STATEMENT OF LEIBNIZ S PHILOSOPHY 107 



time to the effect ; the true cause is always the reason or 

 explanation, the distinct as opposed to the confused per- 

 ception, whatever may be the time-order of the events or 

 phenomena \ 



Mechanical and final Causes. Soul and Body. 



Every substance, as we have seen, consists of soul and 

 body. And the soul, being on the one hand the relatively 

 distinct perception of the substance, and on the other 

 hand its activity, is the final cause of the substance, the 

 end for which it is, the self-development of its nature. 

 It must be conceived under the notion of Becoming, as ^p 

 a thing whose essence it is to move towards an end. It 

 cannot, therefore, be adequately described by purely 

 mechanical conceptions. It has something more than 

 a static self-identity ; its unity unfolds itself in the series 

 of its changes. Its reality is thus not determined merely V 

 by the principle of contradiction, taken as a principle of ->- 

 pure or abstract self- consistency. The body of every J 

 substance, on the other hand, i. e. its matter, its confused 

 perception, its passivity, is the physical or mechanical 

 cause of the substance. Being entirely abstract, and in 

 itself a bare possibility, body may by itself be adequately 

 described by mechanical conceptions, under the principle 

 of contradiction. Thus we may have an abstract science 

 of physics by which the phenomena of abstract matter 

 are explained on purely mechanical principles, that is, as 

 a system of physical or efficient causes. But if we would 

 explain the concrete reality even of material substance we 

 must employ dynamical rather than mechanical concep- 

 tions, or, in other words, we must regard the world as 

 ultimately and essentially a system of final causes, a 

 system which is the expression, not of an indifferent all- 

 powerful Will, but of an all-powerful Will which knows 

 and decrees the best 2 . - 



1 See Appendix C, p. 204. 



2 Of. Epistola ad Bierlingium (1711) (E. 677 b ; G. vii. 501) : 'You 



