(2). Ido not see that your substantial forms can remedy this difficulty, for the attribute of the ezs which is called unum, taken as you take it, strictly meta- physically, must be essential and intrinsic to what is called the unum ens. Therefore, if a particle of matter is not a unum ens but plura entia, I do not see how a substantial form, which being really dis- tinguished from it, could only give it an extrinsic property—how this substantial form could make it cease being a plura entia and should make it a unum ens by an intrinsic property. I understand easily that this would give us a reason for calling it zz ens, if we did not take the word waum in this meta- physical strictness. Substantial forms, however, are not called for in order to be able to give the name one to an infinity of inanimate bodies, because, is it not correct usage to say that the sun Is one, that the earth which we inhabit is one, etc? It is not evident, therefore, that there is any necessity for admitting these substantial forms in order to give to bodies a true unity, which they would not otherwise have.
(3). You admit these substantial forms only in animate bodies.* Now there are no animate bodies * Leibniz’s note: ‘‘I do not remember having said that.’
206 CORRESPONDENCE.
which are not organized, nor are there any organized bodies which are not plura entia; therefore your substantial forms, far from preventing bodies to which they are joined from being plura entia, must themselves become plura entia in order that they may be joined.
(4). I have no clear idea of these substantial forms or souls as applied to brutes. It must be that you regard them as substances, since you call them sub- stantial, and since you say that only substances are truly real beings, among which you include above all these substantial forms. Now I know only two sorts of substances, bodies and minds, and it is for those who claim that there are others to show me them, according to the maxim with which you conclude your letter, “that nothing should be considered certain without a basis.’ Suppose therefore that these sub- stantial forms are either bodily or mental; if they are bodily they must be extended and consequently divisible and divisible to infinity; hence it follows that they are not a unum ens but plura entia; just as are the physical bodies which they animate; they are not therefore able to impart a true unity. If, however, the substantial forms are mental, their essence will be to think, for this is what I under- stand by the word mind. It is hard for me to under- stand how an oyster thinks or a worm thinks; and since you say in your last letter that you are not sure but that plants have a soul, have a life or a sub- stantial form, it must be you are not sure that plants do not think, because their substantial forms, if they have any, not being corporeal because they are not extended, must be mental, that is to say, a sub- stance which thinks.
LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 207 (5). The indestructibility of these substantial forms or souls in brutes appears to me still more untenable. I asked you what became of the souls of these brutes when they died or when they were killed, just as when worms were burned what became of their souls. You reply “that they remain for each worm in a small part of the body that remains alive. This will always be as small as is necessary to serve as a shelter from the action of the fire which tears to pieces or which destroys the bodies of these worms.” This brings you to say that “the ancients were mistaken in introducing the transmigration of souls in place of the transformation of the same ani- mal which always preserves the same soul.” Noth- ing can be imagined more subtle for meeting the difficulty that I raised, but you will have to be on your guard, M., against what I am about to say; when a silk moth casts its eggs each one of these eggs in your opinion has the soul of a silk worm, whence it happens that five or six months later little silk worms hatch out. Now, if a hundred of these silk worms had been burned there would be, in your opinion, a hundred souls of silk worms in so many little particles of the ashes; but on the one hand I do not know any one whom you can persuade that each silk worm after having been burned remains the same animal preserving the same soul joined now to a speck of ashes which was formerly a little portion of its own body; and, on the other hand, if this were so, why is no silk worm born out of these specks of ashes as they are born out of the eggs?
(6). This difficulty appears greater in the case of animals, where it is known certainly that they can- not be born except through the alliance of two 208 CORRESPONDENCE.
sexes; I ask, for example, what became of the soul of the ram which Abraham offered in place of Isaac and which he burned? You will not say that it passed into the foetus of another ram, for this would be the metempsychosis which you condemn; but you reply that it remained in a particle of the body of this ram reduced to ashes and that therefore it is only the transformation of the same animal which has always preserved the same soul. This could be said with some appearance of truth in your hypothesis of the substantial forms of a caterpillar which becomes a butterfly, because the butterfly is an organized body quite as much as is the caterpillar, and therefore it is an animal which can be considered the same as the caterpillar because it preserves many of the parts of the caterpillar without any change, and the other parts have changed only the forms. But this part of the ram, reduced to ashes, in which the soul of the ram has taken refuge, not being organized, cannot be taken for an animal, and therefore the soul of the ram which is joined to it, does not com- pose an animal, much less a ram, such as the soul of aram should. What will then become of the soul of this ram in this cinder? For it cannot separate itself away, to go elsewhere, since this would bea transmigration of the soul, that you have con- demned. The same is the case with an infinity of other souls which would never form animals because of being joined to particles of matter not organized, but which invisible could become organized according to laws established in nature. What an infinity of monstrous things would be this infinity of. souls joined to bodies which cannot become ani- mated!
LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 209 Not long since I saw what Abbé Catelan replied to your answer in The News of the Republic of Let- ters for the month of June. What he said there seemed very clear to me, perhaps however, he did not entirely understand your thought; therefore, I am awaiting the reply which you will make to him. I am, Monsieur, Your very humble and very obedient servant, XXI A. Arnauld to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels.
August 3Ist, 1687.
Here, M., is the reply to the last letter which M. Leibniz sent through your Serene Highness in April last. I was not able to apply myself to it sooner in order to reply to it. I beg you to send it on to him ‘because I do not know his traits. If you will look it through you will see that there are a good many ‘very strange opinions in regard to physics and some which appear to be hardly tenable, but I have tried to tell him my opinion regarding them in a way which should not wound him; it would be better were he to quit, fora time at least, these kinds of speculations, in order to apply himself to the most important business that he can have, which ts the choice of the true religion in accordance with what he wrote.to your Highness a few years ago. There is cause for fear that death may overtake him before he has taken a step so important for his salvation. M. Nicole’s book against Seigneur Jurieu’s new ecclesiastical system has just been printed. We are expecting it from Paris in five or six days. I will 210 CORRESPONDENCE.
send you a copy of the Cologne stage together with certain other books which you will like to see.
XXII Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels to Leibmz. My dear M. Leibniz: There is reason for saying what M. Arnauld has said; for even if there were thousands among the Protestants who did not know their right hand from their left, who, in comparison with the savants, would be reputed as unthinking brutes, and who adhered only materially to heresy, certainly this cannot be said of you who have so much enlighten- ment, and with respect to whom, if there had never been any other but myself, as much as possible has been done to make you come forth from the Schis- matic and to represent to you whatever there was to be represented. To mention merely one out of a thousand points; do you believe that Christ would have so constituted his Church that what one thought white another might think black, and that he would have constituted the ecclesiastical ministry in such a contradictory fashion that we should be in debate about it with the Protestants, we thinking one thing and you thinking another? For example, we hold that your ministers are laymen and are ustrpers in the ministry. I do not know what you may think of ours who are so opposed to yours on this point. O, my dear M. Leibniz, do not lose thus the time of grace and hodie si vocem Domini auderitis, nolite obdurare corda vestra. Christ and Belial can no more agree together than do the Catholics and Protest- ants, and I know nothing which promises your sal- vation unless you become a Catholic.
LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS., 211 XXIIL Letbntz to Arnauld.
October 6, 1687.
As I always hold in high esteem your criticism when you have seen the point at issue, I will try this time so to write that the positions which I hold as important and almost as certain, may appear to you, if not certain, at least as entertainable; for it does not seem to meat all difficult to answer the doubts which you still have, and which, in my opinion, result only because a person, however able he may be, when he has his mind made up and ts otherwise diverted, has difficulty at first in entering into a new line of thought upon an abstract subject, where neither figures nor models nor illustrations can assist him.
I have said that the soul naturally expresses the whole universe in a particular sense and according to the relation which other bodies have to its own; consequently, as it expresses most directly that which belongs to the parts of its own bodies, it ought, in virtue of the laws of relationship which are essential to it, to express in particular certain unusual changes of its own body; for instance, that which happens when it feels pain. To this you reply that you have no clear idea of what I mean by the word express; that, if I mean by it a thought, you will not agree that the soul has any more thought and cognizance of the movement of the lymph in the lymphatic ducts than of the move- ments of the satellites of Saturn. If I mean, how- ever, something else, you say you do not know what tt is. and. consequently (supposing that I were not abie to explain it distinctly), this word would be 212 CORRESPONDENCE.
of no service in letting us know how the soul can become aware of the feeling of pain, since it would needs be, you say, that it already knew that I was being pricked instead of obtaining this knowledge only by the pain which it felt.
In reply to this I will expdain this word which you think is obscure, and I will apply it to the diffi- culty which you have raised. One thing expresses another, in my use of the term, when there is a con- stant and regulated relation between what can be said of the one and of the other. It is thus that a projection in perspective expresses a_ structure. Expression is common to all forms, and is a class of which ordinary perception, animal feeling and intellectual knowledge are species. In ordinary perception and in feeling it is enough that what is divisible and material and what is found common to several beings should be expressed or represented in a single indivisible being, or in the substance which is endowed with a true unity. We cannot at all doubt the possibility of such a representation of several things in a single one, since our own souls furnish us examples; this representation, however, is accompanied by consciousness in a rational soul and becomes then what is called thought.
