Making the Case for God in terms of his Justicewhich is Reconciled with the rest of his Perfections
and with all his Actions
G. W. Leibniz

Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved[Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as
though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations,

are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought.—This Latin work was meant as a more
rigorous version of the over-all argument of the vastly longer but more informal Theodicy, written in French.
First launched: March 2005

Last amended: June 2006******

1. Constructing a defence in the case of God is doing something not only for his glory but also for our advantage, in that it may
move us to •honour his greatness, i.e. his power and wisdom, as well as to •love his goodness and the justice and holiness thatstem from it, and to •imitate these as best we can. This defence will have two parts—a preparatory one and then the principal
one. The first part studies the •greatness and the •goodness of God separately. The second part concerns these two perfections
taken together, including the providence that God extends to all created things and the control that he exercises over creatures
endowed with intelligence, particularly in all matters concerning piety and salvation. ·The first part will occupy sections 2–39,
the second part sections 40–144·.

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Greatness and goodness separately

God’s greatness and goodness considered separately
2. Stiff-necked theologians attended to God’s •greatness at
the expense of his •goodness, while more relaxed ones havedone the opposite. True orthodoxy consists in paying equal
respect to both these perfections. Neglecting God’s greatness
amounts to likening him to a human being; neglecting his
goodness amounts to likening him to a despot.

8. The possibility of things—even the ones that have no
actual existence—has a reality based on God’s existence. For
if God didn’t exist nothing would be possible. The ideas in
his intellect contain everything that is possible, and havedone so from eternity.
9. Actual things depend on God for their •existence as well
as for their •actions, and depend not only on his intellect but
also on his will. Their existence depends on God because
as well as having been freely created by him they are kept
in existence by him. There is a sound doctrine according towhich this divine keeping-in-existence is a continual creation,comparable to the rays continually produced by the sun.
The persistence of created things •doesn’t come from God’s
essence, ·but rather from his will·, and it •isn’t necessary,·because the relevant acts of God’s will are contingent·. [In

3. The greatness of God has to be resolutely defended,particularly against the Socinians and some semi-Socinians[whom Leibniz names. The Socinians denied the doctrine of the Trinity,
the divinity of Jesus, God’s foreknowledge of future contingent truths,etc.] This greatness can be brought under two main headings,

God’s •omnipotence and his •omniscience.
4. God’s omnipotence implies that he does not depend onanything else, and also that everything else depends on him.
5. God is independent ·of everything else in two different
ways·: in his •existence and also in his •actions. He is
independent in his existence in that he is a necessary andeternal being, and is what is called an Ens a se—·Latin for‘a being to himself’, meaning something that exists without
in any way depending on anything else. Because he exists
necessarily, nothing was needed to cause him to come into
existence; which is why he doesn’t depend on anything forhis existence·. A consequence of this is that he is immense.

sections 10–12, 26–7, and in about half the sections from 61 to 76,
Leibniz will write about God’s ‘concurring in’ things that happen (Latin
concurre). Understood literally, this is his going along with the events.
But as used by Leibniz and his contemporaries the Latin word has awider meaning than that: they would say that God ‘concurs in’ events
that he actively causes as well as ones that he goes along with, i.e. allows
to happen, i.e. could have prevented but didn’t.]

10. Things depend on God in their actions, because heconcurs in their actions to the extent that these actions havesome something in the nature of a perfection about them;and any such perfection must have flowed from God.

6. In his actions he is independent both •naturally and•morally. He is naturally independent in that he is absolutely
free, and isn’t made to act by anything but himself. He is
morally independent since he. . . .has no superior.

11. God’s concurrence is immediate in this sense: if God
causes x which causes y, this involves him in concurringin y’s production just as much, and just as directly, as heconcurs in the production of x.

7. Everything depends on God—not just every •actual thing
but also everything that is •possible, i.e. that doesn’t imply
contradiction.
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Greatness and goodness separately·one and only actual · world, viewing it merely as possible;
what knowledge by vision adds to that is just something
God knows about himself, namely his decree to bring thisworld into actual existence. ·Because the decree is absolutely
specific, ordaining the existence not just of some world or ofa world that is of this or that general kind but of just precisely
THIS world, in all its detail ·, knowledge of this decree is allthat is needed as a basis for divine foreknowledge.

12. God’s concurrence is also specific in this sense: it is directed not merely to the thing’s existing and to its acting thus
and so, but also to its having such-and-such specific statesand qualities—all its states and qualities insofar as they havesomething perfect about them. Any such perfection—·like
the perfection in the thing’s actions·—always flows from
God, the father of light and giver of everything good. (What
I have said about the immediacy and specificity of God’s
concurrence applies ·not only to his miracles, but· even tohis ordinary, non-miraculous concurrence.)

17. Knowledge by simple intelligence, taken in the way I
have expounded it, includes what is commonly called middle
knowledge.

13. Having dealt with God’s power, I turn now to his
wisdom—which is called ‘omniscience’ because it is so vast.
This wisdom is the most perfect possible (just as is God’somnipotence), and so it holds within itself every idea andevery truth—that is, everything (simple or complex) thatcan be an object of the understanding. It includes equally
everything possible as well as everything actual.

[This phrase was coined by Luis de Molina to name knowledge of counterfactual conditional truths. It is included in knowledge by simple intelligence, as defined in section 14, because knowledge of counterfactual
truths is one kind of knowledge about connections between possibilities.
Leibniz is here taking ‘middle knowledge’ in its common meaning to be
restricted to conditionals about possible futures—what would happen if
at some later time such-and-such were to be the case. He now goes

14. ·God’s· knowledge of the possibles constitutes what
is called knowledge by simple intelligence. Its objects are
the things as well as their relationships, necessary andcontingent.

on to propose a broader definition for ‘middle knowledge’ that removes
that restriction; and he proposes a narrower definition of ‘knowledge bysimple intelligence’ so that it no longer includes simple knowledge.]

