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HUM 104: G.W. LEIBNIZ
PRINCIPLES OF NATURE AND GRACE BASED ON REASON By G. W. Leibniz 5. The perceptions of ·non-human· animals are interconnected in a way that has some resemblance to reason. But ·differs from reason because· it is grounded only in the memory of facts or effects, and not at all in the knowledge of causes. That is what happens when a dog shrinks from the stick with which it has been beaten because memory represents to it the pain the stick has caused. In fact human beings, to the extent that they are empirics - which is to say in three quarters of what they do - act just like non-human animals. [An ‘empiric’ is someone who goes by obvious superficial regularities and similarities without asking ‘Why?’ about any of them.] For example, we expect there to be daylight tomorrow because we have always experienced it that way; only an astronomer foresees it in a reasoned way (and even his prediction will prove wrong some day, when the cause of daylight goes out of existence). But genuine reasoning depends on necessary or eternal truths like those of logic, arithmetic and geometry, which make indubitable connections between ideas and reach conclusions that can’t fail to be true. Animals that never think of such propositions are called ‘brutes’; but ones that recognise such necessary truths are rightly called rational animals, and their souls are called minds. These souls are capable of reflective acts - ·acts of attention to their own inner states· - so that they can think about what we call ‘myself’, substance, soul, or mind: in a word, things and truths that are immaterial. This is what renders us capable of science, or of demonstrable knowledge. Copyright © Jonathan Bennett THE MONADOLOGY By G. W. Leibniz Translation © George MacDonald Ross, 1999 28. People behave in the same way as animals in so far as the following of one perception from another occurs only in accordance with the principle of memory. They are like the doctors of the empirical school of medicine, who rely on practical experience alone, without any theorising. Three-quarters of the time, our behaviour is purely like that of the empiricists. For example, when we expect the sun to rise tomorrow, we are behaving as empiricists, since that is what has always happened up till now. It is only astronomers who come to this judgment on the basis of reasoning. 29. But it is knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and which gives us reason and the sciences, by elevating us to knowledge of ourselves and of God. This is what in us is called the ‘rational soul’, or spirit. |
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