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.