Correspondence with Arnauld E-book

                             1686

                   CORRESPONDENCE WITH ARNAULD


                        by G W Leibniz






Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)



Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)þI


           I: Leibniz to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels


                                               1/11 Feb., 1686.
  Being at a place lately for several days with nothing to do, I
wrote out a short discourse on Metaphysics on which I should be
very glad to have the opinion of Mons. Arnaud. *001 For the
questions in regard to grace, in regard to the relations of God with
created beings, in regard to the nature of miracles, the cause of
sin, the origin of evil, the immortality of the soul, ideas, etc., are
discussed in a way which seems to offer new points of approach
fitted to clear up some great difficulties. I enclose herewith a
summary of the articles which it contains, as I have not had time
to make a clean copy of the whole.

  I therefore beg Your Serene Highness to send him this summary,
requesting him to look it over and give his judgment upon it. For,
as he excels equally in Theology and in Philosophy, in erudition
and in power of thought, I know of no one who is better fitted to
give an opinion upon it. I am very desirous to have a critic as
careful, as enlightened and as open to reason as is Monsieur
Arnaud, being myself also a person the most disposed in the world
to submit to reasoning.

  Perhaps Mons. Arnaud will not find this outline wholly
unworthy of his consideration, especially since he has been
somewhat occupied in the examination of these matters. If he
finds obscurities I will explain myself sincerely and frankly, and if
he finds me worthy indeed of his instruction I shall try to behave
in such a way that he shall find no cause for being dissatisfied on
that point. I beg Your Serene Highness to enclose this with the
summary which I am sending and to forward them both to Mons.
Arnaud.



         Summary of the Discourse on Metaphysics


  1. Concerning the divine perfection and that God does
everything in the most desirable way.

  2. Against those who hold that there is in the works of God no
goodness, or that the principles of goodness and beauty are
arbitrary.

  3. Against those who think that God might have made things
better than he has.

  4. That love for God demands on our part complete satisfaction
with and acquiescence in that which he has done.

  5. In what the principles of the perfection of the divine conduct
consist and that the simplicity of the means counterbalances the
richness of the effects.

  6. That God does nothing which is not orderly and that it is not
even possible to conceive of events which are not regular.

  7. That miracles conform to the general order although they go
against the subordinate regulations; concerning that which God
desires or permits and concerning general and particular
intentions.

  8. In order to distinguish between the activities of God and the
activities of created things, we must explain the conception of an
individual substance.

  9. That every individual substance expresses the whole universe
in its own manner, and that in its full concept is included all its
experiences together with all the attendant circumstances and the
whole sequence of exterior events.

  10. That the belief in substantial forms has a certain basis in fact
but that these forms effect no changes in the phenomena and must
not be employed for the explanation of particular events.

  11. That the opinions of the theologians and of the so-called
scholastic philosophers are not to be wholly despised.

  12. That the conception of the extension of a body is in a way
imaginary and does not constitute the substance of the body.

  13. As the individual concept of each person includes once for
all everything which can ever happen to him, in it can be seen a
priori the evidences or the reasons for the reality of each event
and why one happened sooner than the other. But these events,
however certain, are nevertheless contingent being based on the
free choice of God and of his creatures. It is true that their choices
always have their reasons but they incline to the choices under no
compulsion of necessity.

  14. God produces different substances according to the different
views which he has of the world and by the intervention of God
the appropriate nature of each substance brings it about that what
happens to one corresponds to what happens to all the others
without, however, their acting upon one another directly.

  15. The action of one finite substance upon another consists only
in the increase in the degree of the expression of the first
combined with a decrease in that of the second, in so far as God
has in advance fashioned them so that they should accord.

  16. The extraordinary intervention of God is not excluded in that
which our particular essences express because this expression
includes everything. Such intervention however goes beyond the
power of our natural being or of our distinct expression because
these are finite and follow certain subordinate regulations.

  17. An example of a subordinate regulation in the law of nature
which demonstrates that God always preserves the same amount
of force but not the same quantity of motion; against the
Cartesians and many others.

  18. The distinction between force and the quantity of motion is,
among other reasons, important as showing that we must have
recourse to metaphysical considerations in addition to discussions
of extension, if we wish to explain the phenomena of matter.

  19. The utility of final causes in physics.

  20. A noteworthy disquisition by Socrates in Plato's Phaedo
against the philosophers who were too materialistic.

  21. If the mechanical laws depended upon geometry alone
without metaphysical influences, the phenomena would be very
different from what they are.

  22. Reconciliation of the two methods of explanation, the one
using final causes and the other efficient causes, thus satisfying
both those who explain nature mechanically and also those who
have recourse to incorporeal natures.

  23. Returning to immaterial substances we explain how God acts
upon the understanding of spirits, and ask whether one always
keeps the idea of what he thinks about.

  24. What clear and obscure, distinct and confused, adequate and
inadequate, intuitive and assumed knowledge is, and the
definition of nominal, real, causal and essential.

  25. In what cases knowledge is added to mere contemplation of
the idea.

  26. Ideas are all stored up within us. Plato's doctrine of
reminiscence.

  27. In what respect our souls can be compared to blank tablets
and how conceptions are derived from the senses.

  28. The only immediate object of our perceptions which exists
outside of us is God and in him alone is our light.

  29. Yet we think directly by means of our own ideas and not
through God's.

  30. How God inclines our souls without necessitating them; that
there are no grounds for complaint; that we must not ask why
Judas sinned because this free act is contained in his concept, the
only question being why Judas the sinner is admitted to existence,
preferably to other possible persons; concerning the original
imperfection or limitation before the fall and concerning the
different degrees of grace.

  31. The motives for election, faith foreseen, partial knowledge,
the absolute decree and that the whole inquiry is reduced to the
question why God has chosen and resolved to admit to existence
such a possible person whose concept involves such a sequence of
gifts of grace and of free acts. This at once overcomes all the
difficulties.

  32. Applicability of these principles in matters of piety and of
religion.

  33. Explanation of the inter-relation of soul and body which has
been usually considered inexplicable and miraculous; also
concerning the origin of confused perceptions.

  34. The difference between spirits and other substances, souls or
substantial forms, and that the immortality which people wish for
includes remembrance.

  35. Excellence of spirits; that God considers them preferably to
the other created things; that spirits express God rather than the
world while other simple substances express rather the world than
God.

  36. God is the monarch of the most perfect republic which is
composed of all the spirits, and the felicity of this city of God is
his principal purpose.

  37. Jesus Christ has disclosed to men the mystery and the
admirable laws of the Kingdom of Heaven and the greatness of the
supreme happiness which God has prepared for those who love
him.



           II: Arnauld to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels


                                                  March 13, 1686.
  I have received, Monseigneur, the metaphysical thoughts which
Your Highness sent me from Mr. Leibniz as a witness of his
affection and his esteem for which I am very grateful to him. But I
have been so busy ever since that only within the last three days
have I been able to read his missive.

  And at the present time I have such a bad cold that all that I can
do now is to tell Your Highness in a couple of words that I find in
his thoughts so many things which frightened me and which if I
am not mistaken almost all men would find so startling that I
cannot see any utility in a treatise which would be evidently
rejected by everybody.

  I will instance for example what is said in Article 13: That the
individual concept of every person involves once for all everything
which will ever happen to him, etc. If this is so, God was free to
create or not to create Adam, but supposing he decided to create
him, all that has since happened to the human race or which will
ever happen to it has occurred and will occur by a necessity more
than fatal. For the individual concept of Adam involved that he
would have so many children and the individual concepts of these
children involved all that they would do and all the children that
they would have; and so on. God has therefore no more liberty in
regard to all that, provided he wished to create Adam, than he was
free to create a nature incapable of thought, supposing that he
wished to create me. I am not in a position to speak of this at
greater length, but Mr. Leibniz will understand my meaning and
it is possible that he will find no difficulties in the consequence
which I have drawn. If he finds none, however, he has reason to
fear that he will be alone in his position, and were I wrong in this
last statement I should be still sorrier.

  I cannot refrain from expressing to Your Highness my sorrow at
his attachment to those opinions, which he has indeed felt could
hardly be permitted in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church
would prohibit his entertaining them, and it is apparently this
attachment that has prevented his entering the fold,
notwithstanding the fact that Your Highness, if I remember
rightly, brought him to recognize that there was no reasonable
doubt as to its being the true church. *002 Would it not be better
for him to leave those metaphysical speculations which can be of
utility neither to himself nor to others, in order to apply himself
seriously to the most important matter he can ever undertake,
namely, to assure his salvation, by entering into the Church from
which new sects can form only by rendering themselves
schismatic? I read yesterday by chance one of Saint Augustine's
letters in which he answers various questions that were put
forward by a Pagan who showed a desire to become a Christian
but who always postponed doing so. He says, at the end, what may
be applied to our friend "There are numberless problems which
are not to be solved before one has faith and will not be solved in
life without faith."



           III: Leibniz to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels


                                                  April 12, 1686.
  I do not know what to say to M. A.'s letter, and I never should
have thought that a person whose reputation is so great and so real
and from whom we have such excellent Reflections on Morals and
Logic would be so precipitate in his judgments. After this instance
I am not surprised that some are angry at him. Nevertheless I
think it well to be patient at times under the ill humor of one
whose merit is extraordinary, provided his acts have no serious
results and I believe that a judicious reply may dissipate a
prejudice ill-founded. I anticipate this justice in M. A.

  Whatever reason, however, I may have for complaint, I desire to
suppress all reflections which are not essential to the matter in
hand and which might serve to increase the ill-feeling, but I hope
he will use the same moderation, in case he has the graciousness
to act as my instructor. I am only able to assure him that he is
quite mistaken in certain of his conjectures, because people of
good sense have judged otherwise regarding my positions, and
that notwithstanding their encouragement I have not been over
quick in publishing anything upon abstract subjects which are to
the taste of few people, inasmuch as the public even has as yet
heard almost nothing in regard to certain more plausible
discoveries which I made several years ago.

  I have written down these Meditations only in order to profit for
my own sake by the criticisms of more able thinkers and in order
to receive confidence or correction in the investigation of these
most important truths. It is true that some persons of intelligence
have found my opinions acceptable, but I should be the first to
warn them if I thought there were the slightest evil effects from
them.

