German original: Abhandlung über die Quelle der ewigen Wahrheiten

Note: this English translation is not the version in The Owl of Minerva - it was made by Opus 4.8.

Read at the general session of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin on 17 January 1850

The question I intend to speak about today already occupied the philosophy of the Middle Ages, just as it is connected backward with the greatest investigations of philosophizing antiquity. Taken up again by Descartes and by Leibniz, it has, through the new philosophical movement initiated by Kant — a movement which, notwithstanding all interruptions and momentary distortions, has still not been diverted from its true goal — likewise entered a new stage and has perhaps been brought nearer to a decision. The question I mean concerns the so-called eternal or necessary truths, and in particular the source of these; yet this was the simplest expression; in the fuller one it was a matter of the origine essentiarum, idearum, possibilium, veritatum aeternarum (the origin of essences, ideas, possibles, eternal truths); all of this was regarded as one and the same. For, 1. as regards the essences, it counted as an uncontradicted principle: essentias rerum esse aeternas (that the essences of things are eternal). Contingency (contingentia) always refers only to the existence of things: contingent is the plant existing here, in this place, or now, in this moment, but necessary and eternal is the essence of the plant, which cannot be otherwise, but is only thus or not at all. From this it is at once evident that the essentiae rerum (essences of things) are also the same as the more or less Platonically conceived ideas. Furthermore, since in the case of the essence actuality does not come into consideration — inasmuch as the essence remains the same whether the thing actually exists or not, just as the essence of a circle is not in the least altered by my actually describing a circle — it is from this comprehensible that the realm of essence is also the realm of possibilities, and that what is only thus possible, is necessarily so. This leads of itself to the fourth expression, the necessary or eternal truths. Usually this is referred only to the mathematical ones. But the concept is much broader. If, like Kant, we conceive the highest idea of reason as the sum total of all possibilities, then there will also be a science that distinguishes these possibilities and makes them knowable, in that it lets them, through the activity of thought, step forth out of potentiality and become actual in thought — as mathematics does when it takes what in a figure, e.g. the right-angled triangle, is merely potentia (in respect of capacity), such as the relation of the hypotenuse to the legs, when, I say, it finds this out, in that the activity of thought (ho nous energäsas — the intellect having acted) raises it into act. Phaneron, says Aristotle, hoti ta dynamei onta eis energeian anagomena heurisketai (It is manifest that what merely is in potency is found by being brought over into act). This is the way of all pure or mere science of reason. In the highest idea of reason the plant, too, is now indisputably predetermined, and it will not be absolutely impossible to advance from the first possibilities, which still present themselves as principles, to the already manifoldly conditioned and composite possibility of the plant. It will not, I say, be absolutely impossible. For here it is not at all a question of what is possible for us, but of what is possible in itself; what is possible for us is everywhere dependent on many highly contingent conditions; for such derivations the aid of experience is indispensable for us (a higher intelligence could perhaps dispense with it): experience is an ever-advancing, never-completed one, and even the measure of the application of our in-themselves limited mental faculties is very much conditioned by contingencies. But assuming now — what in general is to be assumed as possible and may never be given up — that from the highest idea of reason down to the plant, as a necessary moment of that idea, a continuous progression is to be found: then the plant, in this connection, is no longer anything contingent, but is itself an eternal truth; and I will not pronounce how one would have to judge the — natural scientist to whom this were a matter of indifference and — whose researches were not accompanied by the constant consciousness that he, with whatever he may be occupied, has to do not with a merely contingent thing of no worth for reason, but with such a one as has, in the great connection — even if to him unsurveyable — a necessary place and therewith an eternal truth.

Now that I believe I have in this way shown the extension of the object of the question, I come to the occasion, and shall first adduce what determined the Schoolmen to look about for the source of the eternal truths.

