“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.” HumansLongHas BeensSoulEndsBodyGivenPoorMassRidiculousGlobesInterfereHuman BodyTriflingStingy Book:Leibniz: Philosophical Essays Source: Leibniz: Philosophical Essays
“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.” KnowsMenTwoIdeasDifferentBodyWould BeTogetherTurnsUniverseImaginationAnimalUnitedClassTakenImpossibleEssentialsPlantSensesDisorderImperfectionLinkedCurvesFossils Author:Gottfried Leibniz
“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.” BodyPerceptionCheeseWorms Book:Leibniz: Philosophical Essays Source: Leibniz: Philosophical Essays
“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.” SoulBodyGrowthDevelopmentBirthAbsolutesSeparationStrictDevelopment And Growth Author:Gottfried Leibniz
“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.” SoulDreamBodySubstanceConsistentRainbow Author:Gottfried Leibniz
“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.” WaySoulBodyLawScienceUniverseGivenPrinciplesVirtueHarmonyAgreeUnionsSubstanceAgreementMutualRepresentationExplaining Author:Gottfried Leibniz