  This declaration is sincere, and this will not be the first time that
I have profited by the instruction of enlightened persons. This is
why I shall assuredly be under great obligations to M. A. in case I
merit his having the goodness to deliver me from the errors which
he thinks dangerous and of which, I declare it in good faith, I am
unable to see the evil. But I hope that he will use moderation, and
that he will do me justice, because men deserve at least that no
wrong be done to them through precipitate judgments.

  He chooses one of my theses to show that it is dangerous. But
either I am incapable for the present of understanding the
difficulty or else there is none in it. This has enabled me to
recover from my surprise and has made me think that M.
Arnaud's remarks are the result of misconceptions. I will try
therefore to deflect him from that strange opinion, which he
conceived a little too hurriedly.

  I said in the 13th article of my summary that the individual
concept of each person involved once for all, all that would ever
happen to him. From that he draws this conclusion that all that
happens to any person and even to the whole human race must
occur by a necessity more than fatal, as though concepts and
previsions rendered things necessary and as though a free act
could not be included in the concept or perfect view which God
has of the person who performs it. And he adds that perhaps I will
not find difficulties in the conclusion which he draws. Yet I have
expressly protested in that same article that I do not admit such a
conclusion. It must be then either that he doubts my sincerity for
which I have given him no grounds or else he has not sufficiently
examined that which he controverts. I do not complain as much as
it appears I have a right to, because I remember that he was
writing at a time when an indisposition did not permit him the
liberty of his whole mind, as the letter itself witnesses. And I
desire to have him know how much regard I have for him.

  He says: "If this is true (that is to say that the individual concept
of each person involves once for all all that will ever happen to
him), God has not been free to create everything that has since
happened to the human race, and all that will happen to it for all
eternity must occur through a necessity more than fatalistic."
(There is some fault in the copy but I have felt able to amend it as
above.) "For the individual concept, Adam, has involved that he
should have so many children and the individual concept of each
one of these children has involved everything that they would do
and all the children that they would have, and so on. There is
therefore no more liberty in God regarding all that, supposing that
he wished to create Adam, than there is to create a nature
incapable of thought, supposing that he wished to create me."

  To these last words ought properly to have been added the proof
of the consequence but it is quite evident that they confuse
necessitatem ex hypothesi with absolute necessity. A
distinction has always been made between God's freedom to act
absolutely and his obligation to act in virtue of certain resolutions
already made. He hardly understands the case who does not take
the whole into consideration. It is little consonant with God's
dignity to conceive of him (with the pretext of assuring his
freedom) like certain Socinians, as a human being who forms his
resolutions according to circumstances. These maintain that he
would be no longer free to create what he found good if his first
resolutions in regard to Adam or other men already involved a
relationship to that which concerned their posterity. Yet all agree
that God has regulated from all eternity the whole course of the
universe without this fact diminishing his freedom in any respect.
It is clear also that these objectors separate the will-acts of God
one from another while his acts are in fact inter-related. For we
must not think of the intention of God to create a certain man
Adam as detached from all the other intentions which he has in
regard to the children of Adam and of all the human race, as
though God first made the decree to create Adam without any
relation to his posterity. This, in my opinion, does away with his
freedom in creating Adam's posterity as seems best to him, and is
a very strange sort of reasoning. We must rather think that God,
choosing not an indeterminate Adam but a particular Adam,
whose perfect representation is found among the possible beings
in the Ideas of God and who is accompanied by certain individual
circumstances and among other predicates possesses also that of
having in time a certain posterity,- God, I say, in choosing him,
has already had in mind his posterity and chooses them both at the
same time.

  I am unable to understand how there is any evil in this opinion.
If God should act in any other way he would not act as God. I will
give an illustration. A wise prince in choosing a general whose
intimates he knows, chooses at the same time certain colonels and
captains whom he well knows this general will recommend and
whom he will not wish to refuse to him for certain prudential
reasons. This fact, however, does not at all destroy the absolute
power of the prince nor his freedom. The same applies to God
even more certainly.

  Therefore to reason rightly we must think of God as having a
certain more general and more comprehensive intention which
has regard to the whole order of the universe because the universe
is a whole which God sees through and through with a single
glance. This more general intention embraces virtually the other
intentions touching what transpires in this universe and among
these is also that of creating a particular Adam who is related to
the line of his posterity which God has already chosen as such and
we may even say that these particular intentions differ from the
general intention only in a single respect, that is to say, as the
situation of a city regarded from a particular point of view has its
particular geometrical plan. These various intentions all express
the whole universe in the same way that each situation expresses
the city. In fact the wiser a man is, the less detached intentions
does he have, and again the more views and intentions that one
has the less comprehensive and inter-related they are.

  Each particular intention involves a relation to all the others, so
that they may be concerted together in the best way possible. Far
from finding in this anything repellent, I think that the contrary
view destroys the perfection of God. In my opinion one must be
hard to please or else prejudiced when he finds opinions so
innocent or rather so reasonable, worthy of exaggerations so
strange as those which were sent to Your Highness.

  If what I said be thought over a little it will be found to be
evident ex terminis: for by the individual concept, Adam, I
mean of course a perfect representation of a particular Adam who
has certain individual characteristics and is thus distinguished
from an infinity of possible persons very similar to him yet for all
that different from him (as ellipses always differ from the circle,
however closely they may approach it). God has preferred him to
these others because it has pleased God to choose precisely such
an arrangement of the universe, and everything which is a
consequence of this resolution is necessary only by a hypothetical
necessity and by no means destroys the freedom of God nor that of
the created spirits. There is a possible Adam whose posterity is of
a certain sort, and an infinity of other possible Adams whose
posterity would be otherwise; now is it not true that these possible
Adams (if we may speak of them thus) differ among themselves
and that God has chosen only one who is precisely ours? There are
so many reasons which prove the impossibility, not to say the
absurdity and even the impiety of the contrary view, that I believe
all men are really of the same opinion when they think over a
little what they are saying. Perhaps M. A. also, if he had not been
prejudiced against me as he was at first, would not have found my
propositions so strange and would not have deduced from them
the consequences which he did.

  I sincerely think I have met M. Arnaud's objection and I am glad
to see that the point which he has selected as the most startling, is
in my opinion so little so. I do not know, however, whether I will
have the pleasure of bringing M. Arnaud to acknowledge it also.
Among the thousand advantages of great intellectual ability there
is this little defect, that those who are possessed of this great
intellectual ability, having the right to trust to their opinions, are
not easily changed. As for myself, who am not of this stamp, I
glory in acknowledging that I have been taught, and I should even
find pleasure in being taught, provided I could say it sincerely and
without flattery.

  In addition I wish M. Arnaud to know that I make no pretentions
to the glory of being an innovator, as he seems to have understood
my opinions. On the contrary I usually find that the most ancient
and the most generally accepted opinions are the best. I think that
one cannot be accused of being an innovator when he produces
only certain new truths without overturning well established
beliefs. This is what the Geometers are doing and all those who
are moving forward. I do not know if it will be easy to indicate
authorized opinions to which mine are opposed. That is why what
M. Arnaud says concerning the church has nothing to do with
these meditations of mine, and I hope that he does not wish to
hold and that he will not be able to prove them to contain
anything that can be considered as heretical in any church
whatever. Yet if the Church to which he belongs is so prompt to
censure, such a proceeding should serve as a notice to be on one's
guard. As soon as a person might wish to express some view
which would have the slightest bearing upon Religion and which
might go a little beyond what is taught to children, he would be in
danger of getting into difficulties or at least of having some
church father as a sponsor, which is saying the same things in
terminis. Yet even that would not be perhaps sufficient for
complete safety, above all, when one has no means of support.

  If Your Serene Highness were not a Prince whose intelligence is
as great as is his moderation, I should have been on my guard in
speaking of these things. To whom, however, do they relate better
than to you, and since you have had the goodness to act as
intermediary in this discussion, can we without imprudence have
recourse to any other arbitrator? In so far as the concern is not so
much regarding the truth of certain propositions as regarding their
consequences and their being tolerated, I do not believe that you
will approve so much vehemence over so small a matter. It is
quite possible, however, that M. A. spoke in those severe terms
only because he believed that I would admit the consequence
which he had reason to find so terrifying and that he will change
his language after my explanation. To this, his own sense of
justice will contribute as much as the authority of Your Highness.
                       I am, with devotion, etc.



           IV: Leibniz to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels


                                                   April 12, 1686.
  I have received M. Arnaud's verdict and I think it well to
disabuse his mind by the enclosed reply in the form of a letter to
Your Highness. But I confess that I have had much difficulty in
suppressing a desire as much to laugh as to express pity, inasmuch
as the good man seems really to have lost a part of his mind and
seems not to have been able to keep from crying out against
everything as do those seized with melancholy to whom
everything which they see or think of appears black. I have shown
a good deal of moderation toward him but I have not avoided
letting him quietly know that he is wrong. If he has the kindness
to rescue me from the errors which he attributes to me and which
he thinks to have seen in my writings, I wish that he would
suppress the personal reflections and the severe expressions,
which I have feigned not to notice out of the respect which I have
for Your Serene Highness and also because of the respect which I
have for the merits of the good man.

  Yet I am surprised at the difference which there is between our
pretended Santons and those persons of the world who pretend to
no such position and have much more the effect. Your Serene
Highness is a Sovereign Prince and still you have shown to me a
moderation which I wonder at, while M. Arnaud is a famous
theologian whose meditations on religious subjects ought to have
rendered him mild and charitable, yet what he says seems often
haughty, rough and full of severity. I am not surprised now that he
has so easily fallen out with Father Malebranche and others who
used to be his fast friends. Father Malebranche has published
writings which M. Arnaud treated extravagantly almost as he has
done in my case. The world has not always been of his opinions.
He must take care, however, not to excite his bilious temper. It
will deprive us of all the pleasure and all the satisfaction which I
had anticipated in a mild and reasonable debate.

  I believe he received my paper when he was in an ill humor and
finding himself put to trouble by it, he wanted to revenge himself
by a rebuff. I know that if Your Serene Highness had the leisure to
consider the objection which he brought forward, you could not 
refrain from laughing at seeing the slight cause he had for making
such tragic exclamations; quite as one would laugh on hearing an
orator who should say every few minutes, "O coelum, O terra, O
maria Neptuni."

