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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
METAPHYSICS
I. Concerning the divine perfection and that God does everything in the most desirable way.
II. Against those who hold that there is in the works of God no goodness, or that the principles of goodness and beauty are arbitrary.
III. Against those who think that God might have made things better than he has.
IV. That love for God demands on our part complete satisfaction with and acquiescence in that which he has done.
V. In what the principles of the divine perfection consist, and that the simplicity of the means counterbalances the richness of the effects.
VI. That God does nothing which is not orderly, and that it is not even possible to conceive of events which are not regular.
VII. That miracles conform to the regular order although they go against the subordinate regulations; concerning that which God desires or permits and concerning general and particular intentions.
VIII. In order to distinguish between the activities of God and the activities of created things we must explain the conception of an individual substance.
IX. 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 attendent circumstances and the whole sequence of exterior events.
X. 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.
XI. That the opinions of the theologians and of the so-called scholastic philosophers are not to be wholly despised.
XII. That the conception of the extension of a body is in a way imaginary and does not constitute the substance of the body.
XIII. 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.
XIV. 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 happens to one corresponds to what happens to all the others, without, however, their acting upon one another directly.
XV. The action of one finite substance upon another consists only in the increase in the degrees 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 shall act in accord.
XVI. The extraordinary intervention of God is not excluded in that which our particular essences express, because their 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.
XVII. 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.
XVIII. 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.
XIX. The utility of final causes in Physics.
XX. A noteworthy disquisition in Plato’s Phaedo against the philosophers who were too materialistic.
XXI. If the mechanical laws depended upon Geometry alone without metaphysical influences, the phenomena would be very different from what they are.
XXII. Reconciliation of the two methods of explanation, the one using final causes, and the other efficient causes, thus satisfying both those who explain nature mechanically and those who have recourse to incorporeal natures.
XXIII. Returning to immaterial substances we explain how God acts upon the understanding of spirits and ask whether one always keeps the idea of what he thinks about.
XXIV. What clear and obscure, distinct and confused, adequate and inadequate, intuitive and assumed knowledge is, and the definition of nominal, real, causal and essential.
XXV. In what cases knowledge is added to mere contemplation of the idea.
XXVI. Ideas are all stored up within us. Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence.
XXVII. In what respect our souls can be compared to blank tablets and how conceptions are derived from the senses.
XXVIII. The only immediate object of our perceptions which exists outside of us is God, and in him alone is our light.
XXIX. Yet we think directly by means of our own ideas and not through God’s.
XXX. How God inclines our souls without necessitating them; that there are no grounds for complaint; that we must not ask why Judas sinned because this free act is contained in his concept, the only question being why Judas the sinner is admitted to existence, preferably to other possible persons; concerning the original imperfection, or limitation before the fall and concerning the different degrees of grace.
XXXI. Concerning the motives of election; concerning faith foreseen and the absolute decree and that it all reduces to the question why God has chosen and resolved to admit to existence just such a possible person, whose concept includes just such a sequence of free acts and of free gifts of grace. This at once puts an end to all difficulties.
XXXII. Usefulness of these principles in matters of piety and of religion.
XXXIII. Explanation of the relation between the soul and the body, a matter which has been regarded as inexplicable or else as miraculous; concerning the origin of confused perceptions.
XXXIV. Concerning the difference between spirits and other substances, souls or substantial forms; that the immortality which men desire includes memory.
XXXV. The excellence of spirits; that God considers them preferable to other creatures; that the spirits express God rather than the world, while other simple substances express the world rather than God.
XXXVI. God is the monarch of the most perfect republic composed of all the spirits, and the happiness of this city of God is his principal purpose.
XXXVII. Jesus Christ has revealed to men the mystery and the admirable laws of the kingdom of heaven, and the greatness of the supreme happiness which God has prepared for those who love him.
THE MONADOLOGY
A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS
A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF INTEREST
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