The Significance of Leibniz for Historiography Author(s): Lewis W.

Spitz Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Jun., 1952), pp. 333-348 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707600 . Accessed: 23/10/2012 05:25
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the History of Ideas.

http://www.jstor.org

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEIBNIZ FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY

BY LEWIS W. SPITZ

The evaluation of the significance of Leibniz for historiography requires an examination of his understanding of the theory of history and his own achievement in practice, his contribution to the historical writing of the Enlightenment, and finally, his impact on subsequent historical thought. Two dominant attitudes toward history prevailed in early modern philosophy as Leibniz knew it. On the one hand, Cartesianism made no serious evaluation of history at all and abandoned it to revelation or to literature. On the other hand, Spinoza and Hobbes reduced the facts of history to a philosophically generalized naturalistic concept of causation. In neither case could an adequate theory of history be achieved. There is a dichotomy also in the thought of Leibniz between his philosophic system and his expressed interpretation of historical method and meaning. The essential connection between his philosophy and history was there, but he did not consciously elaborate its terms in any coherent fashion. Both philosophy and history were important. " Philosophers despise historians of antiquity and antiquarians mock what they call the dreams of philosophers. But he is right who does justice to the merits of both." 1 He did not assign to history the lofty rank of the realm of freedom, as Kant was to do, but considered the world of factual truth secondary to that of eternal truth. His views of history, never comprehensively formalized, must be drawn from scattered references in his letters, prefaces, dissertations, and philosophical writings wherever they are to be found. Leibniz has long been recognized as a polyhistorian of great achievement.2 His learning was not just a cumulative activity, as with many scholars of the age of erudition, or a negative instrument for criticism as with Pierre Bayle, but was creative and capable of constructive synthesis.3 His thinking on historical method, however, represents one of the least original and productive aspects of his intellectual perpetuum mobile.
1 Leibnizto Th. Burnett (1700), C. J. Gerhardt,Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Berlin, 1887), III, 270, hereafter referred to as Phil. Schriften. Gerhardt's 2 LudwigGrote, Leibnizund seine Zeit (Hanover,1869), 383. 3 Ludwig Feuerbach,Darstellung, Entwicklungund Kritik der Leibnitz'schen Philosophie (Ansbach, 1837), 12. Leibniz wrote in "Zwei Plane zu Societaten": " Die wahre Hoffnungist nicht nur reden, ja nicht nur dencken,sondern practice

dencken .... ."

Die Werke von Leibniz (Hanover, 1864), Onno Klopp ed., I, 112.

333

334

LEWIS W. SPITZ

When Leibniz turned his attention to historical writing, his logic, epistemology, and metaphysics moved into the backgroundand he becameimmediatelyconcernedwith the descriptionof fact and interconnectionsof the materialpresentedexperientially. This necessarily directedhim to the problemof sourcecriticism. " I have learned,"he wrote, " that in mathematicsone must dependon reason,in nature on experiments,in laws divine and human on authority, and in history on witnesses."4 Historicalcritics,however,shouldbe awarethat even witness can be trusted chiefly with respect to public a contemporary events, but when he speaks of motives, secrets, hidden forces, and things which are disputable,e.g., poisonings,assassinations,the testimony of many witnesses is necessary.5 For witnesses are subject to prejudice,venality, the ambitionto make sensationalstatements, and are thereforeto be tested in respect to sincerity and accuracy.6 The numberand clarity of the documentsare significant. But not only the direct testimony of witnesses is useful. Bernheim believes that the importanceof sources and acts for historical researchhas seldom been so strongly emphasizedas in the prefaceto
the Codex juris gentium diplomaticus, 1693, with the appendix Man-

tissa codicis juris, etc., 1700.7 In reconstructingan historic event, a study of natural conditions is helpful. Chronologymay be established by documents. Bronze tablets, old monuments, documents, seals, and numismatics,all are useful in historical investigation and may enable the historian to explode fictions, as that of the Papess Joan.8 In spite of this appreciationfor the contributionof the auxili5 Nouveaux Essais, Bk. IV, chap. XVI, ? 10, Gerhardt, Phil. Schriften, V, 448f. 6 Letter to Eisenhardt (1679), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Samtliche Schriften und Briefe (Darmstadt, 1927), series I, vol. II, 426ff. 7 Ernst Bernheim, Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie (Leipzig, 1908), 225. Cf. Werke von Leibniz, Onno Klopp ed., VI, 457, Codicis Juris gentium diplomatici praefatio. 8 " Notitia De Historia Brunsuicensi, quam edere paraverat G. G. Leibnitius," Acta Eruditorum (Leipzig, 1717), 361: "Through documents, moreover, a chronology will be exactly arranged of the ninth and tenth centuries with part of the eighth and eleventh which up to now have been obscured with deep darkness. Furthermore, a little treatise will be added which will be inscribed: Flowers scattered on the grave of a Papess, wherein by bringing new insights into history that fable will be exploded, which so far was maintained only because of the great obscurity of the chronology. Finally, I may venture to assert that nothing like this has been produced for medieval history to date in which so many errors on the affairs of the Empire throughout Germany and Italy have been put under and matters placed in a clearer light. Each volume will be in folio form, as they call them, decorated with bronze tablets of old monuments, of documents, seals, and coins."
4 Letter to von Blume (1688), Werke, Onno Klopp ed., V, 368.

