NEW ESSAYS 361 



we take for granted beforehand. Mathematicians call 

 them common notions (KOLVOL ewowu) 16 . Modern philo- 

 sophers give them other excellent names ; and, in 

 particular, Julius Scaliger 17 named them semina aeter- 

 nitatis item zopyra 18 , as much as to say, living fires, 

 flashes of light [traits lumineux] 19 , hidden within us but 

 appearing at the instance of the senses, like the sparks 

 which come from the steel when it strikes the flint. 

 And not without reason it is thought that these flashes 

 [eclats] indicate something divine and eternal, which 

 appears above all in necessary truths. Hence there 

 arises another question, whether all truths are dependent 

 on experience, that is, on induction and instances ; or 

 whether there are some which have yet another founda- 

 tion. For if some events can be foreseen before we have 

 made any trial of them, it is manifest that we contribute 



much more akin to that of Locke than to that of Leibniz : ot 

 (paffiv orav fevvrjOf) 6 dvOpcairos, *x 6 T fftfuoviicbv pepos TTJS 

 wffTTfp xapTyv cvfpyov fh airoypcHprjv' els TOVTO fj.iav tKaarrjv TUV evvoiwv 

 fv<nroypa(f)Ta.i. But the peculiarity of the Stoic Monism makes it 

 possible to regard this as less inconsistent with Leibniz's view than 

 at first sight it appears to be. Cf. Kendall's Marcus Aurelius Anto- 

 ninus, Introduction, pp. Ixxvi-lxxviii ; and Bonhoffer, Epictet und 

 die Stoa, pp. 187 sqq. 



16 Euclid calls axioms KOIVCU cvvoiat. 



17 Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558), one of the great scholars of 

 the Renaissance. Among his chief works (besides many translations 

 from Greek into Latin) were a treatise on Latin grammar, De causis 

 linguae Latinae, and a book in opposition to the views of Cardan, 

 Exotericae Exercitationes de Subtilitate ad Hieronymum Cardanum. 



18 'Seeds of the eternal and kindling sparks/ The reference 

 is to Poetice, Lib. iii. cap. n. (sth ed., 1617, p. 211) : <Sunt in nobis 

 insita zopyra quaedam, id est, semina aeternitatis/ For similar 

 expressions cf. Poetice, Lib. iii. cap. i and 20 ; Poemata, Pars Altera 

 ( I 574)? PP- 19 and l6 ; and Ad Arnoldum Ferronum Atticum Oratio 

 (Epistolae et Orationes, p. 427). Zopyra is the Greek ffarvpa, ' lights 

 used for kindling fires.' In the Laws, bk. iii. 677 B, Plato speaks of 

 the survivors of the Flood as ev reopvfpats TTOV fffjiiKpa 



ytvovs. 



19 Trait de lumiere is used in French for an illuminating thought, 

 and probably Leibniz's phrase is intended to suggest this. 



