THE

DEVELOPMENT
OF LOGIC
BY

WILLIAM KNEALE
F.8.A.,
white's professor of moral philosophy
IN THE OF

AND

MARTHA KNEALE
LADY HALL
OXFORD

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1962
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II|'U^a^WWIJIWIIWW"I
M.W,"WmjJHI" '""WfWW 1' IUI' ' "Hl''rrwm*nr
.naSl

320 Logic after the renaissance THE INTERESTS OF LEIBNIZ 321

the details of their formal theory, e.g. their determination of the of Newton said that he had stolen the idea of the calculus from
valid moods of syllogism and their proofs of the special rules of their master, and the unmetaphysical minds of the eighteenth
the various figures. It is characteristic;, however, of Arnauld and century found his Theodicee and his Monadologie (published after
Nicole that before each of their passages dealing with details of his death) fantastic : he was the butt ofVoltaire's wit in Candide.
formal logic they tell the reader that he may omit what follows From short pieces published in journals,letters written to some of
since it is necessary only for pure theory. his many correspondents, and references scattered through his
A small point of some interest in their treatment of reason- Nouveaux Essais sur I'entendement humain (a detailed criticism of
ing is a remark that, when only one premiss of a valid syllogism Locke, first published in 1765) it became known that he claimed
is known to be true, the other premiss may be introduced as a to have made great discoveries in logic, but there was little avail-
condition to the conclusion. Given, for example, that no matter able to substantiate this claim. For years Leibniz had written
thinks, we may go on to infer that, if everything which feels pain copiously on his many projects, but in the form of notes or
'I
thinks, no matterfeels pain. And when neither premiss is known to memoranda, and most of what he had written remained un-
be true, we may even present them both as conditions in hypo- published in the library at Hanover, where he had served the
thetical statement.1 Here we have in effect a version of the prin- Elector as historian, scientific adviser, and expert on international
ciple of conditionalization (or 'deduction theorem') which was law. During the nineteenth century various selections from his
taken for granted by Aristotle and explicitly used by the Stoics. papers were published, but there was no complete (or nearly com-
Some features of the Port Royal Logic reflect special interests of plete) catalogue until 1895, 1 and even now there is no complete
Arnauld and Nicole which could not be expected to spread far text ; for the definitive edition in forty volumes projected by the
beyond their own circle ; but the general conception of logic Berlin Academy (of which he was the first president) has been
which they expounded in this book was widely accepted and con- delayed by anti-semitism and war.
tinued to dominate the treatment of logic by most philosophers There are many different facets to Leibniz's thought about
for the next 200 years. To follow in detail the transmission of logic. He was a man who took great delight in intellectual syn-
their influence would be tedious and not very profitable. In the thesis ; and just as he praised his metaphysical theory of monads
rest of this chapter we shall therefore consider instead another for connecting many things which would otherwise be discon-
1
it line of thought which has in the end proved much morefruitful, nected (e.g. teleology and mechanism, substance and energy,
though for a long time it produced little effect in the academic mind and matter, the infinitesimal calculus and microbiology),
teaching of logic. This is the line which Leibniz started as a boy, so too he valued his logic because it seemed to him like a jewel
a few years before the writing of the Port Royal Logic. that can throw light in many different directions. For an explana-
%: j
I' - tion of his thought it will therefore be necessary to consider a
2. The Interests of Leibniz number of his interests in turn, and we propose to treat briefly
of the following: (1) his respect for traditional logic, (2) his
Although, as we have seen, few famous thinkers of the seven- notion of an ars combinatorial or general theory of arrangements,
s
teenth and eighteenth centuries gave much attention to formal (3) his plans for an ideal language, (4) his scheme for the co-
logic, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who was born in 1646 and died ordination of knowledge in an encyclopaedia, and (5) his hope
hi
1 in 17 16, deserves to beranked among the greatest of all logicians.
1
for a general science of method. Each of these interests he shared
That his work on logic had little influence for nearly 200 years with some of his contemporaries, but the remarkable feature of
after he wrote was due in part to the dominance of other interests, his thought is the way in which he tried to relate them together.
connected with the rise of natural science, but also in part to the The order in which we shall deal with them is that which helps
II defects of his own character. He was a universal genius who con- most to an understanding of their connexions in Leibniz's mind.
