The best possible world is a world of free agents, whose acts are rewarded or punished according to their deserts. If we discover what seems to be inexplicable evil, we must regard it as an incident in the harmony of the whole. The world would be less good without evil. There is no more evil than there ought to be. The world which God conceived to be the best possible—this world—is a world of lights and shades. Evil comes from the free agency of man, and God is not responsible for it. It is better to have evil and free agency than no evil and no free agency. Evil after all is not positive, and is only due to the indistinct ideas of man. It is the absence of good, as cold is the absence of heat.
Thus a preëstablished harmony was constructed by Leibnitz that does not come out of his original philosophical premises. Leibnitz used his celebrated figure ofthe two clocks to illustrate the harmony of the monads. Two clocks keep the same time, not because they influence one another (interaction), nor because the maker moves the hands of one (Occasionalism), but because they have been thus constructed by an intelligent Creator. Thus the harmony of the world implies a personal God. Leibnitz’s philosophical Rationalism here passed into theology, and his metaphysics became an ethics. Leibnitz began with a monadology, and by means of the conception of harmony passed to an optimism.
CHAPTER VI
THE ENLIGHTENMENT (1690–1781)[36]
The Emergence of the “New Man,”—Individualism. In passing to this period we should recall the two objects of interest that distinguish modern from mediæval thought: the “new man” of modern Europe; and the “new universe”—new in its geographical outlines and in its intellectual materials. We have already found that the two hundred and more years of the Renaissance, the first period of modern thought, was absorbed in exploiting the second of these objects—the “new universe.” In fact the “new man” had been so interested in the “new universe” that he had not thought of studying himself. He had systematized the great wealth of his acquisitions and had constructed great systems of science and metaphysics.
This second period of modern thought—the Enlightenment—begins when the “new man” turns away from his intellectual struggles with his environment and attempts to understand his own nature. Thus the more important of the two objects emerges last; and this turn to self-reflection constitutes the century of the Enlightenment. The Renaissance had been subjective and spectacular; the Enlightenment was subjective and tragic. The mental activity of the Renaissance had been vital, spontaneous, and unconscious, like the awakening from sleep; that of the Enlightenmentwas self-conscious and attitudinizing. The man of the Renaissance had been in love with nature; the man of the Enlightenment was in love with himself. Like the Greek Sophistic Illumination, which is its parallel in ancient history, the Enlightenment turned away from cosmological and metaphysical problems. On the other hand, the philosophy of the Enlightenment penetrated all departments of life and found expression in practical questions. Erdmann has well expressed the meaning of these nine decades of the Enlightenment as “an effort to raise man, so far as he is a rational individual, into a position of supremacy over everything.” It was during this period, which we are now about to enter, that Herder brought into currency in Germany the word “humanity.” In England the same sentiment was uttered by Pope in 1732 in his Essay on Man:—
“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.”
The Enlightenment marks, therefore, the rise of modern individualism; and the concerns of the individual become the important object of consideration. The novelty of the great discoveries and inventions of the Renaissance had lost its lustre. The “new universe” had become old and familiar, but through his accomplishments the “new man” had begun to feel the strength of his liberated powers. For had not the wonderful world of the Renaissance been his own accomplishment? Had not all its notable constructions been the creations of his powers? The “struggle of traditions” to revive antiquity and to incorporate the “new universe” upon an old basis; the “strife of methods” to reorganize the “new world” upon a new basis—revealedthis great fact: that man has “world wisdom.” Man in his supremacy occupies the entire foreground, and interest in the “new universe” fades away. The “new universe” is now seen in the light of one’s personal interests. Man is supreme, and to his word there can be no exception. There is constant reference during this time to the “light of reason”—to a bright inner, rational illumination in contrast to the vagaries of mysticism and the obscurities of dogmatism. The worship of genius arises and with it a contempt for the unenlightened. “Thus would I speak, were I Christ,” said Bahrdt. No wonder that Goethe described the Enlightenment as an age of self-conceit!
The Practical Presupposition of the Enlightenment—The Independence of the Individual. The “new man” emerged from the Renaissance as the most important object of consideration, and during the Enlightenment there was never the slightest question about his independence. The individual became the original datum of this period into which we are now entering; he was considered to be the only thing that is self-intelligible; he was the starting-point from which all social relationships were to be explained. Among the many problems that arose, the independent existence of the individual remained unquestioned. It was the period of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” The problems were about the relations of the individual; never about the individual himself, for concerning the individual no problem could arise. The individual rejoicing in the exuberance of his own powers, the “monad enjoying himself,” dominated everything. The monadology of the Renaissance became an atomism in the Enlightenment. The individual was the practical assumption of the period.