CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE & Other Works on the Human Thought Process. Джон Дьюи
to the discovery of a unity of equal depth and comprehensiveness.
Except for Descartes, then, we should not be conscious of the gulf that yawns between the individual mind and the universe in front of it. He presented the opposition as between mind and matter. The essence of the former is thought; of the latter, extension. The conceptions are disparate and opposed. No interaction is possible. His disciples, more consistent than their master, called in a deus ex machina,—the miraculous intervention of God,—in order to account for the appearance of reciprocal action between the universe of matter and the thinking individual. Thus they in substance admitted the relation between them to be scientifically inexplicable, and had recourse to the supernatural. The individual does not act upon the universe to produce, destroy, or alter the arrangement of anything. But upon the occasion of his volition God produces a corresponding material change. The world does not act upon the soul of the individual to produce thoughts or sensations. God, upon occasion of the external affection, brings them into being. With such thoroughness Descartes performed his task of separation. Yet the introduction of the deus ex machina only complicated the problem; it introduced a third factor where two were already too many. What is the relation of God to Mind and to Matter? Is it simply a third somewhat, equally distinct from both, or does it contain both within itself?
Spinoza attempted to solve the problem in the latter sense. He conceived God to be the one substance of the universe, possessing the two known attributes of thought and matter. These attributes are one in God; indeed, he is their unity. This is the sole legitimate outcome of the Cartesian problem stated as Descartes would have it stated. It overcomes the absoluteness of the dualism by discovering a common and fundamental unity, and at the same time takes the subject out of the realm of the miraculous. For the solution works both ways. It affects the nature of God, as well as of extension and thought. It presents him to us, not as a supernatural being, but as the unity of thought and extension. In knowing these as they are, we know God as he is. Spinoza, in other words, uses the conception of God in a different way from the Cartesians. The latter had treated him as the God of theology,—a being supernatural; Spinoza uses the conception as a scientific one, and speaks of Deus sive Natura.
Leibniz recognized the unphilosophic character of the recourse to a deus ex machina as clearly as Spinoza, and yet did not accept his solution. To find out why he did not is the problem of the historian of thought. The one cause which stands out above all others is that in the unity of Spinoza all difference, all distinction, is lost. All particular existences, whether things or persons, are modes of extension and thought. Their apparent existence is due to the imagination, which is the source of belief in particular things. When considered as they really are,—that is, by the understanding,—they vanish. The one substance, with its two unchanging attributes of thought and extension, alone remains. If it is a philosophic error to give a solution which permits of no unity, is it not equally a philosophic error to give one which denies difference? So it seemed to Leibniz. The problem is to reconcile difference in unity, not to swallow up difference in a blank oneness,—to reconcile the individual with the universe, not to absorb him.
The unsatisfactoriness of the solution appears if we look at it from another side. Difference implies change, while a unity in which all variety is lost implies quiescence. Change is as much an illusion of imagination to Spinoza as is variety. The One Reality is permanent. How repugnant the conception of a static universe was to Leibniz we have already learned. Spinoza fails to satisfy Leibniz, therefore, because he does not allow the conceptions of individuality and of activity. He presents a unity in which all distinction of individuals is lost, and in which there is no room for change. But Spinoza certainly presented the problem more clearly to Leibniz, and revealed more definitely the conditions of its solution. The search is henceforth for a unity which shall avoid the irresolvable dualism of Descartes, and yet shall allow free play to the principles of individuality and of activity. There must be, in short, a universe to which the individual bears a real yet independent relation. What is this unity? The answer, in the phraseology of Leibniz, is the monad. Spinoza would be right, said Leibniz, were it not for the existence of monads. I know there are some who have done Leibniz the honor of supposing that this is his way of saying, “Spinoza is wrong because I am right;” but I cannot help thinking that the saying has a somewhat deeper meaning. What, then, is the nature of the monad? The answer to this question takes us back to the point where the discussion of the question was left at the end of chapter second. The nature of the monad is life. The monad is the spiritual activity which lives in absolute harmony with an infinite number of other monads.
Let us first consider the reasons of Leibniz for conceiving the principle of unity as spiritual. Primarily it is because it is impossible to conceive of a unity which is material. In the sensible world there is no unity. There are, indeed, aggregations, collections, which seem like unities; but the very fact that these are aggregations shows that the unity is factitious. It is the very nature of matter to be infinitely divisible: to say this is to deny the existence of any true principle of unity. The world of nature is the world of space and time; and where in space or time shall we find a unity where we may rest? Every point in space, every moment in time, points beyond itself. It refers to a totality of which it is but a part, or, rather, a limitation. If we add resistance, we are not better situated. We have to think of something which resists; and to this something we must attribute extension,—that is to say, difference, plurality. Nor can we find any resistance which is absolute and final. There may be a body which is undivided, and which resists all energy now acting upon it; but we cannot frame an intelligible idea of a body which is absolutely indivisible. To do so is to think of a body out of all relation to existing forces, something absolutely isolated; while the forces of nature are always relative to one another. That which resists does so in comparison with some opposing energy. The absolutely indivisible, on the other hand, would be that which could not be brought into comparison with other forces; it would not have any of the attributes of force as we know it. In a word, whatever exists in nature is relative in space, in time, and in qualities to all else. It is made what it is by virtue of the totality of its relations to the universe; it has no ultimate principle of self-subsistent unity in it.
Nor do we fare better if we attempt to find unity in the world of nature as a whole. Nature has its existence as a whole in space and time. Indeed, it is only a way of expressing the totality of phenomena of space and time. It is a mere aggregate, a collection. Its very essence is plurality, difference. It is divisible without limit, and each of its divisions has as good a right to be called one as the whole from which it is broken off. We shall consider hereafter Leibniz’s idea of infinity; but it is easy to see that he must deny any true infinity to nature. An ultimate whole made up of parts is a contradictory conception; and the idea of a quantitative infinite is equally so. Quantity means number, measure, limitation. We may not be able to assign number to the totality of occurrences in nature, nor to measure her every event. This shows that nature is indefinitely greater than any assignable quantity; but it does not remove her from the category of quantity. As long as the world is conceived as that existing in space and time, it is conceived as that which has to be measured. As we saw in the last chapter, the heart of the mechanical theory of the world is in the application of mathematics to it. Since quantity and mathematics are correlative terms, the natural world cannot be conceived as infinite or as an ultimate unity.
In short, Leibniz urges and suggests in one form and another those objections to the mechanical theory of reality which later German philosophers have made us so familiar with. The objections are indeed varied in statement, but they all come to the impossibility of finding any unity, any wholeness, anything except plurality and partiality in that which is externally conditioned,—as everything is in nature.
But the reasons as thus stated are rather negative than positive. They show why the ultimate unity cannot be conceived as material, rather than why it must be conceived as spiritual. The immediate evidence of its spiritual nature Leibniz finds in the perception of the one unity directly known to us,—the “me,” the conscious principle within, which reveals itself as an active force, and as truly one, since not a spatial or temporal existence. And this evidence he finds confirmed by the fact that whatever unity material phenomena appear to have comes to them through their perception by the soul. Whatever the mind grasps in one act, is manifested as one.
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