A History of Western Philosophy

by Bertrand Russell

  Although personal survival after death is an illusion, there is nevertheless something in the human mind that is eternal. The mind can only imagine or remember while the body endures, but there is in God an idea which expresses the essence of this or that human body under the form of eternity, and this idea is the eternal part of the mind. The intellectual love of God, when experienced by an individual, is contained in this eternal part of the mind.

  Blessedness, which consists of love towards God, is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; we do not rejoice in it because we control our lusts, but we control our lusts because we rejoice in it.

  The Ethics ends with these words:

  “The wise man, in so far as he is regarded as such, is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but being conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit. If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.”

  In forming a critical estimate of Spinoza’s importance as a philosopher, it is necessary to distinguish his ethics from his metaphysics, and to consider how much of the former can survive the rejection of the latter.

  Spinoza’s metaphysic is the best example of what may be called “logical monism”—the doctrine, namely, that the world as a whole is a single substance, none of whose parts are logically capable of existing alone. The ultimate basis for this view is the belief that every proposition has a single subject and a single predicate, which leads us to the conclusion that relations and plurality must be illusory. Spinoza thought that the nature of the world and of human life could be logically deduced from self-evident axioms; we ought to be as resigned to events as to the fact that 2 and 2 are 4, since they are equally the outcome of logical necessity. The whole of this metaphysic is impossible to accept; it is incompatible with modern logic and with scientific method. Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning; when we successfully infer the future, we do so by means of principles which are not logically necessary, but are suggested by empirical data. And the concept of substance, upon which Spinoza relies, is one which neither science nor philosophy can nowadays accept.

  But when we come to Spinoza’s ethics, we feel—or at least I feel—that something, though not everything, can be accepted even when the metaphysical foundation has been rejected. Broadly speaking, Spinoza is concerned to show how it is possible to live nobly even when we recognize the limits of human power. He himself, by his doctrine of necessity, makes these limits narrower than they are; but when they indubitably exist, Spinoza’s maxims are probably the best possible. Take, for instance, death: nothing that a man can do will make him immortal, and it is therefore futile to spend time in fears and lamentations over the fact that we must die. To be obsessed by the fear of death is a kind of slavery; Spinoza is right in saying that “the free man thinks of nothing less than of death.” But even in this case, it is only death in general that should be so treated; death of any particular disease should, if possible, be averted by submitting to medical care. What should, even in this case, be avoided, is a certain kind of anxiety or terror; the necessary measures should be taken calmly, and our thoughts should, as far as possible, be then directed to other matters. The same considerations apply to all other purely personal misfortunes.

  But how about misfortunes to people whom you love? Let us think of some of the things that are likely to happen in our time to inhabitants of Europe or China. Suppose you are a Jew, and your family has been massacred. Suppose you are an underground worker against the Nazis, and your wife has been shot because you could not be caught. Suppose your husband, for some purely imaginary crime, has been sent to forced labour in the Arctic, and has died of cruelty and starvation. Suppose your daughter has been raped and then killed by enemy soldiers. Ought you, in these circumstances, to preserve a philosophic calm?

  If you follow Christ’s teaching, you will say “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I have known Quakers who could have said this sincerely and profoundly, and whom I admired because they could. But before giving admiration one must be very sure that the misfortune is felt as deeply as it should be. One cannot accept the attitude of some among the Stoics, who said, “What does it matter to me if my family suffer? I can still be virtuous.” The Christian principle, “Love your enemies,” is good, but the Stoic principle, “Be indifferent to your friends,” is bad. And the Christian principle does not inculcate calm, but an ardent love even towards the worst of men. There is nothing to be said against it except that it is too difficult for most of us to practise sincerely.

  The primitive reaction to such disasters is revenge. When Macduff learns that his wife and children have been killed by Macbeth, he resolves to kill the tyrant himself. This reaction is still admired by most people, when the injury is great, and such as to arouse moral horror in disinterested people. Nor can it be wholly condemned, for it is one of the forces generating punishment, and punishment is sometimes necessary. Moreover, from the point of view of mental health, the impulse to revenge is likely to be so strong that, if it is allowed no outlet, a man’s whole outlook on life may become distorted and more or less insane. This is not true universally, but it is true in a large percentage of cases. But on the other side it must be said that revenge is a very dangerous motive. In so far as society admits it, it allows a man to be the judge in his own case, which is exactly what the law tries to prevent. Moreover it is usually an excessive motive; it seeks to inflict more punishment than is desirable. Torture, for example, should not be punished by torture, but the man maddened by lust for vengeance will think a painless death too good for the object of his hate. Moreover—and it is here that Spinoza is in the right—a life dominated by a single passion is a narrow life, incompatible with every kind of wisdom. Revenge as such is therefore not the best reaction to injury.

