Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

1:There is in the universe one power of infinite Thought. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

2:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
~ Mortimer J Adler,

* WISDOM TROVE *

1:Nature does not make leaps. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

2:All things in God are spontaneous. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

3:There is nothing without a reason. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

4:He who does not act does not exist. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

5:The present is big with the future. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

6:The present is great with the future. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

7:The past is pregnant with the present. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

8:This is the best of all possible worlds. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

9:We live in the best of all possible worlds ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

10:Why is there something rather than nothing? ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

11:Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

12:Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

13:Everything that is possible demands to exist. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

14:Justice is charity in accordance with wisdom. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

15:The most perfect society is that whose purpose ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

16:…every feeling is the perception of a truth... ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

17:Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

18:Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

19:A great doctor kills more people than a great general. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

20:To love is to place happiness in the heart of another. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

21:TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

22:Nihil est sine ratione. There is nothing without a reason. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

23:To love is to place happiness in the heart of another... . ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

24:Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever? ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

25:He who hasn't tasted bitter things hasn't earned sweet things. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

26:It's easier to be original and foolish than original and wise. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

27:I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

28:The World of Mathematics. Book by James R. Newman, p. 1832, 1956. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

29:Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

30:Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

31:The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

32:The soul is the mirror of an indestructible universe. The Monadology. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

33:The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

34:There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

35:Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

36:But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

37:Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

38:... as far as we are capable of knowledge we sin in neglecting to acquire it... ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

39:The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the universal and supreme happiness. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

40:Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

41:Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

42:Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

43:The words &

44:For all bodies are in perpetual flux like rivers, and parts are passing in and out of them continually. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

45:Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

46:Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can't see anything. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

47:God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

48:There is a certain destiny of everything, regulated by the foreknowledge and providence of God in His works. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

49:If you could blow the brain up to the size of a mill and walk about inside, you would not find consciousness. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

50:The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

51:Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

52:He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

53:Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

54:There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

55:It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind's labour. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

56:God's relation to spirits is not like that of a craftsman to his work, but also like that of a prince to his subjects. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

57:Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

58:tags: antireductionism, holism, interconnectedness, microcosm, monad, part, substance, systems-theory, whole8 likesLike ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

59:I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

60:New Essays Concerning Human Understanding with an Appealing. Transtated from the Original Latin, French and German Writeen, ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

61:Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

62:Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

63:For I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

64:imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful resource of the divine intellect, almost an amphibian between being and non-being. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

65:The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

66:Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

67:Perceptions which are at present insensible may grow some day: nothing is useless, and eternity provides great scope for change. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

68:If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

69:There is no way in which a simple substance could begin in the course of nature, since it cannot be formed by means of compounding. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

70:It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

71:There is nothing in the understanding which has not come from the senses, except the understanding itself, or the one who understands. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

72:And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

73:Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

74:Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

75:To love is to take delight in happiness of another, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is to account another's happiness as one's own. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

76:It is this way that in mathematics speculative theorems and practical canons are reduced by analysis to definitions, axioms and postulates. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

77:To love is to be delighted by the happiness of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define this as true love. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

78:The Elements of True Piety (1677). "The Shorter Leibniz Texts: A Collection of New Translations" edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 189, 2006. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

79:It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

80:The monad, of which we shall speak here, is nothing but a simple substance which enters into compounds; simple, that is to say, without parts. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

81:And as every state of a simple substance is a natural consequence of its preceding state, so that the present state of it is big with the future. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

82:Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

83:Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

84:It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

85:I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something purely relative, as time; an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

86:The means of obtaining as much variety as possible, but with the greatest possible order... is the means of obtaining as much perfection as possible. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

87:The greatness of a life can only be estimated by the multitude of its actions. We should not count the years, it is our actions which constitute our life. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

88:It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

89:The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypothesis, is like the art of decyphering, in which an ingenious conjecture greatly shortens the road. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

90:We should like Nature to go no further; we should like it to be finite, like our mind; but this is to ignore the greatness and majesty of the Author of things. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

91:It is God who is the ultimate reason for things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

92:The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

93:I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

94:For since it is impossible for a created monad to have a physical influence on the inner nature of another, this is the only way in which one can be dependent on another. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

95:I don't say that bodies like flint, which are commonly called inanimate, have perceptions and appetition; rather they have something of that sort in them, as worms are in cheese. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

