302 NEW SYSTEM 



perhaps be more easily understood) primary forces 1 *, 

 which contain not only actuality [Vacte] or the comple- 

 ment of possibility, but also an original activity. 



4. I saw that those forms and those souls, as well as 

 our mind [esprit], ought to be indivisible, and in fact 

 I remembered that this was the opinion of St. Thomas 

 with regard to the souls of the lower animals 19 . But 

 this truth 20 renewed the great difficulty about the origin 

 and the duration of souls and forms. For, as every 

 simple* 1 substance which has a genuine unity can have 

 a beginning and an end only by miracle, it follows that 

 they can come into being only by creation and come to 

 an end only by annihilation 22 . Thus I was obliged to 

 recognize that (with the exception of the souls which 

 God still intends specially to create) the constitutive 

 forms of substances must have been created with the 

 world and must always continue to exist 23 . So some of 

 the Scholastics, like Albertus Magnus and John Bacon, 

 had an inkling of part of the truth regarding the origin 

 of these forms 24 . And all this ought not to appear ex- 



18 ' To distinguish it from the secondary, which is called moving 

 force, and which is an accidental limitation or variation of primary 

 force.' First Draft (G-. iv. 473). 



19 Possibly Leibniz refers to the passage in which Aquinas 

 says : ' The substantial form, which requires diversity in the 

 parts, for instance the soul and especially the soul of complete 

 animals, does not stand in exactly the same relation to the whole 

 and to the parts. And hence it is not divided per accidensj that 

 is to say, by a quantitative division.' Summa Theol. i. qu. 76, 

 art. 8. Elsewhere, however, Aquinas says : ' The sensitive soul 

 in the lower animals is corruptible ; but in man, since it is the 

 same in substance as the rational soul, it is incorruptible.' De 

 Anima, art. 14 ad primum. 



20 Janet reads cette nouveaute, ' this new view,' instead of cette verite. 



21 E. omits ' simple.' 



22 The First Draft has in addition the words : * brought about 

 expressly by the supreme power of God ' (G. iv. 474). 



23 Cf. Principles of Nature and of Grace, 6 ; Monadology, 4, 5, 6, 

 and 76. The First Draft has : ' genuine unity is absolutely in- 

 dissoluble ' (G. iv. 474). 



2 * Cf. Monadology, note 116. The statement of Leibniz is so 

 vague that one can hardly fix the passage in Albertus Magnus 

 of which he is thinking. In his Summa de Creaturis (part ii. qu. 16, 

 art. 3), Albertus Magnus says : ' We hold that the souls of the 