However, there is a different way of drawing the lines between
kinds of knowledge. We could restrict knowledge by simple
intelligence to knowledge of what truths are possible andwhat are necessary, ·leaving out knowledge of contingent
relations between possibilities·. Then we could take ‘middle knowledge’ in a broader sense in which it covers not
only knowledge of conditional future events but generally
knowledge of all contingent possibles—·including truths tothe effect that if such-and-such had been the case in thepast then so-and-so would also have been the case·. In thisrevised classification, ·‘knowledge by vision’ ·is untouched,and still deals with contingent truths about what is actual.
Now we have middle knowledge ·genuinely in the middle ·,15. Contingent possibles can be looked at ·in either of two
ways·: either •separately or •as correlated in an infinity ofcomplete possible worlds. Each possible world is perfectly
known to God, though only one of them has been brought
into existence. There’s no question of there being more than
one actual world, because our single universe includes all
the created things there ever were or are or will be, anywhere;
and that is what I here call ‘one world’.
16. ·God’s· knowledge of actual things—i.e. of the world thathas been brought into existence and of all its past, present,
and future states—is called knowledge by vision. Knowledge
by simple intelligence can also be focussed on this same3

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sharing •one feature with knowledge by simple intelligence(namely, dealing only with truths about possibilities), and •adifferent feature with knowledge by vision (namely, dealing
only with contingent truths).

Greatness and goodness separately

to go on falling or rather to stay where you are. But we see in the next
section that his primary topic is God’s freedom, to which such examples
are irrelevant.]

21. Something is •metaphysically necessary if its opposite
is ·absolutely· impossible, i.e. implies a contradiction. If
it is •morally necessary, its opposite is ·not contradictory
but merely· unfitting. God’s freedom rules out the former ofthese kinds of necessity, but not the latter. For although
God can’t fall into error in choosing, and therefore always
chooses what is most fitting, this ·inability to make worse
choices· is not an obstacle to his freedom; indeed, it serves
only to make his freedom even more perfect. If there were
only one possibility for his will to aim at—i.e. if only one total
state of affairs were possible—that would be incompatible
with his freedom; for then there would nothing for him tochoose, and no basis for praising him for the wisdom andgoodness of his actions.

[Just to make sure this proposed new classification is clear, think about
these propositions (supposing them all to be true):
1. It is impossible for something to be smaller than a part ofitself.
2. If the oceans had been warmer, there would have been morerain.
3. If the sun were to go cold tomorrow, all life on earth wouldcease within a month.
4. The earth will become steadily warmer through the next two
decades.
What Leibniz sees himself as doing is moving 2 out of knowledge bysimple intelligence and into middle knowledge along with 3; while 4
remains in knowledge by vision, as before.]

18. Having considered God’s greatness; I now turn to his
goodness. Just as •wisdom (= knowledge of truth) is aperfection of the •understanding, so •goodness (= trying to
do what is good) is a perfection of the •will. Indeed all will,·even that of creatures·, aims at the good, or anyway of theapparent good; but ·we need’t add ‘or apparent’ in the caseof God, because· his will has no object that isn’t ·actually·both good and true.

22. Some ·theologians· have maintained that only theactual—only what God has chosen—is possible. They are
wrong, or at least they have expressed themselves clumsily.
Diodorus the Stoic made this mistake, according to Cicero,and Christians who have made it include Abelard, Wycliff,and Hobbes. I shall deal with freedom more fully later on,
when human freedom will have to be defended. [Human

19. So I shall be looking at both the will and its object—i.e.
what it takes account of and is moved by —namely good andevil, which give ·to the will· reasons for willing and rejecting
respectively. As to the will, I shall consider both the natureof will and the different kinds of will.

freedom will come up in sections 97–8 and 101–6.]

23. That was about the nature of ·God’s· will. Now I turn tothe varieties of it. For my present purpose two distinctions
are the most important: the distinction of •antecedent willfrom •consequent will, and the distinction of •productive willfrom •permissive will.

20. The nature of the will requires freedom, which consistsin the voluntary action’s being spontaneous and deliberate.
So freedom rules out the kind of necessity that suppresses•deliberation. [One might think that this illustrates Leibniz’s point:

24. The former distinguishes•acts of will that are antecedent or prior from •thosethat are consequent or final;

when you are falling from a great height, you can’t •try to decide whether

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Greatness and goodness separately

which is the same as distinguishing•will that inclines from •will that decrees ·or lays down

25. ·God’s· antecedent will is entirely serious ·or weighty·,
and pure ·or unmixed with qualifications or afterthoughts·.
It shouldn’t be confused with mere velleity (as expressed in‘I would do x if I could, and I wish I could’), which doesn’t
exist in God; nor should it be confused with conditional will,
which is not in question here. God’s antecedent will tends
toward bringing about all good and repelling all evil, ·thetendency being strong· in proportion to how good or evil thegood and evil are. God himself confirmed how serious—·howunhesitant and unmixed·—this will is when he so firmly
asserted that he did not want the death of the sinner, wanted
all men to be saved, and was opposed to sin, ·all of whichwere examples of antecedent will·.

the law·.
This is tantamount to distinguishing•will that is incomplete from •will that is complete orabsolute.

The antecedent will is directed toward some particular goodconsidered in terms of how good it is in itself, ·but without
reference to how it would fit in with the rest of what would
be the case·; so that this is only a will secundum quid [Latin,
meaning ‘a will according to something’]. The consequent will on
the other hand takes account of the whole ·world-wide stateof affairs· and contains a final decision; so it is absoluteand issues in a decree ·such as ‘Let there be light’·. Since it
is God’s will that is in question here, the decree always
obtains its full effect. –Some authors, however, have a
different understanding of this distinction (especially of the‘antecedent’ side of it). They hold that the ‘antecedent’ will ofGod (e.g. that all men be saved) comes before men’s actions
are taken into account, and that the ‘consequent’ will (e.g.
that some men be damned) comes after the facts about
men’s actions are taken into account. But that distinction·doesn’t have any special bearing on God’s will concerningsalvation, because it· applies also to other acts of God’s will:certain acts of the divine will involve the concept of actionsof creatures, and actions of creatures couldn’t occur withoutcertain acts of the divine will. That is why St. Thomas, Duns
Scotus, and others understand this distinction in the way I
do ·rather than in terms of the difference between ‘before theact’ and ‘after the act’·. For the rest, if you reject my way ofdrawing the line, I won’t quarrel with you about words; andyou may if you like substitute the terms ‘prior’ and ‘final’ for‘antecedent’ and ‘consequent’ respectively.