96:It follows from what we have just said, that the natural changes of monads come from an internal principle, since an external cause would be unable to influence their inner being. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

97:Therefore, I have attacted [the problem of the catenary] which I had hitherto not attempted, and with my key [the differential calculus] happily opened its secret. Acta eruditorum ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

98:I have so many ideas that may perhaps be of some use in time if others more penetrating than I go deeply into them someday and join the beauty of their minds to the labour of mine. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

99:The ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

100:Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

101:Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

102:I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

103:We may say, that not only the soul (the mirror of an indestructible universe) is indestructible, but also the animal itself is, although its mechanism is frequently destroyed in parts. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

104:... a distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

105:Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

106:The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

107:Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

108:This is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

109:... it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that distinguishes us from the mere animals and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God... ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

110:When God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

111:Whence it follows that God is absolutely perfect, since perfection is nothing but magnitude of positive reality, in the strict sense, setting aside the limits or bounds in things which are limited. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

112:I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

113:…if geometry were as much opposed to our passions and present interests as is ethics, we should contest it and violate I but little less, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes… ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

114:The mind is not only capable of knowing [innate ideas], but further of finding them in itself; and if it had only the simple capacity to receive knowledge…it would not be the source of necessary truths… ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

115:There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

116:One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

117:Of what use would it be to you, sir, to become King of China on condition that you forgot what you have been? Would it not be the same as if God, at the same time he destroyed you, created a King in China? ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

118:It can have its effect only through the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God a monad rightly demands that God, in regulating the rest from the beginning of things, should have regard to itself. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

119:The dot was introduced as a symbol for multiplication by Leibniz. On July 29, 1698, he wrote in a letter to Johann Bernoulli: "I do not like X as a symbol for multiplication, as it is easily confounded with x. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

120:In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then indeed the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

121:Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

122:The dot was introduced as a symbol for multiplication by Leibniz. On July 29, 1698, he wrote in a letter to Johann Bernoulli: "I do not like X as a symbol for multiplication, as it is easily confounded with x... ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

123:We never have a full demonstration, although there is always an underlying reason for the truth, even if it is only perfectly understood by God, who alone penetrated the infinite series in one stroke of the mind. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

124:I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

125:Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

126:For things remain possible, even if God does not choose them. Indeed, even if God does not will something to exist, it is possible for it to exist, since, by its nature, it could exist if God were to will it to exist. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

127:Each portion of matter may be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of the plant, each member of the animal, each drop of its humors, is also such a garden or such a pond. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

128:[Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

129:For the [innate] general principles enter into our thoughts, of which they form the soul and the connection. They are as necessary thereto as the muscles and sinews are for walking, although we do not at all think of them. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

130:In my judgment an organic machine new to nature never arises, since it always contains an infinity of organs so that it can express, in its own way, the whole universe; indeed, it always contains all past and present times. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

131:I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

132:Indeed every monad must be different from every other. For there are never in nature two beings, which are precisely alike, and in which it is not possible to find some difference which is internal, or based on some intrinsic quality. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

133:The larger the mass of collected things, the less will be their usefulness. Therefore, one should not only strive to assemble new goods from everywhere, but one must endeavor to put in the right order those that one already possesses. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

134:There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

135:But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

136:There is a world of created beings - living things, animals, entelechies, and souls - in the least part of matter... . Thus there is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

137:Either there are no corporeal substances, and bodies are merely phenomena which are true or consistent with each other, such as a rainbow or a perfectly coherent dream, or there is in all corporeal substances something analogous to the soul. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

138:Now this connection or adaption of all created things with each, and of each with all the rest, means that each simple substance has relations which express all the others, and that consequently it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

139:I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

140:In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

141:It has long seemed ridiculous to me to suppose that the nature of things has been so poor and stingy that it provided souls only to such a trifling mass of bodies on our globe, like human bodies, when it could have given them to all, without interfering with its other ends. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

142:The mind leans on [innate] principles every moment, but it does not come so easily to distinguish them and to represent them distinctly and separately, because that demands great attention to its acts, and the majority of people, little accustomed to think, has little of it. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

143:This interconnection or accommodation of all created things to each other, and each to all the others, brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others, and consequently, that each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

144:Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

145:Nature has established patterns originating in the return of events, but only for the most part. New illnesses flood the human race, so that no matter how many experiments you have done on corpses, you have not thereby immposd a limit on the nature of events so that in the future they could not vary. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

146:When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached. It is this way that in mathematics speculative theorems and practical canons are reduced by analysis to definitions, axioms and postulates. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

147:I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua ; for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor; and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

148:It is true that the more we see some connection in what happens to us, the more we are confirmed in the opinion we have about the reality of our appearances; and it is also true that the more we examine our appearances closely, the more we find them well-sequenced, as microscopes and other aids in making experiments have shown us. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

149:God, possessing supreme and infinite wisdom, acts in the most perfect manner, not only metaphysically, but also morally speaking, and ... with respect to ourselves, we can say that the more enlightened and informed we are about God's works, the more we will be disposed to find them excellent and in complete conformity with what we might have desired. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

150:There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible: truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths, until we come to those which are primary. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

151:Let there be two possible things, A and B, one of which is such that it is necessary that it exists, and let us assume that there is more perfection in A than in B. Then, at least, we can explain why A should exist rather than B and can foresee which of them will exist; indeed, this can be demonstrated, that is, rendered certain from the nature of the thing. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

152:There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

153:These principles have given me a way of explaining naturally the union or rather the mutual agreement [conformité] of the soul and the organic body. The soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

154:And just as the same town, when looked at from different sides, appears quite different and is, as it were, multiplied in perspective, so also it happens that because of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were as many different universes, which are however but different perspective representations of a single universe form the different point of view of each monad. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

155:For, above all, I hold a notion of possibility and necessity according to which there are some things that are possible, but yet not necessary, and which do not really exist. From this it follows that a reason that always forces a free mind to choose one thing over another (whether that reason derives from the perfection of a thing, as it does in God, or from our imperfection) does not eliminate our freedom. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

156:Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

157:If we were magically shrunk and put into someone's brain while she was thinking, we would see all the pumps, pistons, gears and levers working away and we would be able to describe the workings completely, in mechanical terms, thereby completely describing the thought processes of the brain. But that description would not contain any mention of thought! It would contain nothing but descriptions of pumps, pistons, levers! ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

158:According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

159:I agree with you that it is important to examine our presuppositions, throughly and once for all, in order to establish something solid. For I hold that it is only when we can prove all that we bring forward that we perfectly understand the thing under consideration. I know that the common herd takes little pleasure in these researches, but I know also that the common herd take little pains thoroughly to understand things. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

160:There is no argument so cogent not only in demonstrating, the indestructibility of the soul, but also in showing that it always preserves in its nature traces of all its preceding states with a practical remembrance which can always be aroused. Since it has the consciousness of or knows in itself what each one calls his me. This renders it open to moral qualities, to chastisement and to recompense even after this life, for immortality without remembrance would be of no value. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

161:I do not believe that a world without evil, preferable in order to ours, is possible; otherwise it would have been preferred. It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted. The combination of all the tendencies to the good has produced the best; but as there are goods that are incompatible together, this combination and this result can introduce the destruction of some good, and as a result some evil. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

162:If we could sufficiently understand the order of the universe, we should find that it exceeds all the desires of the wisest men, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is, not only as a whole and in general but also for ourselves in particular, if we are attached, as we ought to be, to the Author of all, not only as to the architect and efficient cause of our being, but as to our master and to the final cause, which ought to be the whole aim of our will, and which can alone make our happiness. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:What is is what must be. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

2:Nature does not make leaps. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

3:There is nothing without reason. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

4:All things in God are spontaneous. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

5:He who does not act does not exist. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

6:The present is big with the future. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

7:The present is great with the future. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

8:The past is pregnant with the present. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

9:This is the best of all possible worlds. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

10:We live in the best of all possible worlds ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

11:Why is there something rather than nothing? ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

12:Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

13:Everything that is possible demands to exist. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

14:Justice is charity in accordance with wisdom. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

15:…every feeling is the perception of a truth... ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

16:Milovať znamená radovať sa z cudzieho šťastia. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

17:The most perfect society is that whose purpose ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

18:Everything that is possible demands to exist.
~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

19:Pourquoi y a-t-il quelque chose plutôt que rien ? ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

20:Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

21:Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

22:A great doctor kills more people than a great general. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

23:To love is to place happiness in the heart of another. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

