324 FIRST EXPLANATION 



be more substances rather than fewer, and He thought 

 it right that these modifications of the soul should corre- 

 spond to something outside 16 . 



10. No substance is useless; they are all made to 

 co-operate 17 towards fulfilling the plan of God. 



11. I am also far from admitting that the soul does not 

 know bodies, although this knowledge arises without any 

 influence of the one upon the other. 



12. I will not even shrink from saying 18 that the soul 

 moves the body ; and as a Copernican speaks truly of the 

 rising of the sun, a Platonist of the reality of matter, and 

 a Cartesian of the reality of sensible qualities 19 , provided 

 we rightly understand them, in the same way I hold 

 that it is most true to say that substances act upon one 

 another, provided we understand that one is the cause of 

 changes in the other in consequence of the laws of the 

 harmony. 



13. The objection which is based on the supposed 

 lethargy of bodies, which would be without activity 

 [action] while the soul believes them to be in motion, 

 cannot hold because of this very unfailing correspondence, 

 which the Divine wisdom has established 20 . 



18 In the Eemargues Leibniz says : l Bodies were necessary so that 

 there might be produced not only our unities and souls but also 

 those of the other corporeal substances, animals and plants, which 

 are in our bodies and in those which surround us' (G. iv. 493 \ 

 This last sentence indicates Leibniz's real answer to the difficulty 

 (the answer he would have given in later years\ viz. that ulti- 

 mately all bodies are souls or Monads, so that to ask why there 

 are bodies is to ask why there are other souls. Is the answer 

 sufficient ? 



17 E. has ' they all co-operate.' 



18 E. has 1 1 will even raise no objection against saying.' 



19 i. e. the qualities of bodies, as they are perceived by our senses. 

 As sensations, facts of consciousness, these are real, according to 

 Descartes ; but as qualities of bodies they are confused and there- 

 fore unreal. See Principia, Part i. 66-70. 



20 Toucher says that, on Leibniz's hypothesis, ' even although no 

 motion took place in bodies ' [in harmony with the action of the 

 soul], ' the soul would nevertheless always think that such a motion 

 does take place ; in the same way as sleeping people think they are 

 moving their limbs and walking, while nevertheless their limbs 