It ceived many projects and made many beginnings but brought
little to fruition. When he died, his fame rested on his discovery
It corresponds in part to the order of development of his thought,
for (1) and (2) came very early and (5) later; but we do not
of the infinitesimal calculus and his defence of the metaphysical
; doctrine that this is the bestof all possible worlds. But the admirers
attach much importance to this, since it is not yet possible to trace
>i 1 E. Bodemann, Die
Leibniz-Handschriften der Koniglichen Offentlichen Bibliothek zu
1 Logiqtie, iii. 13. Hannover.
6341 V

f.
1
I
322 LOGIC AFTER THE RENAISSANCE
the history of his thought in detail, and it is1 clear in any case
that he retained all these interests to the last.
(1) According to his own statement Leibniz read Zabarella
with pleasure at the age of twelve and at the age offourteen had
the idea that all propositions might be arranged according to the
order in which they gave matter for syllogisms, i.e. in a deductive
system like that which Euclid elaborated for geometry.2 This
enthusiasm for Aristotle's theory of the syllogism remained with
him still when he wrote the Nouveaux Essais. For he there describes
Aristbtle's doctrine as 'one of the most beautiful discoveries of
the human spirit', and says it is an 'art of infallibility'3 which can
be developed into 'a sort of universal mathematics'. These re-
marks are directed, of course, against Locke's depreciation of
formal logic. In a note of 17 15, not intended for publication, he
was more outspoken: Lockius aliique gui spemunt non intelliguntA
But it is interesting to consider Leibniz's views on a number of
points of syllogistic theory ; for he was by no means an Aris-
totelian purist.
In the first place, he did not believe that all arguments could
be brought into syllogistic form. The examples of non-syllogistic
reasoning which he liked to cite were the arguments by inversion
of relations and the arguments a recto ad obliquum discussed by
Junge in the Logica Hamburgensis. But he can scarcely have in-
tended to suggest that these were the only forms not covered by
Aristotle's doctrine ; for he sometimes insisted that an enlarged
theory of deduction would allow for many different calculi, and
apart from that he was well aware of the impossibility ofreducing
conditional and disjunctive arguments to syllogistic form. He
held, nevertheless, that there is a common principle of all de-
duction, namely, substitution of equivalents. s
Secondly, he maintained the existence of four figures of syl-
logism, each with six moods. This view appears already in his
De Arte Combinatoria, written in 1666, when he was only nineteen
years of age, and it obviously attracted Leibniz because of its
tidy symmetry. He saw that the ordinary Aristotelian doctrine
offourteen moods, distributed between three figures, was due to
an arbitrary notion ofwhat was natural in reasoning, rather than
to any consistent theory of syllogistic form. In accepting the doc-
1 In giving references to works which have not been published separately we use
*P' for Die philosophischen Schriften yon G. W. Leibniz and 'M' for Leibnizens mathe-
matische both edited by and '0' for Opuscules et fragments inidits
de Leibniz, edited by L. Couturat. The plan and much ofthe material ofthis section
came from Couturat's Logique de Leibniz (1901)-
-3 Nouveaux Essais, iv. xvii.
4. We
2P> v> P- ia6
shall use 'ME.' for the title of this work.
5 Leibnitii Opera (cd. Dutens 1768), vi (i), p. 32.
- 3
* P, vii, p. 481.
I
THE INTERESTS OF LEIBNIZ 323
trine of twenty-four moods he committed himself quite explicitly
to the assumption of existential import for all universal state-
ments. We shall see that in spite of misgivings he never succeeded
in freeing himselffrom this entanglement and that it was probably
one of the factors which prevented him from producing a really
satisfactory calculus of logic.
