598 GOTTFRIEDLEIBNIZ
the bones were solid, but had gaps and joints, that the nerves could be tensed or relaxed,
and that was why the body was flexible and I was sitting. Or if he wanted to explain the
present speech, he had recourse to the air, to vocal and aural organs and like things,
while forgetting the true causes, that is that the Athenians thought it better to condemn
than to acquit me, and I for my part thought it better to sit here than to take flight. For,
by my faith, these nerves and these bones would long since be with the Boeotians and
the Megarans, if I had not found it more just and more honest for me to suffer the
penalty the fatherland wants to impose on me than live elsewhere a wanderer in exile.
That is why it is unreasonable to call these bones and nerves and their motions causes.
“It is true that whoever said that I could not do all this without bones and nerves
would be right, but the true cause is something else... and that is no more than a
condition without which the cause could not be the cause....
“People who say no more than, for example, that the motions of the bodies sur-
rounding the earth support the earth where it is, forget that the divine power arranges
everything in the finest way, and do not understand that it is the good and the beautiful
that join, form and preserve the world....”Thus far Socrates, for the things about ideas
or forms that follow in Plato are not less excellent but a bit more difficult.
- IF THERULES OFMECHANICSDEPENDED ONGEOMETRY
ALONEWITHOUTMETAPHYSICS, THEPHENOMENA
WOULDBEQUITEDIFFERENT
Now, since the wisdom of God has always been recognised in the details of the mechan-
ical structures of particular bodies, it is very necessary that it should also be shown in the
general set-up of the world and the constitution of the laws of nature. This is so true that
the counsels of this Wisdom are observed in the laws of motion in general. For if there
were nothing else to bodies but an extended mass and nothing to motion but change of
place, and if everything had to and could be deduced from these definitions alone by
geometrical necessity, it would follow, as I have shown elsewhere, that the least body
would give the same speed as its own to the largest resting body it met without losing
any of its own, and many other rules of this sort would have to be accepted, such as are
altogether contrary to the construction of a system. But the decree of the divine wisdom
to preserve always the same total force and direction has provided for this.
I even find that many natural effects can be demonstrated doubly, i.e. through the
efficient cause and separately through the final cause as well, by using for example the
decree of God to produce His effect by the simplest and most determinate ways, as I
have shown elsewhere in my account of the rules of catoptrics and dioptrics, and I shall
say more of it below.
- RECONCILIATION OF THETWOWAY S B YFINAL ANDEFFICIENT
CAUSES INDEFENCE OFBOTHTHOSEWHOEXPLAINNATURE
MECHANICALLY ANDTHOSEWHOHAV ERECOURSE
TOINCORPOREALNATURES
It is good to note this point to reconcile those who hope to explain mechanically the
formation of the first tissues of an animal and the complete machine of its parts with
those who account for the same structure by final causes. Both are good and both can be