The Philosophy of Leibniz (review)

294 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY voluntarist notion of obligation; that law obligates for the same reason that any law does. The Reasonaibleness reaffirms that "without a clear knowledge and acknowledgement of the lawmaker , and the great rewards and punishmentsfor those that would or would not obey him," we cannot know that we are obligated. Without a complete and full demonstration of the laws of nature this obligation cannot be seen. What Locke says in 1695 in the Reasonableness is that no one had, before Christ's coming, given mankind the law of nature in all its parts. From the fact that no one had produced the true and complete morality by deductions of reason, Locke does not conclude that there was no such law. "It is true, there is a law of nature" (Reasonableness in Works (1823), VII, 142). The law of nature is God's law, and Jesus Christ has given us that law in the New Testament (p. 143). In talking of Adam's fall, Locke identifies the law of nature (or of reason) with God's law (pp. 11, 13, 15). He speaks throughout of God's eternal moral law or of the eternal law of right (pp. 112, 115, 133), of Christ confirming the moral law (pp. 122, 125), and of the light of nature revealing parts of that law (pp. 130, 133). This law of nature can be discovered either through reason or through revelation. Reasonableness opts for revelation. What Christ revealed by way of explicit laws (cf. especially Reasonableness, pp. 135-144) were moral, not civil laws. Even recognizing Locke's firm conviction in moral laws as laws of nature, Abrams' link between morality and civil polity needs, I think, modification. The areas are not unrelated, but Locke always seems to recognize that there are details necessary for civil life which are not covered by moral laws, which society itself, through the magistrate or the legislature, must regulate. The controls on what can be done by the civil polity are found in the goals of society, i.e., peace, welfare, and protection of property. Locke's early thought does not differ from his later thought on this matter. Two Tracts on Government and Abrams' thoughtful commentary will enable readers to examine Locke's political thought for development, to sample another polemical piece by Locke, and to see the way in which Locke's comments on a specific political issue of his day led him into substantive and theoretical questions. JOHN W. YOm~N York University Toronto The Philosophy o] Leibniz. By Nicholas Rescher. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967. Pp. fii + 168. Paper, $2.95) This study is a sympathetic, synoptic, critical explication of the metaphysical system of Leibniz which attempts to defend Leibniz' thought against some of its critics (especially Bertrand Russell) and to provide succinct analyses of the fundamental principles which are the cornerstones of Leibniz' metaphysical structure. Beginning with a discussion of "God and the Mind of God," Nicholas Rescher emphasizes the importance Leibniz placed upon God as the creator of the universe, the being in whom "subsists" the multiplicity of cosmological possibilities, the supreme monad who brings to actualization possible beings. Rescher points out that in Leibniz' conception of the relationship between God and the universe he seems to be echoing Nicholas of Cusa's conception of the world as explicatio dei (p. 15). Each possible substance is represented in the mind of God by its complete individual notion; the being of individual substances is the ineluctable unfolding of what is called its "program." The multiplicity of compossible substances comprise the created totality which Leibniz conceives of as the best possible world. Against the sarcasm of a Voltaire, Rescher replies that this is the best possible world insofar as it contains the greatest variety of phenomena which are consonant with the maximum simplicity of laws (p. 19). In accordance with the "Principle of Perfection" God selects that universe in which there will be the greatest possible degree of perfection. This principle of perfection is not a logical principle but an ethical principle. God freely "submits" to a universal 7~gle de bont$ which, it is said, is "operative independently of...