Source:

Sämtliche schriften und briefe series VI, volume 4
Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed)
pp 2228-2233


Date: summer - autumn 1679?

Translated from the French


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THEOLOGY

LEIBNIZ: DIALOGUE BETWEEN THEOPHILE AND POLIDORE


[A VI 4, p2228]

     THEOPHILE.1 For some time now I have found you a little changed, my dear Polidore, and it seems to me that your do not have your usual gaiety. Yet your affairs are as one would wish, your prudence has been assisted by fortune, and of the things which men seek with such eagerness you lack nothing. You have wealth, you have acquired glory, and God has given you a constitution so robust that we hope to enjoy your company for many years yet. That being the case, I cannot understand the cause of the change I see.
     POLIDORE. I know that you love me, Theophile, and I have enough consideration for you to enlighten you on this point. You should know, then, that what you see in me is not sadness but the indifference I have towards many of the things which were agreeable to me before. For ever since I have obtained the things I wished for, I have recognized their vanity, and finding myself at the height of the happiness to which men aspire here below, I recognize better than ever the imperfection of human nature, which is incapable of solid happiness. You know I am hardly concerned with coarse pleasures, but a short while ago I found more and more that the most refined pleasures attributed to the mind are only agreeable deceptions which disappear when closely examined. Is there anything in the world to which great souls are more sensitive than glory? And yet what good will it do me when I am reduced to dust? I will not thereby stop doing things worthy of approbation, for it is my habit to do them, and I would have difficulty doing otherwise, but I shall no longer make special efforts to acquire for myself this chimerical immortality. My curiosity is thus diminished by half, and I no longer enjoy the beauties of nature and the arts; and I find even less satisfaction in [A VI 4, p2229] these fine discourses, which often consist only in an outburst of well-arranged words. And although I recognize that there are solid sciences, like mathematics and mechanics for example, I observe that they are only of use to those who make a profession of them. For they require too much application, and since we shall lose the fruits of all our efforts in a moment, let us not burden ourselves with anything at all. Let us follow an easy style of life and arm ourselves with indifference against the deceptive charms of enterprises.
     TH. I feel sorry for you, Polidore, for I see that you are depriving yourself of the greatest satisfaction of life when you are in the best position to enjoy it. But I feel even more sorry for the public and for posterity, which will be deprived of those great and fine things you planned when your affairs did not permit you to carry them out. which makes me admire the conduct of men, who seek only what is far off. But I do not see that you have changed your maxims, and that you no longer think that you have cause to make an effort for the public, and that it seems ridiculous to you to work for a time when you will no longer exist. However I think you would judge otherwise if you had good assurance that there is a great monarch of the universe, who takes everything done for the public as done for himself. And if you were convinced of the immortality of our souls, you would take an interest in the state of future centuries.
     PO. If you are speaking to me as a theologian, I shall end the discussion, for I submit to the faith. But if we restrict ourselves to the limits of philosophy, I see great reasons for doubting these fine things, which serve only to allay our misery with false hopes. I admit I would like to number among those who are happy with their errors. Felices errore suo:2 but since I clearly see what they are, it is no longer in my power to distract myself with them.

[A VI 4, p2230]

     TH. But you, who have such excellent knowledge, and have so often admired the wisdom of nature, can you doubt a governing providence when you consider the machine of the universe, which proceeds with so much regularity?
     PO. It seems to me it is no great wonder to see that the sun turns around its centre, that it carries and turns with it the liquid matter - called ether - which surrounds it, and consequently carries and turns some large balls called planets which float in this ether and follow its motion with greater or lesser speed in proportion to their solidity and distance. And as nothing resists them, we should not be surprised if their periods are regular without any change being noticed for a long time.
     TH. What you say is reasonable. Assuming the motion of this ether around the sun, as well as these balls of different solidity and volume, the rest follows mechanically. But tell me, how is that there is a sun, an ether, and planets; could the world not have been made in a completely different way? And who made the choice of this one? And the principle of motion we observe in it - where does that come from?
     PO. I think there is a soul of the world, which gives life and movement to it.
     TH. You will not get away with that. Let us see: does this soul act by choice or by necessity?
     PO. Perhaps by necessity.
     TH. Then you have no need of a soul, and you had only to say at the outset that this form of the world and this motion are necessary. However nothing is absolutely necessary when the contrary is possible. Now there is no impossibility or contradiction in conceiving a world without a sun, and a sun positioned and moved in a completely different way from ours.

