinary brain. And to these were added private studies not less multifarious. "I am distracted beyond all account," he writes to Vincent Placcius. "I am making extracts from archives, inspecting ancient documents, hunting up unpublished manuscripts; all this to illustrate the history of Brunswick. Letters in great number I receive and write. Then I have so many discoveries in mathematics, so many speculations in philosophy, so many other literary observations, which I am desirous of preserving, that I am often at a loss what to take hold of first, and can fairly sympathize in that saying of Ovid, 'I am straitened by my abundance.' [12]"
[Footnote 11:Annals Imperii Occidents Brunsvicensis. Leibnitz succeeded in discovering at Modena the lost traces of that connection between the lines of Brunswick and Esto which had been surmised, but not proved.]
[Footnote 12: "Quam mirifice sim distractus dici non potest. Varia ex archivis eruo, antiquas chartns inspicio, manuscripta inedita conquiro. Ex hic lucem dare conor Brunsvicensi historiæ. Magno numero litteras et accipio et dimitto. Habeo vero tam multa nova in mathematicis, tot cogitationes in philosophicis, tot alias literarias observationes, quas vellem non perire, ut sæpe inter agenda anceps hæream et prope illud Ovidianum sentiam:Iniopem me copia facit."]
His diplomatic services are less known at present than his literary labors, but were not less esteemed in his own day. When Louis XIV., in 1688, declared war against the German Empire, on the pretence that the Emperor was meditating an invasion of France, Leibnitz drew up the imperial manifesto, which repelled the charge and triumphantly exposed the hollowness of Louis's cause. Another document, prepared by him at the solicitation, it is supposed, of several of the courts of Europe, advocating the claims of Charles of Austria to the vacant throne of Spain, in opposition to the grandson of Louis, and setting forth the injurious consequences of the policy of the French monarch, was hailed by his contemporaries as a masterpiece of historical learning and political wisdom. By his powerful advocacy of the cause of the Elector of Brandenburg he may be said to have aided the birth of the kingdom of Prussia, whose existence dates with the commencement of the last century. In the service of that kingdom he wrote and published important state-papers; among them, one relating to a point of contested right to which recent events have given fresh significance: "Traité: Sommaire du Droit de Frédéric I. Roi de Prusse à la Souveraineté de Neufchâtel et de Vallengin en Suisse."
In Vienna, as at Berlin, the services of Leibnitz were subsidized by the State. By the Peace of Utrecht, the house of Habsburg had been defeated in its claims to the Spanish throne, and the foreign and internal affairs of the Austrian government were involved in many perplexities, which, it was hoped, the philosopher's counsel might help to untangle. He was often present at the private meetings of the cabinet, and received from the Emperor the honorable distinction of Kaiserlicher Hofrath, in addition to that, which had previously been awarded to him, of Baron of the Empire. The highest post in the gift of government was open to him, on condition of renouncing his Protestant faith, which, notwithstanding his tolerant feeling toward the Roman Church, and the splendid compensations which awaited such a convertite, he could never be prevailed upon to do.
A natural, but very remarkable consequence of this manifold activity and lifelong absorption in public affairs was the failure of so great a thinker to produce a single systematic and elaborate work containing a complete and detailed exposition of his philosophical, and especially his ontological views. For such an exposition Leibnitz could find at no period of his life the requisite time and scope. In the vast multitude of his productions there is no complete philosophic work. The most arduous of his literary labors are historical compilations, made in the service of the State. Such were the "History of the House of Brunswick," already mentioned, the "Accessiones Historiæ," the "Scriptores Rerum Brunsvicensium Illustrationi inservientes," and the "Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus";— works involving an incredible amount of labor and research, but adding little to his posthumous fame. His philosophical studies, after entering the Hanoverian service, which he did in his thirtieth year, were pursued, as he tells his correspondent Placcius, by stealth,—that is, at odd moments snatched from official duties and the cares of state. Accordingly, his metaphysical works have all a fragmentary character. Instead of systematic treatises, they are loose papers, contributions to journals and magazines, or sketches prepared for the use of friends. They are all occasional productions, elicited by some external cause, not prompted by inward necessity. The "Nouveaux Essais," his most considerable work in that department, originated in comments on Locke, and was not published until after his death. The "Monadology" is a series of propositions drawn up for the use of Prince Eugene, and was never intended to be made public. And, probably, the "Théodicée" would never have seen the light except for his cultivated and loved pupil, the Queen of Prussia, for whose instruction it was designed.
It is a curious fact, and a good illustration of the state of letters in Germany at that time, that Leibnitz wrote so little— almost nothing of importance—in his native tongue. In Erdmann's edition of his philosophical works there are only two short essays in German; the rest are all Latin or French. He had it in contemplation at one time to establish a philosophical journal in Berlin, but doubts, in his letter to M. La Croye on the subject, in what language it should be conducted: "Il y a quelque tems que j'ay pensé à un journal de Savans qu'on pourroit publier à Berlin, mais je suis un peu en doute sur la langue … Mais soit qu'on prit le Latin ou le François," [13] etc. It seems never to have occurred to him that such a journal might be published in German. That language was then, and for a long time after, regarded by educated Germans very much as the Russian is regarded at the present day, as the language of vulgar life, unsuited to learned or polite intercourse. Frederic the Great, a century later, thought as meanly of its adaptation to literary purposes as did the contemporaries of Leibnitz. When Gellert, at his request, repeated to him one of his fables, he expressed his surprise that anything so clever could be produced in German. It may be said in apology for this neglect of their native tongue, that the German scholars of that age would have had a very inadequate audience, had their communications been confined to that language. Leibnitz craved and deserved a wider sphere for his thoughts than the use of the German could give him. It ought, however, to be remembered to his credit, that, as language in general was one among the numberless topics he investigated, so the German in particular engaged at one time his special attention. It was made the subject of a disquisition, which suggested to the Berlin Academy, in the next century, the method adopted by that body for the culture and improvement of the national speech. In this writing, as in all his German compositions, he manifested a complete command of the language, and imparted to it a purity and elegance of diction very uncommon in his day. The German of Leibnitz is less antiquated at this moment than the English of his contemporary, Locke.
[Footnote 13: KORTHOLT.Epistolae ad Diversos, Vol. I.]