LEIBNIZ'

SIGNIFICANCE

FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY

335

ary sciences in establishing historical accuracy, it is undeniable that Leibniz placed greater emphasis on lower criticism than on higher. Leibniz believed that historical method was becoming increasingly scientific. Authors and documents more recent, while very faulty, were nevertheless more reliable than those of earlier centuries.9 The benefits of printing in making sources available and thus increasing accuracy held great promise for historians.10 The same exactness which was increasing in the other sciences was spreading also to history.11 This tendency of Leibniz to conceive of historic truth in terms of scientific exactitude was certainly a reflection of contemporary natural science. It was this trend of thought which led him to apply the analogy of the human body to history and its auxiliary sciences, a parallel to the then common Cartesian analogy of comparing the sciences with a tree, with metaphysics as the roots, physics as the trunk, mechanics, medicine, morality, and the like as the branches. This analogy must not be taken too seriously as a definitive statement of Leibniz's conception of history. It is certainly unfair to brand this letter as "incredibly naive " and "nothing but crude materialism," to see in it the sum total of Leibniz's historical thinking and to see this as the cause for his "small influence on history." 12 It was no doubt this emphasis on method which prompted Droysen to call Leibniz a trail blazer in giving a historical method to the a1uoSo~8o vi9' of

history in the new natural law sense.13 This concern for a critical method, laudable though it was, should
9 GodefridiGvilielmiLeibnitii,AccessionesHistoricae (Leipzig, 1698), praefatio
ad lectorum: "... truly excellent documents, especially those by which we may

learn to know somethingwhich reasonitself would not have easily explained,I find to be rare, even among good writers; much more so among those inept and barbato ignoranceproduced." rous authorswhich the centuriescondemned 10G. W. Leibniz, Scriptores Rerum Brunsvicensivm (Hanover, 1707), Introdvctio: "When after the rebirthof letters erudite men gave thought to the writing of histories,they gave narrationsconfirmedby no documentson the model of the ancients, as though the authority of the writer sufficedto make it reliable. Howevents, especiallyif the author was ever, this could be allowedin contemporaneous engagedin the elucidationof things which he could know, which he handed on to posterity. But in remote times and places reliance on true recountings,uncertain because of rumor,emotion, or unfaithful witness, has fallen into intolerableerrors, which little by little have been perceived,since the ancientwriters,thanks to typography, began to be in the hands of all." Memoir to Ernst Augustus (1692), Bodemann,Zeitschrift des historischen Vereinsfiir Niedersachsen(1885), 19ff. in Louis Daville, "Le Developpementde la Methodehistoriquede Leibniz," Revue de SyntheseHistorique(Paris,1911),XXIII, no. 3, 262ff.: "Cette exactitudeque les vrais sqavansdemandentaujourd'huys'est
repandue jusque dans l'histoire ...."

J. W. Thompson,History of Historical Writing (New York, 1942), II, 100. 13Johann Gustav Droysen, Historik (Munich, 1937), 417.
12

336

LEWIS W. SPITZ

not be exaggerated.l4 The Maurists and Bollandists, whose work Leibniz knew, had stressed critical history, and Leibniz himself was little if any ahead of Mabillon and Muratori. He did not, for example, use modern critical apparatus and supplied only a half dozen marginalannotations in the whole Annales.l He refused to devote his life exclusively to editing sources and works of a purely critical
nature. "I have no mind to turn transcriber . . . ," he wrote to

Basnage, "Does it not occur to you that the advice you give me resembles that of a man who should wish to marry his friend to a shrew? For to engage a man in a lifelong work is much the same as to find him a wife." 6 Moreover, there was little development in Leibniz'sbasic critical conceptionsduringhis own careeras a professional historian,an indication that the problemnever really received his seriousattention, for he left few areasof knowledgewhich actually interestedhim unchanged.17 In tune with the generaltendency of the time towardthe secularization of the areas of historical investigation, Leibniz expanded the scope of his interests beyond a concernfor ecclesiasticalhistory and also embracedmuch more than political history. To him history included the "universal history of the times, the geographyof places, the searchingof antiquities and of ancient monuments, as medals, inscriptions,manuscripts,and the like, the knowledge of languages and that which one calls philology,which includesalso the etymologi18 He was almost monadic in his interests, reflecttory of religions." a universe of ing subjectsworthy of historicalinvestigation,biography of authorsand inventors,history of medicine,history of law, and the

