Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/347

II. ON THE RELATION BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA AND THAT OF LEIBNIZ. 1 BY EGBERT LATTA. IT is not my intention to reopen the purely historical question regarding the actual intercourse between Spinoza and Leibniz and the particular ideas or suggestions which Leibniz may reasonably be held to have directly borrowed from Spinoza. On this point it would hardly be possible to add anything to the thorough work of Prof. Stein in his Leibniz und Spinoza, which seems to me to prove conclusively that Leibniz was no more a plagiarist of Spinoza than he was a plagiarist of Newton, but that he was " philosophically homo sui generis," strongly influenced by thinkers like Plato and Spinoza, yet in his philosophy neither Platonist nor Spinozist but always Leibnitian. 2 A few of the historical facts may, however, be mentioned as having suggestiveness in connexion with the large problem of the relation between the two systems. About a year before Spinoza's death Leibniz saw him at the Hague and had several conver- sations with him. At this time Leibniz was without a philosophical system of his own, dissatisfied with Cartesian- ism and ready to receive suggestions. He had just completed a long course of mathematical study by discovering the Infinitesimal Calculus, and on the way to Holland he wrote a paper on the principle of motion, doubtless with the view of getting Spinoza's opinion about it. This question of the laws of motion (in view of the theories of Descartes) was one of the two subjects which Leibniz mentions as having been discussed in course of the conversations at the Hague, the other subject being that of the necessity of the existence of an absolutely perfect Being. 3 In general it is clear from the evidence adduced by Stein 4 that Leibniz made a most careful study of most of Spinoza's writings and that he re- garded Spinoza's as the best of modern systems with the 1 Bead before the Aristotelian Society. 2 Leibniz u. Spinoza, p. 184. 1 V. infra pp. * Leibniz u. Spinoza, p. 286 sqq.