Said we’re most prone to miss the sacred wood
In search of common trees, or to deprive
Our questing souls of everything that could,
More amply viewed, do wonders to revive
Our sense of such things as are understood
Only by minds at full creative stretch
Around those possibilia. They gleam
At every thought’s periphery and sketch,
Each one, a world conceived as if in dream
Yet strictly on condition that we fetch
From reason’s store an apt projection-scheme
By which inventive intellect can etch
The sharpest images with laser-beam
Intensity. Let’s anyway concede
That Leibniz and his kind not only traced
Alternative world-paradigms that freed
The mind for exploration but embraced
A here-and-now more intimately keyed
To its nearby world-counterparts. When faced
With these infractions of the one-world creed
We’ll maybe come to think the actual graced,
Not compromised, by modals that conspire
With logic to declare ours not the sole
Reality nor such as would require
The sorts of zealous boundary-control
Devised to close our minds to that entire
Thought-multiverse where reason has a role
Beyond what falls to it as chief supplier
Of grounds to think what’s there for us the whole
Of what there is. They got him wrong who took
Exception (like Voltaire, though let’s admit
His error made Candide a splendid book)
To all the methods Leibniz used to fit
The worst vicissitudes by hook or crook
Into a meliorist scheme of things, acquit
The deity of malice, and (what shook
His hard-boiled critics) offer us a kit
Of concepts and devices good for use
In any new theodicy that sought
To prove God’s loving-kindness. He’d deduce,
His critics said, by exercise of thought
Alone the perfect, ready-made excuse
For all the grief and suffering they’d brought,
That crew of monster deities from Zeus
To a God who, as the Church Fathers taught,
Reserved his choicest punishments for those
Brave dissidents who counted it depraved,
This worship of a psychopath who chose
To multiply the joys of souls he’d saved
From hellfire by consenting to disclose
For their delight how those who’d misbehaved
Were broiling down below. Yet should this pose
A problem God’s apologists have slaved
For centuries to solve, still it’s that gloss
On Leibniz that’s gone badly off the rails
And not his brave design to think across
The boundaries drawn up when there prevails
A mind-set such as couldn’t give a toss
For any modal venture that entails
At any rate some temporary loss
Of bearings. Thus imagination trails
Not clouds of glory from some dream-world past
Remembrance but a shift of view that tropes
The actual and allows us to contrast
Its limiting perspective with the hopes
(Though fears as well) that come when we recast
Conceiving’s role from worlds with which it copes
Familiarly to dealing with that vast
New range that even those who know the ropes—
Experts in modal logic, sci-fi fans,
Or thought experimenters—may regard
As altogether surplus to their plans
And purposes. This means a boarding-card
Good for some short-hop flights or day-trips sans
Passport or papers but, it says, debarred
From taking any longer-range or trans-
World jaunt to someone else’s far back-yard
Which risks the kind of compass-spin that makes
A nonsense of our wishing to return,
Like old Odysseus, and relieve the aches
Of home-lament in those who’ve failed to learn
His lesson. Yet perhaps that’s what it takes,
That same Leibnizian readiness to burn
All bridges leading home, refuse all stakes
Except the riskiest, banish all concern
With scheduling our mental flights to touch
Down in our actual world, and so—in brief—
Resolve, like him, to kick away the crutch
Of common-sense perception or belief
That’s oftenest what actualists will clutch
Most tightly when the multiverse motif
Looms up on thought’s horizon. If it’s such
A threat to them, a knowledge-wrecking reef
Of unknown possibilia, let’s not leap
To the same false conclusion that Voltaire
Was quick to put around and thereby keep
Enlightened readers safe from this new snare
Laid down, he thought, by those in whom the sleep
Of reason bred not monsters but a rare
And, in its way, quite monstrous will to sweep
Aside all pains and evils because they’re
(Or so the doctrine held) perceived as freak
And bad occurrences only by dint
Of our restricted knowledge and our weak
Since human, all-too-human view asquint.
