Journal of the History of Philosophy

96 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY fail to see how it supports a spiritualistic reading of substance. There are, in fact, many passages in the Essay that would lead one to suspect that Locke leaned toward materialism. In Book 4, Locke says: "We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no" (4.3.6.). Locke also claims that immateriality is not necessary for the view that the soul is immortal. Given the limitations of human knowledge, it would be just as wrong to conclude that Locke is a materialist as it is to conclude that material objects harbor immaterial forms or essences. KATHYSQUADRITO Indiana University-Purdue University Robert McRae. Leibniz: Apperception, Perception, and Thought. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1976. Pp. x + 148. $15.00. Professor McRae has attempted a difficult task: the reconstruction of Leibniz's epistemology . As McRac points out, Leibniz has "nothing within the large bulk of his writings that can be pointed at as constituting a theory of knowledge," and the reason for this is that he appears not to have been interested in epistemological problems per se. The distinction of appearance from the real in some ways may serve as a paradigm for illustrating Leibniz's tendency to exploit epistemological theory in solving metaphysical problems. Again, the formulation of the distinction of perception and apperception is inextricably linked with metaphysical problems concerning the demarcation of spirits from mere souls. To approach Leibniz's epistemology is to move to the periphery of his thought and, eventually, to be led right back to its metaphysical core. To analyze his epistemological theory for its own sake is almost to do more than Leibniz himself did; it is perhaps, as Russell believed, "to attempt a reconstruction of the system which Leibniz should have written: but did not." McRae's discussion is far-ranging, and he offers interesting interpretations of many of the elements of Leibniz's thought concerning perception, apperception, ideas, concepts, principles, innateness, memory, phenomena, understanding, and more. If there is a central thesis to the book, it is that, with due qualifications, Leibniz's "theory of knowledge" is that "the conjoining of apperception with perception provides the necessary and sufficient conditions of thought and understanding" (p. 5). Perception is the "expression " of external multiplicitiesin a single individualentity. Perception lacks modern connotations , and McRae emphasizes, contra Russell, that perception is not a kind of consciousness, at least in Leibniz's sense of the term. For McRae is convinced that consciousness, apperception , and reflection are equivalent terms and entail consideration of what we call "i," the ego, in a way that perception does not. Consciousness, for Leibniz, is self-consciousness. McRae is willing to pay the cost of this interpretation, which does have support from texts, and the cost is to settle for "an unresolved inconsistency in Leibniz' account of sensation" (p. 34). For Leibniz allows that animals are souls and have feeling and sensation. As McRae sees it, Leibniz commits himselfto the view that sensation requires apperception or consciousness. Thus, it follows that animals must have apperception. However, men are distinguished from animals by their having reason, that knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that comes with (self-) reflexive acts. And so, if apperception is synonymous with reflection, animals both do and do not have reflection-apperception-consciousness.An alternative possibility is that Leibniz simply used apperception and consciousness ambiguously and allowed that, in a broad sense, apperception could be awareness of perceptions, but without awareness of the I. This would leave reflection as awareness of the ego itself. McRae dismisses this possibility on the grounds, first, that Leibniz nowhere says that apperception of perceptions without awareness of the I is possible; second, that he never attributes consciousness, apperception, or reflection to animals ; and third, that "consciousness of the I and its thoughts, is... of 'one fact' for Leibniz." BOOK REVIEWS 97 It may be wondered, however, whether these considerations are not misleading in some respects . For while it is strictly true that Leibniz does not attribute apperception to animals, it may be noted that he indicates that in souls (such as animals...