24:To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

25:There is in the universe one power of infinite Thought. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

26:Nihil est sine ratione. There is nothing without a reason. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

27:Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever? ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

28:He who hasn't tasted bitter things hasn't earned sweet things. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

29:It's easier to be original and foolish than original and wise. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

30:Nihil est sine ratione.
[There is nothing without a reason.] ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

31:I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

32:Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

33:Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

34:The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

35:The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

36:There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

37:...as far as we are capable of knowledge we sin in neglecting to acquire it... ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

38:Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

39:But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

40:Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

41:Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

42:Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

43:Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

44:The words 'Here you can find perfect peace' can be written only over the gates of a cemetery. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

45:For all bodies are in perpetual flux like rivers, and parts are passing in and out of them continually. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

46:Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

47:Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can't see anything. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

48:God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

49:There is a certain destiny of everything, regulated by the foreknowledge and providence of God in His works. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

50:If you could blow the brain up to the size of a mill and walk about inside, you would not find consciousness. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

51:The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

52:Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

53:He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

54:Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

55:There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

56:It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind's labour. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

57:God's relation to spirits is not like that of a craftsman to his work, but also like that of a prince to his subjects. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

58:Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

59:I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

60:Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

61:Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

62:For I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

63:imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful resource of the divine intellect, almost an amphibian between being and non-being. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

64:The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

65:Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

66:Perceptions which are at present insensible may grow some day: nothing is useless, and eternity provides great scope for change. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

67:If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

68:There is no way in which a simple substance could begin in the course of nature, since it cannot be formed by means of compounding. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

69:It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

70:There is nothing in the understanding which has not come from the senses, except the understanding itself, or the one who understands. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

71:And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

72:Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

73:Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

74:To love is to take delight in happiness of another, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is to account another's happiness as one's own. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

75:To love is to be delighted by the happiness of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define this as true love. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

76:In the century of Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, and Newton,” one historian wrote, “the most versatile genius of all was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. ~ Edward Dolnick,

77:It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

78:The monad, of which we shall speak here, is nothing but a simple substance which enters into compounds; simple, that is to say, without parts. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

79:It is true that as the empty voids and the dismal wilderness belong to zero, so the spirit of God and His light belong to the all-powerful One. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

80:Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

81:It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

82:The means of obtaining as much variety as possible, but with the greatest possible order...is the means of obtaining as much perfection as possible. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

83:I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something purely relative, as time; an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

84:The greatness of a life can only be estimated by the multitude of its actions. We should not count the years, it is our actions which constitute our life. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

85:We should like Nature to go no further; we should like it to be finite, like our mind; but this is to ignore the greatness and majesty of the Author of things. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

86:It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

87:Therefore, I have attacted [the problem of the catenary] which I had hitherto not attempted, and with my key [the differential calculus] happily opened its secret. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

88:The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

89:I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

90:For since it is impossible for a created monad to have a physical influence on the inner nature of another, this is the only way in which one can be dependent on another. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

91:I don't say that bodies like flint, which are commonly called inanimate, have perceptions and appetition; rather they have something of that sort in them, as worms are in cheese. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

92:I have so many ideas that may perhaps be of some use in time if others more penetrating than I go deeply into them someday and join the beauty of their minds to the labour of mine. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

93:Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

94:Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

95:We may say, that not only the soul (the mirror of an indestructible universe) is indestructible, but also the animal itself is, although its mechanism is frequently destroyed in parts. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

96:...a distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

97:The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

98:Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

99:...it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that distinguishes us from the mere animals and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God... ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

100:..This is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

101:When God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

102:Whence it follows that God is absolutely perfect, since perfection is nothing but magnitude of positive reality, in the strict sense, setting aside the limits or bounds in things which are limited. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

103:[...] we can find no true or existent fact, no true assertion, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise, although most of the time these reasons cannot be known to us. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

104:I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

105:…if geometry were as much opposed to our passions and present interests as is ethics, we should contest it and violate I but little less, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes… ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

106:The mind is not only capable of knowing [innate ideas], but further of finding them in itself; and if it had only the simple capacity to receive knowledge…it would not be the source of necessary truths… ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

107:One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

108:Of what use would it be to you, sir, to become King of China on condition that you forgot what you have been? Would it not be the same as if God, at the same time he destroyed you, created a King in China? ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

