Page:Leibniz Discourse on Metaphysics etc (1908).djvu/94

Rh  ; concerning that which God desires or permits and concerning general and particular intentions.  In order to distinguish between the activities of God and the activities of created things, we must explain the conception of an individual substance. That every individual substance expresses the whole universe in its own manner, and that in its full concept is included all its experiences together with all the attendant circumstances and the whole sequence of exterior events. That the belief in substantial forms has a certain basis in fact but that these forms effect no changes in the phenomena and must not be employed for the explanation of particular events. That the opinions of the theologians and of the so-called scholastic philosophers are not to be wholly despised. That the conception of the extension of a body is in a way imaginary and does not constitute the substance of the body. As the individual concept of each person includes once for all everything which can ever happen to him, in it can be seen a priori the evidences or the reasons for the reality of each event and why one happened sooner than the other. But these events, however certain, are nevertheless contingent being based on the free choice of God and of his creatures. It is true that their choices always have their reasons but they incline to the choices under no compulsion of necessity.  <li>God produces different substances according to the different views which he has of the world and by the intervention of God the appropriate nature of each substance brings it about that what </li> </ol>