Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of EvilLeibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von
Religion
Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von
Free will and determinism; Theism; Theodicy
66. One may however give a true and philosophic sense to this _mutual
dependence_ which we suppose between the soul and the body. It is that the
one of these two substances depends upon the other ideally, in so far as
the reason of that which is done in the one can be furnished by that which
is in the other. This had already happened when God ordered beforehand the
harmony that there would be between them. Even so would that [159]
automaton, that should fulfil the servant's function, depend upon me
_ideally_, in virtue of the knowledge of him who, foreseeing my future
orders, would have rendered it capable of serving me at the right moment
all through the morrow. The knowledge of my future intentions would have
actuated this great craftsman, who would accordingly have fashioned the
automaton: my influence would be objective, and his physical. For in so far
as the soul has perfection and distinct thoughts, God has accommodated the
body to the soul, and has arranged beforehand that the body is impelled to
execute its orders. And in so far as the soul is imperfect and as its
perceptions are confused, God has accommodated the soul to the body, in
such sort that the soul is swayed by the passions arising out of corporeal
representations. This produces the same effect and the same appearance as
if the one depended immediately upon the other, and by the agency of a
physical influence. Properly speaking, it is by its confused thoughts that
the soul represents the bodies which encompass it. The same thing must
apply to all that we understand by the actions of simple substances one
upon another. For each one is assumed to act upon the other in proportion
to its perfection, although this be only ideally, and in the reasons of
things, as God in the beginning ordered one substance to accord with
another in proportion to the perfection or imperfection that there is in
each. (Withal action and passion are always reciprocal in creatures,
because one part of the reasons which serve to explain clearly what is
done, and which have served to bring it into existence, is in the one of
these substances, and another part of these reasons is in the other,
perfections and imperfections being always mingled and shared.) Thus it is
we attribute _action_ to the one, and _passion_ to the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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