NEW ESSAYS 399 



aside miracles), God is not arbitrarily free to give to 

 substances one set of qualities or another indifferently ; 

 and He will never give them any but those which are 

 natural to them, that is to say, which can be derived 

 from their nature, as explicable modifications of it. Thus 

 we may hold that matter will not by nature have the 

 attraction mentioned above, and will not of itself go in 

 a curved line, because it is not possible to conceive how 

 that can happen, that is to say to explain it mechanically ; 

 while that which is according to nature [naturel] ought 

 to be capable of becoming distinctly conceivable, if we 

 were admitted into the secrets of things. This distinc- 

 tion, between that which is natural and explicable and 

 that which is inexplicable and miraculous, removes all 

 difficulties, and to reject it would be to maintain some- 

 thing worse than occult qualities and accordingly to 

 renounce philosophy and reason, and to provide refuges 

 for ignorance 175 and idleness by a confused [sourd] system 

 which allows, not only that there are qualities we do not 

 understand (of which there are only too many), but also 

 that there are qualities which the greatest mind [esprit], 

 even if God were to give it the widest possible grasp, 

 could not comprehend, that is to say, qualities which 

 would either be miraculous or without rhyme or reason ; 

 and that God should usually perform miracles would 

 certainly be without rhyme or reason. Accordingly this 

 lazy 176 hypothesis would equally destroy our philosophy, 



that nothing happens without a reason, which can always be given 

 why the thing took place so rather than otherwise.' This, of 

 course, is radically opposed to the view of Locke. 



178 Asiles de Vignorance. Cf. Spinoza, Ethics, Part i. Appendix: 

 Donee ad Dei voluntatem, hoc est, ignorantiae asylum confugeris (Bruder's 

 ed., i. 220). 



ne rp ne French isfaineante. Leibniz is probably thinking of the 

 fallacy of dp-yds ^0705 or Ignava Ratio, to which he frequently refers 

 in the Theodicee (cf. E. 470 b ; G. vi. 30). The fallacy is that 

 which counsels doing nothing, because things are fated one way or 

 another, whatever we do. Leibniz means that the hypothesis of 