Thirdly, he preferred to reduce syllogisms to the first figure
per impossibile rather than by conversion, because he held that the
method usually called indirect was really simpler. But he saw
that syllogisms in the fourth figure could not be reduced at all
without principles of conversion (or at any rate without the prin-
ciple of identity which he used for proofs of the principles of
conversion in the second or third figures), and that in this respect
at least the tidinessof his scheme was compromised. 1 The remarks
which he makes in this connexion show how carefully he had
studied the history of logic, and it is therefore rather strange that
he tries to justify indirect reduction by the principle of non-
contradiction alone, i.e. without the principle of primary logic
which the Stoics called the first thema.
Fourthly, he defended the view (which we have noticed already
in Wallis's work) that singular statements may be classed as
universal for the purposes of syllogistic theory.2 If this were only
a dodgefor allowing us to treat arguments with singular premisses
as though they were syllogisms, it would be harmless enough.
For although these arguments are different in character from
Aristotelian syllogisms, their rules have a similarity to those for
syllogistic reasoning which can be brought out by the device
just mentioned. We think it is clear, however, that Leibniz went
farther than this and accepted the assimilation of singular to
universal statements because it seemed to him there was no
fundamental difference between the two sorts. Such a conclusion
is implied by his often repeated assertion that in every true affir-
mative proposition, whether universal or singular, necessary or
contingent, praedicatum inest subiecto, 3 and it is so important in his
thought that it requires special notice.
Lord Russell argued in his book on The Philosophy of Leibniz
that this principle was the chief source of the curious metaphysical
doctrines to which Leibniz found himself committed. We can
now see that it was equallyfateful in the development ofLeibniz's
logic. It may perhaps be paraphrased in English by the remark
'Every true affirmative statement ascribes to the thing denoted
by its subject term an attribute which really inheres in that thing.
1 #""" iv- ". 1. 2 K.E.
iv. xvii. 8.
0, p. 16; p. 51 0, pp. 518-19; Discours de metaphysique, 8; P, ii, p. 46.

324 LOGIC AFTER THE RENAISSANCE
Taken in this way, it would probably have been accepted by
Aristotle ; for his account of general statementsisbased ona notion
of predication derived from consideration of singular statements.
But the application of the subject-predicate way of talking has
usually tended to make philosophers think of general propositions
in a way appropriate only to singular propositions. In particular
they have assumed that the subject-term of a universal statement
must refer to something, and so have accepted without question
the doctrine of existential import. Leibniz sometimes followed
this line of thought, as we have noticed ; but the peculiarity of
his philosophy is due in large part to the fact that he also fell into
the opposite mistake of trying to treat propositions about in-
dividuals as though they were like the laws we express by
universal statements. When he used the phrase Praedicatum inest
subjecto, he thought not only ofthe sense in which wisdom may be
said to inhere in Socrates, but also of the sense in which animality
may be said to be contained in humanity ; and the second pre-
dominated so far that he often talked as though there were a
concept or essence of each individual which necessarily involved
all the attributes predicable of that individual. This is the origin
of his principle ofthe identity of indiscernibles. Just as St. Thomas
Aquinas held that every angel was of a distinct species, because
they all lacked matter,by which ordinary things areindividuated,
so Leibniz maintained that every individual differedfrom every
other in some attribute. 1 For him the distinction between history
and science disappeared, and the assimilation of singular to
universal statements was no longer merely a dodge for economy of
rules in the criticism of arguments, but the expression of a pro-
found truth.
His respect for the Aristotelian logic of subject and predicate
had another unfortunate effect on Leibniz's thought, namely,
that ofmaking him try to explain away propositions ofa relational
form. His mention of Junge's argument by inversion of relations
(e.g. from 'Titus is bigger than Caius' to 'Caius is smaller than
Titus') shows that he was aware of the need for an enlargement
of logic by a theory of relations; but he was never able to admit
that the addition would be more than a gloss on the theory of
attributes. According to him, 'Titus is bigger than Caius' means
the same as 'Titus is big in as much as Caius is small', i.e. re-
lational facts can be resolved into conjunctions of attributive
facts. 2 This doctrine is certainly untrue, and we shall see that it
hampered Leibniz seriously in the development ofhis own ideas ;
1
2
Discours de metaphysique, 9.
0, p. 280. Cf. Fifth Letter to 47 (P, vii, p. 401).
