382 NEW ESSAYS 



the soul of the whole of its organic body and of the 

 ineffaceable remains of all its former impressions 114 . 

 But the ease with which people have given up the 

 ancient doctrine that the angels have ethereal [subtils^ 

 bodies connected with them (which has been confounded 

 with the corporeality of the angels themselves), the in- 

 troduction of supposed unembodied [separes] intelligences 

 among created things (to which Aristotle's theory of 

 intelligences that make the skies revolve has greatly con- 

 tributed) 115 , and finally the ill-considered opinion people 



114 Cf. Monadology, 72-77 ; New System, 7 and 8. 



115 According to Aristotle the heavens are moved by the -npurov 

 KIVOVV or prime mover, i. e. by God, who (as Leibniz also admits) is 

 actus purus. But this is an eternal (aidiov} motion, and Aristotle 

 describes the heavens as <ro//*a TI 0iov (De Caelo, ii. 3, 286* n). 

 Accordingly the heavens are not moved by ' intelligences.' On the 

 other hand, Aristotle represents the planets as having motions of 

 their own, different from that of the fixed stars or the sphere of 

 the heavens in general. These planetary motions are attributed 

 to an activity (trpais') similar to that which exists in animals and 

 plants (De Caelo, ii. 12, 292** i). But even so, Aristotle cannot be 

 regarded as meaning that the planets are moved by ' separate' 

 intelligences. It seems likely that Leibniz was thinking of the 

 views of Thomas Aquinas, who says : ' A heavenly body is moved 

 by some intellectual substance ' (Contra Gentes, iii. 23, i) ; and 

 also : ' Heavenly bodies are moved by the substances which move 

 them through apprehension : not however a sense-apprehension 

 .... and therefore an intellectual one.' At the end of the chapter 

 quoted, he says : ' For our present purpose it does not matter 

 whether a heavenly body is moved by an intellectual substance 

 conjoined with it as its soul, or by a separate substance : or 

 whether each of the heavenly bodies is moved by God or none 

 of them is immediately so moved, but all through the mediation of 

 created intellectual substances : or whether the first heavenly 

 body alone is immediately moved by God and the others by the 

 mediation of created substances provided we hold that the motion 

 of the heavens is due to an intellectual substance.' There is here 

 a suggestion of the Neo-Platonic influences to which Thomas 

 Aquinas was necessarily subject. The theory mentioned by Leibniz 

 is stated also by Albertus Magnus, Metaphysica, Lib. xi. Tract. 2, 

 cap. 10 (Opera, ed. Jammy, 1651, vol. iii. p. 374 b\ and by J. C. 

 Scaliger, Comm. in Hippocratis lib. de Somniis (1539), p. 12. Cf. Leibniz's 

 Considerations sur la Doctrine d'un Esprit Universel Unique (E. 178 b ; G. 



