APPENDIX F 273 



culties ; but he still feels dissatisfied as to the power of a simple 

 substance, like the soul of man, to develop spontaneously all 

 the variety of thought, &c. It has not ' the necessary instru- 

 ments' for doing this. * Let us freely imagine an animal created 

 by God and intended to sing incessantly. It will always sing, that 

 is indubitable ; but if God assigns to it a certain piece of music 

 to sing [une certaine tablature], He must necessarily either place 

 this before its eyes, or imprint it on its memory, or give it an 

 arrangement of muscles which, in accordance with the laws of 

 mechanics, shall make one note follow another exactly according 

 to their order in the musical score [tablature]. Otherwise it is 

 inconceivable that the animal should ever be able to conform 

 to the whole succession of notes indicated by God. Let us 

 apply this to the soul of man. M. Leibniz thinks that it has 

 received not only the faculty of continually supplying itself 

 with thoughts, but also the faculty of always following a certain 

 order in its thoughts, corresponding to the continual changes 

 of the bodily mechanism. This order of thoughts is like the 

 musical score assigned to the animal musician of which we have 

 been speaking. In order that the soul may from moment to 

 moment change its perceptions or its modifications in accord- 

 ance with the " score " of thoughts, must not the soul know the 

 succession of the notes and actually think of it ? Now expe- 

 rience shows us that it does nothing of the kind. And, failing 

 this knowledge, must there not at least be in the soul a succession 

 of special instruments which might each be a necessary cause 

 of this or that particular thought ? Must not these instruments 

 be so situated that one acts upon another, in exact accord with 

 the pre-established correspondence between the changes of the 

 bodily mechanism and the thoughts of the soul ? Now it is 

 quite certain that no immaterial, simple and indivisible sub- 

 stance can be composed of this countless multitude of special 

 instruments placed one before another in the order required by 

 the " score " in question. Accordingly it is impossible for the 

 human soul to carry out this law.' (This illustration of Bayle's 

 may be compared with Leibniz's simile of the choirs, see Intro- 

 duction, Part ii. p. 47. The letter containing Leibniz's simile 

 was written in 1687.) In a paper written in 1702 (G. iv. 

 549 sqq.) Leibniz makes the following reply to Bayle (referring 

 in the first place to Bayle's supposition of an animal created by 

 God to sing incessantly) : ' It is enough if we suppose a singer 

 paid to sing at certain hours in church or at the opera, and 



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