The interest to us in this extraordinary man—who died at Hanover, 1716, in the midst of his labors and projects—turns mainly on his speculative philosophy. It was only as an incidental pursuit that he occupied himself with metaphysic; yet no philosopher since Aristotle— with whom, though claiming to be more Platonic than Aristotelian, he has much in common—has furnished more luminous hints to the elucidation of metaphysical problems. The problems he attempted were those which concern the most inscrutable, but, to the genuine metaphysician, most fascinating of all topics, the nature of substance, matter and spirit, absolute being,—in a word,Ontology. This department of metaphysic, the most interesting, and,agonistically[14], the most important branch of that study, has been deliberately, purposely, and, with one or two exceptions, uniformly avoided by the English metaphysicians so-called, with Locke at their head, and equally by their Scottish successors, until the recent "Institutes" of the witty Professor of St. Andrew's. Locke's "Essay concerning the Human Understanding," a century and a half ago, diverted the English mind from metaphysic proper into what is commonly called Psychology, but ought, of right, to be termedNoölogy, or "Philosophy of the Human Mind," as Dugald Stewart entitled his treatise. This is the study which has usually taken the place of metaphysic at Cambridge and other colleges,—the science that professes to show "how ideas enter the mind"; which, considering the rareness of the occurrence with the mass of mankind, we cannot regard as a very practical inquiry. We well remember our disappointment, when, at the usual stage in the college curriculum, we were promised "metaphysics" and were set to grind in Stewart's profitless mill, where so few problems of either practical or theoretical importance are brought to the hopper, and where, in fact, the object is rather to show how the upper mill-stone revolves upon the nether, (reflection upon sensation,) and how the grist is conveyed to the feeder, than to realize actual metaphysical flour.
[Footnote 14: That is, as a discipline of the faculties,—the chief benefit to be derived from any kind of metaphysical study.]
Locke's reason for repudiating ontology is the alleged impossibility of arriving at truth in that pursuit,—"of finding satisfaction in a quiet and sure possession of truths that most concern us, whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of being." [15] Unfortunately, however, as Kant has shown, the results of noölogical inquiry are just as questionable as those of ontology, whilst the topics on which it is employed are of far inferior moment. If, as Locke intimates, we can know nothing of being without first analyzing the understanding, it is equally sure that we can know nothing of the understanding except in union with and in action on being. And excepting his own fundamental position concerning the sensuous origin of our ideas,—to which few, since Kant, will assent,— there is hardly a theorem, in all the writings of this school, of prime and vital significance. The school is tartly, but aptly, characterized by Professor Ferrier: "Would people inquire directly into the laws of thought and of knowledge by merely looking to knowledge or to thought itself, without attending to what is known or what is thought of? Psychology usually goes to work in this abstract fashion; but such a mode of procedure is hopeless,—as hopeless as the analogous instance by which the wits of old were wont to typify any particularly fruitless undertaking,—namely, the operation of milking a he-goat into a sieve. No milk comes, in the first place, and even that the sieve will not retain! There is a loss of nothing twice over. Like the man milking, the inquirer obtains no milk in the first place; and, in the second place, he loses it, like the man holding the sieve…. Our Scottish philosophy, in particular, has presented a spectacle of this description. Reid obtained no result, owing to the abstract nature of his inquiry, and the nothingness of his system has escaped through all the sieves of his successors." [16]
[Footnote 15:Essay, Book I. Chap. 1, Sect. 7.]
[Footnote 16:Institutes of Metaphysic, p. 301.]
Leibnitz's metaphysical speculations are scattered through a wide variety of writings, many of which are letters to his contemporaries. These Professor Erdmann has incorporated in his edition of the Philosophical Works. Beside these we may mention, as particularly deserving of notice, the "Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis", the "Systeme Nouveau de la Nature", "De Primæ Philosophiæ Emendatione et de Notione Substantiæ", "Reflexions sur l'Essai de l'Entendement humain", "De Rerum Originatione Radicali", "De ipsa Natura", "Considerations sur la Doctrine d'un Esprit universel", "Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement humain", "Considerations sur le Principe de Vie". To these we must add the "Théodicée" (though more theological than metaphysical) and the "Monadologie", the most compact philosophical treatise of modern time. It is worthy of note, that, writing in the desultory, fragmentary, and accidental way he did, he not only wrote with unexampled clearness on matters the most abstruse, but never, that we are aware, in all the variety of his communications, extending over so many years, contradicted himself. No philosopher is more intelligible, none more consequent.
In philosophy, Leibnitz was aRealist. We use that term in the modern, not in the scholastic sense. In the scholastic sense, as we have seen, he was not a Realist, but, from childhood up, a Nominalist. But the Realism of the schools has less affinity with the Realism than with the Idealism of the present day.
His opinions must be studied in connection with those of his contemporaries.
Des Cartes, Spinoza, Locke, and Leibnitz, the four most distinguished philosophers of the seventeenth century, represent four widely different and cardinal tendencies in philosophy: Dualism, Idealism, Sensualism, and Realism.
Des Cartes perceived the incompatibility of the two primary qualities of being, thought and extension, as attributes of one and the same (created) substance. He therefore postulated two (created) substances,—one characterized by thought without extension, the other by extension without thought. These two are so alien and so incongruous, that neither can influence the other, or determine the other, or any way relate with the other, except by direct mediation of Deity. (The doctrine of Occasional Causes.) This is Dualism,— that sharp and rigorous antithesis of mind and matter, which Des Cartes, if he did not originate it, was the first to develop into philosophic significance, and which ever since has been the prevailing ontology of the Western world. So deeply has the thought of that master mind inwrought itself into the very consciousness of humanity!
Spinoza saw, that, if God alone can bring mind and matter together and effect a relation between them, it follows that mind and matter, or their attributes, however contrary, do meet in Deity; and if so, what need of three distinct natures? What need of two substances beside God, as subjects of these attributes? Retain the middle term and drop the extremes and you have the Spinozan doctrine of one (uncreated) substance, combining the attributes of thought and extension. This is Pantheism, orobjectiveidealism, as distinguished from thesubjectiveidealism of Fichte. Strange, that the stigma of atheism should have been affixed to a system whose very starting-point is Deity and whose great characteristic is theignorationof everything but Deity, insomuch that the pure and devout Novalis pronounced the author a God-drunken man, and Spinozism a surfeit of Deity. [17]
[Footnote 17: Let us not be misunderstood. Pantheism is not Theism, and the one substance of Spinoza is very unlike the one God of theology; but neither is the doctrine Atheism in any legitimate sense.]
Naturally enough, the charge of atheism comes from the unbelieving Bayle, whose omnivorous mind, like the anaconda, assisted its enormous deglutition with a poisonous saliva of its own, and whose negative temper makes the "Dictionnaire Historique" moreMorguethanValhalla.
