586 GOTTFRIEDLEIBNIZ
As for the general and particular wills, depending on how we take the matter, it
can be said that God does everything in accordance with His most general will, the one
in conformity with the most perfect order He chose. But it can also be said that He has
particular wills, which are exceptions to the subaltern norms mentioned above; for the
most general of the laws of God, by means of which He regulates the whole universe,
are without exception.
It can also be said that God wills everything that is an object of His particular will.
But as for the objects of His general will, such as the actions of other creatures, particu-
larly of those that are rational, and with which, (i.e. the actions) God wishes to concur,
we must draw a distinction: if the action is good in itself, it can be said that God wills it
and sometimes commands it, even when it does not happen; but if it is evil in itself, and
only becomes good by accident, it has to be said that God permits it and not that He
wills it, though He concurs in it through the laws of nature established by Him, and
because he is able to draw from it greater good. This comes about because the sequence
of things, particularly punishment and recompense, corrects its evil nature, and com-
pensates for the evil with interest, so that in the end there is more perfection in all that
follows than if none of the evil had happened.
- INORDER TODISTINGUISH THEACTIONS OFGODFRO MTHOSE
OFCREATURES, ANEXPLANATIONISGIVEN OF THENOTION
OF ANINDIVIDUALSUBSTANCE
It is rather difficult to distinguish the actions of God from those of creatures as well as
the actions and passions of these same creatures. For there are those who think that God
does everything, while others imagine that He does no more than conserve the force He
has given to creatures. What follows will show how far either of these can be said. Now
since, properly speaking, actions belong to individual substances (“actions belong to
supposita”), it will be necessary to explain just what such a substance is.
It seems to me that when several predications are attributed to the same subject
and this subject is not attributed to any other, this subject is called an individual sub-
stance. But that is not enough and such an explanation is merely nominal, so we need to
consider what it is to be truly attributed to a particular subject.
Now it is acknowledged that all true predication has some basis in the nature of
things, and when a proposition is not an identity, that is, when the predicate is not
expressly included in the subject, it must be so included virtually. That is what the
Philosophers call inesse, when they say that the predicate is in the subject. Thus the sub-
ject term must always include that of the predicate, so that whoever understood the
notion of the subject perfectly would also judge that the predicate belongs to it.
That being so, we can say that the nature of an individual substance or complete
being is to have such a complete notion as to include and entail all the predicates of the
subject that notion is attributed to. In contrast, an accident is a being whose notion does
not include all that can be attributed to the subject it is attributed to. Thus* the quality of
being king that belongs to Alexander the Great, taken in abstraction from the subject, is
*The first edition of the text used the following example: “Thus the circular figure of the ring of
Gyges, does not contain everything that makes up the individual notion of this ring. Whereas God sees in it
at the same time the foundation and cause for all the predicates that can truly be applied to it, such as that
it would be swallowed by a fish and nevertheless returned to its master. I speak here as if this ring were a
substance.”