362 NEW ESSAYS 



to them something of our own 20 . The senses, although 

 they are necessary for all our actual acquiring of know- 

 ledge, are by no means sufficient to give us the whole of 

 our knowledge, since the senses never give anything but 

 instances 21 , that is to say particular or individual truths 22 . 

 Now all the instances which confirm a general truth, 

 however numerous they may be, are not sufficient to 

 establish the universal necessity of this same truth ; for 

 it does not at all follow that what has happened will 2S 

 happen in the same way. For example, the Greeks, the 

 Romans, and all the other peoples of the earth, as it was 

 known to the ancients 24 , always observed that before 

 twenty-four hours have passed, day changes into night 



20 E. reads ' on our part.' 



21 i. e. special cases. 



22 In a Lettre touchant ce qui est independant des Sens et de la Matiere 

 written to Queen Sophia Charlotte in 1702 (during the time when 

 he was working at the New Essays'), Leibniz says : ' We use our 

 external senses as a blind man uses his stick (after the simile of an 

 ancient writer), and they make known to us their particular objects, 

 which are colours, sounds, odours, tastes, and touch-qualities. But 

 they do not make known to us what these sense -qualities are, 

 nor in what they consist. ... It may be said that sense-qualities are 

 in fact occult qualities, and that there must be other more manifest 

 qualities, which can make them explicable. And far from its being 

 true that we understand things of sense alone, these are the very 

 things we understand least. And although they are familiar to 

 us, we do not on that account comprehend them better, as a pilot 

 does not understand better than other people the nature of the 

 magnetic needle which turns to the north, although he has it 

 always before his eyes in the compass, and on that account has 

 almost ceased to wonder at it. ... Nevertheless I admit that, in 

 our present state, the external senses are necessary for our thinking, 

 and that, if we had none of them, we should not think. But what 

 is necessary for anything is not on that account the essence of the 

 thing. Air is necessary to us for life ; but our life is something 

 else than air. The senses furnish us with matter for reasoning, 

 and we never have thoughts so abstract that something of sense is 

 not mingled with them ; but reasoning requires in addition some- 

 thing other than that which is of sense.' (G. vi. 499, 500, 506.) 



33 E. adds ' always.' 



24 E. has merely l and all other peoples.' 



