Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - What is spirit like?

If in the previous chapter Crusius intended to explain the essence of spirit, in this chapter he wants to outline the basic features of a spirit. In effect, he has to describe in more detail the two basic capacities that distinguish spirit from mere matter, that is, understanding and will.

Starting with understanding, Crusius says that every idea a spirit has cannot be something passive. If there was a passive idea, he justifies his statement, it would have to be caused either by an external or by an internal activity. If an idea was caused by an external activity it would have to be either movement or caused by movement, because external interaction occurs only via movement. Both possibilities, of course, contradict the very immateriality of a spirit, Crusius notes. On the other hand, if an idea was caused by an internal activity, it would again be caused by movement or by some other activity belonging to the spirit. The former possibility is again an impossibility for Crusius, while the latter possibility he rejects, because ultimately all spiritual activities presuppose ideas.

Although ideas are always activities, Crusius continues, they can be directly generated by God, who supposedly does not act through movement. Furthermore, he adds, ideas can be modified by other activities of spirit and their generation, forcefulness and duration can be connected to external conditions.

Furthermore, Crusius notes that while all spirits have understanding or capacity for thinking ideas, only some spirits have reason, that is, an understanding so developed it is able to consciously know what is true. To have a reason, it is not enough that a spirit can have ideas, but these ideas must also be able to continue for a while. In addition, a spirit with a reason must be conscious of itself and it must be able to make abstractions. Finally, Crusius concludes, a finite spirit cannot have reason, unless God has given it the capacity to think, distinguish and combine ideas in a manner that it can recognise signs of truth in them by imitating divine understanding.

Crusius emphasises that if a finite spirit is capable of reasoning, its capacity of understanding is not derived from a unique force, but from a sum of many fundamental forces. The only other option, he points out, would be that the fundamental force would be the general force for thinking or knowing truth. Crusius rejects this possibility, because our ideas are so multiform that they cannot all have the same source. He especially points out that it is a very different matter to have an idea and to be conscious of this idea, because one can e.g. be angry without being aware of being angry.

If Crusius defined understanding as a capacity to have ideas, he defines will as a capacity to act according to one’s ideas. Every spirit must have a will, he adds, or otherwise its understanding would have no purpose. Every act of will presupposes an idea and therefore, Crusius insists, will as such is called a blind force.

Crusius is adamant that will requires fundamental forces distinct from those required for understanding, because otherwise will would be just a modification of understanding, which he has already denied. He especially objects to the idea that will could be understood as deriving from a representation of goodness, because good wouldn’t even be a meaningful concept without will. He does admit that the representation of goodness can awaken our will, but he doesn’t think this would yet reveal what will is. Crusius doesn’t even accept the Wolffian idea that the representation of goodness together with conatus or innate striving toward goodness would be enough to define will, simply because Crusius regards conatus as an unfamiliar manner of referring to will.

Every will must will something, Crusius points out, that is, it must be directed by specific ideas, which the will then strives to achieve by action. When such striving continues for a longer period of time, Crusius calls it a drive. Will must then have drives, and even, Crusius says, some fundamental drives, from which other drives are derived. Actions caused by the same fundamental drive can have various grades and directions, thus, Crusius concludes, only few fundamental drives are required for manifold variations in actions. Since a state of a spirit can be in accordance with a fundamental drive, in opposition to it or neither, we can speak of pleasant, unpleasant and indifferent states of mind or feelings. A reasoning spirit, Crusius adds, is also conscious of its state being pleasant and unpleasant, which makes it possible to speak of pleasure and pain. For animals, on the other hand pleasant and unpleasant sensations act then as mere physical causes.

Crusius notes that all animals should control their body and so they must have drives concerning the body and therefore also an idea of their body. Reasoning spirits, he continues, should also have fundamental drives that serve their moral perfection. Such fundamental drives include a drive for perfecting one’s essence, a drive to love other spirits and a drive to fulfil obligations toward God or conscience.

In addition to fundamental drives, Crusius insists, at least reasoning spirits must also have freedom. Even freedom, Crusius admits, does not do things completely without any reason, but it has to be guided by motives. These motives just do not determine the free will to do anything, but just make it inclined to something, leaving the will the final choice whether to pursue these inclinations. Free will can also boost smaller inclinations against stronger inclinations. Yet, Crusius notes, free will of finite spirits must also be finite and can thus be overcome by strong motives.

Activities of a spirit form a clear hierarchy, Crusius says. For instance, movement is the lowest kind of activity, which serves both understanding and will: Crusius again emphasises that the spirit should be able to move its own substance. Of the two other activities, on the other hand, understanding is subservient to will. This does not mean that e.g. laws of truth should be dependent on arbitrary choices of the will. Instead, it means that understanding ultimately does what the will wants, and indeed, for this reason we can speak of the moral perfection of understanding: e.g. a failure to develop one’s understanding could be taken as morally evil. With free spirits, Crusius concludes, freedom is the highest activity, which the fundamental drives should serve.

Crusius notes that there is a certain ambiguity in the concept of a purpose, which he defines as something that a spirit wills. He explains that we might be speaking of a subjective purpose or our own activity of desiring something, of an objective purpose or the object which we specifically desire, and finally, of a formal purpose, by which he means a relation between the subjective and the objective purpose. Purposes form a hierarchy, Crusius explains, since one purpose could be desired because of another purpose. He is convinced that such a series of purposes cannot continue indefinitely, but there must be one or several final purposes, which are desired for their own sake and not to fulfil another desire.

It is common knowledge that we often cannot directly achieve our purposes and so have to use some means to do this. Crusius notes that actually means is an ambiguous concept: it might refer to material means or the mediating cause used for furthering the purpose, but it could also refer to formal means or the activity of using the material means. Crusius also remarks that means can be divided into means in the proper sense, which are active causes that have in itself the power to further the purpose, and mere conditions, which do not have the power to further the purpose, but are still required by other causes to further the purpose. In order to be a proper means, Crusius adds, means must, firstly, make something happen to further the purpose, when so directed by a spirit, secondly, bring about something that the spirit wants before wanting to use the means, and finally, be used by spirit because of desiring the purpose. Thus, if a spirit doesn’t intend to use something because of a purpose, but for a completely different purpose, and this something happens to further the purpose, spirit hasn’t used it as a means for the purpose, but it has been a mere accidental intermediary cause for the purpose.

