Ta employ a comparison, I will say in regard to this concomitance, which I hold to be true, that it is like several bands of musicians or choirs separ- ately taking up their parts and placed in such a way that they neither see nor hear one another, though they nevertheless, agree perfectly in following their notes, each one his own, in such a way that he who hears the whole finds in it a wonderful harmony much more surprising than if there were a connec- tion between the performers. It is quite possible also that a person who is close by one of two such choirs could judge from the one what the other was doing, and would form such a habit (particularly if we supposed that he was able to hear his own choir without seeing it and to see the other without hear- ing it), that his imagination would come to his aid and he would no longer think of the choir where he was, but of the other, and he would take his own for an echo of the other, attributing to his own only certain interludes, in which certain rules of sym- phony by which he understood the other did not appear, or else attributing to his own certain move- ments which he caused to be made from his side, according to certain plans that he thought were imitated by the other because of the inter-relation- ship which he found in the kind of melody, not knowing at all that those who were in the other choir were doing also something which corresponded according to their own plans.
Nevertheless, I do not at all disapprove of the LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 189 statement that minds are in some sort the occasional and even real causes of certain movements in the body, for, with regard to the divine resolves, what- ever God has foreseen and pre-established with regard to minds, has been an occasion for his thus regulating the body from the very start, so that they might fit in together, each following the laws and forces that he has given them; and as the state of one is an unfailing consequence of the other, al- though frequently contingent and even free, we can say that God has established a real connection in virtue of this general conception of substances, which brings it about that they express one another per- fectly. This connection, however, is not immediate, being founded only upon what God has given them in creating them.
If my opinion, that substances require a true unity, is founded only upon a definition which I have made up contrary to the common usage, this would be a mere question of words; but besides the fact that most philosophers have understood this term in nearly the same way, namely, that ‘‘a distinction should be made between unity through itself and. unity through accident, between substantial form and accidental form, between an imperfect and a perfect compound, between natural and artificial,’ I take still higher ground and, leaving the question of terminology, I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there are not even real beings, because every being by aggregation pre-supposes beings endowed with true unity, because it ob- tains its reality only from the reality of the ele- ments of which it is composed, so that it will have no reality at all if every being of which it is com- 1g90 CORRESPONDENCE.
posed is again a being by aggregation; or else we must seek some other foundation for its reality, seeing that by this method it can never be reached, even by searching forever. I grant, M., that in all corporeal nature there exist only machines (some of which are alive), but I do not grant that there exist only aggregations of substances, and if there do exist aggregations of substances it must be that there are also real substances of which all these aggregations are the product; we therefore come necessarily to the mathematical points out of which certain writers have constructed extension, or to the atoms of Epicurus and of M. Cordemoy—things which you reject quite as much as I do; or else we must acknowledge that no reality 1s to be found in bodies. The other alternative is to say that there are certain substances which have a real unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite of the dia- monds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul could be called a pair of diamonds, but this would only be a being of the reason, and if they were brought together they would become a being of the imagination or perception, that is to Say, a phenomenon, because contact, common move- ment and even agreement in design, do not effect a substantial unity. It is true that sometimes there is more and sometimes less basis for supposing that several things constitute one, according as the things have more or less connection,but this is only a means to abbreviate our thinking and to represent the phenomenon.
It seems also that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation consists solely in the mode of the being of itscomponent elements. For exam- LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. Ig!
ple, what constitutes the essence of an army? It is simply the mode of being of the men who compose it. This mode of being presupposes, accordingly a substance of which the essence is not a mode of being of a substance. Every machine therefore presup- poses some substance in the parts out of which it ts made, and there is no plurality without true unities; in short, I consider as an axiom this identical propo- sition, which receives two meanings only through a change in accent; namely, that what is not truly @ being is not truly a demg. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal terms. Being is very different from beings, but the plural presupposes the singular; and there where there is no being, are there still less several beings. What can be clearer? I thought, therefore, that I should be permitted to distinguish beings by aggrega- tion from substances, since these beings have their unity only in our minds, and our minds repose upon the relations or the modes of real substances. If a machine is a substance, a circle of men who are holding hands would be one also, so an army, and in fact, any gathering together of substances. I do not say that there is nothing substantial or nothing but appearance in things which have not a true unity, for I acknowledge that they have as much of reality or substantiality as there is of true unity in that which enters into their composition.