I
\
THE INTERESTS OF LEIBNIZ 325
but he did a service to philosophy by trying to state it in un-
compromising form. The strenuousness of his efforts to preserve
the old theory that every statement ascribes an attribute to a
subject shows his own uneasiness, and has stimulated later
logicians to shake themselves free from this part of the tradition.
The most fruitful idea that Leibniz derived from his study of
(
!
Aristotelian logic was the notion of formal proof. This is em-
! phasized in the criticism of Locke noticed above, and it recurs
again and again in his writings. He says, for example, that Des-
cartes's rules of method are psychological advice of no great
value, 1 and that Descartes's weakness as a writer on method2 was
his failure to understand the importance of logical form. He
recognized, of course, that the use of syllogisms in scholastic dis-
putations could degenerate into stupid pedantry; but he saw
also that there could be no rigour without formality, and he
< insisted rightly on the importance of presenting new develop-
ments of mathematics in such a way that their necessity could
be seen to depend on their form. This interest of his was un-
fashionable when he wrote, and remained so for a long time
afterwards, but it has been amply justified in the past century.
i (2) The theory of permutations and combinations was de-
veloped first in the seventeenth century, primarily for its use in
i connexion with the calculus of probabilities, and it attracted
i
Leibniz's attention while he was still in his teens. Indeed his
first considerable work was the De Arte Combinatorial mentioned
'1
in an earlier paragraph. In later life he was annoyed by the
republication of this tract without his permission; the ground for
his objection, however, was not that he had abandoned its theses,
but rather that he did not wish to have his immature work printed
as though it were a recent composition. 4 To the end of his life
he thought of the theory of combinations as something more
fundamental than ordinary logic ; but he meant by the phrase
f
ars combinatoria more than the rules for calculating the number of
sub-sets of a certain constitution which may be formed from the
1
members of a given set. In his teens he had conceived already
) the idea of an alphabet of human thought with which all possible
thinkables might be constructed by suitable combinations and
by which reasoning might be reduced to the quasi-mechanical
operation of going through a list. 5 His inspiration came from the
Ars Magna of Raymond Lull and the Computatio sive Logica of
Hobbes (i.e. thefirst part ofDe Corpore).6 But he realized that in
1 E. Bodemann, Die p. 82. 2 P, iv, p. 276.
3P, iv, p. 27.
-s P, vii, p. 185.
4
N-6E - - - -
IV m 18
P> iv, P- 64.
1
tfi
326 LOGIC AFTER THE RENAISSANCE
order to make the method useful two things were needed which
neither Lull nor Hobbes had provided : (a) an assurance that the
'alphabet' was really ultimate and complete, and (b) a procedure
for making sure that all possible combinations were considered.
In his early work so much space was given to the calculation of
the numbers ofcombinations permissible in certain circumstances
that these points were obscured ; but even there he made it clear
that he was trying to work out a logic of discovery(logica inventiva),
and he achieved at least one interesting result by showing that
there could be just twenty-four valid forms of syllogism.
In the tract De Arte Combinatoria Leibniz tries to show how the
composition of complex geometrical notions could be exhibited
concisely by a code in which integral numerals were made to
stand for termini primi (e.g. V for punctum and '2' for spatium) and
fractional numerals for other terms which have been introduced
by definition and arranged in various classes (e.g. '|' for thefirst
term of the second class, which happens to be quantitas). With
this apparatus he produced such definitions as Circulus est
ab 18.21 habens rrjv i6.| rod 19 alicuius 1 ab 18.6. But he did not
try to show how such a code might help in the enterprise with
which he was mainly concerned, and thefact that he never made
any use of it in later works suggests that he soon realized its in-
adequacy as an instrument oflogical analysis. It is in fact no more
philosophical than a telegraph code, and it is interesting chiefly
because it shows in a clear light the difficulties of the project
Leibniz had in mind.