109:But as the late- seventeenth-century philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz said, 'To be neutral is rather like someone who lives in the middle of a house and is smoked out from below and drenched with urine from above. ~ Eleanor Herman,

110:The dot was introduced as a symbol for multiplication by Leibniz. On July 29, 1698, he wrote in a letter to Johann Bernoulli: "I do not like X as a symbol for multiplication, as it is easily confounded with x. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

111:In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then indeed the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

112:Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

113:We never have a full demonstration, although there is always an underlying reason for the truth, even if it is only perfectly understood by God, who alone penetrated the infinite series in one stroke of the mind. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

114:I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

115:Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

116:For things remain possible, even if God does not choose them. Indeed, even if God does not will something to exist, it is possible for it to exist, since, by its nature, it could exist if God were to will it to exist. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

117:Each portion of matter may be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of the plant, each member of the animal, each drop of its humors, is also such a garden or such a pond. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

118:[Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

119:For the [innate] general principles enter into our thoughts, of which they form the soul and the connection. They are as necessary thereto as the muscles and sinews are for walking, although we do not at all think of them. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

120:In my judgment an organic machine new to nature never arises, since it always contains an infinity of organs so that it can express, in its own way, the whole universe; indeed, it always contains all past and present times. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

121:I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

122:Indeed every monad must be different from every other. For there are never in nature two beings, which are precisely alike, and in which it is not possible to find some difference which is internal, or based on some intrinsic quality. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

123:The larger the mass of collected things, the less will be their usefulness. Therefore, one should not only strive to assemble new goods from everywhere, but one must endeavor to put in the right order those that one already possesses. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

124:There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

125:There is a world of created beings - living things, animals, entelechies, and souls - in the least part of matter.... Thus there is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

126:But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

127:Either there are no corporeal substances, and bodies are merely phenomena which are true or consistent with each other, such as a rainbow or a perfectly coherent dream, or there is in all corporeal substances something analogous to the soul. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

128:Now this connection or adaption of all created things with each, and of each with all the rest, means that each simple substance has relations which express all the others, and that consequently it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

129:I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

130:In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

131:It has long seemed ridiculous to me to suppose that the nature of things has been so poor and stingy that it provided souls only to such a trifling mass of bodies on our globe, like human bodies, when it could have given them to all, without interfering with its other ends. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

132:The mind leans on [innate] principles every moment, but it does not come so easily to distinguish them and to represent them distinctly and separately, because that demands great attention to its acts, and the majority of people, little accustomed to think, has little of it. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

133:I don't really eliminate body, but reduce it to what it is. For I show that corporeal mass, which is thought to have something over and above simple substances, is not a substance, but a phenomenon resulting from simple substances, which alone have unity and absolute reality. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

134:It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.

(Describing, in 1685, the value to astronomers of the hand-cranked calculating machine he had invented in 1673.) ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

135:This interconnection or accommodation of all created things to each other, and each to all the others, brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others, and consequently, that each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

136:Los misterios se pueden explicar hasta donde es necesario para creerlos, pero no se les puede comprender, ni hacer entender cómo se verifican, a la manera que en la misma física explicamos hasta cierto punto muchas cualidades sensibles, pero de una manera imperfecta, porque no las comprendemos. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

137:Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

138:Nature has established patterns originating in the return of events, but only for the most part. New illnesses flood the human race, so that no matter how many experiments you have done on corpses, you have not thereby immposd a limit on the nature of events so that in the future they could not vary. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

139:When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached. It is this way that in mathematics speculative theorems and practical canons are reduced by analysis to definitions, axioms and postulates. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

140:I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua ; for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor; and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

141:La tranquillité est un degré pour avancer vers la stupidité. . . Il faut toujours trouver quelque chose à faire, penser, projeter, s'intéresser, pour le public et pour le particulier, mais cela d'une manière qui nous réjouisse, si nos souhaits sont accomplis et ne nous chagrine point en cas qu'ils manquent. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

142:[...] Et celui de la raison suffisante, en vertu duquel nous considérons qu’aucun fait ne saurait se trouver vrai, ou existant, aucune énonciation véritable, sans qu’il y ait une raison suffisante pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement. Quoique ces raisons le plus souvent ne puissent point nous être connues.
[sect. 32] ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