The notion of spirit is closely connected to that of life. Crusius defines life as a capacity of substance which enables it to be active from an internal ground in many, qualitatively different ways. The seemingly innocuous demand that activities enabled by life should come in many different forms actually implies that these activities cannot be distinguished by mere quantitative means, like spatiotemporal terms or grades of strength. Thus, these activities, and so also life, cannot be based on mere motion and can therefore belong only to spirits. Crusius notes that his concept of life excludes plants, which do not have spirit or soul. In fact, he adds, only spirits really have life, while animal bodies have life only in the sense of being connected to a spirit or a soul.

Crusius also notes that life is more of a continuum, with some substances being more alive than others. Thus, while one substance is alive in the sense that it has all the capacities required for living, another would be alive in a stronger sense, if its capacities of life are truly active. This higher phase of life begins, Crusius suggests, when the will of the spirit becomes active. Depending on the perfection of the will, life can then be also more or less perfect, and the highest type of life is the life of a free spirit.

While God can be alive and still have only one fundamental force, a finite living being must have several, in order to create a qualitative manifold of activities, Crusius insists. These fundamental forces must then be interconnected in the sense that one force is a condition or an object of an activity based on another force. Such an interconnection of forces then modifies the activities enabled by these forces and thus creates the manifold of activities required of a living being. These interconnections are then, Crusius concludes, controlled by laws, some of which describe interactions of spiritual activities, while others describe their interactions with the body and the material world.

Crusius goes through several of these interconnections of spiritual activities. Thus, he notes that force of will is dependent on the force of understanding, and especially, free will requires an ability of abstraction and consciousness of oneself. Other examples include when a drive for some purpose awakens a drive for the corresponding means or when thinking a certain idea activates also some other ideas through association.

An important type of interconnection connects the higher powers of the spirit to its capacity to move. These connections enable external sensations, in which ideas are not literally caused e.g. by our substance moving because of external objects, Crusius notes, but they still are conditioned by the presence of such a movement. Such an external sensation can even be an occasion for a substance becoming alive in the stronger sense, that is, for the substance activating its powers of life. The connections with the capacity of movement also explain why movements of the body can hinder our thinking and why spirits can finally return to the same inactive state in which they were, before having the first sensation. Although such interconnections are then possible, Crusius points out that a finite spirit can also be independent of the movement of its substance, which means that it would be constantly alive.

As an important instance of interaction with external things, Crusius points out that in order to interact with one another, spirits should be able to communicate with one another. With mere animals, this communication can happen through expressions, while spirits with reason are also capable of languages using words that express abstract thoughts. Both kinds of communication use the material world and its movement, but Crusius thinks that God is capable of a more direct sort of communication, in which thoughts are awakened straightaway in the other spirit.

Although activity of one power of spirit would be a condition for another power becoming active, it is still not necessary that when the first power stops its activity, the second should also stop: in some cases it might do this, in others not. This distinction between the behaviour of the powers is important for Crusius especially in cases where external sensations are a condition for the spirit becoming alive in the stronger sense. Some spirits might be passive in the sense that their activities both begin when certain sensations occur and end when these sensations stop. Other spirits, on the other hand, might be capable of independent activity in the sense that while their activities are awakened by sensations, these activities can still continue even after the corresponding sensations have stopped.

With a spirit capable of independent activities, these activities can then continue for a long period of time. Crusius emphasises that such continuing activities are not free choices, which always endure only for an instant. An enduring activity can then be strengthened by new sensations awakening similar activities and this strengthening makes it more probable that the activities lead to effects. In effect, Crusius says, such repetition of activities makes them habits. With human beings, some of these habits might have even been generated, when the human was still a foetus, and could thus be called inborn habits.

Crusius notes that spirits of the world can now be divided into four different classes. The two first classes consist of passive and independently active spirits, that is, firstly, a) spirits that live in the proper sense of the words only while they have sensations, and secondly, b) spirits that are awakened by sensation, but continue to live even after the sensations have stopped because of their inner activities. Both of these classes consist of spirits that do not always live, but must be awakened to life. The two other classes consist then of spirits that do live, even without the help of external sensations. These two classes are then distinguished from one another by c) one still having external sensations, d) the other class not.

Whatever the class a spirit belongs to, Crusius says, it is always a simple substance and thus immaterial. Crusius does admit that God could give a partless element of matter capacities to think and will. This wouldn’t still mean that God would have created a material spirit, but only a transformation of matter to spirit.

Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - What is a spirit?

The final part of Crusius’ metaphysics consists of what he calls pneumatology, that is, a study of finite substances that can not just move, but also think and will. Crusius notes that no matter what the world is like, it must contain such substances - they are supposed to be the purpose of the world - thus, pneumatology should be included in a metaphysical cosmology. Once again, pneumatology should study only the necessary properties of these substances, not those dependent on the contingent features of the world.

Despite emphasising the apriority of pneumatology, Crusius begins with an empirical study of activities we find in our mind. We perceive in us thoughts, he starts. Some thoughts we have while we are awake and they represent what is immediately present to us: these are what is in German called Empfindung - a word that could be translated, depending on the context, as sensation or as feeling. Whatever the translation, Crusius classifies these sensations or feelings into external - those representing a thing outside us with the help of sense organs - and internal - those representing the thing that thinks in us. Through the inner sensation or feeling, Crusius states, we are conscious of ourselves, of our thoughts and of our state of mind.

Crusius goes on describing further capacities of thinking we have. These include memory – a capacity to return to thoughts we once had and thus represent things we sensed, although they are now absent – imagination – capacity to move from one thought to another – abstraction – capacity to divide thoughts into their constituents, for instance, to think of a subject without its properties – capacity to make propositions, that is, to note relations between thoughts, and a capacity to make deductions. These capacities, Crusius notes, are all explained in terms of thoughts or representations, which is a fundamental concept that cannot be explained further.