In the first place, Leibniz's list of twenty-seven termini primi
for geometry is not compiled on any intelligible principle. Some
of the items, such as punctum and dimensio, seem to be peculiar
to geometry, while others, such as unum, possibile, and omne, have
application outside that study; and of the geometrical terms it is
by no means clear that all are indispensable. Secondly, the need
for auxiliary expressions such as ab, habens, alicuius, and the in-
flected Greek articles in the formulation of definitions is a sign of
the insufficiency of Leibniz's analysis. In order to carry out his
programme satisfactorily it would be necessary (a) to distinguish
sharply between the common signs of logical syntax and the
peculiar signs of geometry and {b) to consider carefully what sorts
of complexity can occur in definitions, or, in other words, what
is to be understood by the 'combination' of simple geometrical
notions. Leibniz's failure to produce a convincing example of his
method was due mainly to his obsession with the idea that all
complexity must arise from the conjunction of attributes. When
he talked of combination he thought of such complexes as we
THE INTERESTS OF LEIBNIZ 327
express by putting together adjectives or common nouns, e.g. in
the definition 'A triangle is a three-sided rectilinear figure', and
he failed to understand that the complexity of the world cannot
be explained in this way alone. We shall have occasion to con-
sider this point again, and we mention it here only because it is
interesting to notice that one of Leibniz's chief difficulties was
implicit in his early treatment of the ars combinatoria.
(3) Many writers of the seventeenth century put forward sug-
gestions for the construction of an artificial language ; in Leibniz's
day such ideas flourished especially in England, where Wilkins
and Dalgarno each advocated a system of his own. The chief
arguments of the inventors were like those advanced in recent
times for Esperanto, namely, that communication would be
much easier and the spread of ideas more rapid if all men, or at
least all learned men, had at their disposal a language con-
structed on simple principles and strictly regular in its grammar.
Leibniz was not indifferent to such considerations. For he be-
lieved firmly in the importance of establishing peace and order
throughout the world, and he held that the advancement of
science depended on intellectual co-operation between men of
different nations. He therefore advocated at one time the use
of a basicregular Latin (presumably something like theLatino sine
flexione used by Peano at the beginning of this century in his
Formulario Mathematico). 1 But his interest in the construction of an
ideal language went much farther than this. He wanted a scien-
tific language which would help not merely in the com-
munication of thoughts but also in thinking itself, 2and this he
called a lingua philosophica or characteristica universalis.
The fundamental principle in Leibniz's theory of symbolism is
that our expressions should mirror the structure of the world.
Although the basic signs which stand for simple elements may be
chosen arbitrarily, there must be an analogy, in the strict sense
of that word, between their relations and the relations of the
elements they signifiy, 3 so that the name of each complex thing
is its definition and thekey to all its properties. 4 We cannot escape
from the use of signs in thinking, but our ordinary systems fall
short of the ideal, and this is the chief source of the difficulty of
intellectual work: Tn signis spectanda est commoditas ad in-
veniendum, quae maxima est quoties rei naturam internam paucis
exprimunt et velut pingunt ; ita enim mirifice imminuitur cogi-
tandi labor. 5 In mathematics the importance of good symbolism
is already established by the discoveries which it has made possible
1 P, vii, p. 28. 2 P, vii, p.
184. 3 P, vii, p.
192.
4 0, p. 152. 5 iv, p. 455-
!
TT
328 LOGIC AFTER THE RENAISSANCE
(e.g. Leibniz's own discovery of the infinitesimal calculus), but
we need a thread of Ariadne to guide us through the labyrinth of
other studies, 1 and this we can get only from the characteristica
universalis. With such a help to thought we shall be free from the
snares of the evil genius imagined by Descartes, because all will
be clear and there will be no danger offalse memory.
