History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [335]
This argument apparently satisfied the Queen of Prussia. Her serfs continued to suffer the evil, while she continued to enjoy the good, and it was comforting to be assured by a great philosopher that this was just and right.
Leibniz's solution of the problem of evil, like most of his other popular doctrines, is logically possible, but not very convincing. A Manichæan might retort that this is the worst of all possible worlds, in which the good things that exist serve only to heighten the evils. The world, he might say, was created by a wicked demiurge, who allowed free will, which is good, in order to make sure of sin, which is bad, and of which the evil outweighs the good of free will. The demiurge, he might continue, created some virtuous men, in order that they might be punished by the wicked; for the punishment of the virtuous is so great an evil that it makes the world worse than if no good men existed. I am not advocating this opinion, which I consider fantastic; I am only saying that it is no more fantastic than Leibniz's theory. People wish to think the universe good, and will be lenient to bad arguments proving that it is so, while bad arguments proving that it is bad are closely scanned. In fact, of course, the world is partly good and partly bad, and no 'problem of evil' arises unless this obvious fact is denied.
I come now to Leibniz's esoteric philosophy, in which we find reasons for much that seems arbitrary or fantastic in his popular expositions, as well as an interpretation of his doctrines which, if it had become generally known, would have made them much less acceptable. It is a remarkable fact that he so imposed upon subsequent students of philosophy that most of the editors who published selections from the immense mass of his manuscripts preferred what supported the received interpretation of his system, and rejected as unimportant essays which prove him to have been a far more profound thinker than he wished to be thought. Most of the texts upon which we must rely for an understanding of his esoteric doctrine were first published in 1901 or 1903, in two works by Louis Couturat. One of these was even headed by Leibniz with the remark: 'Here I have made enormous progress.' But in spite of this, no editor thought it worth printing until Leibniz had been dead for nearly two centuries. It is true that his letters to Arnauld, which contain a part of his more profound philosophy, were published in the nineteenth century; but I was the first to notice their importance. Arnauld's reception of these letters was discouraging. He writes: 'I find in these thoughts so many things which alarm me, and which almost all men, if I am not mistaken, will find so shocking, that I do not see of what use a writing can be, which apparently all the world will reject.' This hostile opinion no doubt led Leibniz, thenceforth, to adopt a policy of secrecy as to his real thoughts on philosophical subjects.
The conception of substance, which is fundamental in the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, is derived from the logical category of subject and predicate. Some words can be either subjects or predicates; e.g. I can say 'the sky is blue' and 'blue is a colour'. Other words—of which proper names are the most obvious instances—can never occur as predicates, but only as subjects, or as one of the terms of a relation. Such words are held to designate substances. Substances, in addition to this logical characteristic, persist through time,