You object, M., that it might be of the essence of bodies to have no true unity. But it will be then the essence of bodies to be phenomena deprived of all reality as would be an orderly dream, for phenomena, like the rainbow or like a pile of stones, will be wholly imaginary if they are not com- 192 CORRESPONDENCE.
posed of beings which have a true unity. You say that you do not seé whyI admit substantial forms cr rather corporeal substances endowed with a true unity. It is because I can conceive of no reality without a true unity, and in my opinion the concept of the singular substance involves conse- quences incompatible with its being a mere aggre- gation. I can conceive of properties in the sub- stance which cannot be explained by extension, by form and by motion, quite apart from the fact that there is no exact and definite form in bodies because of the actual subdivision of the continuum to infin- ity, and that their sofion in so far as it is only a modification of extension and a change of place, involves something imaginary so that we cannot determine to which object, among those that change, it belongs, unless we have recourse to the force that is the cause of the motion and that inheres in the corporeal substance. I confess that there is no need of mentioning these substances and qualities in explaining particular phenomena, but no more is there need of inquiring about the intervention of God, the composition of the continuum, the plenum, and a thousand other things. The particular events of nature I confess can be explained mechanically, but only after having recognized or presupposed the principles of mechanics. These can be established a priori only through metaphysical speculations. The difficulties involved in the composition of the continuum will never be resolved so long as exten- sion is considered as constituting the substance of the bodies, and we shall find ourselves entangled in our own chimeras.: I think furthermore that to attempt to limit true LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 193 unity or substance to man alone is as shortsighted in metaphysics as it was in the realm of physics to desire to enclose the world in a sphere. And since true substances are so many expressions of the whole universe taken in a certain sense and so many reduplications of the divine work, it is in conformity with the grandeur and the beauty of the works of God, (seeing that these substances do not clash with one another,) to create in this universe as many of them as is possible and as superior reasons permit. The wholly bare supposition of extension destroys this wonderful variety, since mass, by itself (if we were able to conceive of it), is as much inferior to a substance which is perceptive and which rep- resents the whole universe according to its point of view and according to the impressions or rather relations that its body receives mediately or im- mediately from all others, as a dead body is below an animal or as a machine is inferior to a man. It is, indeed, through the idea of substance that the evidences of the future are formed in advance and that the traces of the past are preserved forever in everything, and that cause and effect are exactly equivalent even to the slightest circum- stance, although each effect depends upon an infinity of causes and every cause has an infinity of effects. It would not be possible to obtain this state of things, if. the essence of the body consisted only in a certain form, motion or modification of extension, which was predetermined. Furthermore, there- is nothing of the kind in nature; taken strictly, every thing is indefinite with regard to extension, and whatever we attribute to bodies are only phenom- ena and abstractions: this enables us to see how 194 CORRESPONDENCE, easy it is to fall into error if reflections so necessary for recognizing the true principles and for having a valid idea of the universe are not made. It seems to me that as much prejudice is displayed in refus- ing to accept so reasonable an idea as this, as there would be in not recognizing the grandeur of the world, the subdivision to infinity and the mechani- cal explanations of nature. It is as great an error to conceive of extension as a primitive concept without looking into the real concept of substance and of action, as it was formerly to be contented with considering substantial forms as a whole with- out entering into details as to the modifications of extension.