Locke, who combined in a strange union strong religious faith with philosophic unbelief, turned aside, as we have seen, from the questions which had occupied his predecessors; knew little and cared less about substance and accident, matter and spirit; but set himself to investigate the nature of the organ itself by which truth is apprehended. In this investigation he began by emptying the mind of all native elements of knowledge. He repudiated any supposed dowry of original truths or innate or connate ideas, and endeavored to show how, by acting on the report of the senses and personal experience, the understanding arrives at all the ideas of which it is conscious. The mode of procedure in this case is empiricism; the result with Locke was sensualism,—more fully developed by Condillac, [18] in the next century. But the same method may lead, as in the case of Berkeley, to immaterialism, falsely called idealism. Or it may lead, as in the case of Helveticus, to materialism. Locke himself would probably have landed in materialism, had he followed freely the bent of his own thought, without the restraints of a cautious temper, and respect for the common and traditional opinion of his time. The "Essay" discovers an unmistakable leaning in that direction; as where the author supposes, "We shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed a power to perceive and think;… it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking, since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first thinking eternal Being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created, senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought." With such notions of the nature of thought, as a kind of mechanical contrivance, that can be conferred outright by an arbitrary act of Deity, and attached to one nature as well as another, it is evident that Locke could have had no idea of spirit as conceived by metaphysicians,—or no belief in that idea, if conceived. And with such conceptions of Deity and Divine operations, as consisting in absolute power dissociated from absolute reason, one would not be surprised to find him asserting, that God, if he pleased, might make two and two to be one, instead of four,—that mathematical laws are arbitrary determinations of the Supreme Will,—that a thing is true only as God wills it to be so,—in fine, that there is no such thing as absolute truth. The resort to "Omnipotency" in such matters is more convenient than philosophical; it is a dodging of the question, instead of an attempt to solve it. Divine ordination—"[Greek: Doz d' etelevto Bonlae]"—is a maxim which settles all difficulties. But it also precludes all inquiry. Why speculate at all, with this universal solvent at hand?
[Footnote 18:Essai sur l'Origine du Connaissances humaines. BookIV. Chap. 3, Sect. 6.]
The "contradiction" which Locke could not see was clearly seen and keenly felt by Leibnitz. The arbitrary will of God, to him, was no solution. He believed in necessary truths independent of the Supreme Will; in other words, he believed that the Supreme Will is but the organ of the Supreme Reason: "Il ne faut point s'imaginer, que les vérités éternelles, étant dépendantes de Dieu, sont arbitragés et dépendent de sa volonté." He felt, with Des Cartes, the incompatibility of thought with extension, considered as an immanent quality of substance, and he shared with Spinoza the unific propensity which distinguishes the higher order of philosophic minds. Dualism was an offence to him. On the other hand, he differed from Spinoza in his vivid sense of individuality, of personality. The pantheistic idea of a single, sole being, of which all other beings are mere modalities, was also and equally an offence to him. He saw well the illusoriness and unfruitfulness of such a universe as Spinoza dreamed. He saw it to be a vain imagination, a dream-world, "without form and void," nowhere blossoming into reality. The philosophy of Leibnitz is equally remote from that of Des Cartes on the one hand, and from that of Spinoza on the other. He diverges from the former on the question of substance, which Des Cartes conceived as consisting of two kinds, one active (thinking) and one passive (extended), but which Leibnitz conceives to be all and only active. He explodes Dualism, and resolves the antithesis of matter and spirit by positing extension as a continuous act instead of a passive mode, substance as an active force instead of an inert mass,—matter as substance appearing, communicating,—as the necessary band and relation of spirits among themselves. [19]
[Footnote 19: The following passages may serve as illustrations of these positions:—
"Materia habet de so actum entitativum."—De Princip. Indiv.Coroll. I.
"Dicam interim notionem virium seu virtutis, (quam Germani vocantKraft, Galli,la force,) cui ego explicandae peculiarem Dynamices scientiam destinavi, plurimum lucis afferre ad veram notionem substantiae intelligendam."—De Primae Philosoph. Emendat, et de Notione Substantiae.
"Corpus ergo est agens extensum; dici poterit esse substantiam extensam, modo teneatur omnem substantiamagere, at omne agens substantiamappellari." "Patebit non tantum mentes, sed etiam substantiae omnes in loco, non nisi peroperationemesse."—De Vera Method. Phil. et Theol.
"Extensionem concipere ut absolutum ex eo forte oritur quod spatium concipimus per modum substantiae"—Ad Des Bosses Ep. XXIX.
"Car l'étendue ne signifie qu'une répétition ou multiplicité continuée de ce qui est répandu."—Extrait d'une Lettre, etc.
"Et l'on peut dire que Pétunduc est en quelque façon à l'espace comme la durée est au tems."—Exam. des Principes de Malebranche.
"La nature de la substance consistant à mon avis dans cette tendance réglée de laquelle les phénomènes naissent par ordre."—Lettre à M. Bayle.
"Car rien n'a mieux marqué la substance que la puissance d'agir."—Réponse aux Objections du P. Lami.
"S'il n'y avait que des esprits, ils seraient sans la liaison nécessaire, sans l'ordre des tems et des lieux."—Theod. Sect. 120.]
He parts company with Spinoza on the question of individuality. Substance is homogeneous; but substances, or beings, are infinite. Spinoza looked upon the universe and saw in it the undivided background on which the objects of human consciousness are painted as momentary pictures. Leibnitz looked and saw that background, like the background of one of Raphael's Madonnas, instinct with individual life, and swarming with intelligences which look out from every point of space. Leibnitz's universe is composed of Monads, that is, units, individual substances, or entities, having neither extension, parts, nor figure, and, of course, indivisible. These are "the veritable atoms of nature, the elements of things."
The Monad is unformed and imperishable; it has no natural end or beginning. It could begin to be only by creation; it can cease to be only by annihilation. It cannot be affected from without or changed in its interior by any other creature. Still, it must have qualities, without which it would not be an entity. And monads must differ one from another, or there would be no changes in our experience; since all that takes place in compound bodies is derived from the simples which compose them. Moreover, the monad, though uninfluenced from without, is changing continually; the change proceeds from an internal principle. Every monad is subject to a multitude of affections and relations, although without parts. This shifting state, which represents multitude in unity, is nothing else than what we callPerception, which must be carefully distinguished fromApperception, or consciousness. And the action of the internal principle which causes change in the monad, or a passing from one perception to another, isAppetition. The desire does not always attain to the perception to which it tends, but it always effects something, and causes a change of perceptions.