26. A consequent act of will arises from all antecedent
acts of will taken together. When they can’t all be carriedout together, the maximum effect that can be obtained bywisdom and power will be obtained. This ·consequent act of·will is also commonly called a ‘decree’.
27. It is clear from this that even the antecedent acts of will
are not altogether in vain; they have their own efficacy. They
do produce effects; but such an act of will doesn’t always
produce the full effect it aims at, because it is restricted by
the influence of other antecedent acts of will. However, thedecisive ·or consequent· act of will, which results from all
the inclining ·or antecedent· ones, always produces its full
effect—provided that the required power isn’t lacking, whichof course in God’s case it never is. This maxim :He who has the power and the will does what he wills
holds only for this decisive ·or consequent· act of will. (·Its
not holding for antecedent acts of will is obvious. The reason
why it does hold for consequent acts of will is that· thispower is supposed to imply also the knowledge required for5Making the case for God

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action, so that nothing intrinsic or extrinsic is lacking foraction.) The fact that not all God’s acts of will produce theirfull effects doesn’t detract from the felicity and perfection of
his will; for he wills what is good only according to how good
it is, and the better the result obtained the more satisfied
his will is.

Greatness and goodness separately[this refers to being guilty, not feeling guilty]. In this sense physicalevil is usually an effect of moral evil, though not always inthe same subjects. [That is, my moral evil may cause you to suffer aphysical evil.] This may seem to be unfair, but eventually thebalance will swing the other way so that even the innocents
won’t wish not to have suffered. See section 55 below.

28. The second distinction ·that I introduced in section 23·
divides the will into •productive and •permissive. The former
is aimed at the actions of the agent himself, the latter atactions by others. Sometimes it is all right to permit (thatis, not prevent) actions which it is not all right to commit, as
for instance acts of sin (more about this soon). The proper
object of permissive will is not •the permitted action but•the permission itself—·when I permit you to do x, what I
immediately/directly/properly will is not •your doing x but•my permitting you to do x·.

33. If something is good in itself then God wills it, at least
antecedently [see sections 24–5]. He wills the perfection of allthings, quite universally, and more specifically he wills the
felicity and virtue of all thinking substances; and (I repeat)
he wills each good according to its degree of goodness.
34. God’s antecedent will doesn’t have evils in its view
except in his willing that evils be suppressed. But they
do in an indirect way come into his consequent will. For
sometimes greater goods couldn’t be obtained if certain
evils were eliminated, and in such a case removing the evil
wouldn’t produce the effect ·aimed at in God’s consequent
will·. Thus, though suppressing the evil in question is athome in the antecedent will, it doesn’t push its way into theconsequent will. That is why Thomas Aquinas was right insaying, following St. Augustine, that God permits certain
evils to occur lest many goods be prevented.

29. So far I have dealt with the will; now I shall study thereasons for willing, namely good and evil. Each of these isof three kinds: metaphysical, physical, and moral. [As Leibniz
uses it here, ‘physical’ (Latin physicus) means something like ‘pertaining
to what exists and what happens in the real world’—it tends to mean
about the same as ‘contingent’. Its meaning is emphatically not confinedto the realm of matter.]

35. Sometimes •metaphysical and •physical evils (such as•imperfections in things and the •evils of punishment inpersons) become subsidiary goods in their role as means togreater goods—·that is, to things that are good enough tomore than outweigh the evils·.

30. Metaphysical good or evil consists in the perfection
or imperfection of all created things, including those notendowed with intelligence. Christ said that the heavenly
father cares for the lilies of the field and for the sparrows;
and Jonah said that God watches over the lower animals.

36. Moral evil or the evil of guilt, however, never functions
as a legitimate means. For (as the apostle says) evil ought
not to be done so that good may ensue [Romans 3:8]. But
sometimes moral evil functions as an indispensable andconcomitant condition of something good—what they calla condition sine qua non [= ‘a condition without which not’], in

31. Physical good or evil is understood as applying especiallyto what is helpful or hurtful to thinking substances. The evilof punishment falls into this category.
32. Moral good or evil is attributed to the virtuous or vicious
actions of thinking substances, for example the evil of guilt
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this case a condition without which the desired good could
not be obtained. . . . What lets evil into the world is not the
principle of •absolute necessity but rather the principle of•fitness. There must, indeed, be a reason for God to permit
an evil rather than not to permit it; but no reason except thegood can determine the divine will.
37. A further point: the evil of guilt is never the object ofGod’s •productive will, but only sometimes of his •permissive
will, for he himself never commits a sin though in some cases
he permits a sin to be committed.
38. As regards permitting sin, there is a general rule that
holds for God and man, namely: nobody ought to permit
someone else to sin unless by stopping him he would himself

Greatness and goodness together

be doing something evil. In a nutshell: it is your duty toprevent someone else from sinning unless it is your duty not
to. I’ll say more about this in section 66.
39. Thus, what God wills as his ultimate goal includes thebest; but any good—·one that isn’t part of the best·—maybe a subordinate goal; and he may often aim at things thatare neither good nor bad, such as the evil of punishment,
as means ·to some goal that he has·. But the evil of guilt
is ·something God aims at as· an end only when it is anecessary condition for something that for other reasons
ought to exist or happen. In this sense, as Christ has said,‘It is impossible but that offences will come’ [Matthew 18:7; Luke
17:1].