  Spinoza would say what the Christian says, and also something more. For him, all sin is due to ignorance; he would “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But he would have you avoid the limited purview from which, in his opinion, sin springs, and would urge you, even under the greatest misfortunes, to avoid being shut up in the world of your sorrow; he would have you understand it by seeing it in relation to its causes and as a part of the whole order of nature. As we saw, he believes that hatred can be overcome by love: “Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than if hatred had not preceded it.” I wish I could believe this, but I cannot, except in exceptional cases where the person hating is completely in the power of the person who refuses to hate in return. In such cases, surprise at being not punished may have a reforming effect. But so long as the wicked have power, it is not much use assuring them that you do not hate them, since they will attribute your words to the wrong motive. And you cannot deprive them of power by non-resistance.

  The problem for Spinoza is easier than it is for one who has no belief in the ultimate goodness of the universe. Spinoza thinks that, if you see your misfortunes as they are in reality, as part of the concatenation of causes stretching from the beginning of time to the end, you will see that they are only misfortunes to you, not to the universe, to which they are merely passing discords heightening an ultimate harmony. I cannot accept this; I think that particular events are what they are, and do not become different by absorption into a whole. Each act of cruelty is eternally a part of the universe; nothing that happens later can make that act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole of which it is a part.

  Nevertheless, when it is your lot to have to
endure something that is (or seems to you) worse than the ordinary lot of mankind, Spinoza’s principle of thinking about the whole, or at any rate about larger matters than your own grief, is a useful one. There are even times when it is comforting to reflect that human life, with all that it contains of evil and suffering, is an infinitesimal part of the life of the universe. Such reflections may not suffice to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair.

  CHAPTER XI

  Leibniz

  LEIBNIZ (1646-1716) was one of the supreme intellects of all time, but as a human being he was not admirable. He had, it is true, the virtues that one would wish to find mentioned in a testimonial to a prospective employee: he was industrious, frugal, temperate, and financially honest. But he was wholly destitute of those higher philosophic virtues that are so notable in Spinoza. His best thought was not such as would win him popularity, and he left his records of it unpublished in his desk. What he published was designed to win the approbation of princes and princesses. The consequence is that there are two systems of philosophy which may be regarded as representing Leibniz: one, which he proclaimed, was optimistic, orthodox, fantastic, and shallow; the other, which has been slowly unearthed from his manuscripts by fairly recent editors, was profound, coherent, largely Spinozistic, and amazingly logical. It was the popular Leibniz who invented the doctrine that this is the best of all possible worlds (to which F. H. Bradley added the sardonic comment “and everything in it is a necessary evil”); it was this Leibniz whom Voltaire caricatured as Doctor Pangloss. It would be unhistorical to ignore this Leibniz, but the other is of far greater philosophical importance.

  Leibniz was born two years before the end of the Thirty Years’ War, at Leipzig, where his father was professor of moral philosophy. At the university he studied law, and in 1666 he obtained a Doctor’s degree at Altdorf, where he was offered a professorship, which he refused, saying he had “very different things in view.” In 1667 he entered the service of the archbishop of Mainz, who, like other West German princes, was oppressed by fear of Louis XIV. With the approval of the archbishop, Leibniz tried to persuade the French king to invade Egypt rather than Germany, but was met with a polite reminder that since the time of Saint Louis the holy war against the infidel had gone out of fashion. His project remained unknown to the public until it was discovered by Napoleon when he occupied Hanover in 1803, four years after his own abortive Egyptian expedition. In 1672, in connection with this scheme, Leibniz went to Paris, where he spent the greater part of the next four years. His contacts in Paris were of great importance for his intellectual development, for Paris at that time led the world both in philosophy and in mathematics. It was there, in 1675-6, that he invented the infinitesimal calculus, in ignorance of Newton’s previous but unpublished work on the same subject. Leibniz’s work was first published in 1684, Newton’s in 1687. The consequent dispute as to priority was unfortunate, and discreditable to all parties.

  Leibniz was somewhat mean about money. When any young lady at the court of Hanover married, he used to give her what he called a “wedding present,” consisting of useful maxims, ending up with the advice not to give up washing now that she had secured a husband. History does not record whether the brides were grateful.

  In Germany Leibniz had been taught a neo-scholastic Aristotelian philosophy, of which he retained something throughout his later life. But in Paris he came to know Cartesianism and the materialism of Gassendi, both of which influenced him; at this time, he said, he abandoned the “trivial schools,” meaning scholasticism. In Paris he came to know Malebranche and Arnauld the Jansenist. The last important influence on his philosophy was that of Spinoza, whom he visited in 1676. He spent a month in frequent discussions with him, and secured part of the Ethics in manuscript. In later years he joined in decrying Spinoza, and minimized his contacts with him, saying he had met him once, and Spinoza had told some good anecdotes about politics.

