220 CORRESPONDENCE.
beasts, the indestructibility necessarily follows. It will be difficult to overcome this opinion which has been always and everywhere received and which has been broadcast, namely, that beasts have feelings. Now, if we grant that they have souls, what I hold regarding the indestructibility of the souls is not only necessary according to the Cartesians but it ts important again in ethics and in religion, in order to controvert a dangerous tenet toward which several personages of intelligence are inclined and which the Italian philosophers, who are disciples of Averroes, have disseminated; namely, that when an animal dies the particular souls return to the soul of the world. This is in contradiction to my demon- stration of the nature of the individual substance and cannot be conceived of distinctly, since every individual substance must always subsist apart when once it has commenced its being; that is why the truths which I advance are so important. Those who recognize that the beasts have souls should approve of them, the others at least should not find them strange.
To come, however, to your objections regarding this indestructibility: 1. I have held that we must admit in bodies some- thing which may be truly a single being, since mat- ter or extended mass in itself can never be more than plura entia, as St. Augustine, following Plato, has very truly observed. Now, I infer that there are not several beings where there is not even one which may be truly a being, and I hold that every multitude presupposes unity; to this you make various replies, but without touching the argument itself, which is unassailable; you use only arguments LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 221 at hominem and from inconveniences which would arise, and you try to show that what I say does not solve the difficulty. First of all, you are aston- ished, M., how I am able to make use of this reason, which would be apparent to M. Cordemoy who con- stitutes everything out of atoms, but which, from my position, as you think, would be necessarily false, since, leaving aside animated bodies that do not con- stitute the hundred thousand thousandth part of the universe, all the others would necessarily have to be plura entia and the difficulty would thus come up again. From this I see, M.,that I did not explain myself sufficiently to enable you to grasp my hypothesis, for, aside from the fact that I do not remember having said that there are no substantial forms excepting souls, I am far from saying that animated bodies constitute only a small proportion of the bodies in the world; for, I think rather that everything is full of animated bodies, and in my opinion there are incomparably more souls than M. Cordemoy has atoms. His atoms are finite in number, while I hold that the number of souls, or at least of forms, is wholly infinite, and that mat- ter being divisible without end, no portion can be obtained so small that there are not in it animated bodies, or at least such as are endowed with a prim- itive entelechy, and (if you will permit me to use the word life so generally), with the val principle, that is to say, with corporeal substances, of all of which it may be said in general that they are alive.
2. As regards this other difficulty which you made, M., namely that the soul joined to matter does not make the latter truly one, since the matter ts not really one in itself, and since the soul, as you think, 222 CORRESPONDENCE.
gives it only an extrinsic character I reply that it-is the animated substance to which this matter belongs that is really a being, and the matter which is understood as the mass in itself is only a pure phenomenon or appearance, as well-founded, how- ever, as is space andtime. It has not even those precise and determined qualities which can enable it to pass as a determined being, as I have already indicated in what precedes, because figure itself, which is the essence of a limited extended mass, is never, strictly speaking, perfectly determined in the state of nature because of the actually infinite division of the parts of.matter: there is never a globe without inequalities, never a straight line without an intermingling of curves, never a curve: of a certain finite nature without an intermixture of some other, and this is as true in small portions as in large, so that far from the figure being a con- stitutive element in the body, it is not a quality at all real and determined outside of the thought. Never can an exact surface be assigned to any body as could be done if there were atoms; I can say the same thing of size and of motion, namely, that these qualities or predicates are phe- nomena like colors and sounds, and although they involve a more distinct knowledge they cannot hold up under a final analysis. Consequently extended mass, when considered without ente- lechies, that is, as consisting only in those qualities of size and motion, is not a corporeal substance but a wholly pure phenomenon like the rainbow. It has been also recognized by philosophers that it: is the substantial form which gives a definite being to matter, and those who do not pay attention to LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 223 that point will never get out of the labyrinth of the composition of the continuum if they once enter: only indivisible substances and their different states are absolutely real.- This Parminedes and Plato and many other ancients have tndeed seen.