Hence Voltaire’s charge: Leibniz was out to seek,
In his plurality of worlds, a hint
Of that which so transcended our oblique
And partial knowledge as to lend a glint
Of God’s omniscience to the otherwise
Contingent-seeming congeries of one
Damn thing after another without whys
Or wherefores. His would be the story run
By clerics through the ages who’d devise
Some neat new twist of argument to stun
The sceptic or seek out some novel guise
For old theodicies that came undone
As soon as one reflected on the plain
Impossibility that any god
Should have all those perfections that pertain
To Him by definition yet should nod—
Through boredom, inattention, or a pain-
Approving relish—when the torture-squad
Gets down to work. Inquisitors re-train
And only a thick creed-protecting wad
Of moral idiocy keeps them cocooned,
The theologians, in their fixed idea
That it could make no sense if one impugned
Either God’s pure benevolence or sheer
Omnipotence since a God-concept pruned
Of one or other attribute would veer
Too far off course, then finish up marooned
In heresy and subject to severe
Doctrinal sanctions of the sort that they,
God’s torturers, could best root out. So if
Voltaire and the enlighteners display
Such animus in their satiric tiff
With Leibniz, let’s not be too quick to say
They’re flat wrong to pick up more than a whiff
Of some addition to the dossier
Of failed theodicies or some new riff
On those repugnant doctrines that contrived
To get God off the hook and get around
His (let’s say) moral flaws by a revived
And, as it seemed at least, a more profound
Since axiom-based and logically derived
Account of how things stood. This made it sound
Plain rational to hold that lives deprived
Of every good might none the less redoun
d
To God’s eternal glory all the more
Decisively by showing how each stroke
Of what must seem misfortune from the store
Prepared for our bleak lives by some baroque
Revenger counts as something we should score
Up, if we weren’t such simple-minded folk
And prone to take short views, to the rapport
Between God’s purposes and—where they poke
Satiric fun most sharply—all that goes
To make the sum of human good viewed sub
Specie aeternitatis. Just dispose
Contingent this-world facts around the hub
Of rational necessity that shows
What’s trans-world valid and you’ll have the nub
Of his case, as the Voltaire faction chose
To take it, for aspiring to the club
Of near-angelic intellect. They claimed
A moral standpoint hugely in advance
Of those poor sufferers at whom were aimed
Catastrophes they’d put down to mere chance
But which, once their occurrences were tamed
By reason’s higher law, worked to enhance
God’s rule as supreme arbiter unblamed
For all our human woes. These, at first glance,
Might logically be blamed on God alone
Since His combined perfections left no gap
Or wriggle-room whereby He might disown
Responsibility and spring the trap
Set by the humanists and others prone
At every opportunity to cap
Their arguments by picking that old bone
Anent how those perfections must run slap
Into some version of the paradox
Or downright contradiction pointed out
By Schopenhauer. His metaphor still mocks
The God-defenders and ensures the rout
Of all theodicies that tick each box—
Omnipotence, omniscience about
The future, and (the one that really knocks
A hole in their defences) what they tout
As the benevolence that must belong
To God’s prime attributes—since, if you try
To square them, you’ll encounter something wrong
Or some pair of them logically awry
(Here Schopenhauer again) whichever prong
Of this or that dilemma may supply
Your hoped-for means of exit from the throng
Of those left unresolved. Let’s not deny,
In view of this, that they possessed at least
Some warrant for adopting such a note
Of fierce disdain for Leibniz as high priest
And architect of all that underwrote
The creed of those whose finer feelings ceased
At just the point where thoughts of God demote
Thoughts of humanity to a decreased,
Then obsolescent role which (to misquote
Voltaire) lifts all restrictions on the grand
Inquisitors and thumbscrew-twisters sold
On credo quia absurdum who’d expand
Their repertoire. For they’ve thrown off the hold
Of reason or the need to understand
Such elementary truths as might be told,
So long as reason keeps the upper hand,
By thoughts of how both parties are enrolled,
Victim and persecutor, in a shared
Though for the moment skewed predicament
That only those with sympathies impaired
By some inhuman dogma could prevent
From showing how they might at last be spared
Yet more such grief if only they’d assent
To reason’s view of them as deeply snared
In a warped actuality. This lent
To all their partial outlooks the same hue
Of darkness, paranoia, or the blind
Insensate rage of those whose one-world view
Of things, as they half-guessed, had so confined