  I am glad that there is nothing more repellent, or more difficult
in my thoughts than what he objects to. For according to him if
what I say is true (namely that the individual concept or
consideration of Adam, involves all that will happen to him and to
his posterity), it follows that God will have no liberty any longer
with respect to the human race. He imagines therefore that God is
like a human being who forms his resolves in accordance with
circumstances, while on the contrary, God, foreseeing and having
regulated all things from all eternity, has chosen from the first the
entire sequence and inter-relation of the universe and
consequently not simply an Adam but such an Adam in regard to
whom he foresaw that he would do such and such things and
would have such and such children, without, however, this
prevision of God's, though ordained from all time, interfering at
all with his freedom. On this point all theologians, excepting
some Socinians who think of God as a human being, are agreed.
And I am surprised that the desire to find something repellent in
my thoughts, prejudice against which had engendered in his mind
a confused and ill-directed idea, has led this learned man to speak
against his own knowledge and convictions. For I am not so
unfair as to imitate him and to impute to him the dangerous
doctrine of those Socinians which destroys the sovereign
perfection of God, although he seems almost to incline to that
doctrine in the heat of debate.

  Every man who acts wisely considers all the circumstances and
bearings of the resolve which he makes, and this in accordance
with the measure of his abilities. And God, who sees every thing
perfectly and with a single glance, can he have failed to make his
plans in conformity with everything which he saw? And can he
have chosen a particular Adam without considering and having in
mind all that has relations to him? Consequently it is ridiculous to
say that this free resolve on God's part deprives him of his liberty.
Otherwise in order to be free one must need be ever undecided.
Such are the thoughts which are repellent to Mr. Arnaud. We will
see if through their consequences he will be able to derive
something worse from them. Yet the most important reflection
which I have made in the enclosed is that he himself some time
ago expressly wrote to Your Serene Highness that no trouble was
given to a man who was in their church or who wished to be in it,
for his philosophical opinions and here is he now, forgetting this
moderation, and losing control of himself over a trifle. It is
therefore dangerous to consort with such people and Your Serene
Highness sees how many precautions one should take. This was
one of the very reasons why I communicated the summary to M.
Arnaud, viz., to probe a little and to see what his behaviour would
be. But tange montes et fumigabunt. As soon as one swings
away the least amount from the positions of certain professors
they burst forth into explosions and thunders.

  I am very positive that the world will not be of his opinion but it
is always well to be on one's guard. Perhaps, however, Your
Highness will have a chance to let him know that to act in such a
way, is to rebuke people unnecessarily, so that henceforth he may
use a little more moderation. If I am not mistaken Your Highness
had a correspondence with him about the methods of restraint and
I should like to learn the results of it.

  I may add that milord has now gone to Rome and apparently will
not return to Germany so soon as was thought. One of these days I
am going to Wolfenbutel and will do my best to recover Your
Highness's book. It is said that M. Varillas has written a History
of Modern Heresies.

  Mastrich's letter which Your Highness communicated to me
regarding the conversions of Sedan seems quite reasonable. M.
Maimburg, they say, reports that St. Gregory the Great also
approved of this principle, namely that one should not trouble
himself even if the conversion of Heretics was feigned, provided
that thus their children were really gained over. But it is not
permitted to kill some persons in order to gain others, although
Charlemagne used almost exactly this method against the Saxons,
forcing them to accept Religion with the sword at their throats.
We have now here a Monsieur Leti who has brought us his
History of Geneva in five volumes dedicated to the House of
Brunswick. I do not know what relationship he finds between the
two. He says quite good things at times and is a good
conversationalist.
                                           I am, etc.



            V: Leibniz to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels


                                                5/15 April, 1686.
  Your Serene Highness will have received the letter which I sent
by the preceding post, to which I joined, in the form of a letter to
Your Highness, a communication of which a copy could be sent to
M. A. I have since thought it would be better to change those
words toward the end, beginning "Nevertheless, if the church in
which he is be so prompt to censure, such a procedure ought to
serve as a notice," etc., as far as the words, "above all, when one
has no means of support," lest M. A. may take the opportunity
from them to enter into controversial disputes as if the church
were being attacked, which is not at all the intention.

  In the copy could be put in their place, "least of all in the
communion to which M. A. belongs, where the Council of Trent
as well as the Popes have been very wisely satisfied with
censuring opinions in which there are points manifestly against
the faith and against the customs. They have not gone into the
philosophic consequences. If it were necessary to listen to these,
then in matters of censure Thomists would pass for Calvinists
according to the Jesuits, and the Jesuits would be classed as
Semipelagians according to the Thomists. Both would destroy
freedom according to Durandus and Father Louys de Dole, and in
general every absurdity would pass for atheism because it could be
shown to destroy the nature of God."



                        VI: Arnauld to Leibniz


                                                 May 13, 1686.
  I thought that I ought to address myself to you personally to ask
pardon for having given you cause to become angry against me, in
that I employed too severe terms when I indicated what I thought
of one of your positions. But I protest before God that the fault
which I committed was not at all the result of prejudice against
you, for I have never had cause to have of you other than a most
favorable opinion save in the matter of Religion, in which you
found yourself fixed through your birth; neither was I in an ill 
humor when I wrote the letter which has wounded you, nothing
being further from my character than the evil disposition which it
pleases many people to attribute to me; neither by a too great
attachment to my own opinions was I shocked in seeing you hold
contrary opinions, for I can assure you that I have meditated so
little on these kinds of subjects that I am able to say that my
opinions are not at all fully made up.

  I beg you, sir, to believe nothing like that about me but to be
convinced that what caused my indiscretion was simply that,
having been accustomed to write off-hand to His Highness
because he is so good as to readily excuse all my faults, I imagined
that I could tell him frankly what I was unable to approve of in
one of your opinions because I was very sure it would not pass
muster and if I had misunderstood your meaning you would be
able to correct me without its going any further.

  But I hope, sir, that the Prince will be willing to make peace for
me and I may engage him in this by using the words which Saint
Augustine used on a similar occasion. He had written very harshly
against those who thought that God could be seen with the
physical eyes, and a Bishop in Africa who held this opinion,
having seen this letter which was not at all addressed to him, was
seriously offended by it. This necessitated Saint Augustine's
employing a common friend to appease the Prelate and I beg you
to imagine that I am saying to the Prince for your ears what Saint
Augustine wrote to this friend, to be said to the Bishop: Dum
essem in admonendo sollicitus, in corripiendo nimius atque
improvidus fui. Hoc non defendo sed reprehendo: hoc non excuso,
sed accuso. Ignoscatur, peto; recordetur nostram dilectionem
pristinem et obliviscatur offensionem novam. Faciat certe quod
me non fecisse succensuit: habeat lenitatem in dandi venia, quam
non habui in illa epistola conscribenda.

  I was in doubt whether I ought not to stop here without going
again into the question which was the occasion for our falling out,
lest there might again escape me some word which could wound
you. But I fear, however, that that would be not to have a
sufficiently good opinion of your fairness. I will tell you, therefore,
in a few words the difficulties which I still have with this
proposition: "The individual concept of each person involves,
once for all, all that will ever happen to him."

  It seems to me to follow from this that the individual concept of
Adam has involved that he would have so many children and the
individual concept of each one of these children involves all that
they will do and all the children which they will have and so on.
Whence I thought that we could infer that God was free, in so far
as the creating or not creating of Adam, but supposing that he had
wished to create him, all that has since happened to the human
race has come and must come by a fatalistic necessity or I thought
at least that there was no more freedom in God regarding all that,
supposing that he had wished to create Adam, than there was not
to create a being capable of thinking, supposing he had wished to
create me.

  It does not appear to me, Monsieur, that, in speaking thus, I have
confused necessitatem ex hypothesi and absolute necessity, for
I was all the time speaking only against the necessity ex
hypothesi; what I find strange is, that all human events should be
quite as necessary by a necessity ex hypothesi after this first
supposition that God wished to create Adam, as it is necessary by
the same necessity for there to be in the world a nature capable of
thinking simply because he has wished to create me.

  You say in this connection various things about God which do
not seem to me sufficient to solve my difficulty.

  1. "That a distinction has always been made between what God
is free to do absolutely and what he is obliged to do by virtue of
certain resolutions already made." This position is valid.

  2. "That it is little consonant with the dignity of God to conceive
of him (under the pretext of safeguarding his freedom) in the way
that the Socinians do, as a man who forms his resolutions
according to the circumstances." Such an opinion is very foolish, I
grant you.

  3. "That the purposes of God, which are all interrelated must not
be isolated. Therefore, the purpose of God to create a particular
Adam must not be looked at detached from all the others which he
has regarding the children of Adam and of the whole human
race." To this also I agree, but I cannot yet see how these can
serve to solve my difficulty.

  For 1. I confess, in good faith, not to have understood that, by
the individual concept of each person (for example of Adam),
which you say involves, once for all, all that will ever happen to
him, you meant this person in so far as he is in the divine
understanding instead of simply what he is in himself. For it
seems to me that it is not customary to consider the specific
concept of a sphere in relation to that which is its representation
in the divine understanding but in relation to what it is in itself. I
thought it was thus with the individual concept of each person or
of everything.

  2. It is enough, however, for me to know what you intend, so that
I can conform to it, and inquire if that overcomes all the difficulty
which I mentioned above. It does not seem to me that it does.

  I agree that the knowledge which God had of Adam when he
resolved to create him involved what happened to him and what
has happened, or will happen, to his posterity; and therefore if we
understand in this sense the individual concept, Adam, what you
say about it is very true.

  I grant also that the purpose which he had in creating Adam was
not detached from that which he had regarding what would
happen to him and in regard to all his posterity.

  But it seems to me, that after all this there still remains the
question (and this is where my difficulty lies) whether the
relationship between those objects (I mean Adam on the one hand
and what will happen to him and to his posterity on the other), is
such through itself, independently of all the free decrees of God;
or, whether it has been dependent. That is to say, whether it is
only in consequence of the free decrees by which God has
foreordained all that will happen to Adam and to his posterity that
God has known all that will happen to Adam and to his posterity;
or whether there is, independent of these decrees, between Adam
on the one hand, and what has happened and will happen to him
and his posterity on the other, an intrinsic and necessary
connection. Unless you mean the latter I do not see how it can be
true when you say, "that the individual concept of each person
involves once for all, all that which will ever happen to him,"
even if we understand this concept in its relation to God.