This occasion, then, was that eternal, i.e. necessary, truths could not have their sanction from the divine will; established merely by divine good pleasure, they were contingent truths, which just as well could also be untruths; there had therefore to be recognized a source of them independent of the divine will, and likewise there had to be something independent of the divine will in which the possibilities of things had their ground. To be sure, for Thomas Aquinas the possibility was still in the essentia divina (divine essence) itself, namely in it conceived as participabilis sive imitabilis (as participable or imitable); a representation of which a trace is still found in Malebranche. In the expressions one easily recognizes the Platonic methexis (participation) and the more Pythagorean mimësis (imitation). But who does not at the same time see that here the capacity of things to participate in the divine essence or to imitate it — in which the possibility of things would consist — that for this there is substituted a capacity of the divine essence to let itself be participated in or imitated, whereby the possibility on the side of things would not be explained. Unavoidable, therefore, was the recognition of an original possibility of things independent not merely of the divine will, but also of the divine essence. Such a one was asserted by the Scotists, compelled thereto, as an adherent of Leibniz expresses it, coacti admittere principium realitatis essentiarum nescio quod a Deo distinctum eique coaeternum et connecessarium, ex quo essentiarum pendeat necessitas et aeternitas (compelled to admit an I-know-not-what principle of the reality of essences, distinct from God and coeternal and connecessary with him, on which the necessity and eternity of essences depend). This nescio quod (I-know-not-what) might, moreover, even according to the expressions used by Scotus, have been overcome up to a certain point. Scotus spoke of an ens diminutum, in quo possibile constitutum sit (a diminished being, in which the possible is constituted). Ens diminutum (diminished being) is meant, in the Latin of Scotus, indisputably to designate nothing other than what is to be called being only in a subordinate sense — just as Aristotle too distinguishes the prötös on (primarily being) from that which is merely hepomenös on (consequently being), from that which is only as a consequence and co-posited with another, the energeia on (actually being) from the merely hylikös on (materially being), and equates the latter with the dynamei on (potentially being) or the më on (non-being) — well to be distinguished from the ouk on (the utterly non-being, the wholly and entirely not being). About the material nature, then, of that co-posited there remained no doubt. What was unresolved, and has remained unresolved down to our own time, lay not in its constitution, but in the fact that that which, according to its own nature, is merely able-to-be must nevertheless have some relation to God. But now came Descartes, who, cutting the knot in his own way, namely hastily, pronounced the opposite: that the mathematical, like the other so-called eternal truths, are fixed by God and depend on the divine will no otherwise than all other creatures. (Descartes' own words, in one of his letters, are as follows: Metaphysicas quaestiones in Physica mea attingam, praesertim vero hanc: veritates mathematicas, quas aeternas appellas, fuisse a Deo stabilitas et ab illo pendere non secus quam reliquas creaturas — In my Physics I shall touch upon metaphysical questions, but especially this one: that the mathematical truths, which you call eternal, were established by God and depend on him no otherwise than the rest of the creatures.) One might attempt to interpret the words as though only the independence of the eternal truths from the divine cognition were to be refuted, in opposition to those Scotists who taught: the eternal truths would subsist even if there were no understanding at all, not even the divine. But this interpretation is contradicted by another utterance of the philosopher, the following: In Deo unum idemque est velle et cognoscere, ita ut hoc ipso quod aliquid velit ideo cognoscat, et ideo tantum res est vera (In God to will and to know are one and the same, so that by the very fact that he wills something he thereby knows it, and only therefore — namely because he wills it — is a thing true).

