NEW ESSAYS 369 



ourselves? Is our soul, then, so empty that, beyond 48 

 images borrowed from outside, it is nothing? That, I 

 am sure, is not a view which our judicious author can 

 approve. And where shall we find tablets which have 

 not some variety in themselves? For there is never 49 

 such a thing as a perfectly unbroken [uni] and uniform 

 surface. Why, then, should not we also be able to 

 provide ourselves with some sort 50 of thought out of 

 our own inner being, when we deliberately try to 

 penetrate its depths 51 T Thus I am led to believe that 

 his opinion on this point is not fundamentally different 

 from mine, or rather from the common opinion, inas- 

 much as he recognizes two sources of our knowledge, the 

 senses and reflexion 5 



I do not know that it will be so easy to reconcile him 

 with us and with the Cartesians, when he maintains 

 that the mind does not always think, and especially that 

 it is without perception when we sleep without dreaming ; 

 and he holds that, since bodies can exist without motion, 

 souls might also quite well exist without thinking 53 . 

 But here I reply in a way somewhat different from that 

 which is usual ; for I maintain that, naturally P4 , a sub- 



48 E. reads ' without.' 



49 In E. the sentence is interrogative : ' Is there ever,' &c. 



50 E. reads ' object.' 



51 Leibniz is here applying his principle of the ' identity of 

 indiscernibles,' viz. that no two things are absolutely identical, 

 which implies that no real thing is an absolute unity, exclusive of 

 all difference or variety, but that everything has some essential 

 characteristic or internal quality. See Monadology, 9. 



M If the mind is really tabula rasa, what are those ' internal 

 operations ' or ' actings of our own minds,' which Locke regards as 

 the objects of reflexion? Leibniz suggests that Locke may not 

 really mean all that he seems to mean by the tabula rasa, and that, 

 accordingly, Locke is fundamentally at one with him in admitting 

 at least innate ' dispositions.' 



53 Essay, bk. ii. ch. i, 9 (Eraser's ed., vol. i. p. 127). See Intro- 

 duction, Part iii. p. 129. 



51 i.e. 'in the ordinary course of things,' 'otherwise than by 

 miracle.' 



Bb 