. However, I grant that the word one can be applied to a gathering together of inanimate bodies although no substantial form unites them, just as I am able to say there is one rainbow, there is one herd. But this is a unity, phenomenal or of thought, which is not sufficient for the reality back of the phenomenon. [If we take as the matter of the corporeal substance, not its formless mass but a secondary matter which is the manifold of sub- stances whose mass constitutes the whole body, it can be said that these substances are parts of this matter; just as those which enter into our ‘body make apart of it. It is the same with other cor- poreal substances as it is with our body, which is the matter and the soul, which is the form of our substance; and I find no more difficulty in this respect than is found in the case of man, in regard to whom all are agreed upon this point. The diff- culties which come up in these subjects are due, among other reasons, to the fact that we have not ordinarily a sufficiently distinct conception of the whole and of the parts, because essentially the part is nothing else than an immediate requisite for the whole and is, in-a way, homogeneous with it; there- fore, the parts can constitute a whole, whether there is a real unity or not. It is true that the whole, which has a real unity, may continue as the same individual in the strictest sense even when it loses or gains parts as our experience shows us.’ In these 224 CORRESPONDENCE, 224 CORRESPONDENCE, cases the parts are immediate requisites only pro tempore but if, however, we understand by the term matter something which will always be essential to the same substance we might, in the sense of certain of the Schoolmen, understand by this the primitive passive power of a substance and, in this sense, the matter would be neither extended nor divisible although it would be the principle of divisibility or of that which stands for divisibility in the substance. However, I do not wish to argue regarding the use of terms. ] 3. You object that I admit substantial forms only in the case of animated bodies—a position which I do not, however, remember to have taken. Now, you continue: all organized bodies being pluva entia the forms or souls by no means suffice to constitute a being, but rather there must be several beings so that the body can be animated. I reply that sup- posing there is a soul or entelechy in beasts or in other corporeal substances, we must reason in regard to them as we all reason regarding man, who is a being endowed with a real unity; his soul gives him this unity although the mass of his body is divided into organs, ducts, humors, spirits, and that the parts are doubtless full of an infinity of other cor- poreal substances endowed with their own entele- chies. As this third objection agrees in substance with the preceding the former solution will suffice.
4. You think that it is without a basis, when souls are attributed to animals, and you think that if they had souls there would be a mind, that is to say, a substance which thinks since we know only bodies and spirits and have no idea of any other substance; now, that an oyster thinks or a worm thinks, LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 235 it is difficult to believe. This objection applies equally to all those who are not Cartesians. Besides the fact, however, that that cannot be entirely unreasonable, which the whole human race has always accepted, namely that animals have feel- ings, I think I have shown that every substance is indivisible, and that consequently every cor- poreal substance must have a soul or at least an entelechy which has an analogy with the soul, because otherwise the body would be only a phe- nomenon.
To hold that every substance which is not divisible (that is to say, in my opinion, every substance in general), is a mind and must think, appears to me incomparably more rash and more destitute of basis than the conservation of forms. We know only five senses and acertain number of metals, should we conclude that there are none other in the world? It seems more evident that nature, which loves variety, has produced other forms than those which think. If I am able to prove that there are no other figures of the second degree than those found in conic sections it is because I have a distinct idea of those lines, which enables me to reach an exact division; as, however, we have no distinct idea of thought and are not able to demonstrate that the concept of an indivisible substance coincides with that of a substance which thinks, we have no cause for being certain about it. I agree that the idea which we have of thought is clear but everything which is clearis not distinct. As Father Malebranche has already noticed, it is only by internal feeling that we recognize thought, we can recognize by feel- ing only the things which we have experienced, and 226 CORRESPONDENCE.
226 CORRESPONDENCE.
as we have not experienced the functions of other forms we must not be astonished if we have no clear idea of them; for, we ought not to have such ideas even if it were granted that there are these forms. It is a mistake to try to employ confused ideas, how- ever clear they may be, to prove that something cannot be; and when I pay attention to distinct ideas it seems that we can conceive that phenomena which vary or which come from several beings, can be expressed or represented in a single indivisible being, and this is sufficient to constitute a perception with. out any necessity of adding thought or reflection to this representation. I would wish to be able to explain the differences or the degrees of the other immaterial expressions which are without thought, so that we might distinguish corporeal or living substances from animals, as far as they can be distinguished. I have not, however, meditated enough about the above, nor sufficiently examined the things in nature in order to pass judgment upon the forms as compared with their organs and activ- ities. M.. Malpighi, well versed in important analogies of anatomy, is very much inclined to think that plants can be embraced under the same class with animals and that they are imperfect ant- mals.
