Stony Brook University

again at last to the Ciceronian formulation that the useful for oneself is coincident with
the honorable, where “honorable” means to act in a way most useful to everyone.
We may then return to the passage with which this section began, which
expressed the full precept of piety, the third precept of right, as universal justice,
universal virtue: “One can also say that as soon as [justice] is founded on God or on the
imitation of God, it becomes universal justice, and contains all the virtues. . . . And
universal justice is stamped with the supreme precept: honeste (hoc est probe, pie) vivere
(RM 60). 111 After all this it is fitting to turn to an earlier passage in the Meditation, one
which conveys the “true good” in a way that may now be better understood.
But since justice tends to the good, and [since] wisdom and goodness,
which together form justice, relate to the good, one may ask what the true
good is. I answer that it is nothing else than that which serves in the
perfection of intelligent substances: from which it is clear that
contentment, joy, wisdom, goodness and virtue are good things essentially
and can never be evil; that power is naturally a good, that is to say in itself,
because, everything being equal, it is better to have it than not to have it:
but it does not become a certain good until it is joined with wisdom and
goodness. (RM 50) 112
The true good is “that which serves in the perfection of intelligent substances.” This
perfection includes pleasure, happiness, and power. But these qualities, or the sum total
of their effects, are not truly good unless they are regulated by the rule of reason and by
the precepts of right. As Leibniz says in reference to the formal reason of justice: “Power
is a different matter, but if it is used it makes right become fact, and makes what ought to
be also really exist, in so far as the nature of things permits. And this is what God does in
the world” (RM 50). In other words, although God is not obligated to any superior, he is
obligated by his own moral and rational nature. By virtue our own moral and rational
nature, our own moral power, we are also obligated to this moral perfection.
Thus the whole story of Leibniz’s science of right culminates in “the perfection of
intelligent substances,” in this “spiritual disposition.” The highest good as an end is not to
attain the greatest happiness, but rather to attain moral perfection. 113 This culmination is
111 M 64: “On peut dire qu’aussitôt qu’elle est fondée sur Dieu ou sur l’imitation de Dieu, elle devient
justice universelle et contient toutes les vertus. . . . Et la justice universelle est marquée par le précepte
suprême “honeste, h.e. probe, pie vivere. . . .”
112 M 48: “Mais, puisque la justice tend au bien et que la sagesse et la bonté qui forment la justice
ensemble, se rapportent au bien, on demandera ce que c’est que le vrai bien? Je réponds que ce n’est autre
chose que ce qui sert à la perfection des substances intelligentes, d’où il est manifeste que l’ordre, le
contentement, la joie, la sagesse, la bonté, la vertu sont des biens essentiellement et ne sauraient jamais être
mauvais, que la puissance est un bien naturellement, c’est-à-dire de soi, parce que, le reste étant égal, il faut
mieux l’avoir que de ne la point avoir. Mais elle ne devient un bien assuré que lorsqu’elle est jointe avec la
sagesse et avec la bonté.”
113 Theodicy §119). “The felicity of all rational creatures is one of the aims [God] has in view; but it is not
his whole aim, nor even his final aim. Therefore it happens that the unhappiness of some of these creatures
may come about by concomitance, and as a result of other greater goods . . . God will produce as much
reason and knowledge in the universe as his plan can admit. God gives reason to the human race ... But
even though it should prove that reason did more harm than good to men . . . it might still be the case that it
was more in accordance with the perfection of the universe to give reason to men, notwithstanding all the
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