143:It is true that the more we see some connection in what happens to us, the more we are confirmed in the opinion we have about the reality of our appearances; and it is also true that the more we examine our appearances closely, the more we find them well-sequenced, as microscopes and other aids in making experiments have shown us. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

144:God, possessing supreme and infinite wisdom, acts in the most perfect manner, not only metaphysically, but also morally speaking, and ... with respect to ourselves, we can say that the more enlightened and informed we are about God's works, the more we will be disposed to find them excellent and in complete conformity with what we might have desired. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

145:There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible, and those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths until we reach those which are primitive. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

146:Let there be two possible things, A and B, one of which is such that it is necessary that it exists, and let us assume that there is more perfection in A than in B. Then, at least, we can explain why A should exist rather than B and can foresee which of them will exist; indeed, this can be demonstrated, that is, rendered certain from the nature of the thing. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

147:There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

148:These principles have given me a way of explaining naturally the union or rather the mutual agreement [conformité] of the soul and the organic body. The soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

149:And just as the same town, when looked at from different sides, appears quite different and is, as it were, multiplied in perspective, so also it happens that because of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were as many different universes, which are however but different perspective representations of a single universe form the different point of view of each monad. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

150:For, above all, I hold a notion of possibility and necessity according to which there are some things that are possible, but yet not necessary, and which do not really exist. From this it follows that a reason that always forces a free mind to choose one thing over another (whether that reason derives from the perfection of a thing, as it does in God, or from our imperfection) does not eliminate our freedom. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

151:Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

152:If we were magically shrunk and put into someone's brain while she was thinking, we would see all the pumps, pistons, gears and levers working away and we would be able to describe the workings completely, in mechanical terms, thereby completely describing the thought processes of the brain. But that description would not contain any mention of thought! It would contain nothing but descriptions of pumps, pistons, levers! ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

153:According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

154:I agree with you that it is important to examine our presuppositions, throughly and once for all, in order to establish something solid. For I hold that it is only when we can prove all that we bring forward that we perfectly understand the thing under consideration. I know that the common herd takes little pleasure in these researches, but I know also that the common herd take little pains thoroughly to understand things. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

155:Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom. GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ, "Felicity", Leibniz: Political Writings Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. JOHN LOCKE, Some Thoughts Concerning Education However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld,

156:There is no argument so cogent not only in demonstrating, the indestructibility of the soul, but also in showing that it always preserves in its nature traces of all its preceding states with a practical remembrance which can always be aroused. Since it has the consciousness of or knows in itself what each one calls his me. This renders it open to moral qualities, to chastisement and to recompense even after this life, for immortality without remembrance would be of no value. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

157:[...] c’est que jamais rien n’arrive, sans qu’il y ail une cause ou du moins une raison déterminante, c’est-à-dire quelque chose qui puisse servir à rendre a priori, pourquoi cela est existant plulôt que de toute autre façon. Ce grand principe a lieu dans tous les événements, et on ne donnera jamais un exemple contraire : et quoique le plus souvent ces raisons déterminantes ne nous soient pas assez connues, nous ne laissons pas d’entrevoir qu’il y en a.
Essais de Théodicée, 1.44 ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

158:I do not believe that a world without evil, preferable in order to ours, is possible; otherwise it would have been preferred. It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted. The combination of all the tendencies to the good has produced the best; but as there are goods that are incompatible together, this combination and this result can introduce the destruction of some good, and as a result some evil. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

159:If we could sufficiently understand the order of the universe, we should find that it exceeds all the desires of the wisest men, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is, not only as a whole and in general but also for ourselves in particular, if we are attached, as we ought to be, to the Author of all, not only as to the architect and efficient cause of our being, but as to our master and to the final cause, which ought to be the whole aim of our will, and which can alone make our happiness. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

160:All the different classes of beings which taken together make up the universe are, in the ideas of God who knows distinctly their essential gradations, only so many ordinates of a single curve so closely united that it would be impossible to place others between any two of them, since that would imply disorder and imperfection. Thus men are linked with the animals, these with the plants and these with the fossils which in turn merge with those bodies which our senses and our imagination represent to us as absolutely inanimate. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