cal origins, literary history . . ., customs, positive laws, and the his-

Daville, LeibnizHistorien (Paris, 1909), much overrates Leibniz'shistorical method,comparing Leibnizwith the historiansof the Renaissance. Believing that humanisthistory persistedinto the 17th century, he ascribesall improvement to Leibniz, 355. Cf. Eduard Fueter, " Literaturberichtfiber Leibniz Historien," HistorischeZeitschriftCVIII (Munich,1912), 341ff. Also MarcelDrouin, " Leibniz Historien," Revue de Synthese Historique XXIII (Paris, 1911), 154, held that Davill6 did not know any other historiansof the 17th century except Mabillonand Dom Calmet. 15 HeinrichPertz, Vorrede,G. W. Leibnitii, Annales Imperii (Hanover, 1843), xxvi. 16Letter to Basnage, in Franz von Wegele, Geschichteder deutschenHistoriographieseit dem Auftretendes Humanismus (Munich,1885), 653. CharlesLanglois and CharlesSeignobos,Introductionaux Etudes Historiques(Paris, 1897), 98, praise Leibnizfor not sacrificinghis higherfaculties to purely criticallearning. 17Louis Daville, " Le Developpement de la Methode historique de Leibniz," Revue de SyntheseHistoriqueXXIII (1911), 257: " Nous croyonstoujoursque les idees essentiellesde Leibnizne se sont pas modifieesdurantsa carriere." 18Memoirepour des Personnes eclairees et de bonne intention, Werke, Onno Klopp ed., X, 7ff., especially?? 16-19.

14 Louis

LEIBNIZ'

SIGNIFICANCE

FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY

337

like.19 In his criticism of content, however, he frequently fell back upon a narrow conception of the canons of criticism. Nor was Leibniz's chronological division an innovation. He dropped the idea of the four kingdoms, as had others before him. He knew the division of history into Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, dating the last of these from the Reformation, covering specifically the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But this periodization also had been in vogue for some time.20 In organizing his material he himself used the annalistic method as Baronius did before him and as Muratori did after him. This method, after all, was best adapted to the presentation of individual facts and would have been all but impossible if he had attempted more generalizations and broader groupings of material. The conventional nature of his historical theory was evidenced further in his conception of the pragmatic purpose of history. " I wish there might be some persons who would devote themselves preferably to drawing from history that which is more useful [italics mine], as would be extraordinary examples of virtue, remarks upon the conveniences of life, stratagems of politics and of war. And I wish that a kind of universal history were expressly written which should indicate only such things, and some few others of most consequence; for sometimes one reads an extensive historical work, learned, wellwritten, suited also to the aim of the author, and excellent of its kind, but which contains little useful instruction, by which I do not mean here simple morality, with which the Theatrum vitae humanae and other such florileges are replete, but skill and knowledge of which not every one would think himself in need." 21 It is easy to recognize in this the utility-motif found in the general Enlightenment thought on history as expressed in Bolingbroke's famous dictum " History is philosophy teaching by example " (1735), and Voltaire's article "Histoire " in the Encyclopedie. It was a recurrent theme in Leibniz. In the Theodicee he wrote that the main goal of history, like that of poetry, was " to teach wisdom and virtue by example," and conversely by setting forth the proper examples to inspire an abhorrence of
wickedness.2

In the preface to the Accessiones Historicae (1698), he did not speak of specifically religious and moral utility, but found three particular uses of history: history satisfies our curiosity, our desire to know the res singulares; it provides rules for life, demonstrating the
20 Ibid., 344. 19Louis Daville, LeibnizHistorien,348 et passim. NouveauxEssais,Bk. IV, chap. XVI, ? 11, Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften,V, 452ff. 22 Theodicee, Bk. II, ? 148, Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften,VI, 198. 21

338

LEWIS W. SPITZ

truth of Christianity; and finally, it leads us to recognizethe origins of the present by tracing the past to the present time through the causes of events.23 In a more extended discussionof the use of history he repeated the idea that history provides pleasure through the knowledgeof origins. It is useful in renderingjustice to the men who have deservedwell of other men and in establishinghistorical criticism, especially of sacred history, which supports the foundations of revelation by the useful teachings which the examples furnish us.24 Even the smallest trifles of antiquity are worthy subjects of examination, for they may contribute to a knowledge of important matters. Leibniz, then, was not an antiquarianor polyhistorian of the type common to the age of erudition.25 Rather he was representativeof those historianswho were concernedwith rescuinghistory from Descartes'witheringattack by trying to establishhistoricalfacts critically and thereby to elevate them to the status of facts of science, and further by stressingthe useful functions of history. This apologetic motive, therefore,was one determinantin the formulationof Leibniz's ideas of history. This moral-utilitarianconception of history rested, of course, on the premise that history is rationally explicable in causal terms, is affectedby human action, and is not controlledby blind chance. In his own writing Leibniz constantly refers to personal motivations as causal factors.26 To what extent this is compatible with his formal system of thought will become apparent from the discussion of his a priori philosophy of history. GerhardStammler,baffledin his attempts to find a real inner connection between Leibniz's theory of in his actual historicalwork,and his history, especiallyas approached philosophy,has advanceda uniquehypothesis. The meaningof Leibniz's task as a historiancame to him, Stammlerholds, from a pattern of proceduredevelopedin his intellectual pursuits and not from formal philosophy. He developed a kind of artistically constructed methodologyin his technique for approachingintellectual problems of any nature, best illustrated in the Notitia describinghis plan for the Guelph history. This architecturehe applied to all his writings,
23Praefatioad lectorum. 24NouveauxEssais, Bk. IV, chap. XVI, ? 10, Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften,V, 448ff. 25 Daniel to his chief work supplied a comGeorg Morhof in the prolegomena plete, if totally naive, discussionof the leadingPolyhistoriansof the day, Polyhistor in Tres Tomas (Liibeck,1708). 26Expressionssuch as " I think that by a certain singularcounsel of the fates it happenedthat . . .," Novissima Sinica HistoriamNostri TemporisIllustratura by (Hanover, 1697), ii, are not to be taken literally, for they are counterbalanced contraryexpressionssuch as "Supreme Providence,in order that . .," ibid.