5. There remains for me only to satisfy the diffi- culties which you have raised, M., against the inde- structibility of the substantial forms; and, first of all, I am surprised that yov find this point strange and untenable, because, according to your own position, all those who assign to animals a soul and feeling ought to maintain this indestructibility. These sup- posed difficulties are only prejudices of the mind, LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 227 which may detain common thinkers but which have no influence upon minds capable of meditation. I think it will be easy to satisfy you in regard to them. Those who perceive that there. is an infinity of small animals in the least drop of water, as the experiments of M. Leewenhoeck have shown,, and who do not find it strange that matter should be entirely filled with animated substances, will not find it strange either that there should be some- thing animated in the ashes themselves, and that fire can transform an animal and reduce it, without, how- ever, entirely destroying it. That which can be said of one caterpillar or silk-worm could be said of one hundred or one thousand, but it does not follow that we should see the silk worm re-born from the ashes. Perhaps such is not the order of nature. I know that many assure us that the generative powers remain in ashes in such a way that plants can be produced from them but I do not wish to employ doubtful experiments. Whether these small organ- ized bodies produced bya kind of contraction from larger bodies that have become destroyed, are, as it seems wholly out of the series of generation, or whether they can come back again to the theater of action in due time, is something which I am unable to determine. These are secrets of nature where men must acknowledge their ignorance.
6. It is only apparently and as a result. of the imagination that the difficulty seems greater with regard to the larger animals which are born only by the union of two sexes. This is apparently not less necessary with the smallest insects. Ihave recently learned that M. Leewenhoeck holds opinions quite like. mine, in that he maintains that the largest ani- 228 CORRESPONDENCE.
mals are born by a kind of transformation. I do not dare either to approve or to reject the details of his opinion, but I hold it as true in general, and M. Swammerdam, another great investigator and anatomist, says that he also has leanings toward that opinion. Now, the opinions of these men are far more important in such matters than those of many others. True it is, I do not see that they have carried out their opinions so far as to say that corruption, and death itself, is also a transformation with respect to the living beings which are destitute of a reasonable soul, as I hold; but I think that if they were informed of my position they would not find it absurd, for there is nothing so natural as to think that that which does not begin does not perish either, and when it is acknowledged that all births are only growths or developments of an animal already formed, it is easy to be persuaded that decay or death is nothing else than the diminution or the decrease of an animal, which, nevertheless, continnes to exist and to be living and organized. It is true that it is not as easy to render this position accept- able through special experiments as it is with respect to generation, but the reason for this is evi- dent; it is because generation advances from phys- ical matter, little by little, so that we have time to see it, but death goes backward too much by a spring and at once returns to particles too small for us, because death occurs usually in too violent a manner for us to be able to follow out the details of this retrogression. Sleep, however, which is an image of death, and ecstacies, and the condition of the silk worm in its cocoon, which might pass for a death, also the resuscitation of flies quite drowned, LEIBNIZ, ARNAULD, HESSEN-RHEINFELS, 229 through the means of a certain dry powder that may be sprinkled upon them (these flies remaining wholly dead if they are left without any assistance), and, furthermore, the state of swallows, which hibernate in the reeds, where they are found appar- ently dead, and the experiences of men who die from cold, from drowning or from strangulation, whom it is possible to bring to life again (in regard to which not long since a careful thinker in Germany wrote a treatise where, after having given instances known to himself personally, he exhorts those who have to do with such persons, to make more efforts than are usually made to revive them, and he describes the proper method)—all these things serve to confirm my position that these different states differ only in degree, and if we have not the means of bringing about the resuscitation after other kinds ef death, it is because we do not know what must be done, or, even if we should know what must be done, our hands and our instruments and our remedies would not be successful, above all, when the dissolution goes at once into too minute par- ticles. We must not, therefore, hold to the notions which common people may have regarding death or life, when there are both analogies and, what is better, weighty arguments to prove the contrary, for, I think, I have sufficiently shown that there must be entelechies if there are corporeal substances, and if these entelechies or souls are acknowledged, their ingenerability and_ indestructibility must be recognized. After this, it is incomparably more reasonable to think of the transformation of animated bodies than to conceive of fhe passage of souls from one body to another, which latter opin- 230 CORRESPONDENCE.