Leibnitz differs from Locke in maintaining that perception is inexplicable and inconceivable on mechanical principles. It is always the act of a simple substance, never of a compound. And "in simple substances there is nothing but perceptions and their changes." [20]
[Footnote 20:Menadol. 17.]
He differs from Locke, furthermore, on the question of the origin of ideas. This question, he says, "is not a preliminary one in philosophy, and one must have made great progress to be able to grapple successfully with it."—"Meanwhile, I think I may say, that our ideas, even those of sensible objects,viennent de nôtre propre fond… I am by no means for thetabula rasaof Aristotle; on the contrary, there is to me something rational (quelque chose de solide) in what Plato calledreminiscence. Nay, more than that, we have not only a reminiscence of all our past thoughts, but we have also apresentimentof all our thoughts." [21]
[Footnote 21:Reflexions sur l'Essai de l'Entendement humain.]
Mr. Lewes, in his "Biographical History of Philosophy," speaks of the essay from which these words are quoted, as written in "a somewhat supercilious tone." We are unable to detect any such feature in it. That trait was wholly foreign from Leibnitz's nature. "Car je suis des plus dociles," he says of himself, in this same essay. He was the most tolerant of philosophers. "Je ne méprise presque rien."—"Nemo est ingenio minus quam ego censorio."— "Mirum dictu: probo pleraque quae lego."—"Non admodum refutationes quaerere aut legere soleo."
To return to the monads. Each monad, according to Leibnitz, is, properly speaking, a soul, inasmuch as each is endowed with perception. But in order to distinguish those which have only perception from those which have also sentiment and memory, he will call the lattersouls, the formermonadsorentelechies. [22]
[Footnote 22:Entelechy([Greek: entelechia]) is an Aristotelian term, signifying activity, or more properly perhaps, self action. Leibnitz understands by it something complete in itself ([Greek: echon to enteles]). Mr. Butler, in hisHistory of Ancient Philosophy, lately reprinted in this country, translates it "act."Function, we think would be a better rendering. (See W. Archer Butler'sLectures, Last Series, Lect. 2.) Aristotle uses the word as a definition of the soul. "The soul," he says, "is the first entelechy of an active body."]
The naked monad, he says, has perceptions without relief, or "enhanced flavor"; it is in a state of stupor. Death, he thinks, may produce this state for a time in animals. The monads completely fill the world; there is never and nowhere a void, and never complete inanimateness and inertness. The universe is aplenumof souls. Wherever we behold an organic whole, (unum per se,) there monads are grouped around a central monad to which they are subordinate, and which they are constrained to serve so long as that connection lasts. Masses of inorganic matter are aggregations of monads without a regent, or sentient soul (unum per accidens). There can be no monad without matter, that is, without society, and no soul without a body. Not only the human soul is indestructible and immortal, but also the animal soul. There is no generation out of nothing, and no absolute death. Birth is expansion, development, growth; and death is contraction, envelopment, decrease. The monads which are destined to become human souls have existed from the beginning in organic matter, but only as sentient or animal souls, without reason. They remain in this condition until the generation of the human beings to which they belong, and then develope themselves into rational souls. The different organs and members of the body are also relatively souls which collect around them a number of monads for a specific purpose, and so onad infinitum. Matter is not only infinitely divisible, but infinitely divided. All matter (so called) is living and active. "Every particle of matter may be conceived as a garden of plants, or as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of each plant, each member of each animal, each drop of their humors, is in turn another such garden or pond." [23]
[Footnote 23:Monadol.67.]
The connection between monads, consequently the connection between soul and body, is not composition, but an organic relation,—in some sort, a spontaneous relation. The soul forms its own body, and moulds it to its purpose. This hypothesis was afterward embraced and developed as a physiological principle by Stahl. As all the atoms in one body are organically related, so all the beings in the universe are organically related to each other and to the All. One creature, or one organ of a creature, being given, there is given with it the world's history from the beginning to the end.All bodies are strictly fluid; the universe is in flux.
The principle of continuity answers the same purpose in Leibnitz's system that the single substance does in Spinoza's. It vindicates the essential unity of all being. Yet the two conceptions are immeasurably different, and constitute an immeasurable difference between the two systems, considered in their practical and moral bearings, as well as their ontological aspects. Spinoza [24] starts with the idea of the Infinite, or the All-One, from which there is no logical deduction of the individual. And in Spinoza's system the individual does not exist except as a modality. But the existence of the individual is one of the primordial truths of the human mind, the foremost fact of consciousness. With this, therefore, Leibnitz begins, and arrives, by logical induction, to the Absolute and Supreme. Spinoza ends where he begins, in pantheism; the moral result of his system, Godward, is fatalism,—manward, indifferentism and negation of moral good and evil. Leibnitz ends in theism; the moral result of his system, Godward, is optimism,—manward, liberty, personal responsibility, moral obligation.
[Footnote 24: See Helferich'sSpinoza, und Leibnitz, p. 76.]
He demonstrates the being of God by the necessity of a sufficient reason to account for the series of things. Each finite thing requires an antecedent or contingent cause. But the supposition of an endless sequence of contingent causes, or finite things, is absurd; the series must have had a beginning, and that beginning cannot have been a contingent cause or finite thing. "The final reason of things must be found in a necessary substance in which the detail of changes exists eminently, (ne soit qu'éminemment,) as in its source; and this is what we call God." [25]
[Footnote 25:Monadol. 38.]
The idea of God is of such a nature, that the being corresponding to it, if possible, must be actual. We have the idea; it involves no bounds, no negation, consequently no contradiction. It is the idea of a possible, therefore of an actual.
"God is the primitive Unity, or the simple original Substance of which all the creatures, or original monads, are the products, andare generated, so to speak, by continual fulgurations from moment to moment, bounded by the receptivity of the creature, of whose existence limitation is an essential condition." [26]
[Footnote 26: Ib. 47.]
The philosophic theologian and the Christianizing philosopher will rejoice to find in this proposition a point of reconciliation between the extramundane God of pure theism and the cardinal principle of Spinozism, the immanence of Deity in creation,—a principle as dear to the philosophic mind as that of the extramundane Divinity is to the theologian. The universe of Spinoza is a self-existent unit, divine in itself, but with no Divinity behind it. That of Leibnitz is an endless series of units from a self-existent and divine source. The one is an infinite deep, the other an everlasting flood.