  It seems, moreover, that it is this latter which you do not accept.
For I believe you to suppose that, according to our way of
conceiving, possible things are possible before any free decree of
God, whence it follows that what is involved in the concept of
possible things is involved independently of all God's free decrees.
Now you say "that God has found among possible things a
possible Adam, accompanied by certain individual circumstances,
who, among other predicates, possesses also that of having in time
a certain posterity." There is, therefore, according to you a
connection intrinsic, so to speak, and independent of all the free
decrees of God; a connection between this possible Adam and all
the separate persons of his posterity and not the persons alone, but
in general all that must happen to them. It is this, Monsieur, I
speak plainly, that is incomprehensible to me. For your meaning
seems to be that the possible Adam whom God has chosen
preferably to other possible Adams, had a connection with the
very same posterity as the created Adam. In either case it is, as far
as I can judge, the same Adam considered now as possible and
now as created. If this is your meaning then here is my difficulty.

  How many men there are who have come into the world only
through the perfectly free decrees of God, such as Isaac, Samson,
Samuel and many others! Now the fact that God has known them
conjointly with Adam is not owing to their having been involved
independently of the decrees of God in the individual concept of
the possible Adam. It is, therefore, not true that all the individual
personages of the posterity of Adam have been involved in the
individual concept of the possible Adam since they would then
have been thus involved independently of God's decrees.

  The same can be said of an infinite number of human events
which have occurred by the express and particular commands of
God, for instance, the Jewish and Christian Religions, and, above
all, the Incarnation of the Word of God. I do not see how it can be
said that all these are involved in the individual concept of the
possible Adam. Whatever is considered as possible must have all
that is conceived of under this idea of possibility independently of
the Divine decrees.

  Moreover, Monsieur, I do not see how, in taking Adam as an
example of a unitary nature, several possible Adams can be
thought of. It is as though I should conceive of several possible
me's; a thing which is certainly inconceivable. For I am not able
to think of myself without considering myself as a unitary nature,
a nature so completely distinguished from every other existent or
possible being that I am as little able to conceive of several me's as
to think of a circle all of whose diameters are not equal. The
reason is that these various me's are different, one from the other,
else there would not be several of them. There would have to be,
therefore, one of these me's which would not be me, an evident
contradiction.

  Permit me, therefore, Monsieur, to transfer to this me what you
say concerning Adam and you may judge for yourself if it will
hold. Among possible beings God has found in his ideas several
me's, of which one has for its predicates, to have several children
and to be a physician, and another to live a life of celibacy and to
be a Theologian. God, having decided to create the latter, or the
present me, includes in its individual concept the living a life of
celibacy and the being a Theologian while the former would have
involved in its individual concept being married and being a
physician. Is it not clear that there would be no sense in such
statements, because, since my present me is necessarily of a
certain individual nature, which is the same thing as having a
certain individual concept, it will be as impossible to conceive of
contradictory predicates in the individual concept me, as to
conceive of a me different from me? Therefore we must conclude,
it seems to me, that since it is impossible for me not to always
remain myself whether I marry or whether I live a life of celibacy,
the individual concept of my me has involved neither the one nor
the other of those two states. Just as we might say that this block
of marble is the same whether it be in repose or in a state of
movement and therefore neither movement nor repose are
involved in its individual concept. This is why Monsieur, it seems
to me, that I ought to regard as involved in my individual concept
only what is of such a nature that I would no longer be myself if it
were not in me, while, on the other hand, everything which is of
such a nature that it might either happen to me or not happen to
me without my ceasing to be myself, should not be considered as
involved in my individual concept; (although, by the ordinance of
God's providence, which never changes the nature of things, it
could never happen that that should be in me). This is my
thought, which, I believe, conforms wholly to what has always
been held by all the philosophers in the world.

  That which confirms me in this position is the difficulty I
experience in believing it to be good philosophy, to seek in God's
way of knowing things, what we ought to think out, either from
their specific concepts or from their individual concepts. The
divine understanding is the measure of the truth of things,
quoad se, (as far as they are concerned,) but it does not appear
to me that, inasmuch as we are in this life, it can be the measure
for us, quoad nos. For what do we know at present of God's
knowledge? We know that he knows all things and that he knows
them all by a single and very simple act, which is his essence.
When I say that we know it I mean that we are sure that this must
be so. But do we understand it? And ought we not to recognize
that however sure we may be that it is so, it is impossible for us to
conceive how it can be? Further, are we able to conceive that,
although the knowledge of God is his very essence, wholly
necessary and immutable, he has, nevertheless, knowledge of an
infinity of things which he might not have had because these
things might not have been? It is the same in the case of his will
which is also his very essence where there is nothing except what
is necessary; and still he wills and has willed, from all eternity,
things which he would have been able not to will. I find therefore
a great deal of uncertainty in the manner in which we usually
represent to ourselves that God acts. We imagine that before
purposing to create the world he looked over an infinity of
possible things, some of which he chose and rejected the others-
many possible Adams, each one with a great sequence of persons
and events between whom there was an intrinsic connection. And
we think that the connection of all these other things with the one
of the possible Adams is exactly like that which we know has been
between the created Adam and all his posterity. This makes us
think that it was that one of all the possible Adams which God
chose and that he did not at all wish any of the others. Without
however stopping over that which I have already said, namely,
that taking Adam for an example of a unitary nature it is as little
possible to conceive of several Adams as to conceive of several
me's, I acknowledge in good faith that I have no idea of
substances purely possible, that is to say, which God will never
create. I am inclined to think that these are chimeras which we
construct and that whatever we call possible substances, pure
possibilities are nothing else than the omnipotence of God who,
being a pure act, does not allow of there being a possibility in him.
Possibilities, however, may be conceived of in the natures which
he has created, for, not being of the same essence throughout, they
are necessarily composites of power and action. I can therefore
think of them as possibilities. I can also do the same with an
infinity of modifications which are within the power of these
created natures, such as are the thoughts of intelligent beings, and
the forms of extended substance. But I am very much mistaken if
there is any one who will venture to say that he has an idea of a
possible substance as pure possibility. As for myself, I am
convinced that, although there is so much talk of these substances
which are pure possibilities, they are, nevertheless, always
conceived of only under the idea of some one of those which God
has actually created. We seem to me, therefore, able to say that
outside of the things which God has created, or must create, there
is no mere negative possibility but only an active and infinite
power.

  However that may be, all that I wish to conclude from this
obscurity and from the difficulty of knowing the way that things
are in the knowledge of God and of knowing what is the nature of
the connection which they have among themselves and whether it
is intrinsic or, so to speak, extrinsic- all that I wish to conclude, I
say, from this, is that it is not through God, who with respect to
us, dwells in inaccessible light, that we should try to find the true
concepts either specific or individual of the things we know; but it
is in the ideas about them which we find in ourselves.

  Now I find in myself the concept of an individual nature since I
find there the concept me. I have, therefore, only to consult it
in order to know what is involved in this individual concept, just
as I have only to consult the specific concept of a sphere to know
what is involved there. Now I have no other rule in this respect
except to consider whether the properties are of such a character
that a sphere would no longer be a sphere if it did not have them;
such, for instance, as having all the points of its circumference
equally distant from the center. Or to consider whether the
properties do not affect its being a sphere, as for instance, having
a diameter of only one foot while another sphere might have ten,
another a hundred. I judge by this that the former is involved in
the specific concept of a sphere while the latter, which was the
having a greater or smaller diameter, is not at all involved in it.

  The same principle I apply to the individual concept me. I am
certain, that, inasmuch as I think, I am myself. But I am able to
think that I will make a certain journey or that I will not, being
perfectly assured that neither the one nor the other will prevent
me from being myself. I maintain very decidedly that neither the
one nor the other is involved in the individual concept me. "God
however has foreseen," it will be said, "that you will make this
journey." Granted. "It is therefore indubitable that you will make
it." I grant that also. But does that alter anything in the certitude
which I have that whether I make it or do not make it I shall
always be myself? I must, therefore, conclude that neither the one
nor the other enters into my me, that is to say, into my
individual concept. It is here it seems to me that we must remain
without having recourse to God's knowledge, in order to find out
what the individual concept of each thing involves.

  This, Monsieur, is what has come into my mind regarding the
proposition which troubled me and regarding the explanation
which you have given. I do not know if I have wholly grasped
your thought but such has been at least my intention. The subject
is so abstract that a mistake is very easy. I should, however, be
very sorry if you had of me as poor an opinion as those who
represent me as a hot-headed writer who refutes others only in
calumniating them and in purposely misrepresenting their
opinions. This is most assuredly not my character. At times I may
express my thoughts too frankly. At times also I may fail to grasp
the thoughts of others (for I certainly do not consider myself
infallible, and such one would have to be in order never to be
mistaken), but even if this should be through self-confidence,
never would it be that I misstated them purposely; for I find
nothing to be so low as the using of chicanery and artifice in
differences which may arise regarding matters of doctrine. This
even if it should be with persons whom we have no reason
otherwise to love, and still more if the difference is between
friends. I believe, Monsieur, that you wish indeed that I place you
in this latter class. I can not doubt that you do me the honor to
love me. You have given me too many marks of it. And, in my
behalf, I protest that the very fault for which I beg you once more
to pardon me, was only the result of the affection which God has
given me for you and of a zeal for your salvation, a zeal which has
been by no means moderate.    I am, etc.,



           VII: Arnauld to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels


                                                    May 13, 1686.
  I am very sorry, Monseigneur, to have given to Mr. Leibniz
cause to become so angry at me. If I had foreseen it, I should have
been on my guard against saying so frankly what I thought of one 
of his metaphysical propositions. But I ought to have foreseen it
and I did wrong in employing such severe terms, not against him
personally but against his position. Therefore, I have felt myself
compelled to beg his pardon for it and I have done it very
sincerely in the letter which I have written him and am sending
open to Your Highness. It is also from my heart that I pray you to
make peace for me and to reconcile me with a former friend of
whom I should be very sorry to have made an enemy by my
imprudence.

  I shall be very glad, however, if the matter rests there and if I
shall not be obliged to tell him what I think of his positions,
because I am so overwhelmed with so many other occupations that
I should have difficulty in convincing him and these abstract
subjects require a great deal of application which I can not devote
to them on account of the time which it consumes.

  I do not know but that I have forgotten to send you an addition to
the Apology for the Catholics. I fear lest I may have, because Your
Highness has not mentioned it to me. I am accordingly sending it
to you to-day with two Memoirs. The Bishop of Namur, whom the
Internuncio has appointed judge, has had difficulty in deciding to
accept this post, so great is the fear of the Jesuits. But if their
power is so great that justice can not be obtained against them in
this world, they have reason to fear that God will punish them
with so much the more severity in the next. It is a terrible history
and a long one, that of this Canon, whose wickedness apparently
would be unpunished if he had not rendered himself odious by his
conspiracies and his cabals.