God’s greatness and goodness considered together
40. Up to here I have dealt with the greatness and the goodness ·of God· •separately, presenting them in preparation for·the main part of· this treatise. Now I come to what concerns
those two perfections •taken together. The territory thatthey share involves everything that comes from both ·God’s·
goodness and ·his· greatness (that is, ·his· wisdom andpower); ·they work together jointly· because greatness makes
it possible for goodness to attain its ·intended· effect. ·This
joint work falls into two categories, corresponding to the two
ranges across which God’s goodness extends. His· goodness
is directed either (1) generally to all created things or (2)specifically to thinking things. When combined with ·his·
greatness, ·God’s· goodness brings about (1) providence inthe creation and government of the universe, and (2) justicein ruling, specifically, the substances that are endowed withreason.
41. God’s wisdom (·which is an aspect of his power·) directs
his goodness across the totality of things he has created. It
follows that divine providence shows itself in the total seriesof ·things and events that constitute· the universe, and thatfrom out of the infinity of possible series God has selected
the best—so that that best universe is the one that actuallyexists. All things in the universe are in mutual harmony,and someone who is truly wise will therefore never form a
judgment about it without taking them all into consideration
and applying his judgment to the universe as a whole. God’s
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Greatness and goodness together

him •back then to decide what he would do and what hewould permit.

volitions regarding the parts taken separately can belong toantecedent will; but his volition with regard to the wholemust be understood as a decree, ·i.e. as an exercise ofconsequent will·.

45. I repeat: although events are settled by divine foreknowledge and providence, they are not settled in the manner of•something that is absolutely necessary. In the case of •thelatter, we can say that it will be so, no matter what we do;but this doesn’t hold for events that are settled only by theircauses, ·which may include prayers and hard work·. To saythat ·because the future is settled· prayers and hard work
are useless is to commit what the ancients called ‘the lazy
man’s fallacy’. See also sections 106–7 below.

42. Strictly speaking there was no need for a succession of
divine decrees; we can say that there was just one decree of
God—the decree that this series of items should exist—madeafter all the elements of the series had been considered andcompared with the items in other ·possible· series.
43. And that is why God’s decree can’t be changed—because
all the reasons that might count against to it have alreadybeen considered. But the only necessity that arises out of
this is the necessity of the consequence (also called hypothetical necessity)—·meaning that it follows necessarily fromsomething true, but not that it is in itself necessary·. This is
the kind of necessity that arises from the God’s knowing andordaining things in advance. It isn’t absolute necessity, i.e.
the necessity of the consequent—·something that doesn’t
merely follow necessarily but is itself necessary·. That is
because some other series of things ·and events· was equallypossible—possible in its parts and possible as a whole. Bychoosing the contingent series that he did, God didn’t change
its status as contingent.

46. Thus the infinite wisdom of the almighty, allied withhis boundless goodness, has brought it about that nothing
better could have been created, all things considered, thanwhat God has created. As a consequence all things are incomplete harmony and collaborate in the most beautiful way:•formal causes or souls collaborating with •materialcauses or bodies, •efficient or natural causes collaborating with •final or moral causes, and the realm ofgrace collaborating with the realm of nature.
[An example to illustrate those Aristotelian technical terms: the •formal
cause of a coin is its design or plan, its •material cause is the metal it
is made of, its •efficient cause is the action of the die that stamps it out,
and its •final cause is commerce, the purpose for which it was made.]

44. Despite the certainty of the events in this universe, it
is not a waste of time for us to pray and work to obtain the
future goods that we desire. For when God looked at thisactual series in his mind, before deciding to create it, what hesaw also contained the •prayers that the series would include
if it were chosen to become actual, just as it contained all theother •causes of all the effects that the series would include.
So these prayers and other causes have contributed to the
choice of this series and of the events figuring in it. And thereasons that •now move God to do this or permit that moved

47. So whenever some detail in God’s work appears open
to criticism, the right thing to think is that •we don’t know
enough about it to make a judgment, and that •someone
who was wise enough would judge that God could not havemade a better choice.
48. From this it also follows that there is no greater
happiness than to serve such a good master, and that weshould therefore love God above everything else and trust
him without reservation.
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49. The strongest reason for the choice of the best series of
events (namely, this world of ours) was Christ, God become
man [Leibniz gives that in Greek], who was the most perfect of
creatures and had to be contained in that series as a partof the created universe—indeed as the head of it. That is
why it had to be the noblest of all possible series. •To him all
power in heaven and on earth has been given, •in him all thepeoples were to be blessed, and •through him every creature
will be freed from slavery of corruption to enjoy the freedom
and glory of the children of God.

Greatness and goodness together

our blessings.
53. Others are particularly displeased that physical goodand evil are not distributed in proportion to moral good andevil—i.e. that frequently good people are miserable while badones prosper.
54. To these complaints there are two answers. The firstwas given by the apostle ·Paul·: The afflictions of this life are
not worthy of ·comparison with· the future glory that will be
revealed to us [2 Corinthians 4:17]. The second was suggested
by Christ himself in an elegant comparison: If the grain
falling to the soil didn’t die, it wouldn’t bear fruit [John 12:24].

50. So far I have dealt with providence, which is ·God’s
goodness as expressed in a· •general ·way·. Now we come tohis goodness •specifically towards thinking creatures. God’s
goodness towards thinking creatures, combined with his
wisdom, constitutes justice, the highest degree of which isholiness. Justice, in the broad sense of the word, covers not
only •strict law but also •fairness and therefore also laudable
mercy. [See section 40 above for (1) this distinction between the general

55. Thus not only will our afflictions be abundantly compensated for, but they will serve to increase our happiness.
These evils are not only profitable, but also indispensable.
See section 32.
56. A still greater difficulty arises with regard to the life tocome. For there too (it is objected) evil by far prevails overgood, since few are elected ·for salvation·. Well, Origen flatly
denied eternal damnation. Some of the ancient authors—
Prudentius among them—thought that only a few would bedamned for eternity. Others have thought that eventually all
Christians would be saved, and Jerome seems sometimes tohave leaned this way.

and the specific ranges of God’s goodness, and (2) the thesis that God’s
justice is a combination of his goodness towards thinking creatures andhis greatness (one component of which is his wisdom).]