In order to carry out Leibniz's programme, or any part of it,
we should have to provide (a) symbols for all the notions to be
taken as ultimate or unanalysable, and (b) suitable devices for
expressing such formal notions as predication, conjunction, dis-
junction,negation, conditional connexion, universality, and exis-
tence. In most ordinary languages there are special symbols
(called syncategorematic) to signify some of the formal notions,
but it is not essential that these should always be expressed by
separate words. In ancient Greek, for example, the notion of pre-
dication could be expressed by the placing of an adjective before
a noun with the definite article, as in 6 avrjp, and in English
we can express conjunction by the simple juxtaposition of words,
as in the phrase 'a round red apple. Furthermore, even non-
formal notions may sometimes be expressed by the arrangement
of other symbols. This is most obvious in the making of maps,
when the relative positions of the various natural features are
shown by therelative positions ofmarks associated with the names
of those features. But it can occur also in oral language, as when
Julius Caesar said Veni, vidi, vici, meaning that his arrival, his
inspection, and his conquest happened in the order of the verbs
he used to announce them. How exactly Leibniz wished to con-
struct his characteristica universalis is not clear; for he never pro-
duced a detailed scheme or even discussed the alternatives noticed
above. But he probably thought of it most often as a script in
which the non-formal notions would be represented by signs other
than words. Sometimes he says that it would be like algebra, and '
sometimes that it would be an improved version of the Chinese
ideographic system. 2 And he certainly intended it to exhibit the
logical form of propositions in a simple and more regular way than
any natural language. For he often asserts that a philosophically
constructed grammar will make formal reasoning easy by provid-
ing theframework for a calculusratiocinator (i.e. a quasi-mechanical
method of drawingconclusions) in which even the non-syllogistic
arguments ofJungemaybe brought under afew simplerules ofpro-
cedure. Andheprophesies that,when the new languageisperfected,
men of good will desiring to settle a controversy on any subject
whatsoever will take their pens in their hands and say Calculemus.3
z 3 ME. m. i- 1 and iv. vi. 2.
1 0, p. 337. 0, p. 30. 3 P, vii, p.
THE INTERESTS OF LEIBNIZ 329
:!
There were two reasons why Leibniz never succeeded in pro-
ducing a definite system. Thefirst was the impossibility of draw-
ing up a dictionary for the new language until the work of
scientific research had been brought to completion, or at least
nearer to completion than itwas in Leibniz's own day. We cannot
provide an explanatory symbolism for chemistry until chemistry
already exists as a science. Descartes had made this point earlier
in the century against a proposal of Mersenne, and it did not
1
k escape the attention of Leibniz. His enthusiasm for the project
of an encyclopaedia was due in part to his hope that it would
help to make possible the production of'a characteristic^ universalis.
But there was a second reason, unknown to Leibniz, why he
could make little progress in the construction of an ideal language,
and that was his failure to shake himself free from the subject-
predicate dogma of traditional logic.
I We have seen already how Leibniz failed in his early attempt
to apply the ars combinatoria to geometrical notions. The limitation
of his thought which made failure inevitable on thatoccasion was
certain also to prevent him from working out a system of sym-
bolism in which the name of each thing would be itsdefinition
and thekey to all its properties. For the notion of complexity with
which he worked was always that of the conjunction of attributes,
andthis is not sufficient to account for the diversity of thinkables.
A typical suggestion to which he recurred on several occasions
was that simple ideas might be expressed by different prime
i
numbers and complex ideas by products of primes.2 Since there
is only one way in which any given natural number can be de-
composed into primes, this plan would enable a person who had
mastered the system to read off, or at least to work out in un-
ambiguous fashion, the definition ofeach derivative term ;Leibniz
was dissatisfied with it only because he hoped for some system in
which even the primitive terms would be intelligible without a
dictionary, i.e. a kind of picture writing which would be not only
independent of the spoken language (as Chinese characters are)
but also very easy to learn. 3 But such a system would not allow
for the expression ofcomplexities outside a very restricted range.
y
Let us consider for an example the meaning of the common term
'grandparent. This is obviously complex, and Leibniz could
scarcely wish to express it in his numerical system by a prime
number; but it is not the notion of a thing with two or more
attributes conjoined. When we say that X is a grandparent, we
mean that there are two persons V and Z such that X is a parent
1 Descartes, CEuvres (cd. Adam et Tannery), i, p.
76.
200. 2 P, vii, p.
292.
T
330 LOGIC AFTER THE RENAISSANCE
of V and V a parent of Z. We have here what might be called
a second power of an asymmetrical, intransitive, two-termed
relation. Leibniz could not fit it into his scheme, because he never
took relations seriously.
