nciple flashed upon
him? What was he _not_ thinking of? He had a many-sided mind. If the
origins of the principle were complex, little wonder that its applications
were manifold. Every expositor of Leibniz who does not wish to be endlessly
tedious must concentrate attention on one aspect of Leibniz's principle,
and one source of its origin. We will here give an account of the matter
which, we trust, will go most directly to the heart of it, but we will make
no claims to sufficient interpretation of Leibniz's thought-processes.

Leibniz, then, like all the philosophers of the seventeenth century, was
reforming scholasticism in the light of a new physical science. The science
was mathematical in its form, mechanistical in its doctrine, and
unanswerable in its evidence--it got results. But it was metaphysically
intractable, and the doctrines of infinite and finite substance which it
generated furnish a gallery of metaphysical grotesques; unless we are to
except Leibniz; his system is, if nothing else, a miracle of ingenuity, and
there are moments when we are in danger of believing it.

It is a natural mistake for the student of seventeenth-century thought to
underestimate the tenacity of scholastic Aristotelianism. Descartes, we all
know, was reared in it, but then Descartes overthrew it; and he had done
his work and died by the time that Leibniz was of an age to philosophize at
all. We expect to see Leibniz starting on his shoulders and climbing on
from there. We are disappointed. Leibniz himself tells us that he was
raised in the scholastic teaching. His acquaintance with Descartes's
opinions was second-hand, and they were retailed to him only that they
might be derided. He agreed, like an amiable youth, with his preceptors.

The next phase of his development gave him a direct knowledge of Cartesian
writings, and of other modern books beside, such as those of the atomist
Gassendi. He was delighted with what he read, because of its fertility in
the field of physics and mathematics; and for a short time he was an
enthusiastic modern. But presently he became dissatisfied. The new systems
did not go far enough, they were still scientifically inadequate. At the
same time they went too far, and carried metaphysical paradox beyond the
limits of human credulity.

[13]
There is no mystery about Leibniz's scientific objections to the new
philosophers. If he c