New Essays on Human Understanding

Locke's *Essay* answered chapter by chapter: the mind, Leibniz replies, is less a blank tablet than a block of marble already veined with the figure.

by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz978 passages held

French, the original language

Original title: Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain
First published: 1765(published posthumously)
Original language: French

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Overview

Leibniz had read part of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding within a few years of its publication in 1690, and let an intermediary pass some comments to Locke, some admiring, some critical. Locke received them sourly, and in a 1697 letter to his friend William Molyneux he made a sceptical remark about Leibniz's great name. When Pierre Coste's French translation appeared in 1700, Leibniz, who read English only with effort, took the book up again. In 1703 he began a reply that follows Locke chapter by chapter: a dialogue between Philalethes, who speaks for Locke, and Theophilus, who speaks for Leibniz. Locke's first book denies that anything is written in the mind before experience. Leibniz grants that the senses are needed to set thinking going, but denies that they can supply necessary truths, which the mind finds in itself: the mind is less a blank tablet than a block of marble whose veins already outline the figure. He adds that the mind always holds countless perceptions too slight to notice. The dialogue was finished in 1704, and when Locke died that autumn Leibniz lost the wish to publish it. The manuscript stayed in Hanover for sixty years, until Rudolf Erich Raspe, later the author of the Baron Munchausen tales, printed it at Amsterdam and Leipzig in 1765. It caused a sensation, and began to restore a reputation that had come to rest on the Theodicy and on Voltaire's mockery of it.

Key concepts

What is the blank tablet, and what does Leibniz put in its place?

The blank tablet is Locke’s picture of the mind, on which nothing is written before experience. Leibniz replaces it with a block of marble whose veins already outline the figure. The senses are still needed to set thinking going, as the sculptor is needed, but what emerges follows lines that were in the mind from the start.

What are necessary truths, and why can’t the senses supply them?

Truths that could not be otherwise, such as those of mathematics. The senses show what has happened in the cases met so far, but no number of cases shows that something must hold in every case. So Leibniz holds that the mind finds necessary truths in itself, even though experience is needed to set that finding going.

Who are Philalethes and Theophilus?

The two speakers of the dialogue. Philalethes speaks for Locke and presents the Essay Concerning Human Understanding chapter by chapter; Theophilus speaks for Leibniz and replies. The form lets Locke’s own position be stated at length before it is answered, which is why the New Essays follow the order of Locke’s book.

What are the perceptions ‘too slight to notice’?

The countless perceptions Leibniz says the mind always holds without being aware of them. They are real perceptions, but individually too faint to reach awareness. The claim widens what a mind contains beyond what it notices, and so changes the terms of the dispute with Locke about what is in the mind before it attends to anything.

Why did the New Essays stay unpublished for sixty years?

When Locke died in autumn 1704, just as the dialogue was finished, Leibniz lost the wish to publish it. The manuscript stayed in Hanover until Rudolf Erich Raspe, later the author of the Baron Munchausen tales, printed it in 1765. It caused a sensation and began to restore Leibniz’s reputation.

How did Leibniz come to write a reply to Locke?

He read part of the Essay within a few years of its publication in 1690 and let an intermediary pass comments to Locke, who received them sourly. When Pierre Coste’s French translation appeared in 1700, Leibniz, who read English only with effort, took the book up again, and in 1703 began the chapter-by-chapter reply.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Blank Tablet or Veined Marble

Is anything in the mind before experience puts it there? Locke says no; Leibniz grants that the senses set thinking going, and denies that they can supply a single necessary truth.

Locke’s first book denies that anything is written in the mind before experience. Theophilus, speaking for Leibniz, concedes that the senses are needed to set thinking going, but denies that they can supply necessary truths: experience can show what has happened, not what must. Those truths the mind finds in itself. So the mind is less a blank tablet than a block of marble whose veins already outline the figure; the work of bringing it out is still needed, but it follows lines already there. The reply runs chapter by chapter through Locke’s Essay, as a dialogue between Philalethes and Theophilus.

innate ideas
empiricism
knowledge
reason
certainty
demonstration
mathematics
epistemology
ideas
reasoning

Enter a dialogue

Perceptions Too Slight to Notice

Is there more going on in a mind than it can notice? Against Locke, Leibniz holds that the mind always carries countless perceptions too slight to reach awareness.

