4

LETTER TO THOMAS HOBBES

July, 1670

Hobbes's early influence on Leibniz is conspicuous, though Couturat has adequately

refuted Tonnies' effort to trace his logical method back to the English thinker (Cout. L.,
pp. 457-73). Leibniz was much impressed by both the De corpore and the De cive but
sought to supplement them, the former with an Elementa de mente, the latter with a
theological arguments for justice as the will ofthe most powerful, namely God.
Leibniz's youthful and flattering attempt to begin an exchange of letters failed, both
at this time and later when he tried again in Paris. The letter presents his opinions about
Hobbes in exaggerated form but is of interest also for his physical views at a period
between that of the letter to Thomasius (No.3) and the Theory of Abstract Motion of
1671.
[G., VII, 572-74]1

Mainz, July 13/22, 1670

Most esteemed Sir,
To my great delight I recently learned from the letters of a friend visiting in England
that you are still alive and in full health at so great an age. Hence I could not refrain
from writing. If my doing so is inopportune, you can punish it by silence; for me it will
still suffice to have given witness of my feeling. I believe I have read almost all your
works, in part separately and in part in the collected edition, and I freely admit that
I have profited from them as much as from few others in our century. I am not given to
flattery, but everyone who has had the privilege of following your writings on the
theory of the state will acknowledge, as I do, that nothing can be added in such
brevity to its admirable clearness. There is nothing more polished and better adapted to
the public good than your definitions. Among the theorems which you deduce from
them there are many which will remain established. There are some who have abused
them, but I believe that in most cases this occurred because the right principles of
application were ignored. If one were to apply the general principles of motion - such,
for example, as that nothing begins to move unless it is moved by another body, that a
body at rest, however large, can be impelled by the slightest motion of a moving body,
however small, and others - if one were to apply these by an ill-timed leap to sensible
things, he would be derided by the common man unless he had demonstrated in ad-
vance, and to minds prepared for it, that for the most part bodies which seem to be at
rest are insensibly in motion. Similarly, if one were to apply what you have demonstra-
ted about the state and republic to all groups which are commonly called by that name,
and what you attribute to the supreme power to all who claim for themselves the name
of king, prince, monarch, or majesty, and your views about complete freedom in the
state of nature to all cases in which citizens of different states transact certain affairs
among themselves; then, ifl am not mistaken, he too would be very much in error about

For references see p. 107

G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters
© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989
106 LEIBNIZ: PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS AND LETTERS

your opinion. For you acknowledge that there are many communities on earth which
are not one state but a confederation of many and that there are many titular monarchs
to whom others have never transferred their will. Nor will you deny that, assuming a
ruler of the world, there can be no purely natural state of man which would place him
beyond the pale of any community, since God is the common monarch of all; and that
certain men are therefore wrong in ascribing license and impiety to your hypotheses.
As I have said, I have always understood your works in this way, and I acknowledge
that I have received great light from them in carrying out a work on rational juris-
prudence on which I am collaborating with a friend. For I observed the unbelievable
subtlety and soundness of expression with which the Roman jurisconsults gathered
their answers which are preserved in the Pandects - qualities in which your own
writings strongly resemble theirs. I realized that a large part of them were arrived at
almost entirely by demonstration from the law of nature alone and that the rest were
deduced with the same degree of certainty form a few principles which were arbitrary,
it is true, but drawn from the practice of the Republic. When I first set my feet in the
paths of jurisprudence, therefore, I began four years ago to work out a plan for
compiling in the fewest words possible the elements of the law contained in the Roman
Corpus (in the manner of the old Perpetual Edict), so that one could, so to speak,
finally demonstrate from them its universal laws. There are many laws which will
prove refractory to this method, especially in the Imperial Rescripts,because they do
not belong to natural law. However, these are clearly discernible among the rest and
will be counterbalanced by the multitude of the others - especially since I venture to
assert that half of the Roman law is mere natural law. And it is well known that almost
all of Europe uses this law wherever it has not been distinctly invalidated by local
custom.
But I must confess that I sometimes vary these long and tedious concerns with other
more pleasant ones, for I also have the habit of sometimes meditating upon the nature
of things, though this is like being carried into a foreign world. I have been thinking
about the abstract principles of motion, where the foundations which you have laid
seem to me remarkably justified. I agree absolutely with you that one body is not
moved by another unless the latter touches it and is in motion and that, once begun,
every motion continues unless impeded by something. Yet I confess that there are
certain matters about which I have hesitated, especially about this: I have not found
that you account clearly for the cause of consistency, or what is the same thing, of
cohesion in things. For if, as you seem somewhere to suggest, reaction is the sole cause
of cohesion, there will be a reaction even without an impact, since reaction is motion in
opposition to a pushing body, but the impact does not produce the opposition to
itself.2 But reaction is a motion of the parts of a body from its center outward to its
circumference. This motion is either unimpeded or impeded. If unimpeded, the parts of
the body will move outward and so depart from the body to which they belong, which
is contrary to experience. If impeded, the motion of reaction will stop unless it is
revived by external help of a kind which you do not generally find here. I do not men-
tion that it can hardly be explained what cause it is that moves any single body to
strive [eonor] from center to circumference in every sensible point, or how the reaction
of the body struck can alone be the cause of the impetus of the rebound increasing with
the impetus of the striking body - while it would be consistent with reason for a
greater impetus of incidence to diminish the reaction. But perhaps these small doubts of
 MAINZ AND PARIS, 1666-76 107