The immediate consequence that would follow from this assertion would be, for mathematics, that it is a mere science of experience; for what is the consequence of a will, and accordingly contingent, since it could just as well not be, can only be experienced, not, as one says, known a priori. But this is already contradicted by the fact that in experience there is no point, in actuality no line, that is perfectly straight or without all breadth, from which in any case it would follow that in the first concepts or presuppositions of geometry something other than mere experience is at play. I say in any case: for with the general point that mathematics is an a priori science the matter is not settled either, but I cannot here enter into the special investigation of the genesis of the mathematical truths and must reserve it for another occasion. But most of all is the assertion (that the mathematical doctrines are to be true only in consequence of the divine will) contradicted by the whole nature of mathematics. For wherever will comes in between, it is a matter of the actual; but it is manifest that geometry, e.g., does not trouble itself about the actual, but only about the possible triangle, and the sense of none of its propositions is that it actually is so, but that it cannot be otherwise, and that the triangle, e.g., is only possible in such a way that its angles taken together are equal to two right angles — from which then indeed it follows that the triangle will also be so if it Is, but that it Is is regarded as wholly indifferent. The consequence in regard to mathematics Descartes would indeed have been least of all willing to concede; but it is nonetheless true that it follows inevitably from his derivation of the eternal truths from the divine will, and that with this assumption all eternally valid truth would be withdrawn from the sciences generally. One could, like Pierre Bayle, draw from Descartes' pronouncement the conclusion that 3+3 = 6 is only true where and so long as it pleases God, that it is perhaps untrue in other regions of the universe and next year ceases to be true even for us. But of more serious consequence would the matter be if the doctrine were transferred to the moral and religious domain, as was done by some theologians of the Reformed Church, who let themselves be carried by the doctrine of the decretum absolutum (absolute decree) to the opinion that even the distinction of good and evil is not an objective one, but one established solely by the divine will. From this side especially was Descartes attacked by the above-mentioned Bayle, whose words — which Leibniz found not unworthy of a passage in his Theodicy — I may repeat here too. "A number of the most serious authors," says he, "declare themselves for the view that, prior to and independent of any divine command, there is in the nature of things themselves a good and an evil. As proof of this assertion the abominable consequences of the opposite doctrine count especially for them, but there is a directly cogent argument taken from metaphysics. It is a certain thing that God's existence is not a consequence of his will; he does not exist because he wills, and if he is no more omnipotent or omniscient because he wills to be so, then his will can extend only to what is outside him, yet even so only to that it Is, not, however, to that which belongs to the essence of it. God, if he willed, could not make matter, man, the circle actual, but it was impossible for him to make them actual without imparting to them their essential properties, which accordingly do not depend on his willing." One must not take witty speeches too strictly; otherwise one might see glimmering through Bayle's words the opinion that God's existence is an eternal truth in the same sense in which 3+3 = 6 is one for him; an opinion which perhaps one might feel just as much tempted to contradict as did that abbot of a monastery who reprimanded the over-zealous teacher who had let himself be carried away to say that God's existence is as certain as that twice two is four — reprimanding him for this pronouncement by adding that God's existence is far more certain than that 2x2 = 4. I fully comprehend, if, as is further related, the listeners laughed at such an utterance, just as I comprehend that there are still enough people even now who cannot comprehend how anything could be more certain than that 2x2 = 4. Without wishing to examine the expression, it is certain that there are truths of different order, and that to the truths of arithmetic and of mathematics generally, already for this reason, unconditioned certainty cannot belong, because these sciences — as I adduced from Plato in my earlier lecture — go to work with presuppositions which they themselves do not justify, and thereby, as regards their worth and validity, acknowledge a higher tribunal; further, because they know much only empirically, e.g. about even and odd, derived and prime numbers, for which they have not even yet found a law of their mutual distance.

With Bayle now Leibniz declares himself in agreement, as regards the independence of the eternal truths from the divine will, but not likewise with the most extreme among the Scotists, or in general with those who set up a realm of eternal truths independent of God in every sense, or a nature of things subsisting for itself and outside all connection with God. If the will of God can only be the cause of the actuality of things, then the source of their possibility cannot also lie in this will, but it can just as little be one unconditionally and in every respect independent of God. "In my view," says Leibniz (in the Theodicy), "the divine will is the cause of the actuality, but the divine understanding is the source of the possibility of things; it is that which makes the truth of the eternal truths, without the will having any part in it. All reality — thus, he means to say, also that which we must ascribe to the eternal truths — all reality must be grounded on something that exists. It is indeed true — what already a part of the Schoolmen asserted — that even the denier of God can be a perfect geometer. But if there were no God, there would be no object of geometry, and without God there would be not only nothing that exists, but also nothing possible. This does not prevent those who have no knowledge of the connection of all things among themselves and with God from being able to understand certain sciences without knowing their first source, which is in God." Since Leibniz infers this only of certain sciences, he has manifestly excepted philosophy. Ultima ratio tam essentiarum quam existentiarum in Uno (The ultimate ground both of essences and of existences is in the One) is Leibniz's general pronouncement in the treatise de rerum originatione radicali (On the radical origination of things). Between "being wholly independent of God" and being determined by divine arbitrariness there is something in the middle. This middle thing lies in independence from the divine understanding. Leibniz makes use of this distinction especially in order to remove from the divine will every reproach on account of the ill and the evil in the world. The cause of ill, he says, is grounded in the ideal nature of things, which does not depend on the divine will but is only in the divine understanding.