51. Justice taken in a general sense can be divided into
•justice in a more special sense and •holiness. Justice inthe special sense has to do with •physical good and evil asapplied to thinking beings; holiness has to do with •moral

57. But these paradoxical views should be rejected, and we
don’t need any of them to resolve the difficulty. The true
answer is that the whole sweep of the celestial realm mustnot be evaluated according to our knowledge. For the divine
vision can give to the blessed such a glory that the sufferingsof all the damned can’t be compared to such a good. Furthermore, scripture acknowledges an incredible multitudeof blessed angels. Also, nature itself shows us throughnew inventions—·the telescope and the microscope·—a great
variety of created things, so that it is easier for us than

good and evil.
52. Physical good and evil occur both in this life and in
the life to come. There is much complaint that in this life
human nature is exposed to many evils. Those who feel
this way overlook the fact that a large part of these evils is
the effect of human guilt. Indeed they are ungrateful, notsufficiently recognizing the divine goods of which we are thebeneficiaries, and focussing more on our sufferings than on
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it was for St. Augustine and other ancients to defend the
predominance of good over evil.

Greatness and goodness together

And yet scattered across the middle of the kingdom of God
almighty there are rogues triumphant! Serious as it is, thisdifficulty can be overcome with the help of the divine light,
even in this life, so that the pious who love God can besatisfied about it as much as need be.

58. Our earth is merely a satellite of one sun; ·for obvious
reasons· there are as many suns as there are fixed stars;
and for all we know there is an immense space beyond all
the fixed stars. Well, then, nothing prevents those suns andparticularly the region beyond all suns from being inhabitedby blessed creatures. The planets themselves may be or
become happy paradises. In the father’s house are many
mansions, as Christ himself has rightly said of the heavenof the blessed [John 14:2]. Some theologians call that regionthe ‘Empyreum’ and place it beyond the stars (i.e. the suns),
but we can’t say anything for sure about the region of theblessed. Still, we can think it likely that even in the visible
world there are many habitations for rational creatures, withno limits to how happy they may be.

61. The objection, then, alleges that God concurs •toomuch in sin and man •not enough: God concurs too much,
both physically and morally, in moral evil, through productively and permissively willing sins. [(1) The distinction between•productive and •permissive will is introduced in section 28 above. It
now appears that it is equated with the distinction between •physicaland •moral concurrence in an outcome. On this, see section 68 below.
(2) By the puzzling phrase ‘and man not enough’ Leibniz means that notenough of the responsibility for sin is laid at man’s door (because toomuch of it is laid at God’s). See section 74 below.]

62. Those who take this view observe that moral concurrence
would occur even if God didn’t actively •contribute to sin,
because he •permits it—i.e. could prevent it and doesn’t.

59. Thus the argument whose premise concerns how manyof the damned there are is based on nothing but our ignorance, and, as I indicated earlier, can be destroyed by asingle answer: if everything was made clear to us, we would
see that a better world than the one God has made couldn’t
have been chosen. As to the punishment of the damned, it
continues because the wickedness of the damned continues.
In his excellent book On the State of the Damned the eminent
theologian Johann Fechtius has thoroughly refuted those
who deny that sins earn punishment in the after-life, as
though the justice essential to God could ever cease!
60. The most serious difficulties, however, are those thatconcern God’s holiness—the one of his perfections that has
to do with the moral good and evil of others. [The term ‘holiness’
is introduced and explained in section 50 above.] This perfection
makes him love virtue and hate vice in others, and keepthem as far as possible from the stain and contagion of sin.

63. But, they add, God in fact doesn’t merely •permit (ornot prevent) the sinners, but ·positively· •helps them in acertain manner—morally and physically—by providing forces
and occasions for them. Hence the passages in the sacredscriptures that say that God hardens ·the hearts of· theevildoers and incites them.
64. That is why certain authors even go so far as to conclude
that God is morally or physically (or both) an accomplice insin, even an author of sin. By this means they destroy God’s
holiness as well as his justice and goodness.
65. Others prefer to tear down his omniscience and omnipotence or, in one word, his greatness [see section 3 above].
According to them, God either doesn’t foresee the evil, or
doesn’t care about it, or can’t hold back its flood. This was
the opinion of the Epicureans and of the Manichaeans. Some10

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sin, which ·if it were right· would make the evil of guilt besomething aimed at by God’s •productive will. [For the equation

thing similar is taught, less crudely, by the Socinians, whorightly want to protect the divine •holiness from pollution,
but wrongly abandon God’s •other perfections.

of •physical concurrence in x with •productively making x happen rather
than merely permissively allowing x to happen, see sections 61–2 above.]

66. To respond first to the point about moral concurrence
through permission, I need only to return to something that
I launched before, namely that permitting sin is legitimate
when it turns out to be obligatory; that is, it is morally
possible when it is morally necessary. This is the casewhenever you can’t prevent someone else’s sin except bycommitting an offence yourself. . . . A soldier on guard duty,
for instance, particularly in a time of danger, ought not todesert his post in order to prevent two friends from fighting
the duel for which they are preparing. See also section 36.
When I speak something as being obligatory on God, I don’tmean ‘obligatory’ in its human sense; I mean it in the sense
appropriate to God, namely as meaning that if he didn’t do
the thing in question he would be derogating his perfections.

But here again God himself, enlightening the mind, is his
own defender vis-à-vis pious souls who eagerly search fortruth. So I shall explain how God concurs in the matter ofsin (i.e. in the part of evil that is good) but does not concur in
its form. [Leibniz seems to mean that God concurs in some happeningthat is in fact a sin, but doesn’t concur in it as a sin or because it issinful.]69. So here is the right reply: In creatures every perfection—
every purely positive reality—is due to God. This holds also
for their good and evil actions; but an imperfection in an
act consists in a privation—·a lack, the agent’s not having
something·—and it comes from the basic limitedness that
all created things have. Every created thing is ‘limited’ inthe sense that its greatness, power, knowledge, and all its
other perfections are limited or restricted. ·I need to explain
carefully what the status is of this limitedness of createdthings·.
This limitedness is essential to created things. ·It’s
not that they are limited because they were created.
On the contrary·, their limitedness was already inherent in their essence considered as mere possibilities,
i.e. considered as belonging to the region of eternal
truth, the domain of the ideas that present themselvesto the divine intellect. Indeed, a being that was in noway limited wouldn’t be a created thing; it would beGod.
Thus the foundation of evil is necessary, but its coming into
existence is contingent. In other words, it is necessary thatevil be possible, but contingent that it be actual. What is
not contingent is its passing from potentiality to actuality by[The word ‘derogate’, which seems unavoidable as a translation for theLatin derogo, means ‘take something away from’ or ‘impair the force of’or ‘disparage’ or, almost, ‘insult’.]