The doctrine of thePreëstablished Harmony, so intimately and universally associated with the name of Leibnitz, has found little favor with his critics, or even with his admirers. Feuerbach calls it his weak side, and thinks that Leibnitz's philosophy, else so profound, was here, as in other instances, overshadowed by the popular creed; that he accommodated himself to theology, as a highly cultivated and intelligent man, conscious of his superiority, accommodates himself to a lady in his conversation with her, translating his ideas into her language, and even paraphrasing them. From this view of Leibnitz, as implying insincerity, we utterly dissent. [27]
[Footnote 27: See, in connection with this point, two admirable essays by Lessing,—the one entitledLeibnitz on Eternal Punishment, the otherObjections of Andreas Wissowatius to the Doctrine of the Trinity. Of the latter the real topic is Leibnitz'sDefensio Trinitatis. The sharp-sighted Lessing, than whom no one has expressed a greater reverence for Leibnitz, emphatically asserts and vigorously defends the philosopher's orthodoxy.]
The author of the "Théodicée" was not more interested in philosophy than he was in theology. His thoughts and his purpose did equal justice to both. The deepest wish of his heart was to reconcile them, not by formal treaty, but in loving and condign union. We do not, however, object to an esoteric and exoteric view of the doctrine in question; and we quite agree with Feuerbach that the phrasepréétabliedoes not express a metaphysical determination. It is one thing to say, that God, by an arbitrary decree from everlasting, has so predisposed and predetermined every motion in the world of matter that each volition of a rational agent finds in the constant procession of physical forces a concurrent event by which it is executed, but which would have taken place without his volition, just as the mail-coach takes our letter, if we have one, but goes all the same, when we do not write,—this is the gross, exoteric view,—and a very different thing it is to say, that the monads composing the human system and the universe of things are so related, adjusted, accommodated to each other, and to the whole, each being a representative of all the rest and a mirror of the universe, that each feels all that passes in the rest, and all conspire in every act, [28] more or less effectively, in the ratio of their nearness to the prime agent. This is Leibnitz's idea of preëstablished harmony, which, perhaps, would be better expressed by the term "necessary consent." "In the ideas of God, each monad has a right to demand that God, in regulating the rest from the commencement of things, shall have regard to it; for since a created monad can have no physical influence on the interior of another, it is only by this means that one can be dependent on another."—"The soul follows its own laws and the body follows its own, and they meet in virtue of the preëstablished harmony which exists between all substances, as representatives of one and the same universe. Souls act according to the laws of final causes by appetitions, etc. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes or the laws of motion. And the two kingdoms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, harmonize with each other." [29]
[Footnote 28: In this connection, Leibnitz quotes the remarkable saying of Hippocrates, [Greek: Sumpnoia panta]. The universe breathes together, conspires.—Monadal. 61.]
[Footnote 29:Monadol. 78, 79.]
The Preëstablished Harmony, then, is to be regarded as the philosophic statement of a fact, and not as a theory concerning the cause of the fact. But, like all philosophic and adequate statements, it answers the purpose of a theory, and clears up many difficulties. It is the best solution we know of the old contradiction of free-will and fate,—individual liberty and a necessary world. This antithesis disappears in the light of the Leibnitian philosophy, which resolves freedom and necessity into different points of view and different stages of development. The principle of the Preëstablished Harmony was designed by Leibnitz to meet the difficulty, started by Des Cartes, of explaining the conformity between the perceptions of the mind and the corresponding affections of the body, since mind and matter, in his view, could have no connection with, or influence on each other. The Cartesians explained this correspondence by the theory ofoccasional causes, that is, by the intervention of the Deity, who was supposed by his arbitrary will to have decreed a certain perception or sensation in the mind to go with a certain affection of the body, with which, however, it had no real connection. "Car il" (that is, M. Bayle) "est persuadé avec les Cartésiens modernes, que les idées des qualités sensibles que Dieu donne, selon eux, à l'âme, à l'occasion des mouvemens du corps, n'ont rien qui représente ces mouvemens, ou qui leur ressemble; de sorte qu'il étoit purement arbitraire que Dieu nous donnât les idées de la chaleur, du froid, de la lumière et autres que nous expérimentons, ou qu'il nous en donnât de tout-autres à cette même occasion." [30]
[Footnote 30:Théodicée. Partie II. 340.]
If the body was exposed to the flame, there was no more reason, according to this theory, why the soul should be conscious of pain than of pleasure, except that God had so ordained. Such a supposition was shocking to our philosopher, who could tolerate no arbitrariness in God and no gap or discrepancy in nature, and who, therefore, sought to explain, by the nature of the soul itself and its kindred monads, the correspondence for which so violent an hypothesis was embraced by the Cartesians.
We have left ourselves no room to speak as we would of Leibnitz as theosopher. It was in this character that he obtained, in the last century, his widest fame. The work by which he is most commonly known, by which alone he is known to many, is the "Théodicée,"—an attempt to vindicate the goodness of God against the cavils of unbelievers. He was one of the first to apply to this end the cardinal principle of the Lutheran Reformation,—the liberty of reason. He was one of the first to treat unbelief, from the side of religion, as an error of judgment, not as rebellion against rightful authority. The latter was and is the Romanist view. The former is the Protestant theory, but was not then, and is not always now, the Protestant practice. Theology then was not concerned to vindicate the reason or the goodness of God. It gloried in his physical strength by which he would finally crush dissenters from orthodoxy. Leibnitz knew no authority independent of Reason, and no God but the Supreme Reason directing Almighty Good-will. The philosophic conclusion justly deducible from this view of God, let cavillers say what they will, is Optimism. Accordingly, Optimism, or the doctrine of the best possible world, is the theory of the "Théodicée." Our limits will not permit us to analyze the argument of this remarkable work. Bunsen says, "It necessarily failed because it was a not quite honest compound of speculation and divinity." [31]
[Footnote 31:Outlines of the Philos. of Univ. Hist. Vol. I. Chap. 6.]