LEIBNIZ'

SIGNIFICANCE

FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY

339

according to Stammler-to the works on jurisprudence, on formal logic, on natural law, on philology, and hence also to those on history, which led him to betray his philosophic premises to a history actually lacking even probability.27 This ingenious explanation, coupled with the fact that philosophy and not history was Leibniz's first love, as well as the general low prestige of history at that time, help explain his curious conception of the nature and task of historical writing.28 Leibniz produced a phenomenal number of widely varied historical writings.29 In 1674 at the age of twenty-eight he became the librarian of Hanover. After extended travels, he wrote the Codex juris gentium diplomaticus in 1693 followed by the lesser De origine Germanorum in 1696. He was commissioned to write a history of the House of Brunswick, for the very utilitarian purpose of establishing certain seniority rights and claims of the House, not unlike the duty of the Chambers of Reunion under Louis XIV. He was drawn to extend his inquiries further and further afield until his history covered the western empire from the time of Charlemagne to 1025 A.D., the end of the Saxon imperial line. This exhaustive and detailed study consumed a tremendous amount of time, but by his death in 1716 Leibniz had all but completed it, lacking only about three years. Through an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances the fifteen manuscript volumes were not published until 1843, when Heinrich Pertz edited the work for King William IV and published it as the Annales Imperii in three volumes of over two thousand pages. Meanwhile a strictly genealogical history of the House drawn from the research of Leibniz was published for George II in 1748, the Origines Guelficae. While working on his major history, Leibniz had published two valuable collections of sources, the Accessiones Historicae (1697), a series of chronicles of the Empire in the Middle Ages, and the Scriptores Brunsvicensia illustrantes, volume I in 1707 and volume III, the last, in 1711. In addition to these he wrote a host of smaller dissertations, like the De migrationibus gentium and the Protogaea.30
GerhardStammler,Leibniz (Munich, 1930), 113ff. Letter to Bayle (1702), Opera,Erdmanned., 193, last sentence: "If I had the choice, I should prefer natural history to civil, and [the study of] the habits and laws that God has establishedin nature to what is observedamongmen." Cf. und als BefSrdererwissenschaftH. A. Erhard, "Leibnitz, als Geschichtsforscher X Geschichteund Alterthumskunde licher Vereine,"Zeitschriftfiur vaterldndische 247. (Miinster, 1846), 29Louis Daville, LeibnizHistorien,1-333, gives a completetreatmentof his life and works. A more conciselisting of his works, includingposthumouspublications, is given in HeinrichPertz's prefaceto the AnnalesImperii (1843). 30 The Protogaea containedsome novel ideas " de la formationet des revolutions du globe."
27
28

340

LEWIS W. SPITZ

A candid evaluation of his historical theory and actual achievement in historical writing makes impossiblethe claim that " Leibniz est un des plus grandshistoriens de l'6poquemoderne et de tous les temps."31 It is true that he was a professionalhistorian most of his life and was occupied with history especially during his last years. Nevertheless certain serious shortcomingsin his work make it something less than great. The lack of an inner relationshipbetween his theory of history and his philosophy, particularly the original and creative side of his formal thought, deprivesit of real dignity, coherence, and meaning.32 His method, while enabling him to produce work comparable with the best of his day, offeredno strikinginnovahis while tion, conceptionof the task of historicalwriting was typical and conventional. His historical writings, moreover, had only a limited influence. Edward Gibbon used the Origines Guelficae as a guide to his own and originalspirit " who " could turn from the solution of a problem to the dusty parchments and barbarousstyle of the records of the Middle Age." He declaredthat with such a guide and with the materials provided by him and others, and with some experienceof the way, he would "boldly descend into the darkness of the Middle Ages."33 Moreover,the huge source books of medieval manuscripts which Leibniz edited as well as the factual material of the Annales are still used by medievaliststoday.34 But the influenceof his historical writing upon historiographywas almost entirely negated by the fact that the Annaleswere not publisheduntil the middle of the nineteenth century when scholarshiphad alreadysurpassedtheir level of merit.35 Moreover,his work was soon overshadowed by two tremendous workson the early middle ages by Moscov and by Biinau.36
31Louis Daville, LeibnizHistorien,743. Cf. WilhelmDilthey, " Leibnizund sein Zeitalter," in " Studienzur Geschichte des Deutschen Geistes," Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig, 1927), III, 36: "Die Welt in sein philosophisches geschichtliche System aufzunehmen,hat Leibniz nicht mehr versucht." 33Edward Gibbon, "Antiquities of the House of Brunswick,"Miscellaneous Works (Dublin, 1796), John Lord Sheffield,ed., III, 401ff. He added the interesting observationthat Leibniz's"powers were dissipatedby the multiplicityof his
32

