the commencement of the present century, so that his name brings us almost to the borders of the period at which the historical sketch allotted to this chapter is to cease, and reminds us that we have to return to the continent of Europe, in order to seek the first elements of that all-embracing idealism, for which Germany has now become celebrated throughout the world.

SECT. III.-Third Movement - German Idealism.

We now come to a country in which idealism may be said to be indigenous, and where it has long borne its maturest fruits. The real source of the German idealism must be sought in the peculiar construction of the German mind; as this, however, is a point into which we have no right at present to enter, what we shall now attempt is simply to shew the circumstances by which this philosophy was first called forth, and to trace its movements up to the nineteenth century.

The great era in the philosophical history of Germany, from which all its subsequent speculations may be said to have flowed, was formed by the life and writings of Leibnitz. Although we possess no systematic development of his opinions, (since he was too much mingled up with all the learning of Europe to devote himself closely to the expansion of any one particular branch,) yet it is not difficult

to trace in the occasional and what we may almost term fugitive productions of that vast and allcomprehending mind, the fruitful germs of those philosophical opinions, which occupy so prominent a place in the metaphysical speculations of the present age. The mind of Leibnitz was cast in a gigantic mould, and made by nature to tower above the rest of the world around him. By virtue of this it was that, like all great minds, he cast his shadow before him, and gave more pregnant suggestions in some of his cursory writings, than most other men could do in the combined and systematic labour of their whole life.

One great advantage which Leibnitz possessed was, that he entered upon the study of philosophy just at the time when he could not only see the ultimate tendency of the Cartesian principles, as shewn by Malebranche and Spinoza, but could also compare with them the vigorous efforts which Locke had made in the opposite direction. His mind was thus nurtured and expanded in the very heat of the controversy, and feeling assured as he did that truth and error existed on both sides, he came forward as the mediator between the contending parties, and proposed to shew, where on either hand mistaken principles had been advocated, and how the controversy might terminate in the discovery of the truth. It will greatly facilitate, therefore, our estimate of this philosophy, if we first of all exhibit the chief points in which Leibnitz differed from

Locke on the one hand, and Descartes on the other, and thus define the position which he assumed between them both.

In

This position may be easily determined. opposition to the former, Leibnitz wrote a work entitled "Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain," the chief object of which was, to controvert Locke's view respecting innate ideas, and to prove the existence of a principle of human knowledge, independent of and superior to that which is afforded by the senses. In doing this, he by no means ran into the opposite extreme, which was held by the Cartesians, perceiving as he did most clearly that their doctrine of innate ideas was altogether untenable, and that it had been exploded indeed by the English philosopher; but while he avoided this error on the one side, he succeeded in seizing upon the very point in which Locke on the other side was most vulnerable. There is nothing in the understanding, says Locke, which did not first pass through the senses, according to the old axiom,—“nil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu.' True, replies Leibnitz, but there is the understanding itself, there is the innate faculty of forming ideas, which was altogether overlooked by Locke in his reasoning, and which stands quite independent of sensation. From the one consideration, then, that the understanding itself is innate, though our ideas are not, he goes on to reason, that there are, both in mathematics and in philosophy,

necessary truths, whose certainty does not spring from experience, but which have their foundation originally in the thinking soul. These truths he regarded as the primary sources or elements of human knowledge; so that his starting point in philosophy was not, as with Locke, the simple unresolvable product of our sensational faculty, but the simple and unresolvable product of the understanding. While Locke, therefore, grounded everything ultimately upon experience, and thus formed a system of empiricism, Leibnitz took as his groundwork the necessary laws of the understanding, and consequently gave rise to a system of philosophical rationalism.

Far, however, as the philosophy of Leibnitz differed from that of our great English metaphysician, it stood at an equal distance from that of Descartes. It will perhaps be remembered, that the tendency of Cartesianism from the very first was to place in undue prominence the idea of the infinite or absolute, and to cast proportionally into the shade those of finite nature and finite self. Malebranche went so far as to deny secondary causes altogether, thus confining all real activity to the Supreme Being; while Spinoza completely absorbed all finite existence in the infinite, and made everything that is, but a part and a modification of the one unchangeable substance. Leibnitz observing that the inevitable tendency of these principles was entirely to destroy the idea of Cause, to banish all activity

from the universe of created things, and make all phenomena but modes of the one infinite and unalterable existence, saw that he must go back, and reconsider the very notion of substance itself, if he would discover the source of the error, and successfully counteract it. The great aim of his philosophy, therefore, was to demonstrate, that all substance is necessarily active. In this way he thought to vindicate for the notion of causality, which the Cartesians had well nigh lost sight of, its legitimate influence. "The capital error of the Cartesians," he remarks," is, that they have placed the whole essence of matter in extension and impenetrability, imagining that bodies can be in absolute repose: we shall shew that one substance cannot receive from any other the power of acting, but that the whole force is pre-existent in itself." This is in fact the key to the whole of Leibnitz's metaphysics, and from this one doctrine, as we shall see, originates every peculiarity by which his system has been distinguished.

As the system of Leibnitz is of importance, not so much, indeed, on its own account, as on account of its results, we shall endeavour to give as clear a view of its principal features as is compatible with the brevity at which, in the whole of this historical sketch, we are aiming. He set out, then, as we have just seen, from the necessary laws of the human understanding, and maintained that all philosophical truth must arise from the analysis