STATEMENT OF LEIBNIZ'S PHILOSOPHY 



origin of forms, have allowed that they have their be- 

 ginning in a real creation. While I grant this creation 

 in time only as regards the rational soul, and hold that 

 all forms which do not think were created with the 

 world, they believe that this creation happens every day 

 when the smallest worm is engendered 1 .' There is, 

 then, something comparable to a special creation in the 

 case of every mind or rational soul, although this creation 

 is practically no more than the promotion of a Monad 

 to self- consciousness. 'Minds [esprits] are not subject to 

 these revolutions [of bodies], or rather these revolutions 

 of bodies are subservient to the Divine economy regarding 

 minds. God creates them when the time comes and 

 detaches them from the body, at least from the earthly 

 [grossier] body, by death, since they must always retain 

 their moral qualities and their recollection in order to be 

 perpetual citizens of that universal all-perfect common- 

 wealth, of which God is the Monarch, which can lose 

 none of its members and the laws of which are higher 

 than_those of bodies 2 . ' 



1 G. ii. 117. 



2 Lettre a Arnauld (1687) (G. ii. 99). Cf. Theodicee, 91 (E. 527 b ; 

 "G. vi. 152): 'Thus I should think that the souls which will some 



day be human souls have, like those of other species, been in the 

 seed and in their ancestors up to Adam, and have consequently 

 existed, since the beginning of things, always in some kind of 

 organic body. ... It appears to me also for various reasons probable 

 that they then existed only as sensitive or animal souls, endowed 

 with perception and feeling, and devoid of reason ; and that they 

 remained in this state up to the time of the begetting of the man 

 to whom they were to belong, but that then they received reason ; 

 whether we suppose that there is a natural means of raising 

 a sensitive soul to the rank of a rational soul (which I find it 

 difficult to conceive), or that God has given reason to this soul by 

 a special act, or (if you like) by a kind of transcreation. This is the 

 more easily admitted, as revelation informs us of many other 

 immediate acts of God upon our souls. . . . And it is much more in 

 harmony with the Divine justice to give to the soul, already 

 physically or as an animal corrupted by the sin of Adam, a new 

 perfection, namely reason, than, by creation or otherwise, to put 

 a rational soul into a body in which it is to be morally corrupted.' 

 Also Lettre a Arnauld (1686) (G. ii. 75) : ' The rational soul is created 

 only at the time when its body is formed, being entirely different 

 from the other souls we know, because it is capable of reflexion 