mind have arisen because I do not sufficiently understand your views. I should think
that the conatus of the parts toward each other, or the motion through which they press
upon each other, would itself suffice to explain the cohesion of bodies. For bodies which
press upon each other are in a conatus to penetrate each other. The conatus is the be-
ginning; the penetration is the union. 3 But when bodies begin to unite, their limits or
surfaces are one. Bodies whose surfaces are one, or ra 8uxara 8V\ are according to
Aristotle's definition not only contiguous but continuous, and truly one body, movable
in one motion. You will recognize that, if there is any truth in these thoughts, they will
change many things in the theory of motion. It remains for me to show that bodies
which press upon each other are in a conatus to penetrate. To press is to strive into the
place hitherto occupied by another body. Conatus is the beginning of motion, and
therefore the beginning of existence in the place into which the body is striving. To
exist in a place in which something else exists is to have penetrated it. Therefore
pressure is the conatus of penetration. But there can hardly by anyone more accurate in
examining demonstrations than are you, distinguished Sir, and you will judge these
matters more exactly. 5 •••
For the rest, I wish that we might hope for a kind of collection of your thoughts
from the publication of your works up to the present time, especially since I have no
doubt that you have reasoned out the principles involved in so many of the new
experiments which you and doubtless many other men of genius have produced in
recent years - principles which it would be in the interest of mankind not to lose.
I wish also that you had expressed yourself more distinctly about the nature of
mind. For though you have rightly defined sensation as a permanent reaction, as I
said a little earlier, there is no truly permanent reaction in the nature of mere corporeal
things. It only appears so to the senses but is in truth discontinuous and is always
stimulated by a new external cause. So I fear that when everything is considered, we
must say that in beasts there is no true sensation, but only an apparent one, any more
than there is pain in boiling water; and that true sensation such as we experience in
ourselves cannot be explained by the motion of bodies alone - especially since you
never demonstrate, so far as I know, the proposition which you use so often, to the
effect that every mover is a body. 6
But I am burdening you too long with my trifles! I shall stop now, since my witness
has been given. And I shall always profess, both among friends and, God willing, also
publicly (since I am myself a writer), that I know no one who has philosophized more
exactly, clearly, and elegantly than you, not even excepting that man of divine genius,
Descartes himself. I wish that you, my friend, who of all mortals could best do it, had
taken into consideration what Descartes attempted rather than accomplished - that
you had ministered to the happiness of mankind by confirming the hope of immor-
tality. May God preserve you still a very long time to achieve this task.

REFERENCES

1 This is the text copied by F. T6nnies from the original letter in the British Museum. The text
in G., I, 82-85, is inaccurate.
2 Hobbes's discussion of the reaction of bodies in impact is in the De corpore, Book III, chap.
XV, Sec. 2, thought he does not, as Leibniz implies, explain cohesion by means of it.
a We have retained the original term conatus, though Hobbes himself rendered it 'endeavor'.
108 LEIBNIZ: PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS AND LETTERS

Like Hobbes, Leibniz at first identifies it with minimal motion; only much later, after his
own distinction between force and motion, does it become 'dead force'.
4 Seep. 103, note 9.
5 A short paragraph on the origin of springs is omitted.
6 The denial of sensation to the lower animals suggests a Cartesian influence; Leibniz soon
drops it, however, for the view expressed in 1671 that there is a striving in all being but that its
essential combination with memory or reflection becomes the distinguishing feature of mind as
against matter (cf. No.7, I, Sec. 17, and No. 10).