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the divine attributes. In the preface to his work he says, "We show that evil has another source than the will of God; and that we have reason to say of moral evil, that God only permits it, and that he does not will it. But what is more important, we show that God can not only permit sin, but even concur therein, and contribute to it, without prejudice to his holiness; although, absolutely speaking, he might have prevented it." Such is the task which Leibnitz has undertaken to perform; let' us see how he has accomplished it.

"The ancients," says he, "attributed the cause of evil to matter; but where shall we, who derive all things from God, find the source of evil?" He has more than once answered this question, by saying that the source of evil is to be found in the ideas of the divine mind. "Chrysippus," says he, "has reason to allege that vice comes from the original constitution of some spirits. It is objected to him that God has formed them; and he can only reply, that the imperfection of matter does not permit him to do better. This reply is good for nothing; for matter itself is indifferent to all forms, and besides God has made it. Evil comes rather from forms themselves, but abstract; that is to say, from ideas that God has not produced by an act of his will, no more than he has produced number and figures; and no more, in one word, than all those possible essences which we regard as eternal and necessary; for they find themselves in the ideal region of possibles; that is to say, in the divine understanding. God is then not the author of those essences, in so far as they are only possibilities; but there is nothing actual, but what he discerned and called into existence; and he has permitted evil, because it is enveloped in the best plan which is found in the region of possibles; that plan the supreme wisdom could not fail to choose. It is this notion which at once satisfies the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of God, and yet leaves room for the entrance of evil."+

In reading the lofty speculations of Leibnitz, we have been often led to wonder how one, whose genius was so great, could have permitted himself to rest in conceptions which appear so vague and indistinct. In the above passage we have both light and obscurity; and we find it difficult to determine which predominates over the other. We are clearly told that God is not Théodicée, p. 85. † Id., p. 264.

the author of evil, because this proceeds from abstract forms which were from all eternity enveloped in his understanding, and not from any operation of his will. But how does evil. proceed from abstract forms; from the ideal region of the possible? Leibnitz does not mean that evil proceeds from abstract ideas, before they are embodied in the creation of real moral agents. Why then did God create beings which he knew from all eternity would commit sin? and why, having created them, did he contribute to their sins by a divine concourse? This is coming down from the ideal region of the possible, into the world of real difficulties.

According to the philosophy of Leibnitz, God created every intelligent being in the universe with a perfect knowledge of its whole destiny; and there is, moreover, a concourse of the divine will with all their volitions. Now, here we are in the very midst of the concrete world, and here is a difficulty which cannot be avoided by a flight into the ideal region of the possible. How can there be a concourse of the divine will with the human will in one and the same sinful volition, without a stain upon the immaculate purity of God? How can the Father of Lights, by an operation of his will, contribute to our sinful volitions, without prejudice to his holiness? This is the problem which Leibnitz has promised to solve; and we shall, with all patience, listen to his solution.

The solution of this problem, says he, is effected by means of the "privative nature of evil." We shall state this part of his system in his own words: "As to the physical concourse," says he, "it is here that it is necessary to consider that truth which has made so much noise in the schools, since St. Augustine has shown its importance, that evil is a privation, whereas the action of God produces only the positive. This reply passes for a defective one, and even for something chimerical in the minds of many men; but here is an example sufficiently analogous, which may undeceive them."

"The celebrated Kepler, and after him M. Descartes, have spoken of the natural inertia of bodies, and that we can consider it as a perfect image, and even as a pattern of the original limitation of creatures, in order to make us see that privation is the formal cause of the imperfections and inconveniences which are found in substance as well as in actions. Suppose that the

current of a river carries along with it many vessels which have different cargoes, some of wood, and others of stone; some more, and some less. It will happen that the vessels which are more heavily laden will move more slowly than the others, provided there is nothing to aid their progress. . . Let us compare the force which the current exercises over the vessels and what it communicates to them, with the action of God, who produces and preserves whatever is positive in the creature, and imparts to them perfection, being, and force; let us com. pare, I say, the inertia of matter with the natural imperfection of creatures, and the slowness of the more heavily laden vessel with the defect which is found in the qualities and in the actions of the creature, and we shall perceive that there is nothing so just as this comparison. The current is the cause of the movement of the vessel, but not of its retardation; God is the cause of the perfection in the nature and the actions of the creature, but the limitation of the receptivity of the creature is the cause of the defect in its actions. Thus the Platonists, St. Augustine, and the schoolmen, have reason to say that God is the material cause of evil, which consists in what is positive, and not the formal cause of it, which consists in privation, as we can say that the current is the material cause of the retardation, without being its formal cause; that is to say, is the cause of the swiftness of the vessel, without being the cause of the bounds of that swiftness. God is as little the cause of sin, as the current of the river is the cause of the retardation of the vessel." Or as Leibnitz elsewhere says, God is the author of all that is positive in our volitions, and the pravity of them arises from the necessary imperfection of the creature.

