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Leibnitz warns against the misuse of the Cartesian principle, that whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive concerning anything is true, and may be predicated concerning it {quidqitid dare et distincte de re aUgrm percipio, id est verwn sou de ea enunciabile) ; often that appears to us as clear and distinct, which is obscure and confused ; the principle in question is then only sufficient, when the criteria of clear- ness and distinctness above laid down have been applied, and when the ideas involve no contradiction and the propositions have been made certain according to the rules of the ordinary (Aristotelian) logic, by exact observation and faultless demonstra- tion, Leibnitz believed it possible to reduce all thinking to reckoning, and all correctness in the conduct of thought to correctness in reckoning, if there could be found for the simplest ideas and for the modes of combining them signs as adequate as those employed in mathematics, and, especially, as those introduced by Vieta in his method of represent- ing all numbers by letters (Vieta, In Artetn Analytimm Isagoge seu Algebra Nova, 1635, which contains, P 8, the following affirmation : logistiee numerosa est, quce per numeros, speciosa, qucf per species seu rerwn farmas exhibetur, xitpote per alphabetica dementa, see Trendelenburg, Uist Beitr, III, P 6). This was the object of the plan elaborated by Leibnitz in his early years, defended by him in his later years, and which he mentions in many of his works and letters of a Character istlca Universalis {Specieuse genirale), which, however, remained a mere project. (What Leibnitz intended, to what extent, in particular,he followed George Dalgams Ars signorum,vulgo character universalis et lingua phUosophica, London, 1661, and also John Wilkins Essay toward a Real, Clmract&r and a Philosophical Language, London, 1668, how far his own numerous but sporadic and hesitating attempts conducted him, what was accomplished towards the partial execution of the project of Leibnitz on the basis, however, of the Kantian doctrine of oategories by Ludwig Benedict Trede, the author of an anonymous work, published at Hamburg, in 1811, and entitled : "Yorschldge zu einer nothvoendigen Sprachlekre, all this is shown by Trendelenburg in the paper above cited. Whatever of truth is contained in the fun- damental idea of this plan is realized in the signs of mathematics, chemistry, etc ) To the collection of public acts and treaties, published by Leibnitz at Hanover, in 1693, and entitled, " Codex juris gentium diplomaticus, Leibnitz prefixed a number of definitions of ethical and juridical conceptions. The controverted question, whether there was such a thing as disinterested love {am&r Tion mercenarius ab omni utilitatis resfiectu separatus), he seeks to answer by the definition of love as delight in the happi- ness of others {cvmare sive diligere est felieiUxte alterius delectari), in which definition, on the one hand, the element of personal satisfaction is not lost sight of, and, on the other hand, the source of this satisfaction is found in the happiness of others (which latter qualification is wanting in the definition of Spinoza : " Love is joy accompanied by the idea of its external cause. prev next |