238 THE MONADOLOGY 



of present and past forms and motions which go to make 

 up the efficient cause of my present writing ; and there is 

 an infinity of minute tendencies and dispositions of my 

 soul, which go to make its final cause 59 . 



37. And as all this detail again involves other prior or 

 more detailed contingent things, each of which still needs 

 a similar analysis to yield its reason, we are no further 

 forward : and the sufficient or final reason must be out- 

 side of the sequence or series of particular contingent 

 things, however infinite this series may be 60 . 



/3y Thus the final reason of things must be in a neces- 

 sary substance, in which the variety of particular changes 

 exists only eminently R1 , as in its source ; and this sub- 

 stance we call God. (Theod. 7.) 



visible : it cannot consist of paries extra partes. And the ' infinite 

 division ' of bodies is merely another way of describing the in- 

 finite number of particular substances or Monads. 



59 See Introduction, Part iii. p. 107. Cf. 61. Here, in another 

 form, arises the difficulty as to the relation of Leibniz's 'principles ' 

 to one another. Apparently the efficient and the final cause 

 combined make up the sufficient reason, neither by itself being 

 enough. Yet elsewhere Leibniz represents efficient causes as 

 ultimately depending on final causes. And efficient causes are by 

 Leibniz usually identified with mechanical causes, whose principle 

 is that of contradiction. See also Appendix F, p. 272. 



50 This is an argument on the same lines as that by means of 

 which Aristotle infers a ' prime mover.' It depends on his prin- 

 ciple, dvajKrj arrival, i. e. we must come to a stop somewhere in the 

 regress of causes or conditions. Cf. Phys. S, 6, 237 b 3 ; 0, i, 251* 17 ; 

 0, 5, 256" 13. Also Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental 

 Dialectic, bk. ii. ch. 2 and 3. 



61 Eminently in contrast with formally. The terms are Scholastic 

 and they were adopted by Descartes. Thomas Aquinas expresses 

 the difference thus : ' Whatever perfection is in the effect must 

 also appear in the cause, after the same manner if the agent and 

 the effect are of the same kind (univocaT) (thus man begets man), or 

 in a more eminent, that is to say excellent, way, if the agent is of 

 another kind (equivocal).' Descartes says : * By the objective reality 

 of an idea, I mean the entity or being of the thing represented by 

 the idea, in so far as this entity is in the idea ; and in the same way 

 we may speak of an objective perfection or an objective design, &c. 

 For all that we conceive as being in the objects of ideas is objectively 