67. Next point: if God hadn’t selected for creation thebest series of events (in which sin does occur), he would
have admitted something worse than all creaturely sin;for he would have derogated his own perfections and (inconsequence of that) all other perfections as well. For divine
perfection can never fail to select the most perfect, sincechoosing what is •less good has the nature of choosing some•evil. If God lacked power or erred in his thinking or failed
in his will, that would be the end of God, and therefore ofeverything.
68. Some people—especially and objectionably the Epicureans and Manichaeans—have held that God’s •physicalconcurrence in sin makes him the cause and the author of11

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virtue of the harmony of all things because of its fitness to bepart of the best series of things and events. [Leibniz presumably

Greatness and goodness together

inertia to the imperfect state of a created thing.
74. I have answered those who believe that God concurs
too much in evil; now I shall satisfy those who say that man
doesn’t concur enough, meaning that not enough of the guilt
for sin falls on him (so that, once again, it is made to fall on
God). The opposition try to prove this on the basis of •theweakness of human nature combined with •the failure of
divine grace to give our nature the help it needs. Let us thenlook at the nature of man—taking in both •its spoiled state(·spoiled by sin·) and •the vestiges of God’s likeness thatare left over from its state of innocence. [The phrase ‘spoiledmeans: If some evil act x actually occurs, then it was necessary that it
was part of the best series; and the truth about which series is the bestis also necessary. This still allows that the existence of x is contingent,because it wasn’t absolutely necessary that God chose to actualize thebest series.]

70. What I have said about the privative [= ‘negative’] natureof evil—following St. Augustine, St. Thomas, ·our contemporary· Lubinus, and many other ancient and modern
writers—is often considered futile or anyway very obscure.
So I shall spell it out in terms of the very nature of things,
so as to make it look as plain and solid as possible. I’ll
do this through an analogy with something sensible andmaterial that also consists in a privation. I am talking aboutsomething that the noted scientist Kepler has called the‘natural inertia’ of bodies.

state’ translates the Latin corruptio, which is sometimes translated by‘corruption’, but does not have to be.]75. I shall consider what caused man to be spoiled, andwhat his spoiled state consists in. It has its origin in the fallof our first parents, and the hereditary transmission of thecontagion ·of that fall·. Then what was the fall, and whatcaused it?

71. Take the case (to use an easy example) of a river carrying
boats and applying its own velocity to them, but with theirvelocity limited by their own inertia so that, other things
being equal, the more heavily loaded boats will be carried
more slowly. Thus the •speed of each boat comes from theriver, and its •slowness comes from the loads; the •positivefrom the force of the propelling agent, the •privative from theinertia of the thing that is propelled.

76. The cause of the fall: Why did man fall, with God
knowing about this fall, permitting it, concurring in it? The
answer isn’t to be sought in some despotic power of God, as
though his attributes didn’t include justice and holiness—asthey wouldn’t if God weren’t concerned with right and equity.
77. Nor should we try to explain the fall in this way:
God is indifferent as between good and evil, justiceand injustice. It is he who settles what is good andwhat evil, what is just and what unjust, by simply
deciding. ·Rather than God willing something because
it is good, the thing is good because God wills it·.
For if this were so, ·as Descartes thought it was·, it would
follow that God could have made anything good (or evil), andwith equal justice and reason—i.e. with no justice or reason!
And that would reduce all the glory of his justice and his

72. It is in just this way that God must be said to give acreated thing its perfection, which is limited by the thing’s
holding back. Thus goods come from the divine force, andevils from creaturely sluggishness.
73. This is why the understanding often errs through lackof attention, and the will often weakens through lack ofzeal. When this happens the mind, which should stretch up
towards God as its supreme good, slumps down through its
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wisdom to nothing, since he could find in his actions no joy
and no basis for joy.

Greatness and goodness together

need to know about some recent observations and theories
indicating that animals and plants are not •formed out ofsome amorphous mass but come from a body that is alreadysomewhat •formed and has for a long time been lurking,already animate, in the seed. We conclude from this thatby virtue of God’s primeval ‘Let there be. . . ’, some organizedrudiments of all living beings and even (in a certain way)of their souls already existed in the first specimen of every
genus, and that they evolved—·broke free, came into the
open·—in the course of time. (In the case of animals, theseorganic rudiments included their animal forms, however
imperfect.) The seminal animalcules [= ‘tiny animals’] thataren’t destined to become human bodies remain at the levelof •sensitive nature; so for a while do the souls and principles
of life in the seeds that are destined to become human bodies,but eventually the final conception singles them out from theothers; at that time the organized body receives the shape ofthe human body and its soul is raised to the level of being•rational. (I’m not saying here whether this happens throughan ordinary or an extraordinary operation on God’s part.)

78. ·Third and· last: The fall is not to be explained by
supposing that God created miserable creatures because ofa cruel desire to have someone to feel sorry for, and createdsinners so as to have creatures to punish. On this view,
God’s will is neither holy nor worthy of being loved; he lacks
goodness, and cares only about his greatness and glory. All
this is tyrannical and completely alien to true glory andperfection—qualities that receive their splendour not only
from God’s greatness but just as much from his goodness.
79. The true root of the fall is not one of those three but
rather the inherent imperfection and weakness of createdthings, which is why sin belongs in the best possible series of
events (discussed above). That is why it was right for sin tobe permitted, despite the divine power and wisdom; indeed,
it had to be permitted if these perfections were to be given
their due.
80. The nature of the fall mustn’t be conceived of, as it is by
Bayle, in this way:
God punished Adam’s sin by condemning Adam andhis posterity to continue to sin, and infused into
Adam an ·ongoing· inclination to sin because thatwas needed for carrying out this sentence.
In fact, this inclination •follows from the first fall, as though
by a natural causal connection, in the way that many othersins •follow from intoxication.