In addition to thinking, Crusius continues, we find in ourselves something else. We are pleased when we achieve something we want, and we feel pain when we face something we wanted to avoid. We also note that we can control our thoughts, our body and even our desires. All of these, Crusius says, show that we have will, that is, a force of acting according to our representations. Willing presupposes thinking, since we need to have representations, before we can will, Crusius adds, but mere thinking is still not enough for willing. Willing is hence something more than thinking, but this something more cannot be defined.

In addition to thinking and willing, we also have a notion of moving, Crusius says, since we can both see things outside us move and we can move ourselves and our body. Furthermore, he at once adds, we immediately know that movement is something different from thinking and willing and cannot be even their cause. This basic fact, guaranteed by very clear inner feeling, Crusius insists, is the only proof we need against materialism: thinking and willing are not mere movement of matter. No matter how fine the matter is, Crusius states, it can never think or will anything.

Crusius suggests that the central confusion that makes one believe in materialism is that the word “representation” suggests that a thought is like a concrete picture in the brain. He notes that the same confusion can be found also with anyone endorsing Leibnizian pre-established harmony, which states that any representation in the soul corresponds to a material idea in the brain. Crusius argues that a machine could not change pictures as rapidly as we change from one thought to another. Furthermore, he notes that no machine could store pictures for as long a time as our memory does. Indeed, he adds, the brain would soon be filled, if we had to insert pictures in it any time we have thoughts. Abstract ideas especially appear to be such that could never be represented materially. And if no other argument works, Crusius concludes, we can always note that materialism would destroy the freedom of our will and thus make morality and religion impossible.

In addition to this fundamental confusion, Crusius considers other arguments of materialists that he considers fallacious. Most of these involve the obvious fact that the body appears to affect our state of mind, for instance, that a physical sickness makes it difficult to think. Crusius’ answer is that these effects can as well be explained by the close interaction of the spirit and the body.

Crusius notes further that materialists apply arguments involving biology: they state that supposedly thinking and willing beings (e.g. worms) can come out of rotting meat and that parts of worms can still continue their movement when cut apart. The first argument Crusius deals very quickly: worms are not spontaneously generated by the rotting meat, but very small eggs of worms just grow faster, when coming in contact with the warmth and moisture of rot meat. In the case of the second argument, Crusius just points out our ignorance on why the worms can do this - perhaps the movement of a dissected worm is just a mechanical reflex that does not require free will.

In addition to speaking so fervently against materialism, Crusius is eager to state that it is not materialistic to assume that thinking and willing substances can move things. Thinking and willing substance can be spatial and impenetrable, because these characteristics do not form the essence of material things. Some things in the world - like stones - have only a capacity to move, while we humans can move, but also think and will.

Thinking and willing are characteristic not just of humans, Crusius says, but other organic bodies appear also to move as guided by a thinking and willing substance. These organic bodies must also have such a guiding substance or soul, Crusius insists. Together, the soul and the body form an animal, and we humans are then the most perfect animals. Crusius is certain that thinking substances, both those of humans and those of other animals, can exist without being connected to a body. Then these substances just shouldn’t be called souls, but spirits (Geist). Even God could be called spirit, since God can think and will, although not move.

We have already noted that a willing substance must think, but must every thinking substance also have a will? Crusius admits that this is technically a possibility. Yet, from a wider perspective, such merely thinking substances cannot exist. God does nothing without purpose, and what purpose would such a non-willing thinker have? In other words, Crusius appears to say, thinking is done in order to help willing – for instance, in choosing the right means for achieving what we want – and mere thinking by itself would not be enough.

Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - Laws of movement

In every world, Crusius notes, things interact by moving, thus movement is a topic that should be studied in cosmology. More precisely, he continues, the topic of movement can be approached with three questions: what is movement, how it can be measured and what laws govern it. Of these three, Crusius explains, the first one is clearly cosmological, while the second one was dealt in ontology. The third one, Crusius concludes, is partially cosmological, because some laws of movement can be deduced from the very essence of movement, although some laws of movement must be proven empirically and thus belong to physics.

Crusius then defines movement as a state of a substance that changes its place. Its opposite is rest or a state where a thing does not change its place. Crusius notes also that some movement is only apparent, when a thing does not change its absolute place, but only its place in relation to some other thing. True change, where a thing changes its absolute place, he further divides into external change, where the whole thing is moving, and internal change, where some actual parts of a thing change their places so that their positions in relation to other parts of the whole are changed. Crusius points out that these two classes are not mutually exclusive, since there can occur situations where a thing moves, while its parts change their place in relation to one another.

What then could move in these different ways? Crusius notes that a simple substance cannot at least move internally, since it doesn’t have any actual parts. Then again, infinite things (or from Crusius’ perspective, God) cannot move externally, because there is nowhere where such an infinite thing could move as a whole. Furthermore, he adds, everything that is finite, can move at least externally, whether it is simple or complex.

Crusius divides external movement into total external movement, where the whole substance moves completely from one location to another, and partial external movement, where actual or ideal parts of the thing change their place: once again, the two classes are not mutually exclusive. While the notion of total external movement seems clear enough, it might be difficult to see how partial external movement differs from internal movement. One example of a partial external movement that is not internal nor total, Crusius says, is such where a simple substance grows and thus its ideal parts change their places, since this involves no change of actual, distinct parts of the substance. Another example would be rotation of a sphere: the sphere as a whole does not go from one location to another and the relative positions of its parts remain the same, but the parts of the sphere do change their absolute positions.

Crusius derives some simple consequences from his definition of movement. Movement, as he sees it, has always a definite direction, and indeed, a start and end point. It also has certain characteristics: velocity and strength by which it withstands resistance. Furthermore, Crusius notes that movement of a complex substance is defined by the movement of its parts.

Movement, Crusius emphasises, is a positive change and thus requires a positive cause. Rest, on the other hand, is for Crusius just a lack of movement and does not therefore require any cause. In other words, a thing rests, Crusius says, if it has no reason to move, and if the cause of the movement vanishes, the movement must also cease. A direct consequence of this is that increase in the velocity of movement requires a similar increase in the cause of the movement. Crusius also thinks that change of the direction of the movement must also have a cause, which would make the Epicurean idea of atoms swerving without a reason ridiculous.