Few at the present day will pretend to be entirely satisfied with its reasoning, but all who are familiar with it know it to be a treasury of wise and profound thoughts and of noble sentiments and aspirations. Bonnet, the naturalist, called it his "Manual of Christian Philosophy"; and Fontenelle, in his eulogy, speaks enthusiastically of its luminous and sublime views, of its reasonings, in which the mind of the geometer is always apparent, of its perfect fairness toward those whom it controverts, and its rich store of anecdote and illustration. Even Stewart, who wasnotfamiliar with it, and who, as might be expected, strangely misconceives and misrepresents the author, is compelled to echo the general sentiment. He pronounces it a work in which are combined together in an extraordinary degree "the acuteness of the logician, the imagination of the poet, and theimpenetrable yet sublime darknessof the metaphysical theologian." The Italics are ours. Our reason for doubting Stewart's familiarity with the "Théodicée," and with Leibnitz in general, is derived in part from these phrases. We do not believe that any sincere student of Leibnitz has found him dark and impenetrable. Be it a merit or a fault, this predicate is inapplicable. Never was metaphysician more explicit and more intelligible. Had he been disposed to mysticize and to shroud himself in "impenetrable darkness," he would have found it difficult to indulge that propensity in French. Thanks to the strict régime and happy limitations of that idiom, the French is not a language in which philosophy can hide itself. It is a tight-fitting coat, which shows the exact form, or want of form, of the thought it clothes, without pad or fold to simulate fulness or to veil defects. It was a Frenchman, we are aware, who discovered that "the use of language is to conceal thought"; but that use, so far as French is concerned, has been hitherto monopolized by diplomacy.
Another reason for questioning Stewart's familiarity with Leibnitz is his misconception of that author, which we choose to impute to ignorance rather than to wilfulness. This misconception is strikingly exemplified in a prominent point of Leibnitian philosophy. Stewart says: "The zeal of Leibnitz in propagating the dogma of Necessity is not easily reconcilable with the hostility which he uniformly displays against the congenial doctrine of Materialism." [32]
[Footnote 32:General View of the Prog. of Metaph. Eth. and Polit.Phil. Boston: 1822. p. 75.]
Now it happens that "the zeal of Leibnitz" was exerted in precisely the opposite direction. A considerable section of the "Théodicée" (34-75) is occupied with the illustration and defence of the Freedom of the Will. It was a doctrine on which he laid great stress, and which forms an essential part of his system; [33] in proof of which, let one declaration stand for many: "Je suis d'opinion que notre volonté n'est pas seulement exempte de la contrainte, mais encore de la nécessité." How far he succeeded in establishing that doctrine in accordance with the rest of his system is another question. That he believed it and taught it is a fact of which there can be no more doubt with those who have studied his writings, than there is that he wrote the works ascribed to him. But the freedom of will maintained by Leibnitz was not indeterminism. It was not the indifference of the tongue of the balance between equal weights, or that of the ass between equal bundles of hay. Such an equilibrium he declares impossible. "Cet équilibre en tout sens est impossible." Buridan's imaginary case of the ass is a fiction "qui ne sauroit avoir lieu dans l'univers." [34]
[Footnote 33: "Numquam Leibnitio in mentem venisse libertatem velle evertere, in qua defendenda quam maxime fuit occupatus, omnia scripta, precipue autem Theodicæa ejus, clamitant."—KORTHOLT, Vol. IV. p. 12.]
[Footnote 34: Leibnitz seems to have been of the same mind withDante:—
"Intra duo cibi distanti e moventiD' un modo, prima si morria di fameChe liber' uomo l'un recasse a' denti."Parad, iv. 1.]
The will is always determined by motives, but not necessarily constrained by them. This is his doctrine, emphatically stated and zealously maintained. We doubt if any philosopher, equally profound and equally sincere, will ever find room in his conclusions for a greater measure of moral liberty than the "Théodicée" has conceded to man. "In respect to this matter," says Arthur Schopenhauer, "the great thinkers of all times are agreed and decided, just as surely as the mass of mankind will never see and comprehend the great truth, that the practical operation of liberty is not to be sought in single acts, but in the being and nature of man." [35]
[Footnote 35:Ueber den Willen in der Natur. FRANKFURT A.M. 1854. p. 22.]
Leibnitz's construction of the idea of a possible liberty consistent with the preëstablished order of the universe is substantially that of Schelling in his celebrated essay on this subject. We must not dwell upon it, but hasten to conclude our imperfect sketch.
The ground-idea of the "Théodicée" is expressed in the phrase, "Best-possible world." Evil is a necessary condition of finite being, but the end of creation is the realization of the greatest possible perfection within the limits of the finite. The existing universe is one of innumerable possible universes, each of which, if actualized, would have had a different measure of good and evil. The present, rather than any other, was made actual, as presenting to Divine Intelligence the smallest measure of evil and the greatest amount of good. This idea is happily embodied in the closing apologue, designed to supplement one of Laurentius Valla, a writer of the fifteenth century. Theodorus, priest of Zeus at Dodona, demands why that god has permitted to Sextus the evil will which was destined to bring so much misery on himself and others. Zeus refers him to his daughter Athene. He goes to Athens, is commanded to lie down in the temple of Pallas, and is there visited with a dream. The vision takes him to the Palace of Destinies, which contains the plans of all possible worlds. He examines one plan after another; in each the same Sextus plays a different part and experiences a different fate. The plans improve as he advances, till at last he comes upon one whose superior excellence enchants him with delight. After revelling awhile in the contemplation of this perfect world, he is told that this is the actual world in which he lives. But in this the crime of Sextus is a necessary constituent; it could not be what it is as a whole, were it other than it is in its single parts.
Whatever may be thought of Leibnitz's success in demonstrating his favorite doctrine, the theory of Optimism commends itself to piety and reason as that view of human and divine things which most redounds to the glory of God and best expresses the hope of man,—as the noblest andthereforethe truest theory of Divine rule and human destiny.
We recall at this moment but one English writer of supreme mark who has held and promulged, in its fullest extent, the theory of Optimism. That one is a poet. The "Essay on Man," with one or two exceptions, might almost pass for a paraphrase of the "Théodicée"; and Pope, with characteristic vigor, has concentrated the meaning of that treatise in one word, which is none the less true, in the sense intended, because of its possible perversion,—"Whatever is, is right."
* * * * *
A FEW SCENES FROM A TRUE HISTORY. [Concluded.]