[A VI 4 p2231]

     PO. I agree that the world could have been made in a thousand other ways, but this one is apparently the simplest, and nature acts via the shortest ways; therefore it was necessary for it to act in this way.
     TH. If this nature or World Soul or, in a word, this mover of which you speak is capable of reason, I see that it will act through the ways it will consider the simplest. But otherwise I do not see how simplicity will carry the day. For as a cause always acts as much as it can and as long as it is not hindered, it must therefore be that all possible things generate themselves, which is not possible since there are many that are incompatible, or else that nothing generates itself.
     PO. It seems to me that there is a compromise position, for of all the possible ways to make the world, one has to be preferred to all the others - one which causes most things to succeed, and which, so to speak, contains a lot of essence or variety in a small volume; and which, in a word, is the simplest and the richest.
     TH. I understand you. Let us imagine that there are possible beings A, B, C, D, E, F, G, equally perfect and candidates for existence, of which there are incompatibles: A with B and B with D and D with G, and G with C, and C with F and F with E. I say that one will be able to make two possibles exist together in fifteen ways: AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, BC, BE, BF, BG, CD, CE, DE, [A VI 4 p2232] DF, EG, FG, or else three together in the following ways: ACD, ACE, ADE, ADF, AEG, AFG, BCE, BEG and BFG, or else four together in this way alone: ACDE, which will be chosen from all the others, because one thereby obtains the most possible, and consequently these four, A, C, D, E, will exist in preference to the others, B, F, G, which will be excluded, for in taking one of them one cannot obtain four together. Therefore if there were some power in possible things to pull themselves into existence, and to come to light ahead of others, then those four would unquestionably carry the day, for in this struggle necessity itself would make the best choice possible, as we see in machines where nature always chooses the most advantageous option to lower the centre of gravity for the whole mass as much as it can. Likewise, these four possible beings would be preferred. But as possible things have no existence at all, they have no power to make themselves exist, and consequently the choice and the cause of their existence has to be sought in a being whose existence is already established and consequently necessary in itself. This being has to contain in itself the ideas of the perfections of possible things, in order to choose and produce them. And it will doubtless choose in accordance with the degrees of perfection which are found in these ideas, or in accordance with the claim that they can have to existence in the aforementioned way, that is, in the simplest or most beautiful way to make the universe, as we have touched on above; namely, through which more things or more perfect things succeed, or through which the most essence and the most perfection is obtained that it is possible to obtain together. For the most beautiful and the simplest is that which yields the most with the least difficulty, as for example a perfectly round ball is simpler than any other body, because it includes more mass within the same circumference than any other shape. And for this reason a body, for example a drop of oil in water, colliding with some other [A VI 4 p2233] contrary body, collects itself into a circle, in order to disturb, and be disturbed, as little as possible. It is therefore evident that the author of things will act with reason, since he acts according to the perfections of the ideas of each thing, and since he must understand and consider everything all at once in order to match all things together in the best way possible, he will have sovereign wisdom and the first power. See now if what we have just discovered ought not to be called God.




NOTES:

1. At the top of the first page, Leibniz wrote: 'Written before the death of the late Monseigneur Duke Johann Friedrich.'
2. 'Happy with their mistake.' Lucan, Pharsalia, 1.459.


© Lloyd Strickland 2003, 2007