Antiquities of the House of Brunswick. He found Leibniz a "bold

been lost in the ambitionof universalconquest." 34 Marcel Drouin, op. cit., 152. 35 This misfortuneled E. H. Holthouse," Leibniz as a Historian,"The London Times LiterarySupplement (Nov. 16, 1935), 746, to speak of the "tragedy of the life of Leibniz." 36Franz von Wegele,op. cit., 636ff. On the great significance of these two men for German historiography,cf. Friedrich Gundolf, Anfange Deutscher Geschichtschreibung(Elsevier,1938), 130ff.

pursuits . . ." and that he "may be compared to those heroes, whose empire has

LEIBNIZ'

SIGNIFICANCE

FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY

341

An avenue of influence more direct and possibly more effective was Leibniz's personal influence exerted through a tremendous correspondence, including over fifteen thousand letters of academic import still extant, through his personal travels and conversations, and finally through his share in promoting learned academies. Leibniz, whom Frederick the Great called a "whole academy in himself," provided the inspiration for and led in the founding of the Berlin Academy.37 Bernheim believed this type of personal contact had an important influence on historical method.38 However, its extent and nature is necessarily difficult to determine. Leibniz's a priori philosophy of history involved three elements of basic importance, his solution to the problem of freedom and necessity, his concept of optimism, and his idea of progress. Leibniz realized only too well that his system of preestablished harmony might spell determinism, and he struggled heroically against this conclusion. " The real existence of beings which are not at all necessary is a matter of fact or of history; for the knowledge of possibilities and necessities (for necessary is that the opposite of which is not at all possible) constitutes the demonstrative sciences," he argued.39 Free will, for him, consisted in the fullness of knowledge and insight into the purposes and moral connotation of an action, as in the Stoic phrase, "the wise alone are free." 40 Truths of historic fact he considered contingent, since they are not exhaustive of all possibilities. Nevertheless, his concept of the internal development of the monad within predetermined limits, derived from the assumption of his logic, that the nature of the predicate is contained in the subject, involved him in a logical determinism. In so far as the individual is constrained only from within, it is a psychological determinism. But the preestablished harmony between the monads and the material continuum suggests inevitable necessity.41 This necessity is thus involved in the very structure of his monadology.42
37Martha Ornstein,The Role of ScientificSocietiesin the SeventeenthCentury (Chicago,1929), 177ff. So also Adolf Harnack,Geschichteder KiniglichenPreussi38 Op.cit., 225. zu Berlin (Berlin,1900), I, Iff. der Wissenschaften schenAkademie 39Nouveaux Essais, Bk. III, chap. V, ? 3, in Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften,V, 279f. 40 Nouveaux Essais, Bk. II, chap. XXI, ? 8, Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften,V, 160f. 41Cf. Georg M. Burgarski,Die Natur und der Determinismusdes Willens bei Leibniz (Leipzig, 1897), 77. Dr. Gustav Class at the end of his careful study of this problem concluded: "We may now at the end of our investigation conclude that this whole monadologyis a mechanism,not indeed that of efficientcauses, but Die metaphysithat of the a priori basis in the peculiar sense already described," Determinismus(Tiibingen,1874), 125. des Leibnitzischen schen Voraussetzungen 42 ClodiusPiat, Leibniz (Paris, 1915), 354, found in certainminortreatisesmore overt affirmationsof Spinozisticprinciples. He is wrong, however, in finding this to be in completecontrastto the Nouveaux Essais, Theodicee,and Monadology.

342

LEWIS W. SPITZ

Essentially, both nature in its origin and development as well as history in its unfoldinghad their originsin God, the entelechy of the greatest wisdom. The Theodiceein particulardescribesGod as the most perfect, the best monarch,the great architect. If this were not the best of all possible worlds,then God would not be true God either in essence or in morality. Omne possibile exigit existere. This " optimism " does not mean that everythingin the world is good, as men reckongood. Indeed, Leibniz believed in or at least wrote of eternal punishmentfor the wicked. It means rather that the world contains the greatest amount of good actually possible.43 The Theodicee, written in oppositionto Pierre Bayle's skepticism,argues throughout for the necessity of contrasts and the superiorityof the imperfect to nothing at all, which may constitute Leibnizmore of a meliorist than an optimist. Spiritual development and material progress everywhere move toward completeness,beauty, and an ever higher culture. Mankind is advancing to a greater completeness. Thus Leibniz has already "temporalizedthe great chain of being." It is this emphasis which promptedReinhold Niebuhr'spenetratingcriticism: "The dominant note in modern culture is not so much confidencein reason as faith in history. The conceptionof a redemptivehistory informs the most diverse forms of modern culture. The rationalist, Leibniz, shared it 44 What seems to us to be sorrowand with the romanticistHerder." need is the means by which progress is made, "as the seed must suffer before it can producefruit." Nevertheless, this progressis an endless processand does not promiseimmediate achievement. Mankind will never reach the beatific vision.45 Progresstowardevil must be finite, but towardgood, infinite.46
43Leibnizwrote: " Le gouvernement de Dieu est le meilleur3tat qui soit possible "; " Les lois que Dieu a etabliesdans la nature,sont les plus excellentesqu'il est possible de concevoir,"in Arnaud Bacharock,Shaftesbury'sOptimismusund sein zum Leibnizschen(Thann, 1912), 53. Verhdltnis 44Faith and History (New York, 1949), 3. 45 "Nor, therefore,will progress at any time reach its limit," Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften (Berlin, 1890), VII, 308. Cf. Louis Daville, LeibnizHistorien, 666ff. 46Ella HarrisonStokes, The Conceptionof a Kingdom of Ends in Augustine, Aquinas,and Leibniz (Chicago,1912), 111. MauriceHalbwachs,however,contends that Leibniz did not seem altogethersure that the world was in general progress, and cites his statement: " One can doubt if the world always advancesin perfection, or if it advancesand recedesby periods, or if it does not rather maintain itself in the same perfectionwith regardto the whole,althoughit seems that the parts make an exchangebetween themselves and that sometimessome, sometimes others, are more or less perfect. One can then call in question if all the creatures advance always at least to the limit of their periods,or if there are some of them which lose and recede always, or if there are some of them, finally, who always make the