Now, such expression ts found everywhere, because all substances sympathize with one another and receive some proportional change corresponding to the slightest motion which occurs in the whole uni- verse. These changes, however, may be more or less noticeable, as other bodies have ‘more or less relation with ours. I think that M. Descartes would have agreed with this himself, for he would doubt- less grant that because of the continuity and divis- LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS, 213 ibility of all matter the slightest movement would have its effect upon neighboring bodies and conse- quently from body to body to infinity, but in dimin- ishing proportion. Thus, our bodies ought to be affected in some sort by the changes of all others. Now, to all the movements of our bodies certain perceptions or thoughts of our soul, more or less con- fused, correspond; therefore, the soul also will have some thought of all the movements of the universe, and in my opinion every other soul or substance will have some perception or expression of them. It is true that we do not distinctly perceive all the move- ments in our body, as for example the movement of the lymph, but to use an example which I have already employed, it is somewhat in the same way that I must have some perception of the motion of every wave upon the shore so that 1 may perceive what results from. the whole; that is to say, that great sound which is heard near the sea. In the same way we feel also some indistinct result from all the movements which go on within us, but, being accus- tomed to this internal motion, we perceive it clearly and noticeably only when there is a considerable change, as at the beginning of an illness. It is to be desired that physicians should apply themselves to distinguish more exactly these kinds of confused feeling which we have within our bodies. Now, since we perceive other bodies only by the relation which they have to our own, I had reason for saying that the soul expresses better what belongs to its own body and knows the satellites of Jupiter and of Saturn only in accordance with a motion which is produced within the eye. In all this I think the Cartesians would argee with me, excepting that I sup- 214 Lass CORRESPONDENCE. * pose that there are around us other souls beside our own to which I attribute a lower expression or percep- tion than thought. For the Cartesians deny feelings to animals and do not admit any substantial forms out- side of men. This does not at all affect our question here regarding the cause of pain. We have now to ask how the soul perceives the movements of its body, since there seems to be no way of explaining by what means the action of an extended mass may be transmitted to an indivisible being. Most Cartesians confess that they can give no reason for this union; the authors of the hypothesis of occasional. causes think that. it is a modus vindice dignus, cus Deus ex machina interventre debeat, a knot worthy of such an extricator that God must intervene to solve it. For my part, I explain it in a natural way. From the concept of substance or of complete being in gen- eral, where the present state is always a natural consequence of the preceding state, it follows that the nature of every singular substance and conse- quently of every singular soul is to express the unt- verse. From the start it was created in such a way that in virtue of the laws of its own nature it ts obliged to agree with whatever takes place in bodies, and particularly in its own. There is no cause for astonishment therefore, that it is of the nature of the soul to represent to itself a pricking sensation when its body is pricked: in order to explain this matter let us put on opposite sides: State of the body at the State of the soul at momoment A. ment A. State of the body at the State of the soul at the succeeding moment B (prick- moment B (pain).
_ Just as the state of the body at the moment B follows the state of the body at the moment A, in the same way the state B of the soul is a conse- quence of the preceding state A of the same soul, according to the concept of substance in general. Now, the states of the soul are naturally and essen- tially expressions of the corresponding states of the world, and particularly of the bodies which belong to them; therefore, since the pricking constitutes a part of the condition of the body at the moment B, the representation or expression of the pricking, which is the pain, will also form a part of the state of the soul at moment B; because, as one motion fol- lows from another motion, so one representation in a substance, whose nature it is to be representative, follows from another repesentation. Accordingly the soul must needs perceive the pricking when the laws of correspondency require it to express more distinctly some extraordinary change in the parts of its body. It is true that the soul does not always distinctly perceive the causes of the pricking and of its future pain, when they are still concealed in the representation of the state A, as when one is asleep or for some other reason does not see the pin approaching. This is, however, because, at such a time, the motion of the pin makes too little impres- sion and although we are already affected in some sort by all the motions and representations in our soul, and though we have thus in us the representation or expression of the causes of the pricking, and consequently the cause of the representation of the same pricking, that is to say, the cause of the pain, we are yet not able to separate them out from all the other thoughts and movements excepting when they 216 CORRESPONDENCE, become quite considerable. Our soul notices only more special phenomena, which are distinguishable from others, never thinking distinctly of any one when the thought ts about them all equally.