  This Lutheran minister of whom Your Highness speaks must
have good qualities, but it is something incomprehensible and
marking an extremely blind prejudice that he can regard Luther as
a man destined by God for the Reformation of the Christian
religion. He must have a very low idea of true piety to find it in a
man like him, imprudent in his speech and so gluttonous in his
manner of living. I am not surprised at what this minister has said
to you against those who are called Jansenists, since Luther at first
put forward extreme propositions against the co-operation of grace
and against the freedom of will so far as to give to one of his
books the title De servo arbitrio, Necessitated Will.
Melancthon, some time after, mitigated these propositions a great
deal and since then the Lutherans have gone over to the opposite
extreme so that the Arminians have nothing stronger to oppose to
the Gummarists than the doctrines of the Lutheran Church. There
is no cause then for astonishment that the Lutherans of to-day,
who occupy the same positions as the Arminians, are opposed to
the disciples of Saint Augustine. For the Arminians are more
sincere than are the Jesuits. They grant that Saint Augustine is
opposed to them in the opinions which they have in common with
the Jesuits but they do not think themselves obliged to follow him.

  What Father Jobert is requiring from new converts gives grounds
for hope that those who are converts only in name may return,
little by little, provided that instruction is given them, that they
are edified by good examples, and that the curacies are filled with
good men. But it would be spoiling everything to take from them
the vernacular translations of what is said at Mass. It is only such
leniency that can cure them from the aversion that has been given
to them regarding it. Yet we have not yet been informed of what
has been the outcome of the storm aroused against the Annee
Chretienne, about which I wrote to Your Highness some time
ago.

  A gentleman named Mr. Cicati, who is in charge of the
Academy at Brussels and who says he is well-known by Your
Highness because he had the honor to teach the Princes, Your
sons, to ride on horseback, is acquainted with a German, a very
honest man, who knows French very well and is a good lawyer,
even having had a charge as councillor, and who has already been
employed to take charge of young Seigneurs. Mr. Cicati thinks
that he would be a very available man for Your grandsons, above
all, when they make their journey in France and that meanwhile
he could render other services to Your Highness. I thought it
couldn't do any harm to give you this information. It binds you to
nothing and may be of service to you if you think it best to have
somebody with the young Princes- someone who shall leave them
neither day nor night.

  Not knowing the characteristics of Mr. Leibniz, I beg Your
Highness to have the above forwarded along with the letter which
I have written him.



   VIII: Remarks upon Mr. Arnaud's letter in regard to my
statement

  that the individual concept of each person involves, once for all,
                  all that will ever happen to him:


                                                         May, 1686.
  "I thought," says Mr. Arnaud, "that we might infer that God was
free either to create or not to create Adam, but supposing that he
wished to create him, all that has since happened to the human
race was, or all which will happen is by a fatalistic necessity, or
we might infer at least that there was no more liberty in God,
supposing that he once wished to create Adam, than there was of
not creating a nature capable of thought in case he wished to
create me." I replied at first that a distinction must be made
between absolute and hypothetical necessity. To this Mr. Arnaud
replies here that he is speaking only of necessity ex hypothesi.
After this declaration the argumentation takes a different phase.
The words "fatal necessity" which he used and which are
ordinarily understood as an absolute necessity obliged me to make
this distinction, which, however, is now uncalled for, inasmuch as
M. Arnaud does not insist upon the fatalistic necessity. He uses
alternative phrases; "by a fatalistic necessity or at least, etc."

  It would be useless to dispute in regard to the word. In regard to
the matter, however, M. Arnaud still finds it strange for me to
maintain "that all human events occur by necessity ex
hypothesi after this single presupposition that God wished to
create Adam." To which I have two replies to give. The one is,
that my supposition is not merely that God wished to create an
Adam whose concept was vague and incomplete but that God
wished to create a particular Adam sufficiently determined as an
individual. This complete individual concept, in my opinion,
involves the relation to the whole sequence of things- a position
which ought to appear so much the more reasonable, because M.
Arnaud grants here the inter-connection among the resolutions of
God, that is to say, that God, having resolved to create a certain
Adam, takes into consideration all the resolutions which he will
form concerning the whole sequence of the universe; almost in the
same way that a wise man who forms a resolution in regard to one
part of his plan, has the whole plan in view and will make
resolutions better in proportion as he is able to plan for all the
parts at the same time.

  The other reply is that the sequence, in virtue of which events
follow from the hypothesis, is indeed always certain, but that it is
not always necessary by a metaphysical necessity, as is that
instance which is found in M. Arnaud's example: that God,
resolving to create me, could not avoid creating a nature capable
of thought. The sequence is often only physical and presupposes
certain free decrees of God, as, for instance, do consequences
which depend on the laws of motion or which depend upon the
following principle of morality- namely, that every mind will
pursue that which appears to it the best. It is true that when the
supposition of the decrees which produce the consequence is
added to the first supposition which constituted the antecedent,
namely, God's resolution to create Adam- it is true, I say, that if
all these suppositions or resolutions are regarded as a single
antecedent, then the consequence follows.

  As I have already touched upon these two replies somewhat in
my letter sent to the Count, M. Arnaud brings forward answers to
them here which must be considered. He acknowledges in good
faith that he understood my opinion as if all the events happening
to an individual were deducible from his individual concept in the
same manner and with the same necessity as the properties of the
sphere may be deduced from its specific concept or definition, and
as though I had considered the concept of the individual in itself,
without regard to the manner in which it is present in the
understanding or will of God. "For," he says, "it seems to me that
it is not customary to consider the specific concept of a sphere in
relation to its representation in the divine understanding but in
relation to what it is in itself, and I thought that it was thus with
the individual concept of each person."

  But, he adds, that now, since he knows what my thought is, it is
enough for him to conform to it in inquiring if it overcomes all the
difficulties. Of this, he is still doubtful.

  I see that M. Arnaud has not remembered, or at least, has not
adhered, to the position of the Cartesians who maintain that God,
by his will, establishes the eternal truths such as are those
regarding the properties of the sphere. But, as I share their
opinion no more than does M. Arnaud, I will simply say why I
believe that we must philosophize differently in the case of an
individual substance from our way of philosophizing in the case of
a specific concept of the sphere. It is because the concept of space
relations involves only eternal or necessary truths but the concept
of an individual involves sub ratione possibilitatis that which
is in fact or which has relation to the existence of things and to
time, and consequently it depends upon certain free decrees of
God considered as possible. Because the truths of fact or of
existence depend upon the decrees of God. Furthermore, the
concept of the sphere in general is incomplete or abstract, that is
to say we consider only the essence of the sphere in general or
theoretically without regard to the particular circumstances, and
consequently the concept does not involve that which is required
for the existence of a certain sphere. The concept of the sphere
which Archimedes had put upon his tomb is complete and should
involve all that pertains to the subject of this thing. That is why in
individual or practical considerations, where singulars are dealt
with, in addition to the form of the sphere there enters the
material of which it is made, the time, the place, and the other
circumstances which, by a continual network, would finally
involve the whole sequence of the universe, provided we were able
to follow out all that these concepts involve. For the concept of
this bit of matter out of which this sphere is made, involves all the
changes which it has undergone and which it will some day
undergo.

  In my opinion each individual substance always contains the
traces of what has ever happened to it and marks of that which
will ever happen to it. What I have just said, however, may suffice
to justify my line of thought.

  Now, M. Arnaud declares that in taking the individual concept
of a person in relation to the knowledge which God had of it when
he resolved to create it, what I have said regarding this concept is 
very true, and he grants also that the will to create Adam was not
at all detached from God's will in regard to whatever has
happened both to him and to his posterity. He now asks if the
connection between Adam and the events occurring to his
posterity is dependent or independent of the free decrees of God.
"That is to say," as he explains, "whether it is only in consequence
of the free decrees by which God has ordained all that will happen
to Adam and to his posterity that God has known what will
happen to them, or whether, independently of these decrees there
is between Adam and the events aforesaid, an intrinsic and
necessary connection."

  He does not doubt that I would take the second alternative and,
in fact, I am unable to take the first in the manner in which he has
just explained it. But there seems to me to be a mean position. He
proves that I ought to choose the latter because I consider the
individual concept of Adam as possible when I maintain that
among an infinity of possible concepts God has selected a certain
Adam, while the possible concepts in themselves do not at all
depend upon the free decrees of God.

  But here I must needs explain myself a little better. I say,
therefore, that the connection between Adam and human events is
not independent of all the free decrees of God, but also, that it
does not depend upon them in such a way that each event could
happen or be foreseen only because of a particular primitive
decree made about it. I think that there are only a few primitive
free decrees regulating the sequence of things which could be
called the laws of the universe and which, being joined to the free
decree to create Adam, bring about the consequences. In very
much the same way as but few hypotheses are called for to explain
phenomenon. I will make this clearer in what follows.

  As regards the objection that possibles are independent of the
decrees of God I grant it of actual decrees (although the
Cartesians do not at all agree to this), but I maintain that the
possible individual concepts involve certain possible free decrees;
for example, if this world was only possible, the individual
concept of a particular body in this world would involve certain
movements as possible, it would also involve the laws of motion,
which are the free decrees of God; but these, also, only as
possibilities. Because, as there are an infinity of possible worlds,
there are also an infinity of laws, certain ones appropriate to one;
others, to another, and each possible individual of any world
involves in its concept the laws of its world.

  The same can be said of miracles, or of the extraordinary
operations of God. These are a part of the general order and
conform to the principal purposes of God and consequently, are
involved in the concept of this universe, which is a result of these
designs. Just as the idea of a building results from the purposes or
plans of him who undertakes it, so the idea or concept of this
world is a result of the designs of God considered as possible. For
everything should be explained by its cause and of the universe
the cause is found in the purposes of God. Now, each individual
substance, in my opinion, expresses the whole universe, according
to a certain aspect and consequently it also expresses the so-called
miracles. All this ought to be understood in regard to the general
order, in regard to the plans of God, in regard to the sequences of
this universe, in regard to the individual substance and in regard
to miracles, whether they are taken in the actual condition or
whether they are considered sub ratione possibilitatis. For
another possible world would have all such orderings, according
to its own manner, although the plans of ours were preferred.

