422 PRINCIPLES OF NATURE AND GRACE 



Further, as God is the most perfect and most happy and 

 consequently the most lovable of substances, and as 

 genuine pure love 61 consists in the state in which we find 

 pleasure in the perfections and the felicity of the beloved, 

 this love is sure to give us the greatest pleasure of which 

 we are capable, when God is its object. 



17. And it is easy to love God as we ought, if we know 

 Him as I have just said 62 . For although God cannot be 

 perceived by our external senses, He is none the less very 

 lovable and He gives very great pleasure. We see how 

 much pleasure honours give to men, although they do 

 not consist in anything that appeals to the external 

 senses. Martyrs and fanatics (though the emotion of the 

 latter is ill-governed) show how much influence mental 

 pleasure \le plaisir de I' esprit] can have : and, what is more, 

 even the pleasures of sense are really intellectual plea- 

 sures confusedly known 63 . Music charms us, although 

 its beauty consists only in the harmonies [convenances] of 

 numbers and in the counting (of which we are unconscious 

 but which nevertheless the soul does make) of the beats 

 or vibrations of sounding bodies, which beats or vibrations 

 come together at definite intervals. The pleasure which 

 sight finds in good proportions is of the same nature ; 

 and the pleasures caused by the other senses will be 

 found to amount to much the same thing, although we 

 may not be able to explain it so distinctly 64 . 



61 i. e. ' disinterested ' love. See Monadology, 90, note 142. 



82 ' God is love [c/wm'fos], which is known by love [amor] and is 

 loved in being known.' Nicholas of Cusa, Excitationes ex Sermonibus, 

 10, 188 b. 



63 For sense is confused perception. Cf. Introduction, Part 

 iii. p. 125. 



6 * Leibniz does not mean, as some of his critics (e.g. Kirchmann) 

 seem to have thought, that the pleasure we have in music or in 

 painting is entirely a matter of the senses. What he wants to 

 show is that even the sense-element in artistic pleasure is really 

 of an intellectual kind, and this he does by showing that it 

 depends upon an unrecognized perception of proportion, measure 

 or rhythm. He elsewhere calls it * a hidden [occulte] arithmetic ' 

 (G. iv. 551). 



