tions in accordance with
memory. Man differs from higher beings in that the majority of his
ideas are confused. Under confused ideas Leibnitz includes both
sense-perceptions--anyone who has distinct ideas alone, as God, has no
sense-perceptions--and the feelings which mediate between the former and
the perfectly distinct ideas of rational thought. The delight of music
depends, in his opinion, on an unconscious numbering and measuring of
the harmonic and rhythmic relations of tones, aesthetic enjoyment of
the beautiful in general, and even sensuous pleasure, on the confused
perception of a perfection, order, or harmony.

The application of the _lex continui_ to the inner life has a very wide
range. The principal results are: (1) the mind always thinks; (2) every
present idea postulates a previous one from which it has arisen; (3)
sensation and thought differ only in degree; (4) in the order of time, the
ideas of sense precede those of reason. We are never wholly without ideas,
only we are often not conscious of them. If thought ceased in deep sleep,
we could have no ideas on awakening, since every representation proceeds
from a preceding one, even though it be unconscious.

In the thoughtful _New Essays concerning the Human Understanding_ Leibnitz
develops his theory of knowledge in the form of a polemical commentary
to Locke's chief work.[1] According to Descartes some ideas (the pure
concepts) are innate, according to Locke none, according to Leibnitz all.
Or: according to Descartes some ideas (sensuous perceptions) come from
without, according to Locke all do so, according to Leibnitz none.
Leibnitz agrees with Descartes against Locke in the position that the mind
originally possesses ideas; he agrees with Locke against Descartes, that
thought is later than sensation and the knowledge of universals later
than that of particulars. The originality which Leibnitz attributes to
intellectual ideas is different from that which Descartes had ascribed and
Locke denied to them. They are original in that they do not come into the
soul and are not impressed upon it from without; they are not original in
that they can develop only from previously given sense-ideas; again, they
are original in that they can be developed from confused ideas only because
they are contained in them _implicite_ or as pre-dispositions.
Thus Leibnitz is able to agree with both his predecessors up to a certain
point: with the one, that the pure concepts