LEIBNIZ'

SIGNIFICANCE

FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY

343

These basic factors in Leibniz'sa priori philosophy of history in effect completely negate the value of history as history. If history is predetermined, if its courseunfolds always for the best within the limits of possibility, and develops progressivelytoward the infinite good, then its meaning lies well beyond the realm of a posterioriinvestigation and interpretation,the criticalmethod, and the pragmatic purpose of history. Henri See has made an interesting observation regardingthis type of a priorihistorical thinking which may contain a valuable insight for the case of Leibniz. He believes that the philosophy of history of German thinkers of that century took on the characterof a metaphysicratherthan an explanationof history itself, because, lacking a fatherland and unified nation, they did not, at least up to 1815,have any " visee politique."47 A clearercase of this nearer the end of the century is Kant who built his Idea for a Universal History (1784) on a course of history determined a priori. However the case may be, it is obvious that the fundamentalstructure of Leibniz's system of rationalistic idealism required this view of history. Leibniz was the major source of the eighteenth-centuryGerman Enlightenment. In philosophy his rationalism was the chief influence, but it was affectedby the Leibniz-Wolffian school, which gave it a peculiar emphasis. ChristianWolff, the translatorand interpreter of Leibniz's works, applied rationalism to the whole domain of knowledge and tried to reduce all manifestations of the human soul to the discipline of reason and mathematical demonstration,even deducinga priori the duties of servants and the dangersof debauchery. Among the popularphilosophersrationalismwas carriedto the extreme of irrationality. Even the influenceof the psychologicaland moral empiricismcoming from England was limited by the rationalist pattern.48 Thompson's view that Wolff and the German Aufklarung emphasized experience as opposed to the rationalism of Descartes, Leibniz, and Bacon, so that while French historians were anti-historical and pragmatic, German thinkers like Kant, Herder, and Hegel turned to the past, not to " learn by example,"but to show the continuity of the human spirit and social phenomena,holds in only one respect.49 It is true that Wolff'sepistemologydistinguished
periods at the end of which they find themselves to have neither gained nor lost: in the same way as there are some lines which advance always as the straight line, others which turn without advancingor recedingas the circle,otherswhich turn and advance at the same time as the spiral, others, finally, which recede after having advanced,or advanceafter having receded,as the ovals,"Leibniz (Paris, n.d.), 150. 47Scienceet Philosophiede l'Histoire (Paris, 1928), 17. 48Victor Basch, Les Doctrines Politiques des PhilosophesClassiquesde L'Alle49James Westfall Thompson,op. cit., II, 103. magne (Paris, 1927), 6f.

344

LEWIS W. SPITZ

a priori rational truths from a posteriori empirical truths, but he believed that the two coincided. This recognition of the empirical element in knowledge was important for historical thinking, but it was rather another element in the thought of Leibniz and not this innovation of Wolff's which helped to stimulate a resurgence of genuine historical thinking later in the century. The immediate effect upon history of the philosophy of Leibniz as seen through Wolffian eyes was precisely the development of that anti-historical pragmatism which Thompson saw as typical of the French historians. The historians of the early Aufkldrung, as historians, were not concerned with resolving the logical difficulty between the a priori and the utilitarian views of history. They studied history to see in it the hand of God, and at the same time they drew lessons from past human conduct, as though human will and decision were absolutely determinant in history. Later, of course, when the Voltairean influence was more strongly felt, the latter motif prevailed. Leibniz knew the term "pragmatic history," as applied to the kind typical of the German Enlightenment.50 History seen as the product of conscious individual action was to serve pragmatic ends. While there were certainly other factors at work in creating this development of historical thought, the particular influence of Leibniz was important.51 He corresponded with Johann Lorenz Mosheim, the most important of the early pragmatic historians, and influenced his thought.52 Leibniz's rationalism in its Wolffian dress, especially in the importance given to human reason, was basic in the thinking of the so-called "pragmatic historians " like Matthias Schroeckh, Gottlieb Planck, Heinrich Henke, and a large coterie of other writers. Schroeckh wrote: "Formerly our history books were called impartial, reliable, complete. For some time now (1768) they have felt honored to take the name pragmatic." 53 With Ludwig Spittler the Voltairean influence was added and it becomes more difficult to trace the course of the LeibnizWolffian tradition. The basic assumptions, however, of rationalism and natural law, as contained in Leibniz's a priori philosophy of history, remained essential for the conception of history of the representative historians of the Aufkldrung.
50Louis Daville, LeibnizHistorien,373. 51Bernheimhas suggestedthat pragmatichistory has appearedregularlywhenand subjective,op. cit., 7ff. Polybius ever a people of culturebecomesself-conscious had originallyused the phrase. 52 J. Wagenmann, " Mosheim," DeutscheBiographie(Leipzig,1885), Allgemeine XXII, 395. 53J -MatthiasSchroeckh, Christliche Kirchengeschichte (Frankfort,1768), I, 264.

