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."