(4) We have seen that Leibniz was interested in the making
of an encyclopaedia because he hoped that a systematic collection
of knowledge would make it possible to construct a characteristica
universalis. But he had other reasons of a more obvious kind for
his interest. In the first place he was himself a polymath with a
strong desire to extend his learning yet farther and bring it all
into a single system. His works and his correspondence show the
enormous range of his curiosity. Logic, mathematics, physics,
engineering, biology, philology, history, politics, jurisprudence,
metaphysics, and theology were all for him congenial studies ;
and in nearly all of them his knowledge was at least equal to that
of the most learned of the age. Since he died there has been no
man for whom the same distinction could be claimed ; and his
writings show that his interest in the making of an encyclopaedia
was due in large part to his realization of a growing tendencyto the
fragmentation ofknowledge. 1 Secondly, hebelieved that the safety
of all society depended on the maintenance of good order in the
intellectual realm, and he sometimes thought of an encyclopaedia
as an instrument for uniting scholars of all groups. He was
especially interested in the reconciliation of the churches, and
himself devoted much care to the exposition ofthe doctrines which
had to be brought into harmony.
Like his other leading ideas, the project of an encyclopaedia
remained with Leibniz from his youth until his death, but it
took somewhat different forms at different dates. When he was
about twenty, he thought of it only as an opus Photianum, or series
of extracts from the best writers on all the various subjects. Thus
the logic would be taken mainly from Junge and the physics
mainly from Hobbes. 2 At this date mathematics had no more than
a minor place, in his scheme, because hehimself had not yet made
much progress in that science. But he insisted already that the
material should be presented in a logical order of development. At
a later date the mathematical ideal became dominant in his
thought, and he not only gave a bigger place to mathematics in
his scheme but wished to have the whole prepared in the demon-
strative form of Euclid's Elements. When his plans were most
ambitious, he proposed to include the knowledge of nature which
had been accumulated by craftsmen but not hitherto written
down for students to read. This idea may have been suggested to
1 P, vii, p. 160. 2 La Logique de Leibniz, pp. 57_I
THE INTERESTS OF LEIBNIZ 331
him by some of the work which he did for his employer, the
Elector of Hanover. But at a still later date he abandoned such
schemes in favour of a proposal that the encyclopaedia should
include only the first principles of the various sciences, and to-
wards the end of his life seems to have limited his project to the
presentation of a unified world-view, at once scientific and
religious. His tract called Principes de la nature et de la grace and
his Monadologie were written for this purpose.
The planning of the encyclopaedia was usually linked in Leib-
niz's thought with schemes for co-operative research in learned
academies. At various times he sent proposals to the Royal
Society of London, Louis XIV of France, Frederick I of Prussia,
and Peter the Great of Russia. With the King of Prussia he had
some success ; for his initiative led to the founding of the Prussian
Academy with himself as president for life. But in general the
i response to his proposals was not encouraging, and the last years
of his life must have been a time of disappointment. He had hoped
to accompany George I to England, but he was ordered to stay
in Hanover, perhaps because of the dispute about the discovery
of the differential calculus. When he died, there was little prospect
that science would be perfected and civilization made secure by
a college of illuminati.
(5) Projects for an encyclopaedia contributed to the formation
of Leibniz's logical theory only in so far as they led him to think
about the possibility of organizing knowledge in a deductive
system. But his reflections on scientific method were ofthe greatest
importance for his logic. Like Bacon and Descartes before him,
he thought it was possible to describe a procedure for the rapid
enlargement of knowledge, and he sometimes wrote as though
the work of research might be completed in his lifetime and made
available to all men by an order ofmissionaries (Ordo Pacidianorum
or Societas Theophilorum) devoted to that purpose. For there was
1
in his thinking an element of that mysticism which makes men
look for the consummation of history in a millenium. When he
wrote his De Arte Combinatoria, he had already the idea of a logic
of discovery, and in his later work this becomes the dominant
theme under which his other interests can all be organized. We
can see this most clearly from a number of fragments about a
work on General Science, i.e. the science of method, which he
planned to produce under the pseudonym 'Guilielmus Pacidius'.2
One of thesefragments, from which we reproduce selectionsbelow,
is especially interesting because it mentions all the various interests
ofLeibniz and shows by its style what sort of man he was.
- 1 0, pp.
3-8. 2 From Pax Dei : 0, p.
4.