82. So you can see that I don’t say that men are rational
before they are born. Still, it is credible that divine grace
has already prepared and pre-established in the pre-existing
germs everything that will later emerge from them—not only
the human organism, but also rationality itself, contained(so to speak) in a sealed blueprint to be put into action later.
It is also credible that the fall of Adam spoils the soul that
isn’t yet a human one, and that when the soul rises to thelevel of rationality its spoiled state comes to have the force ofthe original inclination—·Adam’s inclination·—to sin. From
recent discoveries it appears, moreover, that life and thesoul come from the father alone, while the mother in theact of conception contributes only a sort of envelope (it isthought to be the ovum) and the food necessary for the full

81. Now let us turn to the hereditary transmission of thecontagion, which started with the fall of our first parents
and was passed on into the souls of their posterity. Thereseems to be no more suitable explanation for this than
the supposition that the souls of Adam’s posterity werealready infected in him. To understand this properly you
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development of the new organic body.

Greatness and goodness together

before any opportunity for a sufficient use of reason andthus before committing any actual sin (e.g. infants dying
before baptism and those dying outside the Church), ought
not to be necessarily damned to eternal hellfire; and that it
would be better if in such cases these souls were committed
to divine mercy.

83. This lets us overcome the philosophical difficulties•concerning the origin of forms and souls; and •concerning
the soul’s immateriality and thus its indivisibility, which·creates a problem about where souls come from because it·
implies that a soul cannot give birth to a soul.

88. On this matter I approve the moderation of. . . .various
theologians of the Confession of Augsburg, who eventually
have become inclined to accept this same doctrine. [He names

84. At the same time we overcome the theological difficulties
about the corruption of souls. For it can no longer bemaintained that a pure rational soul—whether pre-existingor newly created—is corrupted by being introduced by God
into a mass that is already corrupted.

them.]

89. Furthermore, the sparks of the divine image (which I
shall discuss soon) are not entirely extinguished. They canbe stimulated again, by God’s intervening grace, to strive for
spiritual things, but in such a way that the change is solely
the work of grace.

85. Though we must thus admit some kind of transmission·of sin from generation to generation·, it can be a little
easier to swallow than the one taught by St. Augustineand other eminent men. It won’t be transmission •from soul
to soul (which had already been rejected by the ancients,
as is evident from Prudentius, and anyway is contrary to
the nature of things), but •from living thing to living thing.

90. Original sin hasn’t entirely estranged the corrupt massof mankind from God’s universal benevolence. For God soloved the world—this world steeped in evil—that he gave his
only begotten Son for mankind [John 3:16].

[In Latin the contrast is between •animae ex anima and •animati exanimato.]91. The workings of corruption show up in •individual sinfulacts and in •habits of sin. Corruption presents various degrees and kinds, and contaminates our actions in a variety ofways. ·Some of the variety is exhibited in three dichotomies
which I now present·.

86. That was about the cause of our corruption; now let uscome to its nature and constitution. This corruption consistsin •original sin and •derivative sin. Original sin has suchforce that it renders men fragile in body, and dead in spirit
until they are born again [ante regenerationem; all later occurrencesof ‘born again’ translate Latin that could be translated as ‘regenerated’].
It turns one’s thoughts towards sensible things, and one’s
will towards things of the flesh. Hence we are ‘by naturechildren of wrath’ [Ephesians 2:3].

91. A sinful act may be •purely internal or •a composite ofinternal and external. It may be •a sin of commission or •asin of omission. It may be come from •the infirmity of our
natures or from •perversity caused by the wickedness of oursouls.

87. Pierre Bayle and other adversaries who attack the thesisthat God is benevolent, or at least obscure it by some of theirobjections, have ·made at least one good point. They have·affirmed that those who die corrupted only by original sin,

93. A habit of sin come from sinful actions—being createdeither by •the sheer number of a series of ·similar· sinful actions or •the strong impression made by ·a perhaps-smaller
number of· intensely sinful actions. In either of these ways,
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wickedness can become a habit, increasing the depravity
that comes from original sin.

obscured though they often are by human negligence andman’s sensual appetites.

94. Though this bondage of sin spreads through the whole
life of the person who isn’t born again, don’t think of it
as going so far that all his actions will always be. . . .sinful,rather than some of them being genuinely virtuous, and eveninnocent.

100. Contrary to what is said by certain writers—·notably
Locke·—this innate light can be proved ·to exist· both •byreference to the sacred scripture that testifies that the law of
God is engraved in our hearts, and •by a rational argument·which goes as follows·:•It is never possible to infer universal necessity by
induction from particulars; so•necessary truths can’t be demonstrated by induction
from empirical data; so•necessary truths must be demonstrated by principles
inherent in the mind.

95. Even someone who hasn’t been born again may sometimes act in civic life through love of virtue and of the publicwelfare, motivated by good reasons and even by respect for
God, without any low aims involving ambition, private profit,or lust.
96. Yet the actions of such a person always proceed from aninfected source and have an element of depravity mixed into
them (though in some cases it is only habitual).

101. ·Not only •the innate light, but· •freedom also remains
intact, however great human corruption is; so that man,though beyond doubt he is going to sin, is never constrainedby necessity to commit the sinful action that he is committing.

97. It might be thought that if a man is sufficiently corrupt
and depraved, he acts with too little freedom and spontaneity·to be blameworthy for what he does·, and so is excusable,cleared of guilt. But it is not so. There always remain·at least· some vestiges of the divine image in a man, andthey are the reason why God can punish sinners without
prejudice to his justice.

102. Freedom is exempt from both necessity and constraint.
Our actions are not made necessary by •the fact that how
we shall act in the future is already settled, or by •God’s
knowing and deciding in advance how we shall act, or by•the ·present· arrangement of things ·that will cause us toact as we shall act. I shall give these three factors a section
each·.

98. The vestiges of the divine image consist in •the innate
light of reason as well as in •innate freedom of the will. Bothare needed if our actions are to be vicious (or, for that matter,virtuous; ·but I shall focus on vice·). For us to be culpable
for a sin we are committing, we must •know what we aredoing and must •will to do it; and it must be possible for us
to pull back, even in mid-act, if we try hard enough.