Because motion always requires some cause, Crusius continues, state of movement cannot be indifferent to the matter. By this Crusius means that a moving cause has to at first overcome an inherent resistance in moving a piece of matter. This inherent resistance is, of course, inertia. More precisely, Crusius calls it metaphysical inertia, distinguishing it from physical inertia, where the resistance is not just an inherent property of matter, but also involves a force, although one that is, as it were, dead, that is, suppressed by the moving force. Beyond inertia, motion can be resisted also by a living force, that is, a force that truly can resist the moving cause.

Crusius notes that a finite cause of movement cannot really affect a thing more than the thing resists the movement. Of course, the cause can have more force, but it only uses as much force as is required for overcoming the resistance. Thus, Crusius thinks he has justified the law of action being equal to reaction. Although a non-empirical proof, Crusius clarifies, we still require empirical observations to determine how much a finite cause acts at a given situation.

It is an essential feature of substances that differ from God, Crusius says, that they cannot penetrate one another. Thus, when a finite substance, whether matter or spirit, tries to occupy the same place as another finite substance, it will drive away the other substance, that is, pushes it. Crusius adds that pushing is just an existential effect, in other words, it doesn’t require any force, but the mere presence of one substance trying to occupy the place of the other.

Pushing a substance makes it move: Crusius calls this a communicated movement. Indeed, he says, communicating movement is the only way finite substances can affect one another. Series of communicated movements cannot go on forever, he immediately adds, and such series cannot all derive from God’s miracles, because that would be against the purpose of the world. Thus, Crusius argues, there must be some finite substances that can move their own substance through their inner activity - such movement he calls original. The inner activity causing original movement can be constant or conditional striving, inherent to some elements of material things, or it can be free willing. Because even the activity of elements is ultimately derived from God, Crusius concludes, all movement is generated by some spiritual activity that is not movement.

Communicated movement, Crusius notes, need not always be just an effect of the impenetrability of finite substances, but can also involve an inner activity of a substance. He is thus against the Cartesian idea that interactions of material things would have to be explained solely through geometric properties: God can give material things some inner activities. Crusius faces the possible objection that such activities are what were disparagingly called occult qualities by noting that we can know such activities as well as finite creatures can, when we can distinguish them from one another and deduce their existence from their effects.

Crusius progresses then to describe several rules involved in the communication of movement, such as parallelogram rule and behaviour of elastic substances. I will not follow him to these details, but I shall take a look at a few conundrums concerning movement that Crusius considers. First of these involves the question of the quantity of movement in the world: is it always constant? Crusius’ answer clearly has to be negative, because this would preclude the possibility of spirits to interact with the world. He even denies the weaker assumption that the world would have a constant amount of moving force, because spirits should be able to choose how strongly they move other things.

Another conundrum concerns the question whether all the matter in the world is moving constantly. A reason for upholding such an opinion would be that a constant movement is required for explaining why shapes of things remain stable: without the constant movement of the surrounding matter, a thing could just change willy-nilly its shape. Crusius does not find this argument convincing. The shape of a complex thing is determined by the shape and position of its parts, while the shape of a simple thing is either chosen by God, with or without any reason, or caused by themselves or by external forces - where is the need for movement here?

The answer to the question, Crusius concludes, belongs to physical, not metaphysical cosmology. He does state that the ultimate limits of the world cannot move and similarly all things that God has determined to rest. Other things, then, probably at least strive to move, whether through their own inherent activity or through being spurred to movement by things outside them.

Finally, Crusius ponders the question whether movement of one material thing necessarily sets all other material things in motion. He notes that if the world contains spaces void of any finite things, movement of one thing could go through this void without communicating movement to other things. Furthermore, he continues, even if there is no void, certain material things could also just switch places without affecting other material things.

Crusius also thinks that these arguments disprove the idea endorsed often by Wolffians that from state of any substance in the world could be determined the state of all other substances. This proposition of Wolffians was explicitly based on the supposed continuous causal nexus of all the parts of the world, where movement of one piece would eventually affect all the other pieces. If this nexus fails, as Crusius deems very possible, the states of the substances in the world would not be as closely interlinked, although they would be really connected.

Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - The essence of the world

After going through what can be known about God, Crusius continues with the question of the world. His aim is to do metaphysical cosmology, that is, to describe what any world in general must be like and what we can know about this necessary essence of worlds without any help of prior experience. Thus, metaphysical cosmology in Crusius’ sense is not a physical endeavour and does not aim to describe our actual world.

Crusius faces the problem that since we do not even know our actual world completely and certainly don’t know what all the possible worlds are like, it seems impossible for us to know what worlds would necessarily be like. He admits that metaphysical cosmology must be incomplete. Firstly, he says, only God could know all the possible characteristics a world could have. Secondly, we are unsure even of many features of the actual world whether they are necessary: for instance, should every possible world have colours?

Despite these misgivings, Crusius thinks that we can still know some important truths of metaphysical cosmology. Firstly, all possible worlds are also things and thus must have characteristics that ontology has shown all things to have. Secondly, natural theology also implies things in cosmology, because any world would be God’s creation and would thus reflect their essential properties. Finally, he concludes, the very concept of the world must imply what a world must be like.

Furthermore, Crusius notes that we do not need to observe different possible worlds in order to form a distinct concept of a world - we just have to be able to distinguish a world from anything that is not a world. Firstly, Crusius distinguishes the world from God: the latter is necessary, the former is not. Secondly, a world is not an individual creature, but a sum of creatures, although, Crusius admits, God could have created just a single creature.

Not all collections of creatures are worlds, Crusius emphasises. Some collections are just connected by the observer, but a world should truly be a unity, not just in someone’s thoughts. Finally, Crusius notes, a world should be a real whole, not a part of something larger. Crusius’ final concept of the world is then that world is a real combination of finite things that is not again a part of another, to which it would belong through a real combination.

