Page:Leibniz Discourse on Metaphysics etc (1908).djvu/95

70  happens to one corresponds to what happens to all the others without, however, their acting upon one another directly.  The action of one finite substance upon another consists only in the increase in the degree of the expression of the first combined with a decrease in that of the second, in so far as God has in advance fashioned them so that they should accord.  The extraordinary intervention of God is not excluded in that which our particular essences express because this expression includes everything. Such intervention however goes beyond the power of our natural being or of our distinct expression because these are finite and follow certain subordinate regulations.  An example of a subordinate regulation in the law of nature which demonstrates that God always preserves the same amount of force but not the same quantity of motion; against the Cartesians and many others.  The distinction between force and the quantity of motion is, among other reasons, important as showing that we must have recourse to metaphysical considerations in addition to discussions of extension, if we wish to explain the phenomena of matter. The utility of final causes in physics. A noteworthy disquisition by Socrates in Plato's Phaedo against the philosophers who were too materialistic. If the mechanical laws depended upon geometry alone without metaphysical influences, the phenomena would be very different from what they are. </li> <li>Reconciliation of the two methods of </li> </ol>