Alongside the veined marble, the New Essays press a second correction to Locke: the mind always holds countless perceptions too slight to notice. What a person is aware of at any moment is only part of what is happening in them. The claim bears on the whole dispute, since a mind that perceives more than it notices can also contain more than it knows it contains, and the argument over what is innate turns partly on what the mind holds without attending to it.

perception
consciousness
memory
soul
human nature
judgment

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 978
distinct concepts: 860
by passages held, corpus-wide: #64

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “classification” and “language”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 87 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
classification	language	22
ideas	knowledge	18
ideas	language	18
ideas	perception	18
knowledge	perception	15
epistemology	innate ideas	12
knowledge	language	11
perception	reason	11
innate ideas	reason	10
classification	knowledge	9
epistemology	ideas	8
classification	ideas	6
epistemology	reason	6
knowledge	reason	6
epistemology	knowledge	5
epistemology	perception	5
innate ideas	knowledge	5
classification	perception	4
classification	reason	4
ideas	reason	4
language	perception	3
classification	epistemology	2
epistemology	language	2
innate ideas	language	2
innate ideas	perception	2
language	reason	2
ideas	innate ideas	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1684 Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas (Meditationes de cognitione, veritate et ideis)
A journal article of 1684, written into the Arnauld–Malebranche quarrel over ideas; its grades of knowledge return in the Discourse on Metaphysics and the New Essays.
LA
1691 Whether the Essence of a Body Consists in Extension (Lettre sur la question si l'essence du corps consiste dans l'étendue)
Against the Cartesian view that body is nothing but extension: a letter to the Paris Journal des Sçavans in 1691, followed by a second in 1693.
FR
1695 New System of Nature (Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances)
Leibniz's first public statement of his system, printed in Paris in 1695; his replies to Foucher and Bayle kept it in the journals until 1698.
FR
1698 On Nature Itself (De ipsa natura)
An answer to Johann Christoph Sturm in the Acta Eruditorum of 1698, defending forces inside created things and tying the dynamics to the metaphysics of substance.
LA
1710 Theodicy (Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal)
Published anonymously at Amsterdam in 1710, it was the book by which the eighteenth century knew Leibniz, and the one Voltaire answered with Candide.
FR
1717 The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Recueil des lettres entre Leibniz et Clarke)
Ten papers exchanged through the Princess of Wales in 1715–16, cut off by Leibniz's death and published by Clarke in 1717.
FR
1718 Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason (Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison)
A companion summary from the same Vienna months as the Monadology, long mistaken for it and printed before it, in 1718.
FR
1720 Monadology (Monadologie)
Written in French in 1714, it was known for over a century only in German and Latin translation.
FR
1765 New Essays on Human Understanding (Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain) you are here FR
1840 Discourse Touching the Method of Certitude and the Art of Discovery (Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et l'art d'inventer)
A plea for royal patronage of the sciences, addressed to an unnamed king, apparently Louis XIV, setting out the method of certainty and art of discovery Leibniz pursued for decades.
FR
1840 On the Ultimate Origination of Things (De rerum originatione radicali)
A short Latin essay of 1697 on why there is a world at all, left in manuscript until 1840.
LA
1840 Reflections on the Doctrine of a Single Universal Spirit (Considérations sur la doctrine d'un Esprit Universel Unique)
A French essay written in 1702 at the Prussian queen's palace outside Berlin, and left unprinted until 1840.
FR
1846 Discourse on Metaphysics (Discours de métaphysique)
The opening statement of Leibniz's mature metaphysics, written early in 1686 and left unprinted until 1846.
FR
1846 The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence (Correspondance de Leibniz et d'Arnauld)
The exchange of 1686 to 1690 between Leibniz and Arnauld over the Discourse on Metaphysics, every letter carried by the Landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels.
FR
1854 Refutation of Spinoza (Animadversiones ad Joh. Georg. Wachteri librum de recondita Hebraeorum philosophia)
Private Latin notes on Wachter's book about Spinoza and the Kabbalah, given their title by the French scholar who published them in 1854.
FR
1890 Tentamen Anagogicum: An Anagogical Essay in the Investigation of Causes (Essai anagogique dans la recherche des causes)
A French essay of about 1696, from the years of Leibniz's dynamics, defending final causes against the mechanical philosophers.
FR
1903 New Openings (Nouvelles Ouvertures)
Written in French in 1686, by the Academy edition's dating, and left in manuscript until Couturat printed it in 1903.
FR
1903 Preface to the General Science (Préface de la Science générale)
Probably from 1677, an unfinished preface to the universal language of reasoning, unprinted until 1903.
FR
1915 Confessio Philosophi (Confessio philosophi)
Leibniz's first developed theodicy, a Latin dialogue from his Paris years; revised after Steno's objections, its account of sin returns much changed in the Theodicy of 1710.
LA

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