398 NEW ESSAYS 



God, but that their conceptivity, or ability [force] to 

 conceive, is the measure of the power of nature : for all 

 that is in accordance with the order of nature can be 

 conceived or understood by some created being 170 . 

 " Those who will think out my system will see that 

 I cannot wholly agree with either of these excellent 

 authors, whose controversy, however, is very instructive. 

 But, to explain myself distinctly, it is before all things to 

 be considered that the modifications which can naturally 

 or without miracle belong 171 to a subject [sujet] must 

 arise from the limitations or variations of a real genus or 

 an original nature which is constant and absolute 172 . 

 For it is thus that among philosophers the modes of an 

 absolute being are distinguished from the being itself: 

 for instance, we know that size, figure and motion are 

 manifestly limitations and variations of the bodily nature. 

 For 173 it is clear how an extension when limited gives 

 figures, and that the change which takes place in it is 

 nothing but motion. And whenever we find any quality 

 in a subject [sujei], we should believe that if we under- 

 stood the nature of the subject [sujei] and of the quality, 

 we should understand [concevoir] how the quality can be 

 a result of it 174 . Thus in the order of nature (setting 



170 For Leibniz this would follow a priori from the essential unity 

 of nature, shown in the fact that each Monad (and therefore each 

 created being) contains within itself a representation of the whole 

 universe. 



171 E. reads ' come ' [venir] for convener. 



172 Things do have an ' absolute ' original essence of s6me kind. 

 They are not ultimate bare unities, equally capable of any kind of 

 modification. 



173 E. omits ' for.' Cf. Spinoza's Letters, 50, 4. 



174 Cf. Lettre a Amauld (1686) (G. ii. 56) : < Always in every true 

 affirmative proposition, necessary or contingent, universal or 

 singular, the notion of the predicate is in some way comprehended 

 in that of the subject, praedicatum inest subjecto : otherwise I know not 

 what truth is. ... Tfiere musi always be some foundation for the con- 

 nexion of the terms in a proposition and this is to be found in their notions, 

 That is my great principle, to which I think all philosophers must 

 assent, and of which one of the corollaries is the common axiom, 