161:Base two especially impressed the seventeenth-century religious philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He observed that in this base all numbers were written in terms of the symbols 0 and 1 only. Thus eleven, which equals 1 · 23 + 0 · 22 + 1 · 2 + 1, would be written 1011 in base two. Leibniz saw in this binary arithmetic the image and proof of creation. Unity was God and zero was the void. God drew all objects from the void just as the unity applied to the zero creates all numbers. This conception, over which the reader would do well not to ponder too long, delighted Leibniz so much that he sent it to Grimaldi, the Jesuit president of the Chinese tribunal for mathematics, to be used as an argument for the conversion of the Chinese emperor to Christianity. ~ Morris Kline,

162:In 1714, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz argued that matter alone could never produce a mind. Leibniz was a German philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who is sometimes called “the last man who knew everything”. To Leibniz, brain tissue alone could not have an interior life. He suggested a thought experiment, known today as Leibniz’s Mill. Imagine a large mill. If you were to walk around inside of it, you would see its cogs and struts and levers all moving, but it would be preposterous to suggest that the mill is thinking or feeling or perceiving. How could a mill fall in love or enjoy a sunset? A mill is just made of pieces and parts. And so it is with the brain, Leibniz asserted. If you could expand the brain to the size of a mill and stroll around inside it, you would only see pieces and parts. Nothing would obviously correspond to perception. Everything would simply be acting on everything else. If you wrote down every interaction, it wouldn’t be obvious where thinking and feeling and perceiving reside. ~ David Eagleman,

163:We hold these truths to be self-evident.

{Franklin's edit to the assertion in Thomas Jefferson's original wording, 'We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable' in a draft of the Declaration of Independence changes it instead into an assertion of rationality. The scientific mind of Franklin drew on the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of David Hume and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. In what became known as 'Hume's Fork' the latters' theory distinguished between synthetic truths that describe matters of fact, and analytic truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition.} ~ Benjamin Franklin,

164:Que as meditações dos teólogos e dos filósofos conhecidos por escolásticos não são inteiramente desprezíveis

Sei que enuncio um grande paradoxo ao pretender reabilitar de certo modo a antiga filosofia, e recordar postlimino as formas substanciais já quase banidas; mas, talvez não me condenem levianamente quando se souber que meditei bastante sobre a filosofia moderna, que dediquei muito tempo às experiências da física e às demonstrações da geometria, que estive muito tempo persuadido da fragilidade desses entes, que fui, enfim, obrigado a retomar contra a própria vontade e como que à força, depois de eu próprio ter feito investigações que me levaram a reconhecer que os nossos modernos não fazem suficientemente justiça a S. Tomás de Aquino e a outros grandes homens desse tempo, e que há, nas opiniões dos filósofos e teólogos escolásticos, muito mais solidez do que se imagina, contando que delas nos sirvamos a propósito e no seu lugar. Estou mesmo persuadido de que, se algum espírito exacto e meditativo se desse ao trabalho de esclarecer e digerir o pensamento deles à maneira dos geómetras analíticos, encontraria aí um tesouro de grande quantidade de verdades importantíssimas e absolutamente demonstrativas. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

165:The immediate catalyst for the emergence of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century was the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which included three momentous discoveries in astronomy: Johannes Kepler delineated the rules that govern the movement of the planets, Galileo Galilei placed the sun at the center of the universe, and Isaac Newton discovered the force of gravity, invented calculus (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz independently discovered it at the same time), and used it to describe the three laws of motion. In so doing, Newton joined physics and astronomy and illustrated that even the deepest truths in the universe could be revealed by the methods of science. These contributions were celebrated in 1660 with the formation of the first scientific society in the world: the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, which elected Isaac Newton as its president in 1703. The founders of the Royal Society thought of God as a mathematician who had designed the universe to function according to logical and mathematical principles. The role of the scientist—the natural philosopher—was to employ the scientific method to discover the physical principles underlying the universe and thereby decipher the codebook that God had used in creating the cosmos. Success in the realm of science led eighteenth-century thinkers to assume that other aspects of human action, including political behavior, creativity, and art, could be improved by the application of reason, leading ultimately to an improved society and better conditions for all humankind. This confidence in reason and science affected all aspects of political and social life in Europe and soon spread to the North American colonies. There, the Enlightenment ideas that society can be improved through reason and that rational people have a natural right to the pursuit of happiness are thought to have contributed to the Jeffersonian democracy that we enjoy today in the United States. ~ Eric R Kandel,