ion, though very ancient, seems’ to be merely a form of transformation not well understood. To say that the souls of animals remain without a body or that ‘they remain concealed in a body which ts not organ- ized, appears less natural than my position. Whether the animal resulting from the diminution of the body of the ram which Abraham sacrificed in place of Isaac ‘should be called a ram is only a question of names, very much as would be the question whether a moth should be called a silk worm; the difficulty which you have found, M., in regard to the ram reduced to ashes comes only because I did not sufficiently explain myself. You suppose that no organized body remains in the ashes and therefore you have a right to say that it would be a monstrous thing, this infinity of souls without organized bodies; while my position is that in the state of nature there are no souls without animated bodies and no animated bodies without organs Neither ashes nor any other mass appears to me incapable of containing organ- ized bodies. | With regard to spirits, that is to say, substances which think:and’ which are able to recognize God and to discover eternal truths, I hold that God gov- erns them according to laws different from those with which he governs the rest of substances; for, while all the forms of substances express the whole universe, it can be said that animal substances express the world rather than God, while spirits express God rather than the world. God governis animal substances according to the material laws of force and of the transfer of motion, but’ spirits, according to spiritual laws of justice, of which the others are incapable. It is for this reason that antmal substances can be called material, because the economy which God observes with regard to them is that of a worker or of a machinist, but with regard to spirits God performs the functions of a Prince or of a Legislator, which is infinitely higher; with regard to material substances, God is only what he is with regard to everything, namely, the universal author of beings. He assumes, however, another aspect with regard to spirits who conceive of him as endowed with will and with moral qualities; because he is, himself, a spirit and, like one among us, to the point of entering with us into a social relation, where he is the head. It is this universal society or republic of spirits under this sovereign monarch which is the noblest part of the. universe, composed of so many little gods under this one great God; for, it can be said that. created spirits differ from God only in degree, only as the finite differs from the infinite, and it can be truly said that the whole universe has been made oniy to. con- tribute to the beautifying and to the happiness of this city of God. This is why everything is so con- structed that the laws of force or the purely material laws work together in the whole universe to carry out the laws of justice or of love, so that nothing will be able to injure the souls that are in the hands of God, and’ so that everything should result for the greatest good of those who love him}. this ts why, furthermore, it must be that spirits keep their personalities and their moral qualities so that the city of God shall lose no member and they must in particular preserve some sort of memory or con- sciousness or the power to know what they are, upon which depends al? their morality, penalties and 232 CORRESPONDENCE.
chastisements. Consequently, they must be exempt from those transformations of the universe which would render them unrecognizable to themselves and, morally speaking, would make another person of them. For animal substances, however, it is enough if they remain as the same individual in the metaphysical sense, while they are subjected to all imaginable changes because they are without con- science or reflection.
As far as the particulars of this condltion of the human soul after death are concerned and in what way it is exempted from the transformation of things, revelation alone can give us particular instruction; the jurisdiction of the reason does not extend so far. Perhaps an objection may be made to my position when I say that God has given souls to all natural machines which are capable of them, because the souls do not interfere with one another and do not occupy any position; and that it is possible to assign to them as much perfection as they are able to have, since God has made everything in the most perfect possible manner; ‘“‘there is no more a vacuum of forms than of bodies.’’ It might be said that, by the same reasoning, God should give reason- ing souls or souls capable of reflection to all ani- mated substances. But I reply that laws superior to the laws of material nature are opposed to this, that is to say, the laws of justice, because the order of the universe would not permit justice to be observed toward all, and it would have to be, therefore, that at least no injustice should be done them; that ts why they have been made incapable of reflection or consciousness, and consequently, not susceptible of happiness and unhappiness.
LEIBNIZ. ARNAULD. HESSEN-RHEINFELS. 233 Finally, to recapitulate my position in a few words, I maintain that every substance involves in its present state all its past and future states and even expresses the whole universe according to its point of view, since nothing is so far from anything else that there is no relation between them. This expression would be particularly complete, however, with regard to the relations to the parts of its own body, which it expresses more immediately. Conse- quently, nothing happens to the substance except out of its own being and in virtue of its own laws, provided that we add the concurrence of God. It perceives other things because it expresses them naturally, having from the start been created in such a way that it can do this in aseries of events, accom- modating itself as called for, and it is in this agree- ment imposed from the beginning that consists what is called the action of one substance upon another. With regard to corporeal substances, I hold that mass, when we mean by this what is divisible, is a pure phenomenon; that every substance has a true unity in the strictness of metaphysics; that it is indivisible, ingenerable, and incorruptible; that all matter must be full of animated or, at least, living substances; that generation and corruption are only transformations from the little to the great, and vice versa, that there is no particle of matter in which is not found a world with an infinity of creatures organized as well as brought together; and, above all, that the works of God are infinitely greater, more beautiful, and better ordered than is commonly thought, and that mechanism, or organization, that is to say, order, is essential to them even in their smallest parts. Therefore, no hypothesis can enable 234 CORRESPONDENCE, us better to recognize the wisdom of God than mine: according to which there are everywhere substances indicating God’s perfection, and there are just so many differing reflections of the beauty of the uni- verse, where nothing remains empty, sterile, unculti- vated and without perception. It must also be held as indubitable that the laws of motion and the changes of bodies serve the laws of justice and of control, which are without doubt observed the best way pos- sible in the government of spirits; that is to say, of the intelligent souls which enter into social relations with God and, together with him, constitute a kind of perfect city of which he is the monarch.