Natural Religion

Leibniz’s unjust reproach of Newton and Refutation of a notion of Locke.

Leibniz, in his dispute with Newton, reproached him for giving God very lowly ideas and for annihilating natural religion.

He claimed that Newton made God physical.

This accusation was based on “sensorium organum”.

He added that Newton’s God had made this world into a very poor machine which needed to be “scoured” (this is the very word Leibniz used).

Newton had said: Manum emendatricem desideraret (“it would require the correcting hand”).

This reproach stems from Newton saying that, over time:

• motions would diminish
• the irregularities of the planets would increase
• the universe would either perish or be restored by its author.

It is clear from experience that God has made machines destined to be destroyed.

We are the work of His wisdom, and we perish.

Why should it not be the same with the world?*

Leibniz wants this world to be perfect.

But if God only formed it to last for a certain time, then its perfection consists in lasting only until the moment fixed for its dissolution.

Newton was the greatest partisan for natural religion.

Natural religion* is the principles of morality common to humankind.

Newton admitted no innate notions within us—neither ideas, nor feelings, nor principles.

He was persuaded, with Locke, that all ideas come to us through the senses as the senses develop.

But he believed that since God gave the same senses to all men, the same needs and the same feelings result in them.

Therefore the same rough notions which everywhere form the foundation of society.

God has given bees and ants something to make them live in community, which He has not given to wolves or hawks.

All men live in society.

• In their being is a secret bond by which God willed to attach them to one another.

If, at a certain age, these sensory ideas in men did not gradually give them the same principles necessary for society, then these societies would not subsist.

That is why, from Siam to Mexico, truth, gratitude, friendship, etc., are honored.

I am surprised that the wise Locke refuted innate ideas at the start of his Essay on Human Understanding.

I think he was wrong to say that there is no notion of good and evil that is common to all men.

He based this on the reports of travelers, who say that in certain countries the custom is to:

• eat the children, and the mothers when they can no longer bear children
• honor as saints the fanatics who have sex with animals

But the wise Locke should have considered these travelers suspect.

• They commonly see things badly and exaggerate what they have seen.

Let a Persian come to Lisbon, Madrid, or Goa on the day of an auto-da-fé.

He will reasonably think that Christians sacrifice men to God.

If he reads the European almanacs, he will think that we all believe in the effects of the moon.

I find it doubtful that savages eat their father and mother out of pity.

If it is true, then it is probably a barbarous way of showing tenderness, a horrible abuse of the natural law.

One only kills one’s father and mother out of a sense of duty, to deliver them either from:

• the inconveniences of old age or
• the rage of the enemy

So this custom still comes from the goodness of the heart.

Natural religion is nothing but this law known throughout the universe.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Now the barbarian who kills his father to save him from his enemy, and who buries him in his own breast for fear that he will have his enemy for a tomb, wishes that his own son would treat him the same in a similar case.

This law of treating one’s neighbor as oneself flows naturally from the roughest notions and is heard, sooner or later, in the heart of all men: for, all having the same reason, the fruits of this tree must eventually resemble each other; and they do in fact resemble each other, in that in every society one calls “virtue” that which one believes useful to society.

Let anyone find me a country, a company of ten people on the earth, where that which is useful to the common good is not esteemed—and then I will admit that there is no natural rule.

This rule certainly varies infinitely; but what can one conclude from that, except that it exists?

Matter everywhere takes on different forms, but everywhere retains its nature.

They tell us, for example, that at Sparta, theft was ordered.

This is nothing but an abuse of words.

Theft was not commanded in Lacedaemon; but in a city where everything was common, the permission granted to take skillfully what individuals appropriated against the law was a way of punishing the spirit of private ownership, forbidden among those people.

Mine and thine was a crime, for which what we call theft was the punishment; and among them and among us there was still the same rule for which God made us, as He made ants to live together.

Newton therefore thought that this disposition which we all have to live in society is the foundation of the natural law, which Christianity perfects.

There is above all in man a disposition to compassion.

Newton cultivated this sentiment of humanity, and he extended it even to animals.

He was strongly convinced, with Locke, that God gave to animals (which seem to be only matter) a measure of ideas and the same feelings as to us.

He could not think that God, who makes nothing in vain, had given animals organs of sensation so that they would have no sensation.

He found it a most dreadful contradiction to believe that animals feel, and yet to make them suffer.

His morality was in accord at this point with his philosophy.

He found the barbarous custom of eating meat repugnant.

This compassion which he had for animals turned into true charity for men. In fact, without humanity—a virtue which comprises all the virtues—one would hardly deserve the name of philosopher.