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Source: Sämtliche schriften und briefe series VI volume 4 Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed) pp 1640-1641 Date: March 1689 - March 1690 (?) Translated from the Latin View this translation in PDF format (10k) Back to home page Search texts by keyword(s): (For search strings, just type the words; don't use quotation marks) |
LEIBNIZ: ON THE SYSTEM OF OCCASIONAL CAUSES[A VI 4, p1640] The system of occasional causes should be partly accepted and partly rejected. Each and every substance is the true and real cause of its own immanent actions and has the power to act, and although it is sustained by divine concurrence it cannot happen that it be constituted only passively, and that is true with regard to corporeal substances as well as incorporeal ones. But on the other hand, [A VI 4, p1641] each and every substance (God alone excepted) is only the occasional cause of its transeunt actions on another substance. Therefore the true reason of the union between body and soul, and the reason why one body adapts itself to the state of another body, is nothing other than the fact that different substances of the same system of the world are created from the beginning in such a way that they mutually conspire together through the laws of their own nature. © Lloyd Strickland 2007 |