The great number of souls (to which, however, I do not necessarily attribute in every case pain and pleasure), should not trouble us any more than do the great number of the atoms put forward by Gas- sendi, which are quite as indestructible as the soul. On’ the contrary it-4s “one ofthe perfections: of nature to have so many of them, since a soul or indeed a living substance is infinitely more perfect than an atom, which is without variety or subdivis- ion. Every living thing contains a world of diver- sity in areal unity. Our experience is in favor of this great number of living things; we find that there is a prodigious quantity of them in a drop of water tinctured with powder and with one blow millions of them can be killed so that neither the frogs of the Egyptians nor the quails of the Israelites of which you spoke, M., at all approach the number. Now, if these animals have souls, the same must be said of their souls which can probably be said of the animals themselves; namely, that they have been LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 195 living from the very creation of the world and that they will live to its end, and that birth being appar- ently only a change consisting in growth, so death is only a change or diminution which causes this animal to re-enter into the engulfing of a world of minute creatures, where perceptions are very lim- ited until the command comes calling them to return to the theater of action. The ancients made the mistake of introducing the transmigration of souls, in place of the transformation of the same animal which always preserves the same soul. They put metempsychoses in place of metaschematismi. Spirits, however, are not subjected to these revolu- tions, or rather these revoiutions of bodies must serve the divine economy for the sake of spirits. God creates them when it is time and he detaches them from the body, at least from the material body by death; since they must always preserve their moral qualities and their memory in order to be perpetual citizens of that universal republic, absolutely perfect, whose monarch is God. This sepublic can never lose any of its members and its laws are superior to those of the body. I grant that bodies by themselves without the soul have only a unity of aggregation, but the reality which inheres in them comes from the parts which compose them and which retain their substantial unity through the living bodies that are included in them without num- der.
Nevertheless, although it is possible that a soul have a body made up of animated parts or of separ- ate souls, the soul or the form of the whole is not, therefore, composed of souls or forms of parts. In regard to an insect which is cut in two, it is not 196 CORRESPONDENCE, necessary that the two parts shall remain animated, although there may be some movement in them, at least the soul of the whole insect will remain only on one side and as in the formation and in the growth of the insect the soul has already been in a certain part alive from the very start, it will remain also after the destruction of the insect, still alive in a certain part, which will always be as small as is nec- essary to serve as an asylum from the action of him who is tearing or destroying the body of this insect. We need not, however, imagine with the Jews that there is a little bone of irrefrangible hardness where the soul preserves itself.
I agree that there are degrees of accidental unity, that a regulated society has more unity than a con- fused mob and that an organized body or indeed a machine has more unity than a society. That ts, it is more appropriate to conceive of them as a sin- gle thing because there is more relation between the component elements. All these unities, how- ever, receive their name only through thoughts and through appearances like colors and other phenom- ena that are, nevertheless, calledreal. The fact that a pile of stanes or a block of marble can be touched does not prove its substantial reality any more suc- cessfully than the visibility of a rainbow proves its reality; and as nothing is so solid that it has not a certain degree of fluidity, perhaps the block of marble itself is only a mass of an infinite number of living bodies like a lake full of fish, although such animals in a body can be ordinarily distin- guished by the eye only when the body is partially decayed. We may say of these compounds and of similar things what Democritus said very well of LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 197 them, namely esse opinione, lege, vou». Plato had the same opinion in regard to all that is purely material. Our mind sees or conceives of certain true substances which have certain modes. These modes involve relations to other substances when- ever the mind finds occasion to join them in thought and to make one name stand for the whole assem- bly of these things, which name shall serve as a means of reasoning; but we must not make the mistake of thinking that they are substances or veritably real beings. This position can be held only by those who go no farther than appearances, or else by those who consider as realities all the abstractions of the mind and who conceive number, time, place, motion, form and sensible quality as so many beings by themselves. I, on the contrary, hold that philosophy cannot be restored in a better way nor better reduced to precision than by recog- nizing substances or complete beings endowed with a true unity in which different states succeed. All ‘the rest are to be considered only as phenomena, abstractions or relations. | Nothing will ever be found fitted to constitute a true substance out of several beings by means of aggregation; for example, if the parts which fit together for a common design are more appropriate to constitute a true substance than those which are in contact, all the officials of the India Company in Holland would constitute a real substance better than would a pile of stones. But such a common ‘design—what is it but a resemblance, or rather an ‘arrangement of actions and passions, which our mind sees in different things? If this unity by con- tact should be preferred as the most reasonable 198 CORRESPONDENCE.
hypothesis, other difficulties would be found: the parts of solid bodies are perhaps united only by the pressure of surrounding bodies and by their own pressure, and in their substance they may have no more union than a pile of sand arena sine calce. Why will many rings linked together to constitute a chain compose more of a true substance than if they had openings by means of which they could be separated? It is possible that the links of a chain should not touch one another and should not even be interlinked and yet, nevertheless, unless they were taken in a certain particular way they could not be separated, as in the accompanying figure.