As a combination of things, Crusius says, every possible world must be spatial. In addition, because a world is particularly a combination of finite things, it must necessarily be of finite size. Crusius is especially keen to point out that although mathematics speaks of infinite spaces, this is just an abstract fiction that is not truly possible in a world. God, on the other hand, should exist wherever the world is, but God is not limited by the limits of the world. Crusius also accepts the possibility of world having void spaces in it - that is, spaces void of finite creatures, because God would exist even within void.

In addition to being spatial, Crusius continues, a world must also be temporal. He adds that because a world is created by God, it must have not existed at some point in time. World also could not exist by itself, even after creation, but must be sustained by God. Crusius appears to assume that God does not create anything else in the world after the first creation, but he does admit the possibility that some part of the world might have been isolated from another part for a while, while the two parts would later come in contact with one another. Thus, he suggests, the physical law of the constant quantity of forces is not as such necessary, because we cannot be sure that the world does not contain such isolated, unknown forces.

Crusius also emphasises that God has created the world for some purpose. As he has pointed out earlier, the purpose of creation has to serve especially the free creatures with the ability to reason. Thus, other things in the world must be either means for that purpose or then necessary consequences of creating and arranging the world to serve the purpose. Whatever the purpose of a particular possible world is, the world must be good, because its creator is also. Then again, no world can really be the best possible world, because all worlds are somehow imperfect and could be improved.

An interesting question Crusius considers is what belongs to an identity of a world: how much a world can be changed before it becomes a different world? Obviously, one could take the primary constituents of a world - simple substances - and reorder them in a different manner. Yet, this answer concerns only the ultimate metaphysical subject of what makes a world and ignores the intriguing problem of whether a world has some inherent structure that differentiates it from any other world made out of the same substances.

Crusius outlines next his criterion of a world’s identity: a world remains same, as long as it still serves its fundamental purpose and in particular no individual things, their combinations, laws governing them and their essential actions change in a manner that would change this inherent purpose or any means required for the fulfilment of that purpose. Any change that does not do this, he continues, merely changes the state of this world. Indeed, he points out an important type of change that does not change the identity of a world. A world is created for the sake of free creatures and for enabling their free actions. Thus, he suggests, whatever persons do freely should not affect the essence of the world they inhabit, because that would mean the very purpose of a world could contradict itself.

Because things in the world are combined, Crusius insists, they must be able to interact with one another. In these interactions some things must be active or affect one another, but Crusius notes that there can be passive things that do not have any force to affect other things, but at most enable something through their existence. Both active forces and inactive abilities can combine things into more complex wholes.

Furthermore, Crusius continues, interactions that combine things are governed by physical laws that should hold independently of our thinking of them. Crusius notes that there are also laws of understanding that merely say what propositions follow or are possible in certain circumstances, but these differ from real physical laws. Similarly, he distinguishes physical laws from moral laws, which say what should be done according to commands of some lord.

Now Crucius defines nature as the sum of all substances in the world, together with the physical laws governing their combinations. Natural is then something that happens through the fundamental forces of created substances, while God does nothing else, but sustains these substances and fundamental forces. Supernatural, on the other hand, is something caused immediately by God. Because at least the sustainment of the substances and their fundamental forces is an immediate effect of God’s action, Crusius concludes that every world has something supernatural in it.

Crusius thinks that we can conceive no other interaction between finite things than interaction through movement. Since we are dealing with finities, he continues, we can invoke the principle that this non-conceivability reveals a true dependence relation: finite things can affect one another only through movement. Thus, when a finite substance affects another, it either forces the other to move by its own impenetrability or then its motion awakens some other activity in the other substance.

This other activity that can be awakened by motion, Crusius insists, is either thinking or willing, which we know are not movement. He then distinguishes two kinds of substances in the world: material substances, which can only move, and spiritual substances, which move, but also think and will things. Furthermore, he divides matter into two further subclasses: metaphysical or inactive matter that has only a passive capacity for movement and physical or active matter that has also some active force.

Crusius has noted that the world has been made for the sake of free spirits, thus, the world must, undoubtedly, have spirits in it. One important consequence of the existence of free spirits is that Crusius’ world cannot be completely deterministic. A world need not have matter, on the other hand, but matter can exist in it. Then again, Crusius notes, because everything in the world must somehow serve its purpose or free spirits, matter and spirits must be able to interact: why else would God have created it? Crucius brushes aside the old Cartesian worry that spirit could not affect matter, because they are two different types of substances: dogs and humans share characteristics and still are of different species. Crusius sees no problem in accepting that spirits are also impenetrable, like matter, and can thus move and be moved by material objects.

Crusius is unsure about the Leibnizian principle that there are no two things that cannot be distinguished from one another. He does admit that no two spirits can be completely similar, because everyone of them perceives the world from a somewhat different perspective and perceptions change their inner state. The case is different with material substances, Crusius says. The principle itself cannot be justified without experience, he insists and thinks that all supposed proofs of the principle have been sophisms: if God would have wanted, two different and still completely similar material substances could have been created. True, he admits, experience appears to show that seemingly similar things often differ in some manner. Yet, there is no assurance that at least some of the simplest parts of matter wouldn’t be completely similar. Still, Crusius suggests, God has probably created at least many different kinds of simple material substances, because this would provide more means for helping the world to fulfil its purpose.

Whatever the ultimate elements of matter are like, they can be combined into more complex substances or bodies. Indeed, Crusius says, matter as a whole probably has to be dispersed into distinct bodies, because this better helps to achieve the purpose of the world. Crusius distinguishes physical from mathematical bodies, which are mere possible divisions of space. Physical bodies, instead, are not united just because we think of them as united, but through something real that separates them from other bodies. Crusius suggests three kinds of such unifications. Firstly, parts of a body can be held together by inactive, unmoving substances surrounding it. Secondly, parts of a body can be held together by moving substances surrounding it, such as the vortexes in Cartesian physics. Finally, parts of a body can be held together by an elastic matter, that is, matter that has an innate tendency to return to a certain shape.

