is impossible for him not to be affected by the most perfect harmony, and thus to be necessitated to do the best by the very ideality of things. This in no way detracts from freedom. For it is the highest freedom to be impelled to the best by a right reason. Whoever desires any other freedom is a fool. Hence it follows that whatever has happened, is happening, or will happen is best, and also nec- essary, but as I have said, with a necessity which takes nothing away from freedom because it takes nothing from the will and from the use of reason.
(Loemker, p. 158; "Paris N o t e s " [1676].) < T h e r e i s > a most perfect mind, or God. And this mind is a whole in the whole body of the world; to it is due also the existence of the world. It itself is its own cause. Existence is nothing but that which is the cause of sensations agreeing among themselves. The rea- son for the world is the aggregate of requisites of all things. . . . That particular minds exist amounts merely to this—that the highest being judges it conducive to harmony that there should be somewhere something that understands, i.e. some intellectual mirror or a reduplication of the world. To exist is nothing other than to be < m a x i m a l l y > harmonious; the mark of existence is organized sensations.
C O M M E N T A R Y
Recall that section 48 has already stated that in God and created substance alike power/reality can be equated with degree of perfection ("à mesure qu'il y a de la perfection"). We h u m a n s make our choices with a (potentially flawed) view to what appears best. God chooses on the basis of what is best. This ex- plains why every aspect of the real has a teleological explanation: if some fea- ture of the real were not for the overall best, it would not in fact be there as a feature of the reality. A God who did not m a k e optimality-geared creation choices—whose acts or choices were merely willful or arbitrary—would not be a perfectly rational agent.
The Principle of Perfection (or of Fitness) is Leibniz's supreme principle for the determination of contingent truth. God selected the real world for actual- ization as one possibility among infinitely many others precisely because it maximizes "perfection," that is, the combination of variety with order. The actual world is accordingly "the best of possible worlds." It is in this meta- physical c o m m i t m e n t to perfection as the principle of definiteness for the actualization of possibility in which Leibniz's " o p t i m i s m " resides. His is ul- timately a theologically based position geared to the benevolence of God as manifested in his concern to maximize the good overall.
Note that the only "exigency to existence" that possible substances can ex- ert is via the claims for consideration they are able to m a k e upon God in virtue of the comparative perfection that their denning conception incorporates. Leib- niz's occasional metaphor of alternative possibilities competing with one an- other for actualization is just exactly that—a metaphor.
KEY W O R D S :
(sufficient) reason/raison (suffisante) fitness/convenance
degrees of perfection/degrés de perfection (possible) -world/mondes (possible)
possible (substance]/(sui>stfli3cej possible existence/existence
perfection/perfection
arbitrary/arbitraire
SECTION 55
55. And this is the cause of the existence of the best: that his wisdom makes it known to God, his goodness makes him chose it, and his power makes him produce it. (See Theodicy, sees. 8, 78, 80, 84, 119, 204, 206, 208, and Abridg- ment, objs. 1, 8.)
55. Et c'est ce qui est la cause de l'Existence du Meilleur, que sa sagesse <le> fait connoître à Dieu, que sa bonté le fait choisir, et que sa puissance le fait produire, (Théodicée, secs. 8, j8, 80, 84, 119, 204, 206, 208; Abrégé, objs.
i,8.)
[Theodicy, sec. 8.) Now this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is
no less infinite, cannot but have chosen the best. . . . There is an infinitude of possible worlds among which God must needs have chosen the best, since he does nothing without acting in accordance with Supreme Reason.
(Theodicy, sec. 78.) God, in designing to create the world, purposed solely
to manifest and communicate his perfections in the way that was most effi- cacious, and most worthy of his greatness, his wisdom and his goodness. But that very purpose pledged him to consider all the actions of creatures while still in the state of pure possibility, that he might form the most fitting plan. He is like a great architect whose aim in view is the satisfaction or the glory of having built a beautiful palace, and who considers all that is to enter into this con- struction: the form and the materials, the palace, the situation, the means, the workmen, the expense, before he forms a complete resolve. For a wise person in laying his plans cannot separate the end from the means; he does not con- template any end without knowing if there are means of attaining thereto.
{Theodicy, sec. 80.) For it is sufficient to consider that God, as well as every
wise and beneficent mind, is inclined towards all possible good, and that this inclination is proportionate to the excellence of the good.
{Theodicy, sec. 84.) God, before decreeing anything, considered among other
possible sequences of things that one which he afterwards approved. In the idea of this is represented how the first parents sin and corrupt their posterity; how Jesus Christ redeems the human race; how some, aided by such and such graces,
attain to final faith and to salvation; and how others, with or without such or other graces, do not attain thereto, continue in sin, and are damned. God grants his sanction to this sequence only after having entered into all its detail, and thus pronounces nothing final as to those who shall be saved or damned with- out having pondered upon everything and compared it with other possible se- quences. Thus God's pronouncement concerns the whole sequence at the same time; he simply decrees its existence. In order to save other men, or in a dif- ferent way, he must needs choose an altogether different sequence, seeing that all is connected in each sequence. In this conception of the matter, which is