Correspondence with Arnauld by Gottfried Wil Leibniz

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Correspondence with Arnauld by Gottfried Wil Leibniz

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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 accustomed 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 agree with me, excepting that I suppose that there are around us other souls beside our own to which I attribute a lower expression or perception than thought. For the Cartesians deny feelings to animals and do not admit any substantial forms outside 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 nodus vindice dignus, cui Deus ex machina intervenire 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 general, where the present state is always a natural consequence of the preceding state, it follows that the nature of every singular substance and consequently of every singular soul is to express the universe. From the start it was created in such a way that in virtue of the laws of its own nature it is 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

moment A. moment A.

State of the body at the State of the soul at the

succeeding moment B (pricking). 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 consequence 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 essentially 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 follows from another motion, so one representation in a substance, whose nature it is to be representative, follows from another representation. 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 impression 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 become quite considerable. Our soul notices only more special phenomena, which are distinguishable from others, never thinking distinctly of any one when the thought is 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 substances 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 poli rerumque fidem legesque deorum

Cuncta Syracusius 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 themselves the same universe and the universal cause, which is the will of their Creator, and the decrees or laws which He has so established that they fit together in the best possible way. Furthermore, this mutual correspondence of different substances which are not able, if we speak with metaphysical strictness, to act one upon another, and which, nevertheless, agree as though one were acting upon the other, is one of the strongest proofs for the existence of God or of a common cause which each effect must always express according to its point of view and its capacity. 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 finish, were I to explain exhaustively all that is connected with our subject; however, I prefer to be prolix rather than not to express myself sufficiently.

To go on 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