166:reading :::
50 Philosophy Classics: List of Books Covered:
1. Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition (1958)
2. Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics (4th century BC)
3. AJ Ayer - Language, Truth and Logic (1936)
4. Julian Baggini - The Ego Trick (2011)
5. Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
6. Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex (1952)
7. Jeremy Bentham - Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
8. Henri Bergson - Creative Evolution (1911)
9. David Bohm - Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
10. Noam Chomsky - Understanding Power (2002)
11. Cicero - On Duties (44 BC)
12. Confucius - Analects (5th century BC)
13. Rene Descartes - Meditations (1641)
14. Ralph Waldo Emerson - Fate (1860)
15. Epicurus - Letters (3rd century BC)
16. Michel Foucault - The Order of Things (1966)
17. Harry Frankfurt - On Bullshit (2005)
18. Sam Harris - Free Will (2012)
19. GWF Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit (1803)
20. Martin Heidegger - Being and Time (1927)
21. Heraclitus - Fragments (6th century)
22. David Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
23. William James - Pragmatism (1904)
24. Daniel Kahneman - Thinking: Fast and Slow (2011)
25. Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
26. Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling (1843)
27. Saul Kripke - Naming and Necessity (1972)
28. Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
29. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Theodicy (1710)
30. John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
31. Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Massage (1967)
32. Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince (1532)
33. John Stuart Mill - On Liberty (1859)
34. Michel de Montaigne - Essays (1580)
35. Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good (1970)
36. Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
37. Blaise Pascal - Pensees (1670)
38. Plato - The Republic (4th century BC)
39. Karl Popper - The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)
40. John Rawls - A Theory of Justice (1971)
41. Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract (1762)
42. Bertrand Russell - The Conquest of Happiness (1920)
43. Michael Sandel - Justice (2009)
44. Jean Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness (1943)
45. Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation (1818)
46. Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save (2009)
47. Baruch Spinoza - Ethics (1677)
48. Nassim Nicholas - Taleb The Black Swan (2007)
49. Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations (1953)
50. Slavoj Zizek - Living In The End Times (2010)
~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Philosophy Classics,

167:If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.
We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena.
It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]."

—from Letters to Arnauld ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

168:If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.

We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is true that there are sometimes more, sometimes fewer, grounds for supposing that several things constitute a single thing, in proportion to the extent to which these things are connected. But this serves only to abbreviate our thoughts and to represent the phenomena.

It also seems that what constitutes the essence of a being by aggregation is only a mode (*maniére d'être*) of the things of which it is composed. For example, what constitutes the essence of an army is only a mode of the men who compose it. This mode therefore presupposes a substance whose essence is not a mode of substance. Every machine also presupposes some substance in the pieces of which it is made, and there is no plurality without true unities. To put it briefly, I hold this identical proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, *that what is not truly* one *being is not truly one* being *either*. It has always been thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings are another; but the plural presupposes the singular, and where there is no being still less will there be several beings. What could be clearer? [[I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind only, a unity founded on the relations or modes [*modes*] of true substances. If a machine is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.]]."

—from Letters to Arnauld ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

169:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus – Tragedies
4. Sophocles – Tragedies
5. Herodotus – Histories
6. Euripides – Tragedies
7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes – Comedies
10. Plato – Dialogues
11. Aristotle – Works
12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid – Elements
14. Archimedes – Works
15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections
16. Cicero – Works
17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil – Works
19. Horace – Works
20. Livy – History of Rome
21. Ovid – Works
22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy – Almagest
27. Lucian – Works
28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus – The Enneads
32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njál
36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More – Utopia
44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays
48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton – Works
59. Molière – Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics
63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve – The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets ~ Mortimer J Adler,

170:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]
1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus - Tragedies
4. Sophocles - Tragedies
5. Herodotus - Histories
6. Euripides - Tragedies
7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes - Comedies
10. Plato - Dialogues
11. Aristotle - Works
12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid - Elements
14.Archimedes - Works
15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections
16. Cicero - Works
17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil - Works
19. Horace - Works
20. Livy - History of Rome
21. Ovid - Works
22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy - Almagest
27. Lucian - Works
28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus - The Enneads
32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More - Utopia
44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays
48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan
57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton - Works
59. Molière - Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics
63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology
67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve - The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
~ Mortimer J Adler,

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