  It can be seen also from what I have just said concerning the
plans of God and concerning the primitive laws, that this universe
has a certain primary or primitive concept, from which the
particular events are only the consequences- with the exception of
liberty and contingencies, whose certitude, however, is not
affected, because the certitude of events is based in part upon free
acts. Now every individual substance of this universe expresses in
its concept the universe into which it has entered. Not only the
supposition that God has resolved to create this Adam but also any
other individual substance that may be, involves the resolves for
all the rest, because this is the nature of an individual substance,
namely, to have so complete a concept that from it may be
deduced all that can be attributed to it, and even the whole
universe, because of the inter-connection between things;
nevertheless, to speak more strictly, it must be said that it is not so
much because God has resolved to create this Adam that he made
all his other resolutions, but because the resolution which he made
in regard to Adam, as also that which he made in regard to other
particular things, are consequences of the resolve which he made
in regard to the whole universe and to the principal designs which
determine its primary concept; these resolves have established this
general and unchangeable order to which everything conforms
without even excepting the miracles which are doubtless
conformable to the principal designs of God, although the
particular regulations which are called the laws of Nature are not
always observed.

  I have said that the supposition from which all human events can
be deduced is not simply that of the creation of an undetermined
Adam but the creation of a particular Adam, determined to all the
circumstances, chosen out of an infinity of possible Adams. This
has given M. Arnaud opportunity to object, not without reason,
that it is as little possible to conceive several Adams,
understanding Adam as a particular nature, as to conceive of
several me's. I agree, but yet, in speaking of several Adams, I do
not take Adam for a determined individual. I must, therefore,
explain. This is what I meant. When we consider in Adam a part
of his predicates, for example, that he was the first man, put into a
garden of enjoyment, and that, from his side, God took a woman,
and, if we consider similar things, conceived sub ratione
generalitatis (that is to say, without mentioning Eve or Paradise,
or the other circumstances which constitute his individuality), and
if we call the person to whom these predicates are attributed
Adam, all this does not suffice to determine the individual, for
there might be an infinity of Adams, that is to say, of possible
persons to whom these would apply who would, nevertheless,
differ among themselves. Far from disagreeing with M. Arnaud,
in what he says against the plurality of the same individual, I
would myself, employ the idea to make it clearer that the nature of
an individual should be complete and determined. I am quite
convinced in regard to what St. Thomas has taught about
intelligences, and what I hold to be a general truth, namely, that it
is not possible for two individuals to exist wholly alike, that is,
differing solo numero. We must, therefore, not conceive of a
vague Adam or of a person to whom certain attributes of Adam
appertain when we try to determine him, if we would hold that all
human events follow from the one presupposition, but we must
attribute to him a concept so complete that all which can be
attributed to him may be derived from his. Now, there is no
ground for doubting that God can form such a concept or, rather,
that he finds it already formed in the region of possibilities, that is
to say, in his understanding.

  It follows, also, that if he had had other circumstances, this
would not have been our Adam, but another, because nothing
prevents us from saying that this would be another. He is,
therefore, another. It indeed appears to us that this block of
marble brought from Genoa would be wholly the same if it had
been left there, because our senses cause us to judge only
superficially, but in reality, because of the inter-connection of
things, the universe, with all its parts, would be wholly different
and would have been wholly different from the very
commencement if the least thing in it happened otherwise than it
has. It is not because of their inter-connection that events are
necessary, but it is because they are certain after the choice which
God made of this possible universe whose concept contains this
sequence of things. I hope that what I am about say will enable M.
Arnaud himself to agree to this.

  Let a certain straight line, A B C, represent a certain time, and
let there be a certain individual substance, for example, myself,
which lasts or exists during this period. Let us take then, first, the
me which exists during the time A B, and again the me which
exists during the time B C. Now, since people suppose that it is
the same individual substance which perdures, or that it is the me
which exists in the time A B while at Paris and which continues
to exist in the time B C while in Germany, it must needs be that
there should be some reason why we can veritably say that I
perdure, or, to say, that the me which was at Paris is now in
Germany, for, if there were no reason, it would be quite right to
say that it was another. To be sure, my inner experience convinces
me a posteriori of this identity but there must be also some
reason a priori. It is not possible to find any other reason,
excepting that my attributes of the preceding time and state, as
well as the attributes of the succeeding time and state are
predicates of the same subject; insunt eidem subjecto. Now,
what is it to say that the predicate is in the subject if not that the
concept of the predicate is found in some sort involved in the
concept of the subject? Since from the very time that I began to
exist it could be said of me truly that this or that would happen to
me, we must grant that these predicates were principles involved
in the subject or in my complete concept, which constitutes the so-
called me, and which is the basis of the inter-connection of all my
different states. These, God has known perfectly from all eternity.
After this I think that all doubts ought to disappear, for when I say
that the individual concept of Adam involves all that will ever
happen to him I mean nothing else than what the philosophers
understand when they say that the predicate is contained in the
subject of true propositions. It is true that the consequences of so
clear a teaching are paradoxical, but it is the fault of the
philosophers who have not sufficiently followed out perfectly clear
notions.

  Now I think that M. Arnaud, discerning and fair as he is, will
not find my proposition so strange and, although he may not be
able to approve of it entirely, yet I almost flatter myself with
having his approbation. I agree with what he judiciously has
added, in regard to the care that must be employed in having
recourse to knowledge of divine things for the determination of
what we should decide concerning the concepts of mundane
things. But if properly understood, what I have just said must be
said even when we speak of God only as much as is necessary.
For, even if we should not say that God, in considering Adam,
whom he resolved to create, saw all the events which will happen
to him, it is enough that we can always prove that he had a
complete concept of this Adam which involved these events.
Because all the predicates of Adam, either depend upon the other
predicates of the same Adam, or they do not. Putting one side
those which depend upon others, we have only to gather together
all the primitive predicates in order to form a concept of Adam
sufficiently complete to deduce whatever will happen to him in so
far as a reason is needed. It is evident that God can discover, and
indeed effectively conceive such a concept sufficient to assign a
reason to all the phenomena pertaining to Adam; but not less clear
is it, however, that this concept is possible in itself. Truly, we
must not submerge ourselves more than necessary, when we
investigate, in divine knowledge and will, because of the great
difficulties which there are there. Nevertheless, we may explain
what we have derived for our question from such a source without
entering into those difficulties which M. Arnaud mentions; for
instance, the difficulty of understanding how the simplicity of God
is reconcilable with certain things which we are obliged to
distinguish from it. It is also very difficult to explain perfectly how
God has knowledge which he was able not to have, that is, the
knowledge of prevision, for, if future contingencies did not exist,
God would have no vision of them. It is true that he might have
simple knowledge of future contingencies which would become
prevision when joined to his will so that the difficulty above would
be reduced to the difficulties present in conceiving of the will of
God. That is to say, the question how God is free to will. This,
without doubt, passes our ken, but it is not essential to understand
it in order to solve our question.

  In regard to the manner in which we conceive that God acts
when he chooses the best among several possibilities, M. Arnaud
has reason to find some obscurity. He seems, nevertheless, to
recognize that I am inclined to think that there are an infinity of
possible first men, each one with a great sequence of personages
and events, and that God chose among them the one which
pleased him, together with his sequence. This is not, therefore, so
strange as it appears at first. It is true, M. Arnaud says he is
inclined to think that substances which are purely possible are
only chimeras. In regard to this, I do not wish to dispute, but I
hope that, nevertheless, he will grant me as much as I have need
of. I agree that there is no other reality in pure possibilities than
what they have in the divine understanding, and we see, therefore,
that M. Arnaud will be obliged himself to have recourse to the
divine knowledge in order to explain them, while he seems above
to have wished that they might be sought in themselves. When I
grant further what M. Arnaud is convinced of and what I do not
deny, that we conceive nothing as possible excepting through the
ideas which are actually found in the things which God has
created, this does not at all injure my position, for, in speaking of
possibilities, I am content if true propositions may be formed
concerning them. For example, if there were no perfect square in
the world, we should, nevertheless, see that no contradiction was
implied in the idea. If we wish to reject absolutely the pure
possibles, contingencies will be destroyed, because if nothing is
possible except what God has actually created then what God has
actually created would be necessary in case he resolved to create
anything.

  Finally, I agree that in order to determine the concept of an
individual substance it is good to consult the concept which I have
of myself, just as the specific concept of the sphere must be
consulted in order to determine its properties. Nevertheless, there
is a great difference in the two cases for the concept of myself and
of any other individual substance, is infinitely more extended and
more difficult to understand than is a specific concept like that of
a sphere which is only incomplete. It is not sufficient that I feel
myself as a substance which thinks; I must also distinctly conceive
whatever distinguishes me from all other spirits. But of this I have
only a confused experience.

  Therefore, although it is easy to determine that the number of
feet in the diameter is not involved in the concept of the sphere in
general, it is not so easy to decide if the journey which I intend to
make is involved in my concept; otherwise, it would be as easy for
us to become prophets as to be Geometers. I am uncertain whether
I will make the journey but I am not uncertain that, whether I
make it or no, I will always be myself. Such human previsions are
not the same as distinct notions or distinct knowledge. They
appear to us undetermined because the evidences or marks which
are found in our substance are not recognizable by us. Very much
as those who regard sensations merely, ridicule one who says that
the slightest movement is communicated as far as matter extends,
because experience alone could not demonstrate this to them.
When, however, they consider the nature of motion and matter
they are convinced of it. It is the same here when the confused
experience, which one has of his individual concept in particular,
is consulted. He does not take care to notice this inter-connection
of events, but, when he considers general and distinct notions
which enter into them, he finds the connection. In fact, when I
consult the conception which I have of all true propositions, I find
that every necessary or contingent predicate, every past, present,
or future, predicate, is involved in the concept of the subject, and I
ask no more.

  I think, indeed, that this will open to us a means of
reconciliation. For, I think, that M. Arnaud disliked to grant this
proposition, only because he understood the connection which I
held to, both as intrinsic and necessary at the same time, while I
hold it indeed as intrinsic but not at all as necessary. I have now
sufficiently explained that it is founded upon free decrees and free
acts. I mean no other connection between the subject and the
predicate than that which there is in the most contingent of true
propositions. That is to say, I mean that there is always something
to be conceived of in the subject which serves to give the reason
why this predicate or event pertains to it or why a certain thing
has happened to it rather than not.

