MEDIADORES Y ASEGURADOS 431. Recibos de primas pendientes de cobro

to make something from nothing. But can they any better conceive how the power of God is capable of stirring a straw?"

|DM, sec. 14.) Now it is first of all very evident that created substances de- pend upon God who preserves them and can produce them continually by a kind of emanation just as we produce our thoughts. For when God turns his mind, so to say, on all sides and in all fashions, there results the general system of phenomena which he finds it good to produce for the sake of manifesting his glory. And when he regards all the aspects of the world in all possible manners, since there is no relation which escapes his omniscience, the result of each view of the universe as seen from a different position is a substance which expresses the universe conformably to this view.

(DM, sec. 32.) The thoughts which we have just explained and particularly the great principle of the perfection of God's operations and the concept of sub- stance which includes all its changes with all its accompanying circumstances .. . serve to dissipate great difficulties, to inflame souls with a divine love and to raise the mind to a knowledge of incorporeal substances much more than the present-day hypotheses. For it appears clearly that all other substances de- pend upon God just as our thoughts emanate from our own substances; that God is all in all and that he is intimately united to all created things, in pro- portion however to their perfection . . . .[Thus] it may be said in metaphysical strictures that God alone acts upon me and he alone causes me to do good or ill, other substances contributing only because of his determinations; because God, who takes all things into consideration, distributes his bounties so as to compel created beings to accommodate themselves to one another. Thus God alone constitutes the relation or communication between substances. It is through him that the phenomena of the one meet and accord with the phe- nomena of the others, so that there may be a reality in our perceptions. In com- mon parlance, however, an action is attributed to particular causes in the sense that I have explained above because it is not necessary to make continual men- tion of the universal cause when speaking of particular cases. It can be seen also that every substance has a perfect spontaneity (which becomes liberty with intelligent substances). Everything which happens to it is a consequence of its idea or its being and nothing determines it except God only. It is for this reason that a person of exalted mind and revered saintliness may say that the soul ought often to think as if there were only God and itself in the world.

C O M M E N T A R Y

As Leibniz sees it, "God is the primary center from which all else that exists emanates" (G IV, 533). He does not constantly re-create the world at each mo- ment—as in Descartes's theory of "continuous creation"—but sustains it in continuous existence through "continual fulgurations" {fulgurations contin-

uelles) that are reminiscent of the emanation theory of Plotinus. (Here too,

then, Leibniz is something of a neo-Platonist.) These fulgurations or emana- tions simply consist in the continual operation of God's will in sustaining the monads in existence, thereby providing them with the opportunity of allowing their own pre-programmed nature to unfold itself.

The idea of "continual fulgurations of the divinity from moment to mo- ment" associates Leibniz with the continuous creation [cieatio continua) the-

orists tracing back to St. Augustine. Leibniz repeatedly suggests that God's mind produces things in much the same way as our minds produce thoughts: for Leibniz, God sustains the world by thinking of it in a particular sort of way. (If he were to fall asleep—which cannot happen—the world would cease to exist.) However, while Leibniz assumes a God who is "on duty" 24 hours a day, every day, to assure THAT the world keeps on existing, he precludes an inter-

vening God who readjusts WHAT is going on. The course of world history is

settled by a once-and-for-all creation-choice and there is no possibility and no need of God's having any "second thoughts" on the matter. In the correspon- dence with Samuel Clarke, Leibniz emphatically and scornfully rejects any idea of a "hands-on" God who needs to readjust or rewind the universe on the pat- tern of an imperfect clockmaker who has made a defective timepiece.

Leibniz thus regards God as the creator and sustainer of all things—in all of their aspects, imperfections included. But these imperfections lie in their own nature (in the complete individual concepts of the monads involved). And in creating a world—even the best of possible worlds—God has to take the bad with the good. Leibniz accordingly reemphasizes the inherent limited recep-

tivity of the created beings of which he earlier spoke (in sec. 42) as "the im-

perfections of their nature." KEY WORDS-.

God/Dieu

primary unity/7'unité primitive

original simple substance/substance simple originaire created or derivative monads/monades créées ou derivatives continual fulgurations/fulgurations continuelles

created being/créature limits/bomes or limites receptivity /réceptivité

SECTION 48

48. There is in God Power, which is the source of all, and also Knowledge, which contains the detail (détail) of the ideas <of things>, and finally Will, which effects changes or products according to the principle of the best. (See Theodicy, sees. 7, 48,149,150.)

This <triad> corresponds in created monads to the subject or basis, the perceptive faculty, and the appetitive faculty. But in God these attributes are absolutely infinite or perfect, while in the created monads or entelechies (or perfectihabies <"perfection-havers">, as Hermolaus Barbaras rendered this word) they are mere imitations, < authentic only> to the extent that there is perfection. (See Theodicy, sees. 48, 87.)

48. Il y a en Dieu la Puissance, qui est la source de tout, puis la Connoiss-

ance, gui contient le detail des idées, et enfin la Volonté, qui fait les change-

mens ou productions selon le principe du Meilleur. (See Theodicy, secs, 7, 48,

149, 150.)