No other ways to unite material things into bodies exist, Crusius insists. He is especially keen to deny any attractive or cohesive forces that would hold parts of a body together, because all explanations why material things stay together should be reducible to fundamental forces. Cohesive force cannot be a fundamental force, he adds, because cohesion is just another name for material parts staying together and so merely describes the phenomenon without explaining it. Then again, Crusius denies the existence of attractive force, because such an action in distance breaks the requirements of what a force and causal interaction should be like. Finally, Crusius also denies that parts of bodies would stay together because of common feeling, since feeling is something he allows only spirits to have.

However the bodies are held together, they then interact with one another and with the spirits. Despite the interaction between the two types of substances, Crusius notes, these different classes can also be regarded in abstraction from one another. Thus, spirits of the world, in separation from material things, form a spiritual world, while matter as such forms a material world, and when regarded as separated into distinct bodies, a bodily world.

The bodily world particularly, Crusius says, can be seen as a machine - that is, as a body of its own, combined from parts that are shaped for some purposes in such a manner that these purposes can be actualised with the aid of the shape and the position of these parts. This is not true, he adds, of the whole world, because this also includes spirits that cannot be parts of a body. Furthermore, he notes, although the bodily world is a machine, all its parts are not, for instance, a stone is just a body, but not a machine. Finally, Crusius points out that the bodily world is a rather peculiar machine, because part of its driving force comes from actions of free spirits.

Although spirits are not machines, they can be combined with naturally produced machines. Crusius is obviously speaking of organic bodies, combined to which spirits are called souls. Crusius suggests that it is not completely necessary that worlds contain animals or combinations of souls and organic bodies. Animals do make a world more perfect, but finite spirits should be able to affect the bodily world even without the help of a body of their own.

For Crusius, the world is not a deterministic whole, because it also contains spirits capable of free actions. God’s interactions with the world provide further reasons why determinism does not work. We’ve already seen Crusius to note that God has a constant supernatural effect on the world, for instance, in sustaining the world and all the substances in it. In addition to such constant effects, Crusius also thinks that God can occasionally have quite sudden effects on the world, that is, God might do miracles.

Some of the miracles can be hidden from us humans - they are done merely, because God thought it best to do things in such a manner. At other times, God might choose to reveal that a miracle has been done - in these cases, Crusius adds, God must want humans to know that some event was a miracle. Sometimes the miracle might appear to be a work of a person following God, but even in these cases it is God who actually gives the person a power for doing such miracles. In these cases, Crusius explains, it is futile to try to make experiments whether this person truly can consistently make miracles, because God can at any point just choose not to grant that power to the person anymore.

How then to know when some event has been a miracle? Crusius points out that because of the possibility of hidden miracles, we can never be sure that something hasn’t been a miracle. Yet, he also gives a general criteria for recognising miracles: something is a miracle, if it could not have happened in a natural manner generally or at least in these specific conditions. He also adds that we are sometimes very able to distinguish supernatural from natural events, because we are so familiar with what naturally happens: for instance, we know trees don’t usually talk. Crusius also points out that we do not need mathematically certain proofs to accept something as a miracle, but a lower grade of conviction is usually enough. Finally, he emphasises that miracles also have a moral aspect, that is, we shouldn’t think of something with immoral consequences as a miracle.

Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - What God does

The final part of Crusius’ natural theology is dedicated to the question of what God does, that is, what effects the divine activities produce. The obvious first answer for Crusius is that God has created the world, that is, the world that earlier was not has become existent. In the strictest sense, Crusius adds, creation refers to the generation of simple substances and their fundamental forces. In addition, God has also ordered these simple substances, but this is not something that only God could do.

God has not just created the world and everything in it, Crusius continues, but they also sustain all these things. Why couldn’t God just have created the things in such a manner that they would keep on existing without the help of God? Crusius’ answer is that this would have been impossible. Because the created things are contingent, their current existence is no reason why they would continue existing and thus they require the help of God for their continuous existence or otherwise they might as well just blink out of existence.

In addition to sustaining the existence of the things in the world, Crusius states, God also sustains the very order of the world. The threat here is not that the world would be completely wiped out of existence, but only that it would collapse into chaos. This threat is real, Crusius adds, because by themselves, material things would quickly move and change any given order.

Crusius adds that in some cases God sustains the actuality of certain things, but when free choices are involved, God can only sustain their possibility, while the actuality is then left for the decision of free beings. Thus, Crusius explains, God is not responsible for evil actions of free creatures, but merely sustains the possibility of such actions, which the action of a free person then makes real.

God does not just sustain the world, Crusius continues, but they direct the world in accordance with certain purposes. Original guidelines of this divine providence, he clarifies, are God’s fundamental desires, while what God attempts to achieve must have something to do with creatures capable of free actions, not with the mechanism of the material world. God is, as it were, building a kingdom, where the divine will morally obligates free creatures to do certain actions.

Crusius divided divine providence into such where God uses the course of nature to make something purposeful happen at appropriate time and such where God uses miracles or personally acts on the worldly things to make something happen. Since free spirits cannot be forced to do anything by natural causes, he points out, miracles must be especially used with them. Thus, particularly if there are plenty of evil free creatures, God has to do miracles, in order to assure the fulfilment of divine purposes. This still doesn’t mean that we should see miracles everywhere, since God can well use less miracles to produce more effects. In addition, Crusius notes, God need not make miracles obviously visible, unless the explicit purpose of the miracle is to be noted by human beings.

Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - What God is

It is one thing to say that something is, another to say what it is. Thus, it is no wonder that Crusius considers the question on the attributes of God, in addition to attempting to prove their existence. Yet, he also has to at first argue that we can speak reasonably about God. After all, as he himself admits, God should be so far above all finite things that we cannot ever really comprehend their essence.

One common way to describe God is through metaphors taken from human life, for instance, when we say that God hears or sees all things. Crusius accepts such anthropopathies, assuming that they are not understood in a too literal manner that would imply God's finity - this would be anthropomorphism.

Yet, Crusius is also keen to find out more literal attributes of God, in order to alleviate all accusations of humanising God. He notes that anthropathies can still provide an inkling of such literal attributes, if one can just remove the metaphorical element from them.