  His connection with the House of Hanover, in whose service he remained for the rest of his life, began in 1673. From 1680 onwards he was their librarian at Wolfenbüttel, and was officially employed in writing the history of Brunswick. He had reached the year 1005 when he died. The work was not published till 1843. Some of his time was spent on a project for the reunion of the Churches, but this proved abortive. He travelled to Italy to obtain evidence that the Dukes of Brunswick were connected with the Este family. But in spite of these services he was left behind at Hanover when George I became king of England, the chief reason being that his quarrel with Newton had made England unfriendly to him. However, the Princess of Wales, as he told all his correspondents, sided with him against Newton. In spite of her favour, he died neglected.

  Leibniz’s popular philosophy may be found in the Monadology and the Principles of Nature and of Grace, one of which (it is uncertain which) he wrote for Prince Eugene of Savoy, Marlborough’s colleague. The basis of his theological optimism is set forth in the Théodicée, which he wrote for Queen Charlotte of Prussia. I shall begin with the philosophy expounded in these writings, and then proceed to his more solid work which he left unpublished.

  Like Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz based his philosophy on the notion of substance, but he differed radically from them as regards the relation of mind and matter, and as regards the number of substances. Descartes allowed three substances, God and mind and matter; Spinoza admitted God alone. For Descartes, extension is the essence of matter; for Spinoza, both extension and thought are attributes of God. Leibniz held that extension cannot be an attribute of a substance. His reason was that extension involves plurality, and can therefore only belong to an aggregate of substances; each single substance must be unextended. He believed, consequently, in an infinite number of substances, which he called “monads.” Each of these would have some of the properties of a physical point, but only when viewed abstractly; in fact, each monad is a soul. This follows naturally from the rejection of extension as an attribute of substance; the only remaining possible essential attribute seemed to be thought. Thus Leibniz was led to deny the reality of matter, and to substitute an infinite family of souls.

  The doctrine that substances cannot interact, which had been developed by Descartes’s followers, was retained by Leibniz, and led to curious consequences. No two monads, he held, can ever have any causal relation to each other; when it seems as if they had, appearances are deceptive. Monads, as he expressed it, are “windowless.” This led to two difficulties: one in dynamics, where bodies seem to affect each other, especially in impact; the other in relation to perception, which seems to be an effect of the perceived object upon the percipient. We will ignore the dynamical difficulty for the present, and consider only the question of perception. Leibniz held that every monad mirrors the universe, not because the universe affects it, but because God has given it a nature which spontaneously produces this result. There is a “pre-established harmony” between the changes in one monad and those in another, which produces the semblance of interaction. This is obviously an extension of the two clocks, which strike at the same moment because each keeps perfect time. Leibniz has an infinite number of clocks, all arranged by the Creator to strike at the same instant, not because they affect each other, but because each is a perfectly accurate mechanism. To those who thought the pre-established harmony odd, Leibniz pointed out what admirable evidence it afforded of the existence of God.

  Monads form a hierarchy, in which some are superior to others in the clearness and distinctness with which they mirror the universe. In all there is some degree of confusion in perception, but the amount of confusion varies according to the dignity of the monad concerned. A human body is entirely composed of monads, each of which is a soul, and each of which is immortal, but there is one dominant monad which is what is called the soul of the man of whose body it forms part. This monad is dominant, not only in the sense of having clearer perceptions than the others, but also in an
other sense. The changes in a human body (in ordinary circumstances) happen for the sake of the dominant monad: when my arm moves, the purpose served by the movement is in the dominant monad, i.e., my mind, not in the monads that compose my arm. This is the truth of what appears to common sense as the control of my will over my arm.

  Space, as it appears to the senses, and as it is assumed in physics, is not real, but it has a real counterpart, namely the arrangement of the monads in a three-dimensional order according to the point of view from which they mirror the world. Each monad sees the world in a certain perspective peculiar to itself; in this sense we can speak, somewhat loosely, of the monad as having a spatial position.

  Allowing ourselves this way of speaking, we can say that there is no such thing as a vacuum; every possible point of view is filled by one actual monad, and by only one. No two monads are exactly alike; this is Leibniz’s principle of the “identity of indiscernibles.”

  In contrasting himself with Spinoza, Leibniz made much of the free will allowed in his system. He had a “principle of sufficient reason,” according to which nothing happens without a reason; but when we are concerned with free agents, the reasons for their actions “incline without necessitating.” What a human being does always has a motive, but the sufficient reason of his action has no logical necessity. So, at least, Leibniz says when he is writing popularly, but, as we shall see, he had another doctrine which he kept to himself after finding that Arnauld thought it shocking.

  God’s actions have the same kind of freedom. He always acts for the best, but He is not under any logical compulsion to do so. Leibniz agrees with Thomas Aquinas that God cannot act contrary to the laws of logic, but He can decree whatever is logically possible, and this leaves Him a great latitude of choice.