39 NEW ESSAYS 



I see nothing to hinder our Scholastics from saying that 

 everything happens merely through their * faculties/ and 

 from maintaining their 'intentional species/ which go 

 from objects to us and find it possible to enter even into 

 our souls 133 . If that is so, 



Omnia jam fient, fieri quae posse negabam 13 *, 



so that it seems to me that our author, judicious as he is, 

 goes here a little too much from one extreme to the other. 

 He raises difficulties about the operations of souls when 

 the question is merely whether that which is not per- 

 ceptible \sensible] is to be admitted ; and here we have 

 him giving to bodies that which is not even intelligible, 

 attributing to them powers and activities which surpass 

 all that a created spirit can, in my opinion, do or under- 

 stand, for he attributes to them attraction, and that at 

 great distances without any limit to the sphere of its 

 activity ; and he does this in order to support an opinion 

 which seems to me 135 no less inexplicable, namely, the 

 possibility that within the order of nature matter may 

 think. 



The question which he discusses with the distinguished 

 prelate who had attacked him is whether matter can think ; 

 and, as it is an important point, even for the present 

 work, I cannot avoid entering into it a little and exam- 

 ining their controversy 136 . I will state the substance of 



133 See Monadology, 7, note 10. 



131 ' All the things will presently happen, which I said could not 

 happen.' Ovid, Tristia, bk. i. el. 8, ver. 7. The whole passage is : 

 Omnia naturae praepostera legibus ibunt, 

 Parsque suum mundi nulla tenebit iter : 

 Omnia jam fient, fieri quae posse negabam, 

 Et nihil est, de quo non sit habenda fides. 



[All things by the laws of nature will go topsy-turvy, and no part 

 of the world will hold on its own way ; all the things will presently 

 happen which I said could not happen, and there is nothing we may 

 not believe.] 



135 E. reads ' which is ' instead of ' which seems to me.' 



136 That Leibniz was deeply interested in the controversy appears 

 from his letters to Thomas Burnet of Kemnay (G. iii. 151 sqq.), in 



