PRINCIPLES OF NATURE AND GRACE 415 



one who should know things sufficiently, to give a reason 

 which is sufficient to determine why things are so and I 

 not otherwise. This principle being laid down, the first 

 question we are entitled to put will be Why does some- 

 tiling exist rather than nothing ? For l nothing ' is simpler 

 and easier 37 than ' something.' Further, granting that 

 things must exist, we must be able to give a reason why 

 they should exist thus and not otherwise 38 . - 



8. Now this sufficient reason of the existence of the 

 universe cannot be found .in the sequence of contingent 

 things, that is to say, of bodies and their representations 

 in souls : because, matter being in itself indifferent to 

 motion and to rest and to one or another particular motion, 

 we cannot find in it the reason of motion and still less 

 the reason- of one particular motion 39 . And although the 

 motion which is at present in matter comes from the pre- 

 ceding motion, and that again from another preceding 

 motion, we are no farther forward, however far we go ; 

 for the same question always remains. Thus the suffi- 

 cient reason, which has no need of any other reason, 

 must needs be outside of this sequence of contingent 

 things and must be in a substance which is the cause 

 of this sequence, or which is a necessary being, bearing 

 in itself the reason of its own existence, otherwise we 

 should not yet have a sufficient reason with which we 

 could stop. And this ultimate reason of things is called 

 God 40 . 



37 i. e. more easily brought into existence. But if we can say 

 even this of ' nothing/ must not ' nothing ' be ' something ' ? How 

 can we say of that which is not at all, that it is ' simple ' and ' easy ' 

 in comparison with other things ? 



: ' 8 Cf. Monadology, 32. 



39 Motion (which, for Leibniz, is what we should now call an 

 abstraction) is regarded as passing from body to body and as having 

 no definite source in the phenomenal world. The point of view is 

 that which Descartes substituted for the Peripatetic theories, and 

 Leibniz's point is that, while Descartes's view is good so far as it 

 goes, it is insufficient and requires to be supplemented by a deeper 

 explanation. 



40 Cf. Monadology, 36-38, and Ultimate Origination of Things, p. 338. 