99

We have many objections to this mode of explaining the origin of moral evil, some few of which we shall proceed to state. 1. It is a hopeless attempt to illustrate the processes of the mind by the analogies of matter. All such illustrations are better adapted to darken and confound the subject, than to throw light upon it. If we would know anything about the nature of moral evil, or its origin, we must study the subject in the light of consciousness, and in the light of consciousness alone. Dugald Stewart has conferred on Descartes the proud distinction of having been the first philosopher to teach the • Théodicée, pp. 89, 90.

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true method according to which the science of mind should be studied. "He laid it down as a first principle," says Stewart, "that nothing comprehensible by the imagination can be at all subservient to the knowledge of mind; and that the sensible images involved in all our common forms of speaking concerning its operations, are to be guarded against with the most anxious care, as tending to confound in our apprehensions, two classes of phenomena, which it is of the last importance to distinguish accurately from each other."* 2. The privative nature of evil, as it is called, is purely a figment of the brain; it is an invention of the schoolmen, which has no corresponding reality in nature. When Adam put forth his hand to pluck the forbidden fruit, and ate it, he committed a sinful act. But why was it sinful? Because he knew it was wrong; because his act was a voluntary and known transgression of the command of God. Now, if God had caused all that was positive in this sinful act, that is, if he had caused Adam to will to put forth his hand and eat the fruit, it is plain that he would have been the cause of his transgression. Nothing can be more chimerical, it seems to us, than this distinction between being the author of the substance of an act, and the author of its pravity. If Adam had obeyed, that is, if he had refused to eat the forbidden fruit, such an act would not have been more positive than the actual series of volitions by which he transgressed. 3. If what we call sin, arises from the necessary imperfection of the creature, as the slowness of a vessel in descending a stream arises from its cargo, how can he be to blame for it; or, in other words, how can it be moral evil at all? And, 4. Leibnitz has certainly committed a very great oversight in this attempt to account for the origin of evil. He explains it, by saying that it arises from the necessary imperfection of the creature which limits its receptivity; but does he mean that God cannot communicate holiness to the creature? Does he mean that God endeavours to communicate holiness, and fails in consequence of the necessary imperfection of the creature? If so, what becomes of the doctrine which he everywhere advances, that God can very easily cause virtue or holiness to exist if he should choose to do so? If God can very easily cause this to exist, as Leibnitz contends he can, notwithstanding the necessary imperProgress of Ethical Philosophy, p. 114.

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fection of the creature, why has he not done so? Is it not evident, that the philosophy of Leibnitz merely plays over the surface of this great difficulty, and decks it out with the ornaments of fancy, instead of reaching down to the bottom of it, and casting the illuminations of his genius into its depths?

SECTION III.

The maxims adopted and employed by Edwards to show that the scheme of necessity does not make God the author of sin.

"This remarkable man," says Sir James Mackintosh, “the metaphysician of America, was formed among the Calvinists of New-England, when their stern doctrine retained its vigorous authority. His power of subtle argument, perhaps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed among men, was joined, as in some of the ancient mystics, with a character which raised his piety to fervour." It is in his great work on the will, as well as in some of his miscellaneous observations, that Edwards has put forth the powers of his mind, in order to show that the scheme of necessity does not obscure the lustre of the divine perfections. With the exception of the Essais de Théodicée of Leibnitz, it is perhaps the greatest effort the human mind has ever made to get rid of the seeming antagonism between the scheme of necessity and the holiness of God.

According to the system of Edwards, as well as that of his opponents, sin would not have been committed unless it were permitted by God. But in the scheme of Edwards, the agency of God bears a more intimate relation to the origin and existence of sin than is implied by a bare permission of it. "God," says he, disposes "the state of events in such a manner, for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and purposes, that sin, if it be permitted or not hindered, will most certainly and infallibly follow."* And this occurrence of sin, in consequence of his disposing and ordering events, enters into his design. For Edwards truly says, that "If God disposes all events, so that the infallible existence of the events is decided by his providence, then, doubtless, he thus orders and decides things knowingly and on design. God does not do what he does, nor order what he orders, accidentally and unawares, either without or beside

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