In fact, Crusius adds, all things can provide hints of what God is like. Firstly one can concentrate on how things are perfect and then assume that God is eminently more perfect. Secondly, one can pay attention to the fact that God must be able to create everything in the world. Beyond these two roads, Crusius suggests we have only a third route of describing God - negative one.

Well, Crusius does admit also a fourth, that of revelation. He especially refers to the notion of God as a Trinity, which he considers as the closest we come to knowing God's essence - or at least knowing an attribute that is not either an infinitised attribute of finite things or a relation. Indeed, Trinity - that of being a substance composed of three individuals - is something completely unique to God.

The other, non-revelatory attributes of God Crusius divides into non-active and active attributes, depending on whether the attributes involve any action or a capacity to an action. Foremost of the non-active attributes is infinity. This means, Crusius says, that God cannot have any imperfections. Furthermore, it implies that God has majestity, that is, that he is infinitely removed from all finite beings and inconceivable to them.

Although Trinity, Crusius insists, God is still simple. That is, the three persons of Godhead are in themselves incomplete, although they can e.g. have different actions. Furthermore, the simplicity of God implies that God is not material and that human souls are not a part of God.

Crusius is also convinced of the uniqueness of God, although he is not satisfied with many of the proofs suggested for this position. For instance, Crusius does not think that one could prove the uniqueness of God from the supposed impossibility of distinguishing infinite things, which would have all the same attributes - he points out that this distinction could still happen through relations or spatio-temporal characteristics. Neither does he approve the attempt to prove the uniqueness from the necessity of God, since there is nothing to show that there are only necessary things. Instead, Crusius favours a rather idiosyncratic proof: gods exist in space, and if there are several gods, they must exist in the same or different space, but in the latter case they would be finite, while the former is impossible.

In addition to these rather general attributes, Crusius’ non-active attributes for God contain also attributes related to what he calls the abstractions of existence or space and time. Here the case of time is perhaps easier to understand, since it just means that God is eternal or exists at all times (he does make the interesting suggestion that Trinity explains what God did before creation of the world: the three persons interacted with one another somehow).

The case of space is quite analogous, although Crusius’ result seems unusual: God is immense or they cannot be limited by anything. Crusius notes that this does not mean that God would consist of parts - the usual objection against God’s spatiality. Crusius explains himself by saying that the space of God is a mere abstraction and mere abstractions cannot be really broken into parts.

The active attributes of God refer, then, to those attributes of God that involve an action or a capacity for an action. On a general level, these attributes include that of God having an infinite force, that is, a force that can do everything that just happens to be possible. Some of the actions resulting from God using this force are a necessary part of their essence. Yet, all of them cannot be necessary, Crusius insists, and must be such that God can begin and stop doing them, because otherwise God would be less perfect than humans, who can do this.

Crusius also divides God’s actions into immanent actions that belong merely to the inner state of God’s essence and transient actions that either create a new substance or change the condition of a substance different from God. But can God create something different from itself, if God exists everywhere? Yes, Crusius asserts, as although two gods cannot occupy space, apparently God and a finite creature can.

Crusius notes that there are three kinds of actions: movement, understanding and will. Of these, God really cannot move, because as has been noted, God is everywhere. Then again, Crusius notes, God can definitely understand or think things - denying this would be implicit atheism, because otherwise God would be just a blind mechanism.

God’s understanding, Crusius says, should be infinite. This means, firstly, that God knows all there is and all there could be. Secondly, it means that God’s knowledge of actualities and possibilities must be perfect. For instance, God cannot take impossibilities as possibilities, God must know everything as distinctly as possible and therefore God definitely cannot know anything through sensations or deductions.

Crusius points out that God knows different things in a different manner. Some things, like possibilities and God’s own existence, God would know even if the world did not exist. God also has an encompassing vision of the world: its past, present and future. This vision includes, Crusius insists, also the actions of free creatures - we cannot understand how God can know them, but it is not contradictory. Between the two types of knowledge, Crusius states, God has also a third type: knowledge of what would happen, if a free person chose to do something.

In addition to understanding, Crusius assures us, God also has a will. Just like with divine actions, some of God’s volitions are necessary - these are God’s fundamental desires. With humans, Crusius recounts, fundamental desires include drive toward perfection, drive to share perfection to others, drive of conscience and bodily drive. The two latter cannot really be divine drives, but the two others can. God thus always desires to be perfect, and because they are, God is always infinitely happy or blessed.

God also desires perfection in things created, Crusius says, and this means that the world, if such exists, must form a moral system, where choices of free creatures can reflect divine perfection and all the other things can serve free creatures in fulfilling this purpose. Acting in accordance with divine perfection, Crusius suggests, means especially that free creatures must understand their dependence on God. God must thus give the free creatures laws that must be obeyed, and if the laws are not obeyed, God must punish the sinner. Crusius goes even further and insists that God can never really end the punishment, because this would mean that transgression would ultimately be forgotten and justice would not be served. He does concede that this might not mean that God would put sinners in an eternal torture, but only that a sinner is prevented from reaching the highest state of happiness possible.

Why did God then allow sinners to exist in the first place? Crusius’ first line of defence is that sinners were not created as sinners, but they freely chose to be such. Yet, this line of defence seems inadequate, since God still knew that the sinners would sin. Crusius’ second and rather cruel defence is that God had to be shown as a stern and righteous judge, since righteous punishment of sinners is a perfection.

In addition to punishing the sinners, God’s righteousness demands also rewarding the virtuous. Yet, God has also further reasons for this, since the second fundamental drive of God, Crusius says, is a desire to do good and show love to free creatures. Thus, God’s dice are loaded toward mercy and charity. Still, Crusius says, God won’t just hand out maximal amount of goodness to every creature, since this is ultimately impossible: there is no maximal goodness for finite creatures, since their goodness can always be increased.

