Feller, Kortholt, Gruber, Raspe, Dutens, Feder, Guhrauer (the German works), and since Erdmann, Pertz, Foucher de Careil, Onno Klopp, and especially J.C.  Gerhardt.  The last named published the mathematical works in seven volumes in 1849-63, and recently, Berlin, 1875-90, the philosophical treatises, also in seven volumes.[1] In our account of the philosophy of Leibnitz we begin with the fundamental metaphysical concepts, pass next to his theory of living beings and of man (theory of knowledge and ethics), and close with his inquiries into the philosophy of religion.

[Footnote 1:  We have a life of Leibnitz by G.E.  Guhrauer, jubilee edition, Breslau, 1846 [Mackie’s Life, Boston, 1845 is based on Guhrauer].  Among recent works on Leibnitz, we note the little work by Merz, Blackwood’s Philosophical Classics, 1884, and Ludwig Stein’s Leibniz und Spinoza, Berlin, 1890, in which with the aid of previously unedited material the relations of Leibnitz to Spinoza (whom he visited at The Hague on his return journey from Paris) are discussed, and the attempt is made to trace the development of the theory of monads, down to 1697.  The new exposition of the Leibnitzian monadology by Ed. Dillman, which has just appeared, we have not yet been able to examine [The English reader may be referred further to Dewey’s Leibniz in Griggs’s Philosophical Classics, 1888, and Duncan’s Philosophical Works of Leibnitz (selections translated, with notes), New Haven, 1890, as well as to the work of Merz already mentioned.—­TR.]]

%1.  Metaphysics:  the Monads, Representation, the Pre-established Harmony; the Laws of Thought and of the World.%

Leibnitz develops his new concept of substance, the monad,[1] in conjunction with, yet in opposition to, the Cartesian and the atomistic conceptions.  The Cartesians are right when they make the concept of substance the cardinal point in metaphysics and explain it by the concept of independence.  But they are wrong in their further definition of this second concept.  If we take independence in the sense of unlimitedness and aseity, we can speak, as the example of Spinoza shows, of only one, the divine substance.  If the Spinozistic result is to be avoided, we must substitute independent action for independent existence, self-activity for self-existence.  Substance is not that which exists through itself (otherwise there would be no finite substances), but that which acts through itself, or that which contains in itself the ground of its changing states.  Substance is to be defined by active force,[2] by which we mean something different from and better than the bare possibility or capacity of the Scholastics.  The potentia sive facultas, in order to issue into action, requires positive stimulation from without, while the vis activa (like an elastic body) sets itself in motion whenever no external hindrance opposes.  Substance is a being capable of action (la substance est un etre capable d’action).