3. Ethico-political Consequences of the Idea of the
Chain of Being in the Eighteenth Century.
It is Leib-
niz, as we know, who draws
from the idea of a Chain
of Being, and particularly from the principle of
pleni-
tude, those optimistic consequences
already implicit—
consequences which for that matter did not
escape
others before him, for example, Giordano Bruno (cf.
De immenso [1591], II, 13). Already in the
De rerum
originatione radicali (1697),
Leibniz passes from the
principle of sufficient reason to the perfection of
the
world:
... from what has been said it follows that the world is
most
perfect, not only physically, or, if one prefers, meta-
physically, because that
series of things has been produced
in which there is actually a
maximum of reality, but also
that it is most perfect morally....
The world is not only
the most admirable mechanism but insofar as
it is composed
of souls, it is also the best republic, through
which the
greatest measure of happiness and joy is conferred
upon
these souls, in which their physical perfection consists
(Leibniz Selections, p. 351).
Experience seems to show the opposite: particularly
if we consider the
conduct of mankind, the world seems
rather chaotic than ordered by a
supreme wisdom. But,
objects Leibniz, it is not fair to judge the whole
by
the part. We know only a small part of an eternity
infinitely
extended, namely the extent of the memory
of a few millennia handed down by
history. And yet
from such scant experience we rashly judge what is
immense and eternal. It is as if we were to examine
a tiny portion of a
painting and discern there nothing
but a confused mass of colors without
design and with-
out art. In the universe, in
short, the part can be
disturbed without prejudice to the whole, which
will
inevitably escape whomever, like man, has only a
partial vision
of things. The theme is taken up again
by Leibniz on many occasions in the
Théodicée (1710)
and in the
Principes (1718).
We have seen how the principle of plenitude—by
virtue of which
all possible things pass into actual
existence (the criterion of
compossibility being the only
limiting factor)—was connected, in Leibniz, with
that
of sufficient reason. Of this latter principle Lovejoy
([1936],
pp. 145-49, 165-80) gives an interpretation
intended to show its affinity
with Spinoza's kind of
determinism. According to Lovejoy, the principle
of
sufficient reason, with its criterion of compossibility as
sole
restriction in the passage from the possible to the
actual, is not
substantially different from the universal
necessity of Spinoza; and
absolute logical determinism
would then be characteristic of the thought of
both.
This interpretation of the principle of sufficient rea-
son and of the consequent justification of moral and
physical
evil helps clarify the special nature of Leib-
nizian “optimism,” and in general of eighteenth-
century optimism of
Leibnizian derivation; and also
helps explain how it could coexist with a
description
of man's place in the universe which certainly does
not
seem, at first, to encourage an optimistic vision
of the human condition.
It was not a question of deny-
ing the existence
of evil but rather of showing the
necessity for it—and this was
done in the face of the
most dismal and grim descriptions of a natural
and
moral reality in which this same passage from possi-
bility to reality shaped up as a struggle for
existence.
This is a recurrent motif in the theological and moral
writings of the time, and there is an echo of it in Pope's
Essay on Man (1734), a great popularizer of the idea
of the Chain of Being and its implications. The contrast
between such
avowed optimism and this taste for the
grimmest descriptions of the human
condition did not
escape Voltaire, the most famous critic of the
optimism
of his day: Vous criez “Tout est
bien” d'une voix lamen-
table, he observed; and he invited his adversaries to
cease proposing the immutable laws of necessity as
explanation of evil.
In this plan of a perfect universe in which outrageous
(and necessary)
afflictions of individuals are embraced
and given a new value in the law of
universal harmony,
a not inconsistent feature was the idea that man,
far
from being the king of creation and the measure of
all things, was
a mere link in the Chain of Being,
infinitely farther from the highest
grades of creation
than he is above the lowest of creatures. This too
is
a recurrent motif in the literature of the time.
An argument in favor of political conservatism fol-
lowed from all of this: if the perfection of the divine
plan
requires a universe ordered in a hierarchy of
beings, each destined to
occupy a place in the scale
of creatures so that all gradations are filled,
then the
same law should prevail in the world of men, or the
moral
universe: the norm of behavior should be to live
in keeping with one's
condition, without subverting any
order of society which, like a microcosm,
reflects the
very order of the universe.