Would it be said in such acase that the substance of this compound is, as it were, in suspense, and depends upon the future cleverness of him who wishes to separate them? These are all fictions of the mind, and so far as we do not discern what 13 truly a complete being, or indeed, a substance, we shall have no resting place, and through this distinc: tion of substances alone is there a means of estab- lishing stable and real principles.
In conclusion, nothing should be considered cer: tain without a basis. It is therefore for those who speak of beings and substances without a real unity to prove that there is more reality than that which has just been spoken of; and I am awaiting that LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 199 concept of a substance or of a being which can include all those things and in accordance with which, parts and perhaps even dreams may some day pretend to reality: at least I hope that precise limits will be given to the citizenship rights which are being granted to beings formed by aggregation.
I have treated this subject at length so that you might understand not only my positions but also the reasons which have compelled me to assume them. I submit them to your judgment whose fairness and exactness I know. I send also an article in The News of the Republic of Letters which you may find will serve as areply to the Abbé Catelan. I consider him an able man after what you have said, but what he has written against M. Huygens and against me, makes it clear that he goes a little too fast. We shall see what he will do now. I am delighted to learn of the good condition of your health; I desire its continuation with all the zeal and all the passion which makes me, M., etc.
P. S.—I reserve for another time certain subjects which you have touched upon in your letter.
XVIII Letbniz to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rhetnfels.
Monseigneur: I hope that your Serene Highness will receive the book which was delayed so long; I looked for it myself at Wolfenbuttel in order that you might have it again since you were laying the blame on me. I have taken the liberty to adda letter and some 200 CORRESPONDENCE.
documents for M. Arnaud. I have some hope that when he shall have read them, his penetration and his sincerity will, perhaps, enable him to approve entirely of that which at the beginning seemed: strange to him, because since he has modified his position after having seen my first explanation, per- haps he will come to approbation after having seen this last one which, in my opinion, clearly does away with all the difficulties that he said _ stili troubled him. However that may be, I shall be content if he decides, at least, that these opinions, even though they may be very false, entail nothing directly contrary to the definitions of the Church and that consequently they are tolerable even ina Roman Catholic. For your Serene Highness knows, better than I can tell, that there are toler- able errors, and that there are even errors whose consequences are believed to destroy the articles of faith, and yet, nevertheless, neither these errors nor those who hold them are condemned because the consequences are not approved of. For exam- ple, the Thomists hold that the hypothesis of the Molinists destroys the perfection of God; while, on the other hand, the Molinists think that the predeter- mination of the former destroys the freedom of man; nevertheless, since the Church has not yet come to any conclusion upon the matter, neither the former nor the latter can be considered as heretics nor their opinions as heresies. I think the same can be said of my proposition, and for many reasons I should like to know if M. Arnaud does not him- self now acknowledge their harmlessness. He is very busy and his time is too valuable for me to pretend that he should employ it in discussing a LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS., 201 matter regarding the truth or falsehood of ‘an opin- ion; but it is easy for him to decide upon its tolera- bility, since it is merely a question of knowing whether they are contrary to certain definitions of the Church.; XIX Letbntz to Arnauld.
August Ist, 1687.
I have learned with much pleasure that his Serene Highness, Count Ernst, has seen and feund you in good health. I hope with all my heart that I shall have such news frequently, and that the body will feel as little the effects of age as has the mind, whose energy still manifests itself. I have myself appre- ciated this energy, and I confess that I know no one from whom I look for a judgment upon my medita- tions more stable, more penetrating, and also more sincere than from you.
‘I do not wish to trouble you, but the material of the later letters being of an importance second only to that of religion and having great affinities with it, I confess that I should like to be able to enjoy once more your enlightenment and at least to learn your opinion in regard to my last explana- tions; for if you find in them an appearance of reason, I shall be confirmed, but if you find anything to say against them I shall advance more cautiously and shall be obliged to examine some day the whole ‘subject anew.