But now this understanding — how does it stand toward the eternal truths? Either it determines of itself and without being bound to anything what is to be necessary and eternal in things; in this case it is not to be seen how it differs from the will; here too it holds: stat pro ratione voluntas (the will stands in place of the reason). If it is the understanding of God that, without being determined or restricted by anything, thinks out for itself the possibilities of things, which in actuality become necessities, then in this way too one will not escape arbitrariness. Or is the sense this: the understanding does not create these possibilities, it finds them before it, it discovers them as already existing — then there must be something different from this understanding and presupposed by it, in which these possibilities are grounded and in which it beholds them. But this, which is thus independent of the divine understanding, and to which we should have to think this understanding itself bound — how are we to name it? As source of the universal and necessary in things it can itself no longer be anything individual, as we must think the understanding; for even the Leibnizian expression l'entendement divin (the divine understanding) can only be understood of a divine faculty. But independent of everything individual, indeed opposed to it, itself the universal and the seat of the universal and necessary truths — all this can be said only of reason. We should thus be directed to an eternal reason existing independently of the divine will, whose barriers or laws the divine understanding could not overstep in its own productions or designs. But once at this point, and enchanted by the universal that lifts us up above all that is individual — should we stop at this point, and not rather seek to rid ourselves entirely of the individual? And this all the more, since, if one distinguishes between this reason and God, two mutually independent things must be assumed, neither of which is to be derived from the other, whereas science above all and first of all presses for unity of principle. Why then not say that God himself is nothing other than this eternal reason — an opinion which, once adopted as incontrovertible and as self-evident among clever people, relieves one of infinite troubles and removes at one stroke everything hard to comprehend?

One will perhaps object to this advance that it is far more a leap and transports us from the Leibnizian time immediately into the present. For the system in which reason is everything is precisely the newest one. But from this it would not follow what one wishes to infer. In the period from Leibniz down to Kant, rationalism was the general mode of thought of the time and only represented by no philosophical system (for at that time, as is well known, such was lacking), and therefore compelled to assert itself in a more popular manner and to throw itself upon theology. This theological rationalism, which indeed did not itself yet know what it ultimately wanted, proceeded (this can be exactly demonstrated historically) directly out of the Wolffian school. But if this rationalism has only in the most recent time arrived at setting itself up as a philosophical system, then it owes this, to be sure, to the later development, but it does not therefore have its real roots in this, but in the time preceding it. For a mode of thought that has once become general and become as it were a second nature to a whole age is overcome only by a few who present themselves as exceptions, and cannot be at once abolished by a philosophical system; rather the contrary takes place, that the accepted mode of thought abolishes that system, in that it makes it subservient to itself and puts up only with that thus fettered thing.

A great and unavoidable inconvenience, however, attaches to this expedient too. For as, on the one hand, the mere divine will does not explain the necessary and universal of things, so, on the other, it is impossible to explain from pure, mere reason the contingent and the actuality of things. To this end nothing would remain but to assume that reason becomes untrue to itself, falls away from itself — that the same idea which was first presented as the most perfect, and against which no dialectic could do anything further, that this idea, without having any ground for it in itself, quite properly, as the French say, sans rime ni raison (without rhyme or reason), shatters itself into this world of contingent things, things opaque to reason and resistant to the concept. This attempt, if it were made, would be a remarkable example of what one may offer to a prejudiced age; to judge it? — yes, perhaps with the Terentian words: haec si tu postules certa ratione facere, nihilo plus agas, quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias (if you should demand to do these things — such a deranging of reason by itself — by fixed reasoning, you would accomplish no more than if you took pains to be mad with reason).

To tie in again with Leibniz —: it is manifest that, in order to avoid the equally impossible of a perfect dependence and a complete independence, Leibniz assumes two different faculties in God; but would it not be simpler and more natural to seek the cause of the different relation to God in the nature of that nescio quod itself, which is supposed to contain the ground of all possibility and, as it were, the stuff, the matter for all possibilities, but accordingly can itself be only possibility, thus only the potentia universalis (universal potency), which as such, toto coelo (by the whole heaven, i.e. utterly) different from God, must also, according to its essence, thus considered merely logically, be independent of him of whom all doctrines say in agreement that he is pure actuality, actuality in which there is nothing of potency. So far the relation is still a merely logical one. But how will the real relation now present itself? Simply thus: That which comprehends all possibility, itself merely possible, being incapable of self-being, will be able to be only in this way, that it stands as mere matter of another, which is being to it, and against which it appears as that which is itself not being. I give these determinations without further motivation, because they are all grounded on well-known Aristotelian propositions. To hylikon oudepote kath' hautou lekteon — "the material, that which is capable only of a material being, cannot be said of itself, it can only be said of another," which other it accordingly is. For when I say (predicate) B of A, I say that A is B. But this other, which this thing incapable of self-being is, this would have to be the self-being, and indeed the self-being in the highest sense — God. The real relation, then, would be that God is that which for itself is not being, which now, insofar as it is — namely Is in the way in which alone it can be — will appear as the ens universale (universal being), as the essence in which all essences, i.e. all possibilities, are.

