PRINCIPLES OF NATURE AND GRACE 421 



invent without trouble (but also without willing it) 56 

 things which, in our waking hours, we should have to 

 think long in order to hit upon, our soul is architectonic 

 also in its voluntary activities and, discovering the 

 scientific principles in accordance with which God has 

 ordered things (pondere, mensura, numero, &c.) 57 , it 

 imitates, in its own province and in the little world in 

 which it is allowed to act, what God does in the great 

 world 58 . 



15. It is for this reason that all spirits [esprits], whether 

 of men or of angels [genies], entering in virtue of reason 

 and of eternal truths into a kind of fellowship with God, 

 are members of the City of God, that is to say, of the 

 most perfect state, formed and governed by the greatest 

 and best of monarchs : in which there is no crime with- 

 out punishment, no good action without a proportionate 

 reward, and in short as much virtue and happiness as 

 is possible ; and thisj not by any interference with the 

 course of nature, as if what God prepares for souls were 

 to disturb the laws of bodies, but by the very order of 

 natural things, in virtue of the harmony pre-established 

 from all time between the realms of nature and of grace, 

 between God as Architect and God as Monarch, so that 

 nature itself 59 leads to grace, and grace, by the use it makes 

 of nature, brings it to perfection 60 . 



1 6. Thus although reason cannot make known to us 

 the details of the great future (which are reserved for 

 revelation), we can be assured by this same reason that 

 things are made in a way which exceeds our desires. 



56 E. reads sans en avoir meme la volonte, 'without even willing it.' 

 G. (from whom I translate) has mais aussi sans en avoir la volonte. 



57 Sed omnia in mensura, et numero et pondere disposuistis. A quotation 

 (frequently used in Leibniz's time) from the Vulgate, Book of Wisdom, 

 ch. n, v. 21. * But by measure and number and weight Thou didst 

 order all things' (R. V. ch. u, v. 20). The phrase pondere, numero, 

 mensura occurs in the remains of Ulpian, Instit. bk. i, fragment iii. 



58 Cf. Monadology, 82. 



59 E. omits * itself,' 



60 Cf. Monadology, 84-89. 



