the philosophy of Leibnitz, is a system of philosophy formed and published by its author in the last century, partly in commendation of the Cartesian, and partly in opposition to the Newtonian. The basis of Mr Leibnitz's philosophy was that of Des Cartes; for he retained the Cartesian subtle matter, with the universal plenitude and vortices; and represented the universe as a machine that should proceed forever by the laws of mechanism, in the most perfect state, by an absolute inviolable necessity, though in some things he differs from Des Cartes. After Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy was published in 1687, he printed an essay on the celestial motions, &c., Erud. 1689, where he admits of the circulation of the ether with Des Cartes, and of gravity with Sir Isaac Newton; though he has not reconciled these principles, nor shown how gravity arose from the impulse of this ether, nor how to account for the planetary revolutions, and the laws of the planetary motions in their respective orbits. That which he calls the harmonical circulation, is the angular velocity of any one planet, which decreases from the perihelion to the aphelion in the same proportion as its distance from the sun increases; but this law does not apply to the motions of the different planets compared together: because the velocities of the planets, at their mean distances, decrease in the same proportion as the square roots of the numbers expressing those distances. Besides, his system is defective, as it does not reconcile the circulation of the ether with the free motions of the comets in all directions, or with the obliquity of the planes of the planetary orbits; nor resolve other objections to which the hypothesis of the plenum and vortices is liable. Soon after the period just mentioned, the dispute commenced concerning the invention of the method of fluxions, which led Mr Leibnitz to take a very decided part in opposition to the philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton. From the wisdom and goodness of the Deity, and his principle of a sufficient reason, he concluded that the universe was a perfect work, or the best that could possibly have been made; and that other things, which were inconvenient and evil, were permitted as necessary consequences of what was best: the material system, considered as a perfect machine, can never fall into disorder, or require to be set right; and to suppose that God interposes in it, is to lessen the skill of the Author, and the perfection of his work. He expressly charges an impious tendency on the philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton, because he affirms, that the fabric of the universe and course of nature could not continue forever in its present state, but would require, in processes of time, to be re-established or renewed by the hand of its Former. The perfection of the universe, by reason of which it is capable of continuing forever by mechanical laws in its present state, led Mr Leibnitz to distinguish between the quantity of motion and the force of bodies; and, whilst he owns, in opposition to Des Cartes, that the former varies, to maintain that the quantity of force is forever the same in the universe, and to measure the forces of bodies by the squares of their velocities.

This system also requires the utter exclusion of atoms, or of any perfectly hard and inflexible bodies. The advocates of it allege, that according to the law of continuity, as they call a law of nature invented for the sake of the theory, all changes in nature are produced by insensible and infinitely small degrees; so that no body can, in any case, pass from motion to rest, or from rest to motion, without passing through all possible intermediate degrees of motion: whence they conclude, that atoms or perfectly hard bodies are impossible: because if two of them should meet with equal motions, in contrary directions, they would necessarily stop at once, in violation of the law of continuity.

Mr Leibnitz proposes two principles as the foundation of all our knowledge; the first, that it is impos- Leibnizian Bible for a thing to be and not to be at the same time, Philosophy, which he says, is the foundation of speculative truth; the other is, that nothing is without a sufficient reason why it should be so rather than otherwise; and by this principle, according to him, we make a transition from abstracted truths to natural philosophy. Hence he concludes, that the mind is naturally determined, in its volitions and elections, by the greatest apparent good, and that it is impossible to make a choice between things perfectly like, which he calls indifferencies; from whence he infers, that two things perfectly like could not have been produced even by the Deity: and he rejects a vacuum, partly because the parts of it must be supposed perfectly like to each other. For the same reason he also rejects atoms, and all similar particles of matter, to each of which, though divisible in infinitum, he ascribes a monad (Act. Lipsiae 1698, p. 435.) or active kind of principle, endowed, as he says, with perception and appetite. The essence of substance he places in action or activity, or, as he expresses it, in something that is between acting and the faculty of acting. He affirms absolute rest to be impossible; and holds motion, or a sort of nisus, to be essential to all material substances. Each monad he describes as representative of the whole universe from its point of sight; and after all, in one of his letters he tells us, that matter is not a substance, but a substantiatum, or phenomenon bien fondé. He frequently urges the comparison between the effects of opposite motives on the mind, and of weights placed in the scales of a balance, or of powers acting upon the same body with contrary directions. His learned antagonist Dr Clarke denies that there is a similitude between a balance moved by weights, and a mind acting upon the view of certain motives; because the one is entirely passive, and the other not only is acted upon, but acts also. The mind, he owns, is purely passive in receiving the impression of the motive, which is only a perception, and is not to be confounded with the power of acting after, or in consequence of, that perception. The difference between a man and a machine does not consist only in sensation and intelligence, but in this power of acting also. The balance, for want of this power, cannot move at all when the weights are equal; but a free agent, he says, when there appear two perfectly alike reasonable ways of acting, has still within itself a power of choosing; and it may have strong and very good reasons not to forbear.

The translator of Mohr's Ecclesiastical History observes, that the progress of Arminianism has declined in Germany and several parts of Switzerland, in consequence of the influence of the Leibnitzian and Wolfian philosophy. Leibnitz and Wolf, by attacking that liberty of indifference, which is supposed to imply the power of acting not only without, but against, motives struck, he says, at the very foundation of the Arminian system. He adds, that the greatest possible perfection of the universe, considered as the ultimate end of creating goodness, removes from the doctrine of predestination those arbitrary procedures and narrow views with which the Calvinists are supposed to have loaded it, and gives it a new, a more pleasing, and a more philosophical aspect. As the Leibnitzians laid down this great end as the supreme object of God's universal dominion, and the hope to which all his dispositions are directed; so they concluded, that if this Leibnitzian end was proposed, it must be accomplished. Hence Philosophy, the doctrine of necessity, to fulfil the purposes of a predestination founded in wisdom and goodness; a necessity, physical and mechanical, in the motions of material and inanimate things, but a necessity moral and spiritual in the voluntary determinations of intelligent beings, in consequence of propellent motives, which produce their effects with certainty, though these effects be contingent, and by no means the offspring of an absolute and essentially immutable fatality. These principles, says the same writer, are evidently applicable to the main doctrines of Calvinism; by them predestination is confirmed, though modified with respect to its reasons and its end; by them irresistible grace (irresistible in a moral sense) is maintained upon the hypothesis of propellent motives and a moral necessity: the perseverance of the saints is also explicable upon the same system, by a series of moral causes producing a series of moral effects.