With this development we have arrived at the standpoint first, as it were, conquered by Kant, which fell to him as the highest prize of his equally indefatigable and honest inquiry, even though he only just reached this standpoint without himself advancing further from it. I can be brief about Kant's doctrine of the Ideal of reason, since I earlier made it — with the intention of later referring back to it — the object of a detailed treatise, which I had the honor likewise to read here. Kant shows, then, that to the intellectual determination of things there belongs the idea of the total possibility or of a sum total of all predicates. This is what post-Kantian philosophy understands when it speaks of the idea simply, without further determination; but this idea itself now does not exist, it is, as one is wont to say, mere idea; nothing universal at all exists, but only the individual, and the universal essence exists only when the absolute individual being is it. Not the idea is the cause of the being of the Ideal, but the Ideal is the cause of the being of the idea, as one is also generally wont to say that through the Ideal the idea is actualized. In the proposition: the Ideal is the idea, the is accordingly does not have the meaning of the mere logical copula. God is the idea does not mean: he is himself only idea, but: he is the cause of the being of the idea (of the idea in that high sense, where it is potentially all things), he is the cause of the being of the idea, the cause that it Is, aitia tou einai (cause of being), in the Aristotelian expression.

The relation is thus now indeed so determined that God is the universal essence, but as yet neither how, nor in consequence of what necessity he is it. As regards now the how, it is understood, beyond what has already been said, that God is the All of possibility in an eternal manner, thus before all doing, hence also before all willing. And yet it is not He himself who is this All. In himself there is no What, he is the pure That — actus purus. But all the more, if in himself there is no What and nothing universal, by what necessity does it happen that what itself, or in itself, is without all What, that this is the universal essence, the all-comprehending What?

It can be of no help to say: of the merely individual, without the universal, there would be no science. Hë epistëmë tou katholou (Science is of the universal). For why precisely should there be science? and never can the possibility of our knowing be the cause of the fact that he, in whom there is absolutely nothing universal, and who precisely thereby is far exalted above all that we otherwise call individual (for this always still carries very much of the universal within it) — that this one, who is the absolute individual being, is the universal essence. Since he is it not willingly, and also not in consequence of his essence or self — for this, as the most singular (to malista chöriston — the most separate), i.e. as the most individual, is rather that from which nothing universal can follow — he can be the All-comprehending only in consequence of a necessity reaching out beyond himself. But what necessity? Let us try it in this way. Let us say this necessity is that of the oneness of thinking and being — this is the highest law, and its sense is this, that whatever Is must also have a relation to the concept, that what Is nothing, i.e. what has no relation to thinking, also does not truly Is.

