SOURCE: "Metaphysics and Its Method," in Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 71-98.

In the following excerpt, Rutherford examines Leibniz's concept of metaphysics. The critic suggests sources for Leibniz's ideas and focuses on such concepts as substance, cause, and the interpretation of sensory phenomena.

Leibniz offers several definitions of the science of metaphysics. In one work he describes it simply as the "science of intelligibles" (C 556).¹ In another he identifies it as the "science which has being, and consequently God, the source of being, for its object" (GP VI 227/H 243-4). In a third he characterizes "real metaphysics" as involving "important general truths based on reason and confirmed by experience, which hold for substances in general" (RB 431). In a fourth, finally, he says that metaphysics is "the science which discusses the causes of things using the principle that nothing happens without reason."² Although...