They had lived thus nearly a year, when, one day as they were riding on horseback, Alfred saw Mr. Grossman approaching. "Drop your veil," he said, quickly, to his companion; for he could not bear to have that Satyr even look upon his hidden flower. The cotton-broker noticed the action, but silently touched his hat, and passed with a significant smile on his uncomely countenance. A few days afterward, when Alfred had gone to his business in the city, Loo Loo strolled to her favorite recess on the hill-side, and, lounging on the rustic seat, began to read the second volume of "Thaddeus of Warsaw." She was so deeply interested in the adventures of the noble Pole, that she forgot herself and all her surroundings. Masses of glossy dark hair fell over the delicate hand that supported her head; her morning-gown, of pink French muslin, fell apart, and revealed a white embroidered skirt, from beneath which obtruded one small foot, in an open-work silk stocking; the slipper having fallen to the ground. Thus absorbed, she took no note of time, and might have remained until summoned to dinner, had not a slight rustling disturbed her. She looked up, and saw a coarse face peering at her between the pine boughs, with a most disgusting expression. She at once recognized the man they had met during their ride; and starting to her feet, she ran like a deer before the hunter. It was not till she came near the house, that she was aware of having left her slipper. A servant was sent for it, but returned, saying it was not to be found. She mourned over the loss, for the little pink kid slippers, embroidered with silver, were a birth-day present from Alfred. As soon as he returned, she told him the adventure, and went with him to search the arbor of pines. The incident troubled him greatly. "What a noxious serpent, to come crawling into our Eden!" he exclaimed. "Never come here alone again, dearest; and never go far from the house, unless Madame is with you."
Her circle of enjoyments was already small, excluded as she was from society by her anomalous position, and educated far above the caste in which the tyranny of law and custom so absurdly placed her. But it is one of the blessed laws of compensation, that the human soul cannot miss that to which it has never been accustomed. Madame's motherly care, and Alfred's unvarying tenderness, sufficed her cravings for affection; and for amusement, she took refuge in books, flowers, birds, and those changes of natural scenery for which her lover had such quickness of eye. It was a privation to give up her solitary rambles in the grounds, her inspection of birds' nests, and her readings in that pleasant alcove of pines. But she more than acquiesced in Alfred's prohibition. She said at once, that she would rather be a prisoner within the house all her days than ever see that odious face again.
Mr. Noble encountered the cotton-broker, in the way of business, a few days afterward; but his aversion to the unclean conversation of the man induced him to conceal his vexation under the veil of common courtesy. He knew what sort of remarks any remonstrance would elicit, and he shrank from subjecting Loo Loo's name to such pollution. For a short time, this prudent reserve shielded him from the attacks he dreaded. But Mr. Grossman soon began to throw out hints about the sly hypocrisy of Puritan Yankees, and other innuendoes obviously intended to annoy him. At last, one day, he drew the embroidered slipper from his pocket, and, with a rakish wink of his eye, said, "I reckon you have seen this before, Mr. Noble."
Alfred felt an impulse to seize him by the throat, and strangle him on the spot. But why should he make a scene with such a man, and thus drag Loo Loo's name into painful notoriety? The oldrouéwas evidently trying to foment a quarrel with him. Thoroughly animal in every department of his nature, he was boastful of brute courage, and prided himself upon having killed several men in duels. Alfred conjectured his line of policy, and resolved to frustrate it. He therefore coolly replied, "I have seen such slippers; they are very pretty"; and turned away, as if the subject were indifferent to him.
"Coward!" muttered Grossman, as he left the counting-house. Mr. Noble did not hear him; and if he had, it would not have altered his course. He could see nothing enviable in the reputation of being ever ready for brawls, and a dead-shot in duels; and he knew that his life was too important to the friendless Loo Loo to be thus foolishly risked for the gratification of a villain. This incident renewed his old feelings of remorse for the false position in which he had placed the young orphan, who trusted him so entirely. To his generous nature, the wrong seemed all the greater because the object was so unconscious of it. "It is I who have subjected her to the insolence of this vile man," he said within himself. "But I will repair the wrong. Innocent, confiding soul that she is, I will protect her. The sanction of marriage shall shield her from such affronts."
Alas for poor human nature! He was sincere in these resolutions, but he was not quite strong enough to face the prejudices of the society in which he lived. Their sneers would have fallen harmless. They could not take from him a single thing he really valued. But he had not learned to understand that the dreaded power of public opinion is purely fabulous, when unsustained by the voice of conscience. So he fell into the old snare of moral compromise. He thought the best he could do, under the circumstances, was to hasten the period of his departure for the North, to marry Loo Loo in Philadelphia, and remove to some part of the country where her private history would remain unknown.
To make money for this purpose, he had more and more extended his speculations, and they had uniformly proved profitable. If Mr. Grossman's offensive conduct had not forced upon him a painful consciousness of his position with regard to the object of his devoted affection, he would have liked to remain in Mobile a few years longer, and accumulate more; but, as it was, he determined to remove as soon as he could arrange his affairs satisfactorily. He set about this in good earnest. But, alas! the great pecuniary crash of 1837 was at hand. By every mail came news of failures where he expected payments. The wealth, which seemed so certain a fact a few months before, where had it vanished? It had floated away, like a prismatic bubble on the breeze. He saw that his ruin was inevitable. All he owned in the world would not cancel his debts. And now he recalled the horrible recollection that Loo Loo was a part of his property. Much as he had blamed Mr. Duncan for negligence in not manumitting her mother, he had fallen into the same snare. In the fulness of his prosperity and happiness, he did not comprehend the risk he was running by delay. He rarely thought of the fact that she was legally his slave; and when it did occur to him, it was always accompanied with the recollection that the laws of Alabama did not allow him to emancipate her without sending her away from the State. But this never troubled him, because there was always present with him that vision of going to the North and making her his wife. So time slipped away, without his taking any precautions on the subject; and now it was too late. Immersed in debt as he was, the law did not allow him to dispose of anything without consent of creditors; and he owed ten thousand dollars to Mr. Grossman. Oh, agony! sharp agony!
There was a meeting of the creditors. Mr. Noble rendered an account of all his property, in which he was compelled to include Loo Loo; but for her he offered to give a note for fifteen hundred dollars, with good endorsement, payable with interest in a year. It was known that his attachment to the orphan he had educated amounted almost to infatuation; and his proverbial integrity inspired so much respect, that the creditors were disposed to grant him any indulgence not incompatible with their own interests. They agreed to accept the proffered note, all except Mr. Grossman. He insisted that the girl should be put up at auction. For her sake, the ruined merchant condescended to plead with him. He represented that the tie between them was very different from the merely convenient connections which were so common; that Loo Loo was really good and modest, and so sensitive by nature, that exposure to public sale would nearly kill her. The selfish creditor remained inexorable. The very fact that this delicate flower had been so carefully sheltered from the mud and dust of the wayside rendered her a more desirable prize. He coolly declared, that ever since he had seen her in the arbor, he had been determined to have her; and now that fortune had put the chance in his power, no money should induce him to relinquish it.