LEIBNIZ'

SIGNIFICANCE

FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY

345

But the influenceof the man whom Huxley has called " the most thinker since Aristotle" could not be containedwithin comprehensive the narrowlimits set by the Aufkldrung. The creative and dynamic element of his thought in time received due recognition. The Nouplaced a greater emphasis upon individuality, spontaneity, and the dynamic aspects of Leibniz'sthought. Lessing translated them and was profoundlyimpressedby the idea of the struggleof the individual soul out of the dark depths of the unconscioustoward the clear light of consciousness. The story of Lessing, much influencedby Leibniz, and of the initial impetus he gave to Romanticism has often been told. The relation of Leibniz to the new "historicism" is less well known. Wilhelm Dilthey has stated the essence of the contribution of Leibniz with almost epigrammatical force: " The arid natural system so that Leibniz the changes prepares way for the historical world view." 54 The nonconformist ideas he advanced eventually subverted the structureof rationalismhe himself had built. These ideas had deep roots in the past. Leibniz thought not only in terms of the world view of natural law, but also in terms derived from the Reformation, the Renaissance,and earlier times.55 Many of his concepts bore a distinct resemblanceto those of Nicolas Cusanus,for example. His mind assimilatedmany Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas, illustrating once more the truth of Whitehead'ssuggestion that the "safest general characterizationof the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato." The Neoplatonic element in Leibniz'sthought in particularintroducedan anti-rationalist currentwhich, while he controlledit rigidly in his system, nevertheless, provided a potential source for a new philosophicaldevelopment.56 Specifically,three factors were of special import for a new historical point of view, namely, the concept of individualism, dynamic development, and relativism. The origins of a concept of individualismsignificantfor historical thought are to be found earlierthan Herder or even Winckelmann.57
und Analyse des Menschenseit Renaissance und ReformaWeltanschauung tion,"Gesammelte Schriften,II (Leipzig,1923), 469. 55AdolfHarnack,op. cit., I, 10. 56 Joseph Politella, Platonism,Aristotelianism, and Cabalismin the Philosophy Leibniz of (Philadelphia,1938), 11ff.,discussespoints of similaritywith the Enneads and thoroughlyexploresthis type of correspondence and derivation. 57Cf. Friedrich Engel-Janosi, "The Growth of German Historicism,"Johns Hopkins University Studies (Baltimore, 1944), series LXII, no. 2, 18: "Winckelmann'sHistory of AncientArt conceivedthe conceptof individuality. Two decades
"

veaux Essais sur L'Entendement Humain, finally published in 1765,

54

later Herder made it a principle to grasp historical individualities ....

Both

writersopenedup a new world for the historian."

346

LEWIS W. SPITZ

This concept was already developed in the thought of Leibniz. His dissertation,presentedat the age of sixteen to the faculty of Leipzig University, argued the importanceof the individual entity; the individual is individuatedby his whole nature.58 John Dewey believes that the question of the relation of the individual to the universe is for Leibniz the nerve of the philosophicproblem.59 The Nouveaux Essais stress the significanceof the "spirit which loves unity in diversity," a phrase employed since by Karl Lamprecht and others. "Individuality includes infinity and only he who is capable of comprehendingit can have the knowledgeof the principle of individuation of this or that thing. This arisesfrom the influenceof all things in the universe upon each other."60 Thus a qualitative difference must exist between all individuals. This view of the free-acting power of a person was in sharp contrast to the ideal abstract natural law conceptionof human nature."' A corollaryto the concept of the varietas rerumwas the dynamic developmentof the individual. The monad is not a static entity, but rather a dynamic principle, a force, which constantly unfolds its latent potentialities from an inner source. In the world the monad and at the same time reveals progressivelydevelopsself-consciousness itself. Aristotle conceivedof freedomas intelligenceand spontaneity. Leibniz conceived of it as the degree of perception and spontaneity achieved, nevertheless, always within the bounds imposed by the monad's own nature. Nor can the soul unroll at once everything that is enfolded in it, for its complexity is infinite.62 Moreover,the idea of many small perceptions from the realm of the unperceived uniting to achieve a perception,as many small waves make the roar
18ff.: " Pono igitur: omne individuum sua tota Entitate individuatur ....

58Disputatio Metaphysicade PrincipioIndividui,Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften,IV,

Tertia

sententia est, Existentiam esse principium Individuationis." Sigmund Auerbach, however,believedthat this dissertationwas much overratedas a clue to the monadology, and should be understoodin an Aristotelianor scholastic sense. Zur Entder LeibnitzchenMonadenlehre(Dessau, 1884), 11f. wicklungsgeschichte 59Leibniz'sNew Essays Concerning the Human Understanding (Chicago,1886; new ed., 1902), 45. 60Nouveaux Essais, Bk. III, chap. III, ? 6, Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften, 268. V,
Leibniz was fond of Hippocrates' phrase oil/7rvota 7rarira, all things breathe together.