In place of M. Catelan it was the Rev. Father Male- branche who replied a short time ago in The News 202 CORRESPONDENCE.
202 CORRESPONDENCE.
of the Republic of Letters to the objection which I had put forward. He seems to realize that cer- tain of the laws of nature or principles of motion which he advanced would be difficult to maintain; but he thought this was because he had based them on the assumption of absolute hardness which is not found in nature, while I think that if absolute hardness could be found in nature these laws would still be untenable. It is a defect in the reasoning of Descartes and his followers not to have consid- ered that everything that is said of motion, of ine- quality, and of elasticity, should also be true if things are supposed to be infinitely small. In this case motion (infinitely small) becomes rest, inequal- ity (infinitely small) becomes equality,and elasticity (infinitely prompt) is nothing else than extreme hard- ness; somewhat as everything which geometers demonstrate regarding an ellipse proves true of a parabola, when conceived as an ellipse with its second focus infinitely distant. It is a remarkable thing to see that almost all Descartes’ laws of motion conflict with this principle, which I hold to be quite as infal- lible in physics as it is in geometry, because the author of things acts as a perfect geometer. If I make any reply to Father Malebranche it will be principally in order to point out the above men- tioned principle, which is of great utility and which has not as yet been generally considered, so far as } know.
But I am detaining you too long and this matter 25 not worthy of your attention, Iam, etc., LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS, 203 XX Arnauld to Leibniz.
August 28th, 1687.
I must begin by making excuses for replying so late to your letter of April 3d. Since then I have had various illnesses and various occupations and beside it is a little hard for me to apply myself to such abstract things; 1 therefore ask for your con- sideration if I give rather briefly my opinion about the new points in your last letter.
1. I have no clear idea what you mean by the word express when you say that ‘‘our soul expresses more distinctly, other things being equal, that which pertains to its own body, since it expresses even all the universe in a certain sense.’’ For if by this expression you mean a certain thought or a certain knowledge, I cannot agree that my soul has more thought and knowledge regarding the movement of the lymph in the lymphatic ducts than regarding the movement of the satellites of Saturn; if what you call expression is neither thought nor knowl- edge, I do not know what it is. Therefore it cannot be of service in solving the difficulty which I raised; namely, how my soul can have a feeling of pain when I am pricked during my sleep; since for this it would have to know that some one were pricking me, while in fact it obtains this knowledge only by the pain which it feels.
2. In regard to the following reasoning in the philosophy of occasional causes: ‘‘my hand moves as soon as I wish it; now it is not my soul which is the real cause of this motion, neither is it the body, therefore it is God’’; you say that this supposes that 204 at CORRESPONDENCE.
a body cannot move itself. Your thought, how- ever, is that it can, and you hold that whatever there is of reality, in the state which is called motion, proceeds quite as much from the corporeal sub- stance itself, as the thought and the will proceeds from the mind.
This is what seems to me very hard to understand, that a body which has no motion can give itself motion. And if this is admitted, one of the proofs for the being of God is destroyed; namely, the neces- sity for a first mover.
Moreover, if a body could give motion to itself, it would not result in my hand’s moving itself every time that I wished it; for, being without knowledge, how would it know when I wished it to move itself.
3. I have more to say in regard to the indivisible and indestructible substantial forms which you think should be admitted in the case of all animals and perhaps even in the case of plants, because other- wise matter (which you consider as neither com- posed of atoms nor of mathematical points, but to be divisible to infinity) would not be a unum per se but only an ageregatum per accidens.
(1). I replied to you that perhaps it is an essential of matter, which is the most imperfect of all beings, not to have any true and proper unity, just as St. Augustine thought, that is, to be plura entia and not properly wnum ens; and that this is no more incomprehensible than is the infinite divisibility of matter, which you admit.
But you replied that this cannot be so, because there can be no flura entia where there is no unum ens.
LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 205 But how can you employ this argument, which M: Cordemoy perhaps might have thought true, but: which, according to you, must be necessarily false, since, excepting animated beings, which do not form one hundred thousand thousandth part, all the rest must, in your opinion, be without substantial forms, merely plura entia and not properly unum ens? It is, therefore, not impossible that there should be plura entia even where there is properly no unum ens.