We have said that, considering the indefatigable laboriousness which distinguishes the Germans, it would not be strange if they had read the scholastics. In confirmation of this, we notice that Leibnitz urgently recommends the reading of them, and the more modern Germans are not likely to forget the advice of so able an author.
Among various passages of Leibnitz, we select the following extract, because it seems to us rather curious: "Truth is more spread than one would believe; but it is often colored, also often covered over, and even weakened, mutilated, and corrupted by additions which spoil it, or render it less useful. By observing the traces of truth in the ancients, or, to speak more generally, in all who have preceded us, we dig gold from dirt, and draw the diamond from its mine, light from darkness, and this would really be perennis quædam Philosophia.
"It may even be said that some progress would be observable in knowledge. The Orientals have great and beautiful ideas of the Divinity; the Greeks added reasoning and a form of science; the Fathers of the Church rejected whatever was bad in Greek philosophy; but the scholastics labored to usefully employ whatever was acceptable in Pagan philosophy. I have frequently said: aurum latere in stercore illo scholastico barbariei, and I wish we could find some one versed in the Irish and Spanish philosophy, to cull from it what is good; I am sure he would find his labor repaid by many and beautiful truths. There was once a Swiss who mathematized scholastically; his works are but little known; although, from what I have seen of them, I should judge them to be profound and worthy of consideration." (Lettre 3ieme à M. Remond de Montmort.)
Thus speaks Leibnitz, one of the most eminent men of modern times, and of whom Fontenelle said: "He led the van in all the sciences." See, then, if he was wrong in recommending the study of those authors to all desirous of acquiring a profound knowledge of philosophy. This study, setting aside its intrinsic utility, is of great advantage in judging, with knowledge of the cause, a school, which, whatever its worth, occupies a page in the history of the human mind.
ON CHAPTER XXXII.
(28)The author to whom I allude (317) is Fenelon, who, under the name of common sense, includes also the criterion of evidence, as may be seen by this extract: "What is common sense? Does it not consist in the first notions which all men have of the same things? This common sense, which always and everywhere is the same, which precedes all examination, and even holds it in ridicule on certain questions, in which one laughs instead of examining; which renders man unable to doubt, no matter how great his efforts may be; this sense which belongs to all men, which only waits to be consulted in order to discover itself and show us the evidence or the absurdity of the question, is not this what I call my ideas? Here, then, are these general ideas or notions which I cannot contradict or examine, but according to which I examine and judge every thing, so that, instead of replying, I laugh when any thing is proposed clearly in opposition to what these immutable ideas represent."—Existence de Dieu, P. II., v. 33.
There is no doubt that Fenelon speaks of evidence in this extract, since, besides using this very term, he refers to immutable ideas; by common sense he understands the general ideas by which we judge of all things, or in other words, the ideas from which evidence proceeds.