  These reasons of contingent truths, however, bring about results
without necessitation. It is therefore true that I am able not to
make this journey, but it is certain that I will make it. This
predicate or event is not connected certainly with my other
predicates conceived of incompletely or sub ratione
generalitatis; but it is certainly connected with a complete
individual concept because I presuppose that this concept is
constructed expressly in such a way that from it may be deduced
all that happens to me. This concept is found doubtless a parte
rei and is properly a concept of myself which I find under
different conditions, since it is this concept alone that can include
them all.

  I have so much deference for M. Arnaud and such a good
opinion of his judgment, that I easily give up my opinions or at
least my expressions as soon as I see that he finds something
objectionable in them. It is for this reason that I have carefully
followed the difficulties which he put forward and now, after I
have attempted to meet them in good faith, it seems to me that I
am still not far from those very positions.

  The proposition which we are discussing is of great importance
and should be firmly established, since from it follows that every
soul is a world by itself, independent of everything excepting God;
that it is not only immortal, and, so to speak, permanent, but that
it bears in its substance traces of everything that happens to it.
From it can be deduced also in what the inter-activities of
substances consist and particularly the union of soul and body.
This inter-activity is not brought about according to the usual
hypothesis of the physical influence of one substance upon another
because every present state of a substance comes to it
spontaneously and is only a sequence of its preceding state. No
more is the inter-activity accounted for by the hypothesis of
occasional causes as though God intervened differently for
ordinary events than when he preserved every substance in its
course; and as though God whenever something happened in the
body aroused thoughts in the soul which would thus change the
course that the soul would itself have taken without this
intervention. The inter-activity is in accordance with the
hypothesis of concomitants which, to me, appears demonstrative.
That is to say, each substance expresses the whole sequence of the
universe according to the view or relation that is appropriate to it.
Whence it follows that substances agree perfectly and when we
say that one acts upon another, we mean that the distinct
expression of the one which is acted upon diminishes, but of the
one which acts, augments, conformably to the sequence of
thoughts which its concept involves. For, although each substance
expresses everything, we are justified in attributing to it ordinarily
only the expressions which are most evident in its particular
relation.

  Finally, I think after this, that the propositions contained in the
abstract sent to M. Arnaud will appear not only more intelligible
but, perhaps, better founded and more important than might have
been thought at first.



                        IX: Leibniz to Arnauld


                                           Hanover, July 14, 1686.
  Monsieur:

  As I have great deference for your judgment, I was glad to see
that you moderated your censure after having seen my explanation
of that proposition which I thought important and which appeared
strange to you: "That the individual concept of each person
involves once for all, all that will ever happen to him." From this
at first you drew this consequence, namely, that from the single
supposition that God resolved to create Adam, all the rest of the
human events which happened to Adam and to his posterity would
have followed by a fatalistic necessity, without God's having the
freedom to make a change any more than he would have been able
not to create a creature capable of thought after having resolved to
create me.

  To which I replied, that the designs of God regarding all this
universe being inter-related conformably to his sovereign wisdom,
he made no resolve in respect to Adam without taking into
consideration everything which had any connection with him. It
was therefore not because of the resolve made in respect to Adam
but because of the resolution made at the same time in regard to
all the rest (to which the former involves a perfect relationship),
that God formed the determination in regard to all human events.
In this it seems to me that there was no fatalistic necessity and
nothing contrary to the liberty of God any more than there is in
this generally accepted hypothetical necessity which God is under
of carrying out what he has resolved upon.

  You accept, M., in your reply, this inter-relation of the divine
resolves which I put forward and you even have the sincerity to
acknowledge that at first you understood my proposition wholly in
a different sense, "Because it is not customary for example" (these
are your words), "to consider the specific concept of a sphere in
relation to its representation in the Divine understanding but in
relation to that which it is itself." And you thought "that it was
thus also with respect to the individual concept of each person."

  On my part, I thought that complete and comprehensible
concepts are represented in the divine understanding as they are
in themselves but now that you know what my thought is, you say
it is sufficient to conform to it and to inquire if it removes the
difficulty. It seems then that you realize that my position as
explained in this way, to mean complete and comprehensive
concepts such as they are in the divine understanding, is not only
innocent but is, indeed, right, for here are your words, "I agree
that the knowledge which God had of Adam when he resolved to
create him involved everything that has happened to him and all
that has happened and will happen to his posterity, and therefore,
taking the individual concept of Adam in this sense, what you say
is very certain." We will go on to see very soon in what the
difficulty which you still find consists. Yet I will say one word in
regard to the cause for the difference which there is here between
concepts of space and those of individual substances, rather in
relation to the divine will than in relation to the simple
understanding. This difference is because the most abstract
specific concepts embrace only necessary or eternal truths which
do not depend upon the decrees of God (whatever the Cartesians
may say about this whom it seems you have not followed at this
point), but the concepts of individual substances which are
complete, and sufficient to identify entirely their subjects and
which involve consequently truths that are contingent or of fact,
namely, individual circumstances of time, of space, etc.- such
substances, I say, should also involve in their concept taken as
possible, the free decrees or will of God, likewise taken as
possible, because these free decrees are the principal sources for
existences or facts while essences are in the divine understanding
before his will is taken into consideration.

  This will suffice to make clearer all the rest and to meet the
difficulties which still seem to remain in my explanation. For you
continue in this way: "But it seems that after that the question still
remains, and here is my difficulty, whether the connection
between these objects, I mean Adam and human events, is such, of
itself, independently of all the free decrees of God or if it is
dependent upon them. That is to say, whether God knows what
will happen to Adam and his posterity only because of the free
decrees by which God has ordained all that will happen to them,
or if there is, independently of these decrees, between Adam on
the one hand and that which has happened to him and will
happen to him and to his posterity on the other, an intrinsic and
necessary connection." It seems to you that I will take the latter
alternative because I have said, "That God has found among the
possibilities an Adam accompanied by certain individual
circumstances and who, among other predicates, has also this one
of having in time a certain posterity." Now you suppose that I
agree that the possibilities are possible before all the free decrees
of God; supposing, therefore, this explanation of my position
according to the latter alternative, you think that it has
insurmountable difficulties. For there are, as you say with good
reason, "an infinity of human events that happen by the expressly
particular ordinances of God. Among others, the Jewish and
Christian religions and, above all, the Incarnation of the divine
word. And I do not know how one could say that all this (which
has happened by the free decrees of God), could be involved in the
individual concept of the possible Adam. Whatever is considered
as possible ought to have everything that could be conceived as
being under this concept, independently of the divine decrees."

  I wish to state your difficulty exactly, Monsieur, and this is the
way in which I hope to satisfy it entirely to your own taste. For it
must needs be that it can be resolved, since we cannot deny that
there is truly a certain concept of Adam accompanied by all its
predicates and conceived as possible, which God knew before
resolving to create him, as you have just admitted. I think,
therefore, that the dilemma of the alternative explanation which
you have proposed may have a mean, and the connection which I
conceive of between Adam and human events is intrinsic but it is
not necessarily independent of the free decrees of God because the
free decrees of God taken as possible enter into the concept of the
possible Adam, and when these same decrees become actual they
are the cause of the actual Adam. I agree with you, in opposition
to the Cartesians, that the possibles are possible before all the
actual decrees of God, but the decrees themselves, must be
regarded also as possibles. For the possibilities of the individual or
of contingent truths involve in their concept the possibility of their
causes, that is to say, the free decrees of God in which they are
different from generic possibilities or from eternal truths. These
latter depend solely upon the understanding of God without
presupposing any will, as I have explained it above.

  This might be enough, but in order to make myself better
understood, I will add that I think there were an infinity of
possible ways of creating the world according to the different
plans which God might have formed and that each possible world
depends upon certain principal plans or designs of God that are
his own; that is to say, upon certain primary free decrees
conceived sub ratione possibilitatis, or upon certain laws of the
general order of this possible universe with which they agree and
whose concept they determine. At the same time, they determine
the concepts of all individual substances which ought to enter into
this same universe. Everything, therefore, is in order even
including miracles, although these latter are contrary to certain
subordinate regulations or laws of nature. Thus, all human events
cannot fail to happen as they have actually happened, supposing
that the choice of Adam was made. But this is so, not so much
because of the concept of the individual Adam, although this
concept involves them, but because of the purposes of God, which
also enter into this individual concept of Adam and determine the
concept of the whole universe. These purposes determine,
consequently, as well the concept of Adam as the concepts of all
the other individual substances of this universe, because each
individual substance expresses the whole universe, of which it is a
part according to a certain relation, through the connection which
there is between all things, and this connection is owing to the
connection of the resolutions or plans of God.

  I find that you bring forward another objection, Monsieur, which
does not depend upon the consequences, apparently contradicting
freedom, as was the objection which I just met, but which depends
upon the matter itself and upon the idea which we have of an
individual substance. Because, since I have the idea of an
individual substance, that is to say of myself, it seems to you that
we must seek what is meant by an individual concept in this idea
and not in the way in which God conceives of individuals; and
just as I have only to consult the specific concept of the sphere in
order to decide if the number of feet in the diameter is not
determined by this concept, in the same way you say I find clearly
in the individual concept which I have of myself that I will be
myself, in either case whether I make or do not make the journey
which I intend.

  In order to make my reply clear, I agree that the connection of
events, although it is certain, is not necessary, and that I am at
liberty either to make or not to make the journey, for, although it
is involved in my concept that I will make it, it is also involved
that I will make it freely. And there is nothing in me of all that
can be conceived sub ratione generalitatis, whether of essence
or of specific or incomplete concepts from which it can be
deduced that I will make it necessarily. While, on the other hand,
from the fact that I am a man, the conclusion can be drawn that I
am capable of thinking, and consequently, if I do not make this
journey, this will be against no eternal or necessary truth. Still, 
since it is certain that I will make it there must be indeed some
connection between the me which is the subject, and the carrying
out of the journey, which is the predicate. The concept of the
predicate is always in the subject of a true proposition. There is,
therefore, an omission, if I do make it, which will destroy my
individual or complete concept, or which would destroy what God
conceives or conceived in regard to me even before resolving to
create me. For this concept involves, sub ratione possibilitatis,
the existences or the truths of fact or the decrees of God upon
which the facts depend.