Their mental universe that all they knew
Of other worlds was what they were inclined
By trained predisposition to imbue
With every bad propensity assigned
To virtue’s other by (who else?) those fit
For its upholding in (what else?) that sole
Truth-territory where virtue’s friends acquit
Themselves with every honour and extol
The virtues that most readily admit
Themselves alone to the exclusive role
Of truth’s true arbiters. For here’s the bit
They miss out, those who emphasise the toll
Of unacknowledged suffering that craves
No alms for our remembrance when it’s set
Against Leibniz’s worldview, one that staves
Off all such pointless tendencies to fret,
Like Johnson reading Shakespeare, when the knaves
Win out and fix things so the virtuous get
It in the neck, no guardian angel saves
Them as they fall, or twists of fortune let
The best go to the wall. Yet we’ll be wide
Of the Leibnizian mark if we allow
The reasoned optimism of a guide
To other worlds beyond the here-and-now
Of this, where we deictically reside,
To close our more parochial minds to how
Their counter-truths proliferate beside
A plain-fact record which they may endow
Not with a rankling sense of what we might,
If luckier, more gifted, more adept,
Or better off have done as if by right
But what contingency has so far kept,
For us, unactualised. Let’s think, despite
All that may disincline us to accept
The Pangloss view, that maybe with a slight
Yet crucial tweak his seemingly inept
Since twittering or bright-side take on things
Could yet turn out—when suitably expressed
In God-free modal form—as that which brings
No such smug doctrine that would make the test
Of rationality its running rings
Around whoever doubted this was best
Of all worlds possible despite the slings
And arrows. These could not be laid to rest
By any sage discounting of the odds
Against an actual world where every bad
Event or fresh catastrophe shows God’s
To us obscure since long-range plan to add
Some greater good for each new case of sod’s
Law as it seems to those struck by the sad-
To-wretched course of every life that plods
On doggedly as if to show God had
No part in it. Allow yourself to strip
The God-talk out, or grant it the degree
Of latitude it might require to tip
His thinking that way, and perhaps you’ll see
How it’s those Leibniz-bashers in the grip
Of this-world prejudice who fail to free
Their thinking from the cynic’s wish to nip
Hope’s prospect in the bud by harsh decree
Of a poor metaphysics that abjures
All thought of possibilities beyond
The narrowest of subsets. This assures
The Kantians that their concepts correspond
To something really out there, while it cures
The Leibniz-itch to wave a modal wand
And conjure worlds enough for endless tours
Of brainsick fabulation. Yet the bond
Thus zealously enforced between what fits
Our this-world concept-schemes and what pertains
To sensuous apprehension then admits
No slightest space for thought to break the chains
Of a mind-forged necessity that p
its
Brute fact against potential and campaigns
In actualism’s cause to call it quits
With might-have-been so long as thought refrains
From moving on to might-yet-be. It thus
Forgets Kant’s own imperative to think
Things out ourselves, sole means of freeing us
From mental tutelage, and leaves no chink
Through which thought might acquire the impetus
To challenge common-sense or break the link
Imposed by mere perceptual habit plus
Fixed notions. Else we might be on the brink
Of some big upset to the status quo
In all things pertinent to how we cope
With Kant’s three questions, viz: What can we know?
What can we thinkers reasonably hope?
And then, transcending both, what might bestow
Best claim to moral goodness when we grope
Our way toward it along paths that go
The highest route lest reason should elope
With sensuous inclination. This would cause,
As Kant conceives it, such a major breach
In that whole complex edifice of laws
He’d set in place that it would offer each
Of us some special plea or get-out clause
Framed so as to ensure they don’t impeach
Our errant will but give themselves some pause
For thought. Then we’d have ample time to reach
A working compromise with what the strict
Demand of conscience otherwise would deem
Rightfully subject to its interdict
As instinct-led, hence lacking the esteem
Due moral agents who’d entirely kicked
Such variants of the hedonist’s old theme
And so, on Kant’s ascetic reckoning, licked
Themselves into good shape. But should this seem
Too rigorist, too anxious to inflict
Its grim Wirklichkeitsprinzip on the dream
Of Lustprinzip fulfilled, then we should pay
More heed to just those thinkers, Leibniz first
And foremost, who not only did away
With that self-inquisition but reversed
The rule by which Kant sought to hold at bay,
For the Tempus-Fugitives Page 18