The sale was inevitable; and the only remaining hope was that some friend might be induced to buy her. There was a gentleman in the city whom I will call Frank Helper. He was a Kentuckian by birth, kind and open-hearted,—a slave-holder by habit, not by nature. Warm feelings of regard had long existed between him and Mr. Noble; and to him the broken merchant applied for advice in this torturing emergency. Though Mr. Helper was possessed of but moderate wealth, he had originally agreed to endorse his friend's note for fifteen hundred dollars; and he now promised to empower some one to expend three thousand dollars in the purchase of Loo Loo.
"It is not likely that we shall be obliged to pay so much," said he. "Bad debts are pouring in upon Grossman, and he hasn't a mint of money to spare just now, however big he may talk. We will begin with offering fifteen hundred dollars; and she will probably be bid off for two thousand."
"Bid off! O my God!" exclaimed the wretched man. He bowed his head upon his outstretched arms, and the table beneath him shook with his convulsive sobs. His friend was unprepared for such an overwhelming outburst of emotion. He did not understand, no one but Alfred himselfcouldunderstand, the peculiarity of the ties that bound him to that dear orphan. Recovering from this unwonted mood, he inquired whether there was no possible way of avoiding a sale.
"I am sorry to say there is no way, my friend," replied Mr. Helper. "The laws invest this man with power over you; and there is nothing left for us but to undermine his projects. It is a hazardous business, as you well know.Youmust not appear in it; neither can I; for I am known to be your intimate friend. But trust the whole affair to me, and I think I can bring it to a successful issue."
The hardest thing of all was to apprise the poor girl of her situation. She had never thought of herself as a slave; and what a terrible awakening was this from her dream of happy security! Alfred deemed it most kind and wise to tell her of it himself; but he dreaded it worse than death. He expected she would swoon; he even feared it might kill her. But love made her stronger than he thought. When, after much cautious circumlocution, he arrived at the crisis of the story, she pressed her hand hard upon her forehead, and seemed stupefied. Then she threw herself into his arms, and they wept, wept, wept, till their heads seemed cracking with the agony.
"Oh, the avenging Nemesis!" exclaimed Alfred, at last. "I have deserved all this. It is all my own fault. I ought to have carried you away from these wicked laws. I ought to have married you. Truest, most affectionate of friends, how cruelly I have treated you! you, who put the welfare of your life so confidingly into my hands!"
She rose up from his bosom, and, looking him lovingly in the face, replied,—
"Never say that, dear Alfred! Never have such a thought again! You have been the best and kindest friend that woman ever had. IfIforgot that I was a slave, is it strange thatyoushould forget it? But, Alfred, I will never be the slave of any other man,— never! I will never be put on the auction-stand. I will die first."
"Nay, dearest, you must make no rash resolutions," he replied."I have friends who promise to save you, and restore us to each other.The form of sale is unavoidable. So, for my sake, consent to thetemporary humiliation. Will you, darling?"
He had never before seen such an expression in her face. Her eyes flashed, her nostrils dilated, and she drew her breath like one in the agonies of death. Then pressing his hand with a nervous grasp, she answered,—
"Foryoursake, dear Alfred, I will."
From that time, she maintained outward calmness, while in his presence; and her inward uneasiness was indicated only by a fondness more clinging than ever. Whenever she parted from him, she kept him lingering, and lingering, on the threshold. She followed him to the road; she kissed her hand to him till he was out of sight; and then her tears flowed unrestrained. Her mind was filled with the idea that she should be carried away from the home of her childhood, as she had been by the rough Mr. Jackson,—that she should become the slave of that bad man, and never, never see Alfred again. "But I can die," she often said to herself; and she revolved in her mind various means of suicide, in case the worst should happen.
Madame Labassé did not desert her in her misfortunes. She held frequent consultations with Mr. Helper and his friends, and continually brought messages to keep up her spirits. A dozen times a day, she repeated,—
"Tout sera bien arrangé. Soyez tranquille, ma chère! Soyez tranquille!"
At last the dreaded day arrived. Mr. Helper had persuaded Alfred to appear to yield to necessity, and keep completely out of sight. He consented, because Loo Loo had said she could not go through with the scene, if he were present; and, moreover, he was afraid to trust his own nerves and temper. They conveyed her to the auction-room, where she stood trembling among a group of slaves of all ages and all colors, from iron-black to the lightest brown. She wore her simplest dress, without ornament of any kind. When they placed her on the stand, she held her veil down, with a close, nervous grasp.
"Come, show us your face," said the auctioneer. "Folks don't like to buy a pig in a poke, you know."
Seeing that she stood perfectly still, with her head lowered upon her breast, he untied the bonnet, pulled it off rudely, and held up her face to public view. There was a murmur of applause.
"Show your teeth," said the auctioneer. But she only compressed her mouth more firmly. After trying in vain to coax her, he exclaimed,—
"Never mind, gentlemen. She's got a string of pearls inside them coral lips of hern. I can swear to that, for I've seen 'em. No use tryin' to trot her out. She's a leetle set up, ye see, with bein' made much of. Look at her, gentlemen! Who can blame her for bein' a bit proud? She's a fust-rate fancy-article. Who bids?"
Before he had time to repeat the question, Mr. Grossman said, in a loud voice, "Fifteen hundred dollars."
This was rather a damper upon Mr. Helper's agent, who bid sixteen hundred.
A voice from the crowd called out, "Eighteen hundred."
"Two thousand," shouted Mr. Grossman.
"Two thousand two hundred," said another voice.
"Two thousand five hundred," exclaimed Mr. Grossman.
"Two thousand eight hundred," said the incognito agent.
The prize was now completely given up to the two competitors; and the agent, excited by the contest, went beyond his orders, until he bid as high as four thousand two hundred dollars.
"Four thousand five hundred," screamed the cotton-broker.
There was no use in contending with him. He was evidently willing to stake all his fortune upon victory.
"Going! Going! Going!" repeated the auctioneer, slowly. There was a brief pause, during which every pulsation in Loo Loo's body seemed to stop. Then she heard the horrible words, "Gone, for four thousand five hundred dollars! Gone to Mr. Grossman!"
They led her to a bench at the other end of the room. She sat there, still as a marble statue, and almost as pale. The sudden cessation of excited hope had so stunned her, that she could not think. Everything seemed dark and reeling round her. In a few minutes, Mr. Grossman was at her side.
"Come, my beauty," said he. "The carriage is at the door. If you behave yourself, you shall be treated like a queen. Come, my love!"
He attempted to take her hand, but his touch roused her from her lethargy; and springing at him, like a wild-cat, she gave him a blow in the face that made him stagger,—so powerful was it, in the vehemence of her disgust and anger.
His coaxing tones changed instantly.