Reflections on the Doctrine of a Single Universal Spirit

Leibniz takes on the old belief in one world-soul into which every mind dissolves at death.

by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz20 passages held

French, the original language

Original title: Considérations sur la doctrine d'un Esprit Universel Unique
First published: 1840(published posthumously)
Original language: French

Overview

Queen Christina of Sweden, Leibniz had heard, leaned toward the belief that there is only one mind in the universe. It animates each creature through that creature's organs, as one breath of wind sounds differently through different organ pipes, and when the organs fail the particular soul returns into it like water into the ocean. Her librarian Gabriel Naudé had held the view, Leibniz supposed, having met it among Italian followers of Aristotle who taught it privately while saying in public that it was true in philosophy and false in faith. Leibniz wrote this French essay in 1702 at Queen Sophie Charlotte's palace outside Berlin; the German editor J. E. Erdmann printed it only in 1840. In it he traces the doctrine from Averroes, the Arab commentator on Aristotle, and Pietro Pomponazzi, the Italian Aristotelian, through Spinoza's single substance and the Cartesians who make God the only agent, to the Quietist mystics — Molinos, Angelus Silesius and, before them, Valentin Weigel — who treated the soul's rest in God as its highest state. He grants that belief in a universal spirit is no atheism, since all who hold it believe in God. What he denies is that it is the only spirit there is. The old Aristotelian proof, that eternally multiplying souls would make an actual infinity, rests on false premises, and nothing obliges us to think the soul ever leaves its body entirely. Microscopists had found that animals already exist in the seed, so birth is growth and death a folding-up, and the animal persists through both, as the silkworm and the butterfly are one creature.

Key concepts

What is the doctrine of a single universal spirit?

The belief that there is only one mind in the universe, animating each creature through its organs, as one breath of wind sounds differently through different organ pipes. When the organs fail, the particular soul returns into it like water into the ocean. Leibniz had heard that Queen Christina of Sweden leaned toward it.

Who held the doctrine, according to Leibniz?

Averroes, the Arab commentator on Aristotle, and Pietro Pomponazzi, the Italian Aristotelian, then in other forms Spinoza’s single substance and the Cartesians who make God the only agent. Leibniz supposed that Christina’s librarian Gabriel Naudé had held it too, and he ends the line with the Quietist mystics. All of them, he grants, believed in God.

Why did the Italian Aristotelians teach it only in private?

Because it could not be squared with the faith. Naudé, Leibniz supposed, had met the doctrine among Italian followers of Aristotle who taught it privately while saying in public that it was true in philosophy and false in faith, a split between reason and belief that Leibniz’s essay refuses.

What is Quietism, and why does Leibniz include it?

A mystical movement that treated the soul’s rest in God as its highest state. Leibniz names Molinos, Angelus Silesius and, before them, Valentin Weigel. He includes them because their ideal of the soul resting in God and losing itself there comes close, in devotion, to what the universal-spirit doctrine says in philosophy.

What had the microscopists found, and why does it matter here?

That animals already exist in the seed. Leibniz drew the consequence that birth is growth and death a folding-up, and that the animal persists through both, as the silkworm and the butterfly are one creature. It gives him grounds to deny that the soul ever leaves its body entirely, which the universal-spirit doctrine needs.

Themes of the book

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

One Mind in the Universe, or Many?

Is each mind its own, or is there one universal spirit sounding through different organs like one wind through different pipes? Leibniz grants the doctrine is no atheism, and still denies it.

On this doctrine one mind animates every creature through its organs, and when the organs fail the particular soul returns into it like water into the ocean. Leibniz traces it from Averroes and Pomponazzi through Spinoza’s single substance and the Cartesians who make God the only agent, to the Quietist mystics who treated the soul’s rest in God as its highest state. All who hold it believe in God, he grants. What he denies is that the universal spirit is the only spirit there is, and he finds the old proof, that endlessly multiplying souls would make an actual infinity, built on false premises.

universal spirit
individual souls
monism
philosophy of mind
divine action
quietism
faith and reason
argumentation
infinity
personal identity
soul

Enter a dialogue

Birth as Growth, Death as a Folding-Up

Does the soul ever leave its body entirely? Nothing obliges us to think so, Leibniz argues, and what the microscopists found in seeds suggests it never does.

Microscopists had found that animals already exist in the seed. Leibniz drew the consequence: birth is growth, death a folding-up, and the animal persists through both, as the silkworm and the butterfly are one creature. That gives the individual soul what the universal-spirit doctrine denies it, a body it never wholly loses, and so a continuity through death that needs no return into an ocean of mind. The argument strikes the doctrine at its root, since the doctrine needs the particular soul to be released when its organs fail.

immortality
persistence
continuity
embodiment
generation
animal generation
animal souls
death
resurrection
mind-body relation

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 20
distinct concepts: 52
by passages held, corpus-wide: #778

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: “immortality” and “philosophy of mind”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 2 concepts, joined by 1 pairing. 16 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
immortality	philosophy of mind	3

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)
The book-length reply to Locke, written as a dialogue in 1703–04, withheld after Locke's death and first printed in 1765.
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) you are here 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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