In accordance with this, I do not see that the slightest shade of difficulty can be found in this position, unless it be denied that God can create sub- stances which are made from the start in such a way that by virtue of their own natures they agree in the series of events with the phenomena of all the others. Now, there are no plausible grounds for denying this possibility. Mathematicians represent the movements of the heavens by means of machines, (as when Jura polirerumgue fidem legesque deorum Cuncta Syracustus transtulit arte senex, a thing which we can do much better to-day than Archimedes could in his time), and why cannot God, who infinitely surpasses these mathematicians, create from the very start representative substances in such a way that they shall express by their own laws, in accordance with the natural changes of their thoughts or representations, whatever is to happen to all bodies. This appears to me not only easy to conceive, but also worthy of God and of the beauty of the universe, and in a way a necessary conception, since all substances must have a harmony and union among themselves, and all must express in them- selves the same universe and the universal cause, which is the will of their Creator, and the decrees or Jaws which He has so established that they fit together in the best possible way. Furthermore, this mutual correspondence of different substances which LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 217 are not able, if we speak with metaphysical strict- ness, to act one upon another, and which, neverthe- less, agree as though one were acting upon the other, is one of the strongest proofs for the exist- ence of God or of a common cause which each effect must always express according to its point of view and itscapacity. Otherwise the phenomena of different minds would not agree and there would be as many systems as substances; or rather, it would be a pure chance if they at times agreed. All the conceptions which we have of time and of space are based upon this agreement. But I should never fin- ish, were I to explain exhaustively all that is con- nected with our subject; however, I prefer to be prolix rather than not to express myself sufficiently.
To goon to your other objections, I now think that you will see, M., what I mean, when I say that a corporeal substance gives to itself its own motion, or, rather, whatever there is of reality in the motion at each moment, that is, the derivative force, of which it is a consequence; for, every preceding state of asubstance is a consequence of its preceding state. It is true that a body which has no motion cannot give itself motion; but I hold that there are no such bodies. (Also,strictly speaking, bodies are not pushed by others when there is a contact, but it is by their own motion or by the internal spring, which again is a motion of the internal parts. Every corporeal mass, large or small, has already in it all the force that it will ever acquire, the contact with other bodies gives it only the determination, or, better, this determination takes place only at the time that the contact does). You will say that God can reduce a body to a state of perfect repose; I reply, however, 218 CORRESPONDENCE, 218 CORRESPONDENCE, that God can also reduce it to nothing, and that this body, deprived of action and of passion, need not be considered a substance; at least, it is enough if I say that when God ever reduces a certain body to perfect repose, something that can happen only bya miracle, he would require a new miracle in order to restore any motion to it. You see that my opinion confirms rather than destroys the proof of a prime mover: a reason must always be given for the com- mencement of the motion and for the laws and the agreement of the motions among themselves, and this can never be done without having recourse to God. Furthermore, my hand does not move because I wish it for it would. be in vain, unless I hada miraculous faith, for me to wish the mountain to move, and in the case of my hand I should not be able to wish its moving with success unless it were exactly at that moment that the muscles of my hand made the necessary contraction for this effect; so much the more must what I suffer agree with the changes of my body. The one always accompanies the other in virtue of the correspondence which I established above; each one, however, has its cause immediately in itself.
I come to the point regarding the forms or the souls which I consider to be indivisible and inde- structible. I am not the first-one to hold this opin- ion. Parmenides, of whom Plato speaks with respect, as well as Melissus, held that there was neither generation nor corruption except in appear- ance. Aristotle takes the same position in Book 3, De c@lo, chapter 2, and the author of De deta, Book I., which is attributed to Hippocrates, -says expressly that an animal‘cannot be born wholly as a LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 219 new animal nor entirely destroyed. Albertus Magnus and John Bacon seem to have thought that the substantial forms were already concealed in mat- ter from all time; Fernel has them descend from heaven, to say nothing of those who derive them from the soul of the world. These have all seen a part of the truth, but they have not developed it. Most of them believed in the transmigration and others in the traduction of souls, instead of think- ing of the transmigration and transformation of an animal already formed. Others, not being able to explain the origin of the forms, have said that they begin by a true creation. Such a creation tn time I admit only in the case of reasoning souls, and hold that all the forms which do not think were created at the same time that the world was. But they believe that this creation takes place all the time whenever the smallest worm 1s born. Philoponus, an ancient commentator upon Aristotle, in his book against Proclus, and Gabriel Biel seem to have been of thisopinion. I think that St. Thomas considered the souls of beasts as indivisible. Our Cartesians go much further when they say that every soul and every true substantial form must be indestructible and ingenerable. This is why they refused souls to beasts, although M. Descartes, in a letter to M. Morus, says that he is not certain that they have no souls. Since no special objection is made to those who speak of perduring atoms, why is it found strange when the same is said of souls to which indivisibility should belong by their very nature, especially because, if we combine the position of the Cartesians regarding the substance and the soul, with the prevailing opinion regarding the souls of