NEW SYSTEM 303 



traordinary, for we are only attributing to forms the 

 duration which the G-assendists 25 accord to their atoms. 



5. Nevertheless I held that we must not include 

 among these, without distinction (or confound with 

 other forms or souls 26 ), minds [esprits] or rational souls, 

 which are of a higher rank and have incomparably more 

 perfection than those forms which are sunk in matter, 

 which in my opinion are to be found everywhere 27 , and 



lower animals and plants are educed from the matter of the seed 

 through generation. But if it be asked whether they are in the 

 seed or not, we say that they are there in one way, and in another 

 way they are not. . . . They are not there actually [actu], but they 

 are there in the potency [potentia] of the efficient cause and the 

 matter [efficientis et materiae]. And if it be asked : What is this 

 efficient cause ? Is it the soul or not ? We say . . . that it is not 

 the soul. . . .' Cf. De Animalibus (xvi. n) : 'The principle of life 

 is in the seed in the way in which the act is in the instruments 

 of the act. . . . And in this way also the soul is in the seed like an 

 act and not like the entelechy of an organic body. . . . That which 

 is in the seed is something of the soul [aliquid animate] and not the 

 soul.' See also De Anima, bk. i. Tract. 2, cap. 13: 'The soul is 

 indivisible, and nothing can be cut off from it.' John Bacon or 

 Bacho, is better known as John Baconthorp, from the place in 

 Norfolk where he was born towards the close of the thirteenth 

 century. He was a Carmelite monk and a schoolman, and in 1329 

 he became Provincial of the English Carmelites. He lived much 

 in Oxford and Paris, where he obtained a great reputation for 

 learning. He was called the Kesolute Doctor. He died in 1346. 

 Besides a book on the rule of his order, his chief work is the 

 Commentaria seu quaestiones in quatuor libros Sententiarum. Leibniz 

 probably refers to a passage in this book, In Secundum, Dist. xii. 

 Qu. i, Art. 3, 3. 



35 Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), a French priest and a disciple of 

 Bacon, expounded the doctrines of Epicurus and endeavoured to 

 adapt them to the conditions of modern thought. His attitude 

 was both anti- Scholastic and anti-Cartesian. He severely criticized 

 Descartes's Meditations and thus began a long controversy with 

 Descartes regarding the origin of knowledge, Gassendi taking 

 a purely experiential standpoint as against Descartes's belief in 

 innate ideas. See Descartes, Meditations, Cinquiemes Objections (by 

 Gassendi). Gassendi himself does not attribute eternity to his 

 atoms, which he regards as created by God. The spirit of his 

 thinking is well expressed in his own words: 'The shadow of 

 truth which I everywhere pursue suffices to fill me with joy. I say 

 "the shadow," for, as to truth itself, God alone can know it.' 

 Lettre a Golius. 



26 This clause within brackets is given by G., but not by E. 



27 ' Which in my opinion are to be found everywhere ' is given 

 by G., but not by E. Cf. Monadology, 65 sqq. 