God contains in himself nothing but the pure That of his own being; but this, that he Is, would be no truth if he were not Something — Something, to be sure, not in the sense of a being, but of that which is the being of all that is — if he did not have a relation to thinking, a relation not to a concept, but to the concept of all concepts, to the idea. Here is the true place for that unity of being and thinking, which, once pronounced, has been applied in very different ways. For it is easy to tear individual scraps from a system that one does not survey and that perhaps is moreover still far removed from the necessary execution, but it is hard to cover one's nakedness with such scraps, and therefore not to apply them in the wrong place. It is a long way to the highest opposition, and everyone who wishes to speak of it should ask himself twice whether he has traversed this way. The unity that is here meant reaches to the highest opposition; that is therefore also the last boundary, is that beyond which one cannot go. But in this unity the priority is not on the side of thinking; being is the first, thinking only the second or the following. This opposition is at the same time that of the universal and the absolutely individual. But the way does not go from the universal to the individual, as one nowadays generally seems to hold. Even a Frenchman, who moreover has earned merit with respect to Aristotle, adheres to this general opinion, in that he says: le général se réalise en s'individualisant (the universal realizes itself by individualizing itself). It would be hard to say whence the means and the power come to the universal to realize itself. Rather is it to be said: that the individual, and indeed most of all that which is such in the highest sense, that the individual realizes itself, i.e. makes itself intelligible, enters into the circle of reason and of knowing, in that it generalizes itself, i.e. in that it makes the universal, the all-comprehending essence into its own Self, clothes itself with it. Could one nowadays still be astonished at anything, one would have to be so at hearing Plato too, and Aristotle, named on that side where thinking is set above being. Plato? — well, yes, if one overlooks that solitary passage in the sixth book of the Republic, where he says of the agathon, i.e. of the Highest in his thoughts: ouk ousias ontos tou agathou all' eti epekeina tës ousias presbeia kai dynamei hyperechontos (the good not being essence, but still beyond essence, surpassing it in dignity and power) — thus, that the Highest is no longer ousia, essence, What, but still beyond essence, that which in dignity and power precedes it. Even the word presbeia, which in its first meaning designates age, only in its second regard, prerogative, dignity, is not chosen in vain, but precisely to express the priority before essence. If, then, one overlooks this passage, it might seem as though Plato gave to thinking the precedence over being. But Aristotle? Aristotle, to whom the world owes above all the insight that only the individual exists, that the universal, the being, is only attribute (katëgorëma monon — predicate only), not itself self-being, like that which alone can be posited prötös, first — Aristotle, whose expression hou hë ousia energeia (that whose essence is act) alone would strike down all doubt; for here ousia is what otherwise for Aristotle is the ti estin, the essence, the What, and the sense is that in God no What, no essence precedes, that in place of the essence the act enters, that actuality anticipates the concept, thinking. But to this absolute That in God only the absolute What can then correspond. But how both are chained to one another, for this there is still need of a more precise expression. God is the universal essence, the indifference of all possibilities; he is this not in a contingent, but in a necessary and eternal manner; he has it in himself to be this indifference — in himself in the sense in which one may say of a man that he has something in himself, in order to express that he has not willed it, indeed sometimes even that he does not know of it. But precisely for this reason, because God is that other without his doing, in an unwilled, thus in respect of himself contingent manner, it is something come to him in addition, a symbebëkos (accident) in the Aristotelian sense, though a necessary one, an autë kath hauton hyparchon (belonging to it by itself), but which is nevertheless not in the essence for him (më en të ousia on — not being in the essence), against which, therefore (which does not indeed belong here, but is important for the sequel), the essence too remains free for him. Aristotle illustrates such a not-in-the-essence and yet in-itself having by a simile taken from geometry. That the angles of a triangle together = two right angles is indeed a kath' hauto hyparchon (belonging to it in itself) of the triangle, something accruing to it in consequence of necessary derivation, but it is nevertheless not in its ousia, for the concept of the right angle itself does not occur at all in the essential determination or definition of the triangle; there can be a triangle without a right angle.

The discussions to which I have here abandoned myself seem to lie far from all that now preeminently occupies minds, and yet they have a very close bearing on the present. For that preponderance granted to thinking over being, to the What over the That, seems to me not a particular but a general ailment of the whole German nation — which is, fortunately, equipped by God with imperturbable self-satisfaction — a nation that shows itself able for so long — a long — time, unconcerned about the That, to occupy itself with the What of a constitution. That, therefore, by which German philosophy has in the last period been struck with unhappy unproductivity, the same seems to me to be also the cause of the political unproductivity of Germany, most painfully to be felt in a state which, raised from small and doubtful beginnings by indefatigable energy to great importance, has all the more cause always to be mindful of that word of the great Italian, that states are preserved only by the same causes by which they have become great. When, in a manner exalted above every challenge and all doubt, the being has first been established, one may, as of itself has always happened too, seek to make the content of this being more just to thinking and to reason. But if one begins with the content, which, for itself and severed from all conditions of existence, can only be a universal one: then one will indeed be able to continue this for a while, but at the end will become aware with horror that the vessel is lacking to receive this content. The What leads of itself into the wide, into multiplicity, and thus also naturally to polyarchy, for the What is in each thing another, the That by its nature and therefore in all things only One; in the great commonwealth that we call nature and world there rules a single That excluding all multiplicity from itself; but if, with Plato too, it is to be assumed that neither the uneducated and unversed in all truth will administer the state well, nor yet those who have lived incessantly and exclusively in science — the former not, because they are not accustomed to pursue One end in life, but manifold and contingent ends; the latter not, because they will not voluntarily engage in human affairs, but will fancy themselves already now dwelling in the Isles of the Blessed — then from this it cannot follow that the philosopher, even should the contingent political current run to the opposite side, should not all the more, in science, hold fast to that Homeric maxim, which already through Aristotle metaphysics has appropriated to itself as its ultimate principle:

eis koiranos estö. (Let there be one ruler.)

Footnotes:

1. Erdmann edition of Leibniz, p. 560, § 183.
2. Ibid., p. 561, § 184.
3. Contained in the twelfth lecture [on the Philosophy of Mythology].

Source: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling: Werke. Vol. 3, Leipzig 1907. Written 1850. First printed in: Sämtliche Werke, ed. by K.F.A. Schelling, Stuttgart (Cotta) 1856-1861.