  I agree, also, that in order to determine the concept of an
individual substance it is good to consult that which I have of
myself, as we must consult a specific concept of a sphere in order
to determine its properties. Nevertheless, there is between the two
cases a great difference, for the concept of myself in particular and
of any other individual substance is infinitely more extensive and
more difficult to understand than is a specific concept, such as a
sphere, which is only incomplete and does not involve all the
practically necessary circumstances to get at a particular sphere. It
is not enough in order to understand what the me is that I am
sensible of a subject which thinks, I must also conceive distinctly
of all that which distinguishes me from other possible spirits and
of this latter I have only a confused experience. Therefore, it is
easy to determine that the number of feet in the diameter is not
involved in the notion of the sphere in general, it is not so easy to
determine certainly, although we can decide quite probably
whether the voyage which I intend to make is involved in my
concept; were it not so it would be as easy to be a prophet as to be
a geometer. Nevertheless as experience is unable to make me
recognize a great number of insensible things in the body in
regard to which the general consideration of the nature of bodies
and of movements might convince me; in the same way, although
experience cannot make me feel all that is involved in my concept,
I am able to recognize in general that everything which pertains to
me is involved in it through the general consideration of an
individual concept.

  Surely since God can form and does actually form this complete
concept which involves whatever is sufficient to give a reason for
all the phenomena that happen to me, the concept is therefore
possible. And this is the true complete concept of that which I call
the me. It is in virtue of this concept that all my predicates pertain
to me as to their subject. We are, therefore, able to prove it
without mentioning God, except in so far as it is necessary to
indicate my dependence. This truth is expressed more forcefully in
deriving the concept which is being examined from the divine
cognizance as its source. I grant that there are many things in the
divine knowledge which we are unable to comprehend but it does
not seem to me that we must needs go into them to solve our
question. Besides, if, in the life of any person, and even in the
whole universe anything went differently from what it has,
nothing could prevent us from saying that it was another person or
another possible universe which God had chosen. It would then be
indeed another individual. There must then be some reason a
priori independent of my existence why we may truly say that it
was I who was at Paris and that it is still I and not another who
am now in Germany and consequently it must be that the concept
of myself unites or includes different conditions. Otherwise it
could be said that it is not the same individual although it appears
to be the same and in fact certain philosophers who have not
understood sufficiently the nature of substance and of individual
beings or of beings per se have thought that nothing remained
actually the same. It is for this, among other reasons, that I have
come to the conclusion that bodies would not be substances if they
had only extension in them.

  I think, Monsieur, that I have sufficiently met the difficulties
regarding the principal proposition, but, as you have made in
addition some important remarks in regard to certain incidental
expressions, which I used, I will attempt to explain them also. I
said that the presupposition from which all human events could be
deduced, was not that of the creation of an undetermined Adam
but of the creation of a certain Adam determined in all
circumstances, selected out of an infinity of possible Adams. In
regard to this you make two important remarks, the one against
the plurality of Adams and the other against the reality of
substances which are merely possible. In regard to the first point,
you say with good reason that it is as little possible to think of
several possible Adams, taking Adam for a particular nature, as to
conceive of several me's. I agree, but in speaking of several
Adams I do not take Adam for a determined individual but for a
certain person conceived sub ratione generalitatis under the
circumstances which appear to us to determine Adam as an
individual but which do not actually determine him sufficiently.
As if we should mean by Adam the first man, whom God set in a
garden of pleasure whence he went out because of sin, and from
whose side God fashioned a woman. All this would not
sufficiently determine him and there might have been several
Adams separately possible or several individuals to whom all that
would apply. This is true, whatever finite number of predicates
incapable of determining all the rest might be taken, but that
which determines a certain Adam ought to involve absolutely all
his predicates. And it is this complete concept which determines
the particular individual. Besides, I am so far removed from a
pluralistic conception of the same individual that I agree heartily
with what St. Thomas has already taught with regard to
intelligences and which I hold to be very general, namely, that it
is not possible for two individuals to exist entirely alike or
differing solo numero.

  As regards the reality of substances merely possible, that is to
say, which God will never create, you say, Monsieur, that you are
very much inclined to believe that they are chimeras. To which I
make no objection, if you mean, as I think, that they have no other
reality than what comes to them in the divine understanding and
in the active power of God. Nevertheless, you see by this,
Monsieur, that we are obliged to have recourse to the divine
knowledge and divine power in order to explain them well. I find
very well founded that which you say afterwards, "That we never
conceive of any substance merely as possible except under the idea
of a particular one (or through the ideas understood in a particular
one) of those which God has created." You say also, "We imagine
that, before creating the world, God looked over an infinity of
possible things out of which he chose certain ones and rejected the
others, certain possible Adams (first men), each with a great
sequence of personages with whom he has an intrinsic connection;
and we suppose that the connection of all these other things with
one of these possible Adams (first men) is wholly similar to that
which the actually created Adam had with all his posterity. This
makes us think that it is this one of all the possible Adams which
God has chosen and that he did not wish any of the others." In
this you seem to recognize that those ideas, which I acknowledge
to be mine (provided that the plurality of Adams and their
possibilities is understood according to the explanation which I
have given and that all this is understood according to our manner
of conceiving any order in the thoughts or the operations which
we attribute to God), enter naturally enough into the mind when
we think a little about this matter, and indeed cannot be avoided;
and perhaps they have been displeasing to you, only because you
supposed that it was impossible to reconcile the intrinsic
connection which there would be, with the free decrees of God.
All that is actual can be conceived as possible and if the actual
Adam will have in time a certain posterity we cannot deny this
same predicate to this Adam conceived as possible, inasmuch as
you grant that God sees in him all these predicates when he
determines to create him. They therefore pertain to him. And I do
not see how what you say regarding the reality of possibles could
be contrary to it. In order to call anything possible it is enough
that we are able to form a notion of it when it is only in the divine
understanding, which is, so to speak, the region of possible
realities. Thus, in speaking of possibles, I am satisfied if veritable
propositions can be formed concerning them. Just as we might
judge, for example, that a perfect square does not imply
contradiction, although there has never been a perfect square in
the world, and if one tried to reject absolutely these pure possibles
he would destroy contingency and liberty. For if there was nothing
possible except what God has actually created, whatever God
created would be necessary and God, desiring to create anything
would be able to create that alone without having any freedom of
choice.

  All this makes me hope (after the explanations which I have
given and for which I have always added reasons so that you
might see that these were not evasions contrived to elude your
objections), that at the end your thoughts will not be so far
removed from mine as they appeared to be at first. You approve
the inter-connection of God's resolutions; you recognize that my
principal proposition is certain in the sense which I have given to
it in my reply; you have doubted only whether I made the
connection independent of the free decrees of God, and this with
good reason you found hard to understand. But I have shown that
the connection does depend in my opinion upon the decree and
that it is not necessary, although it is intrinsic. You have insisted
upon the difficulties which there would be in saying, "If I do not
make the journey, which I am about to make, I will not be
myself," and I have explained how one might either say it or not.
Finally, I have given a decisive reason which, in my opinion,
takes the place of a demonstration; this is, that always in every
affirmative proposition whether veritable, necessary or contingent,
universal or singular, the concept of the predicate is comprised in
some sort in that of the subject. Either the predicate is in the
subject or else I do not know what truth is.

  Now, I do not ask for any more connection here than what is
found a parte rei between the terms of a true proposition, and
it is only in this sense that I say that the concept of an individual
substance involves all of its changes and all its relations, even
those which are commonly called extrinsic (that is to say, which
pertain to it only by virtue of the general inter-connection of
things, and in so far as it expresses the whole universe in its own
way), since "there must always be some foundation for the
connection of the terms of a proposition and this is found in their
concepts." This is my fundamental principle, which I think all
philosophers ought to agree to, and one of whose corollaries is
that commonly accepted axiom: that nothing happens without a
reason which can be given why the thing turned out so rather than
otherwise. This reason, however, often produces its effects without
necessitation. A perfect indifference is a chimerical or incomplete
supposition. It has seemed that from the principle above
mentioned I draw surprising consequences but the surprise is only
because people are not sufficiently in the habit of following out
perfectly evident lines of thought.

  The proposition which was the occasion of all this discussion is
very important and should be clearly established, for from it
follows that every individual substance expresses the whole
universe according to its way and under a certain aspect, or, so to
speak, according to the point of view from which it is regarded;
and that a succeeding condition is a consequence, whether free or
contingent, of its preceding state as though only God and itself
were in the world. Thus every individual substance or complete
being is, as it were, a world apart, independent of everything else
excepting God. There is no argument so cogent not only in
demonstrating, the indestructibility of the soul, but also in
showing that it always preserves in its nature traces of all its
preceding states with a practical remembrance which can always
be aroused, since it has the consciousness of or knows in itself
what each one calls his me. This renders it open to moral
qualities, to chastisement and to recompense even after this life,
for immortality without remembrance would be of no value. This
independence however does not prevent the inter-activity of
substances among themselves, for, as all created substances are a
continual production of the same sovereign Being according to the
same designs and express the same universe or the same
phenomena, they agree with one another exactly; and this enables
us to say that one acts upon another because the one expresses
more distinctly than the other the cause or reason for the
changes,- somewhat as we attribute motion rather to a ship than to
the whole sea; and this with reason, although, if we should speak
abstractly, another hypothesis of motion could be maintained, that
is to say, the motion in itself and abstracted from the cause could
be considered as something relative. It is thus, it seems to me, that
the interactivities of created substances among themselves must be
understood, and not as though there were a real physical influence
or dependence. The latter idea can never be distinctly conceived
of. This is why, when the question of the union of the soul and the
body, or of action and of passion of one spirit with regard to
another created thing, comes into question, many have felt obliged
to grant that their immediate influence one upon another is
inconceivable. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of occasional causes is
not satisfactory, it seems to me, to a philosopher, because it
introduces a sort of continuous miracle as though God at every
moment was changing the laws of bodies on the occasions when
minds had thoughts, or was changing the regular course of the
thinking of the soul by exciting in it other thoughts on the
occasion of a bodily movement; and in general as though God was
interfering otherwise for the ordinary events of life than in
preserving each substance in its course and in the laws established
for it. Only the hypothesis of the concomitance or the agreement
of substances among themselves therefore is able to explain these
things in a manner wholly conceivable and worthy of God. And as
this hypothesis alone is demonstrative and inevitable in my
opinion, according to the proposition which we have just
established, it seems also that it agrees better with the freedom of
reasonable creatures than the hyp