In addition to these fundamental desires, God also has freedom, Crusius insists, that is, God can begin actions that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. This does not mean that even God’s free actions would be completely against their fundamental desires, in other words, that they wouldn’t satisfy God's desire for perfection and goodness. It is more that God has a complete freedom of not creating such a world at all, but has freely chosen to create it. Furthermore, Crusius emphasises, world could also have been otherwise, since God could have chosen many different means to fulfill the perfection of the world.

Christian August Crusius: Draft of necessary truths of reason, in so far as they are set opposite to contingent ones - Proving God’s existence

Diverging clearly from the Wolffian order of metaphysics, Crusius proceeds after ontology to natural theology. His justification is that while knowing the properties of things in the world requires knowing the properties of their creator, natural theology presupposes only a general concept of the world as a sum of all things, of which we we perceive a part and of which we ourselves are a part, and additionally some individual truths about souls.

Crusius’ first task in natural theology is to prove the existence of God, that is, an intelligent and necessary substance, which differs from the world and is the effective cause of the world. Crusius’ strategy is to throw everything at the wall and see what happens to stick, as he is willing to provide a whole bunch of different proofs, deeming the topic so important that it must be decided by any means necessary - the various proofs convince different people and corroborate one another. Crusius doesn’t even provide any other systematisation of this hodgepodge of proofs, except a classification based on the supposed strength of them.

The most certain proofs, Crusius says, are demonstrations that are ultimately based on the three principles of human cognition and of course principles derivable from them, such as the principle of sufficient reason and the principle of contingency (things that can be thought not to exist are contingent). Crusius presents altogether five of these demonstrations, all of which can be regarded as modifications of the cosmological proof in the Kantian classification. I will not go in detail to these proofs, but merely note their prominent features:

• Crusius bases the existence of complex things on the existence of simple things, which they consist of. Then he uses the principle of contingency to show that simple things in the world are contingent and so require God for their existence.
• Crusius argues, as we have seen, that there are no infinite series of changes. This means, he insists, that the world must have been created by a substance that has existed eternally before creation.
• Crusius notes that all series of movements must be ultimately derived from an action of an infinite force.
• Crusius also uses the principle of contingency to directly conclude that the world is contingent.
• Crusius insists that plant and animal species must have originated from single individuals, which due to their well ordered nature must have been created by God.

The last of the demonstrations provides also a sort of link to what Crusius calls an infinitely probable proof of God’s existence. This proof is basically the old argument from the order in the world to someone creating it in an orderly fashion. Crusius insists that it is not just a question of teleology - it is a question of plants, animals and other things having a well ordered structure and not just them being mere means for human purposes.

Crusius admits that it is possible that this order would have been fashioned from blind chaos by pure chance, or as Crusius suggests some atheists said, by a revolution in the structure of the world. Yet, Crusius instantly counters, such a revolution would have required an infinite number of coincidences, making the only option or the existence of God thus infinitely probable. Indeed, he argues, this proof shows clearest why God would have to be an intelligent substance and not mere force of nature.

The final or the lowest level of the proofs in Crusius scheme consists of such that result in finite probability. First two of those involve history. Crusius argues that the oldest history books (by which Crusius refers especially to the Bible and other myths) assume that the humankind has not existed forever and it is not probable that the first humans would have been created with natural means that do not work nowadays (e.g. humans being generated in the bowels of the earth). Furthermore, Crusius emphasises that during human history all nations have believed in some divine being or beings and asserts the improbability of a so widely spread deception.

Third of the merely probable proofs is based on the supposition that all humans have a conscience or a natural propensity to know what is right and what is wrong. Crusius argues that the universal existence of such a propensity cannot be a mere coincidence, generated by lucky circumstances, but must have been planned by the creator of humankind to help humans to decide what to do and what to avoid doing.

There is a conspicuous absence in Crusius’ battery of proofs - the ontological, or as it was then often called, the Cartesian proof. I noticed in an earlier post that Crusius would have accepted the proof in his ontology, but his theology clarifies that this is not the case - no proof of God’s existence can be based on a mere principle of contradiction, but some consideration of causality must happen. Crusius’ justification is evidently inherited from Hoffmann: although we cannot think the most perfect being without accepting its existence in our thoughts, this does not tell whether the most perfect being has existence outside our thoughts. If it would be a valid, Crusius adds, we might as well prove that the most perfect man and woman must exist, although the existence of men and women altogether is contingent.

What the Cartesian proof does say, according to Crusius, is that if God’s existence has been guaranteed otherwise, we can say this existence is necessary. This strategy is not that far from Wolff’s, who first proved God’s existence through a cosmological argument and then proceeded to show through an ontological argument why God must exist (because God is the most perfect being).

The main target of Crusius’ proofs are atheists. Crusius includes under atheists also people who doubt God’s existence. Such doubting atheists attack only the supposed weaknesses in the proofs of God’s existence, for instance, they might reject proof from the order in the world by pointing out imperfections in the world. Crusius’ answer to this particular objection is that what is imperfection from a limited point of view can actually contribute to the perfection of the whole world.

Another point the doubting atheists make, Crusius says, is that humans cannot really have a perfect conception of God and therefore it is as reasonable to deny as to accept God’s existence. Crusius insists that we do not need such a fully adequate concept of God to speak about their existence, but we have to just be able to distinguish God from other things. God is no empty word, Crusius assures, although we as finite things can know God mostly through negations or through God’s relations to other entities.

The more strict atheists, Crusius says, deny outright the existence of God. Some of these atheists are materialists, like ancient atomists, who consider even thinking and willing to be mere movement of matter and who do deny the existence of all simple intelligent substances. Other atheists Crusius groups under the title of universalists. Universalists he divides into those like Anaximander, who suppose that the final cause of the world can lie in the simple substances of the world, which may be intelligent, and those like Spinoza, who think of world as a unified simple substance, with things in it as mere properties of the substance. All of these forms of atheism, Crusius thinks, fall short in that they have to assume an infinite series of causes.

Crusius ends the discussion of the existence of God by noting that atheism is not the only erroneous view on theological matters. There are also deists, or as he also calls them, virtual atheists, who do not deny the existence of God, but only that of God being a moral lawgiver and judge. This is a topic he leaves for the next chapter on the attributes of God.