Cf. especially Nouveaux Essais, Bk. II, chap. XXVIII, Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften, V, 213ff. 61 Karl Biedermann, Deutschlandim AchtzehntenJahrhundert(Leipzig, 1858), II-1, 249, suggeststhat Leibnizwas inspiredto this idea of a self-activehuman soul by the new discoveriesof minute organiclife in nature. 62 Monadology,? 61, Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften,VI, 617.

LEIBNIZ'

SIGNIFICANCE

FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY

347

of the sea, also subverted the Cartesian reliance on clear and distinct ideas.63 All bodies are in flux, all is in development, change, and growth. This was an important preparation for modern genetic history. "The present is big with the future and heavy with the past," he wrote.64 Nevertheless, the breakthrough of individuality and dynamic development was not complete in Leibniz. The spontaneous development according to the individual's own law was still a reflection of the universal reign of law and norms.65 Finally, since every monad reflects its own picture of the universe and there is consequently a countless number of different world pictures, a relativistic element is included in the monadology. However, Leibniz held that all these views are only perspectives on the one universe and so escaped complete relativism.66 Neither Lessing, Kant, nor Herder read the Annales, but these "progressivist" historians and many others influential in the development of historicism through the nineteenth century read and were influenced particularly by the more original and creative aspects of Leibniz's philosophy.67 Lessing's Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780), Kant's Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbiirgerlicher Absicht (1784), and Herder's Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784) reveal in various ways the impact of his thought. In 1770, in fact, Herder wrote an essay entitled " Truths from Leibniz." Herder understood that Wolff had taken the most conventional ideas of Leibniz, the "new Plato," and dropped some of his more valuable insights. Similarly the Leibnizian continuity and development became for Kant the Werden or becoming in outward form of inward forces, in other words, the creative nature of time, and for Herder the change of individuals and nations within the cosmic continuity. Rejecting a pre-conceived plan, Herder yet saw continuity in the entire scheme of things. The first idea of the first man's soul is connected with the last thought of the last
Prefacea NouveauxEssais, Gerhardt,Phil. Schriften,V, 49ff. 64 Ibid., V, 48. half-centuryago Paul Janet could say: " It is metaphysicsand not physics which is rising above mechanicalism," introductionto Leibniz,Discourse on Metaphysics (Chicago,1927; 1st ed., 1902), x. 66Ernst Troeltschin his essay on " The Ideas of Natural Law and Humanity" concludedthat "it was not after all Romanticismand Hegel which first divided Germanyfrom the West; it was the mysticism of Eckhart and the philosophy of in Otto Gierke,Natural Leibniz,with its relativismand its doctrineof immanence," Law and the Theory of Society, 1500-1800 (Cambridge,1934), 212. 67Friedrich Meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus (Munich, 1946), develops the relationshipof Leibniz to the early historicismin a brilliant and much more comprehensive way than is here possible.
63

65 A

348

LEWIS W. SPITZ

man. Moreover, since Nature has given the earth to her human childrenand has permittedthem to germinateupon it what by virtue of its place, time, and potency could germinate,the historian must view all without partiality and judge without passion. One need only ask for the criterionwhich makes a judgmentpossible at all on these premises,and the specter of relativity arises. The contemporaryschool of historical thought which has grown out of this tradition derived from Leibniz through Herdermaintains many viewpoints found in the thought of Leibniz. Though this view of history has developed a self-conscious group of adherents only within the last half century or so-the term Historismus was first used in Karl Werner'sbook on Vico in 1879-it was in development during the whole span of the past century. Friedrich Meinecke, without doubt the most prominent adherent of historicism today, considersit more than a spiritual-intellectualmethod, rather a different view of the world and life, revealing deeper insights than otherwise possible.68 The debt this historical interpretationowes to the original and creative thought of Leibniz is obvious from its basic interest in the individual, in dynamic change and development, and in the resulting relativism. "Leibniz combined two great qualities which are almost incompatible with one another-the spirit of discovery and the spirit of method," wrote the admiringDiderot. The spirit of method tended to yield conventional and conformistpatterns of thought, and being in tune with the times, it was embracedby the Enlightenment and directly influencedits historiography. The spirit of discoveryyielded new and creative insights of great significancefor historical interpretation and influencedin turn the developing historicism of modern scholarship. A few days before his death, Leibniz wrote at the end of the introductionto his Annales Imperii: " I relinquishto the diligence of others those who must be brought from the shadows [of the past] into the light."69 This almost propheticstatement well illustrates his contribution to historiography. His own historical writing and specific historical theory were of relatively little import. But the impact of his thought on the Enlightenment and on historicism led to a diligent recovery of the past and to particular interpretations of that past. It is in this that his great significancefor historiographylies. HarvardUniversity.
68 F.
69

P. xxii, "...

Meinecke,op. cit., 1. quos ex tenebris eruendosaliorumdiligentiaerelinquo."