103. The fact that how we shall act in the future is alreadysettled doesn’t make our actions necessary, for although
the truth of future contingents is •infallibly determined andthus objectively certain, that should not be confused with•necessity.

99. The innate light consists in simple ideas as well as in
the complex notions into which the simple ones enter. Thus
God and the eternal divine law are engraved in our hearts,

104. God’s knowing and deciding in advance are also
infallible, but they don’t make our actions necessary either.
God contemplated the ideal series of possible events, and15

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Greatness and goodness togetherthe •absurd from the •reasonable: the Turks don’t care about
causes, whereas Christians and anyone ·else· who knows
what’s true deduce effects from their causes.

saw that as they actually occurred they would include a
certain man freely sinning in a certain way. But in decreeing
the existence of this series God didn’t change the natureof that act—he didn’t make something contingent become
necessary!

107. Although I don’t believe that they can all be so lacking
in good sense, the Turks are said to think that it is uselessto try to avoid the plague and similar evils, because they areconvinced that the future events that have been decreed will
occur, whatever you do or don’t do. But that is false. Reason
teaches us that someone who is going unavoidably to die of•the plague is going just as unavoidably to encounter some•cause of the plague. . . . The same is true for all other events.
See also section 45 above.

105. Third and last: The set-up of the world—the series ofcauses—doesn’t detract from the freedom ·involved in actions
that are caused to happen. If you think it does, you must
be assuming that freedom requires the absence of anythingpushing one way or the other; but in that you are wrong·.
For nothing ever happens for which a reason couldn’t begiven; there are no cases of indifference of equilibrium—i.e.
cases where a free substance confronts a choice between
two options and nothing (inside the substance or outsideit) counts for one course of action without being exactly
balanced by something favouring the other. On the contrary,in the efficient cause and in the concurring causes there
are always certain pointers ·to what is to come·; some callthem ‘predeterminations’. But it must be said that these‘determinations’ only •incline, and don’t •necessitate, so thata certain indifference or contingency always remains intact.
Our passion or appetite is never so strong that our action
follows from it with necessity. However strongly a man isdriven by anger, thirst, or similar causes, as long as he hasn’t
lost his mind he can always find some reason for stopping
the impulse. Sometimes he needs nothing more than toremind himself to exercise his freedom and his power over
his passions.

108. Voluntary actions are not constrained. Representationsof things around us can do all kinds of things in our minds,
but our voluntary actions are nonetheless spontaneous: their
moving force always lies in the person who acts, ·not inexternal things·. The thesis that God instituted from the
beginning a pre-established harmony between body andmind can explain this more clearly than had hitherto beenpossible.
109. Having dealt with the weakness of human nature, I
turn now to the help that divine grace gives. My opponents
deny that there is such help, thereby throwing blame fromman back onto God. There are two ways of thinking about
grace: (1) as something that is sufficient for someone who ·of
his own accord· wills ·to be born again·, and (2) as somethingthat produces such an act of the will. ·The disagreement
between myself and my opponents concerns (2)·.

106. Predetermination, that is, predisposition by causes, isthus very far from introducing the ·kind of· necessity that I
have explained—the necessity that is contrary to contingency,
freedom, and morality. Indeed, it is on this very point thatthe •Moslem idea of fate is distinguished from the •Christian,110. It has to be granted that no-one denies that there isgrace that is sufficient for someone who wills of his own
accord. There’s an old adage that grace is never lacking forsomeone who does what he can; some of the ancient authors,
and then St. Augustine, have said that God abandons only16

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those who abandon him. This exercise of grace is either•ordinary, i.e. dispensed through the bible and the sacraments; or else it is •extraordinary, offered at God’s discretion,
as he offered it to St. Paul. ·The other role that grace may
play—in which it produces the will to be saved—will be thetopic of the next four sections, though it will be perceptible
in the background throughout the remainder of this work·.

114. But not everybody is given that grace to will, let alone
getting it with a happy outcome; that is certainly so, andthe enemies of truth use this fact to accuse God of •hatredof mankind or at least of •favouritism. God is the cause ofhuman misery, they contend, and he doesn’t save everyone
though he could, or anyway he doesn’t elect those who areworthy of it.

111. Many peoples have never yet received Christ’s doctrineof salvation, but we can’t believe that his message will never
have any effect on those whom it hasn’t reached, Christ
himself having asserted the contrary concerning Sodom[Matthew 11:23–4]. But that doesn’t make it necessary that
•Someone can be saved without Christ,or ·at the other extreme· that
•Someone will be damned even though he has done
all that is naturally in his power.
For we don’t know all God’s ways. For all we know, he may forspecial reasons come to someone’s rescue at the very momentof death. Anyway, we have to take it as certain. . . .that those
who have made good use of the light they have received will
also be given the light they need but haven’t.

115. It is true indeed that if God had created the majorityof mankind only to make the glory of his justice triumphover their eternal wickedness and misery, he wouldn’t be
praiseworthy for his goodness, his wisdom, or even his true
justice. ·I shall discuss one defensive move against this in
sections 116 and 121–2, and a second in 117–9·.
116. It’s no use replying that in relation to him we arenothing—as little as a maggot is in relation to us. This
excuse wouldn’t diminish God’s cruelty; it would increase it.
Indeed, if God cared no more for men than we do for maggots(which we can’t care for and don’t want to), there would
be nothing left of his love for mankind. ·And the proposed
defence is based on a false theology anyway·. In fact, nothing
escapes God’s providence by being too small, or confuses
him by being too numerous. He feeds the sparrows, he loves
man, providing food for the former and preparing happinessfor the latter as far as man’s happiness depends on him (i.e.
on God).

112. The theologians of the Augsburg confession recognizethat believers’ children who have been purified by baptism
are endowed with a certain faith, even if no trace of it isseen. And there is nothing to rule out the view that when
the non-Christians mentioned in section 111 are at the pointof death, God will by extraordinary means given them thenecessary light that they have lacked throughout their lives.

117. Some might go so far as to contend that God’s poweris so limitless, his government so exempt from rules, that
he is entitled to damn even an innocent person. [This is aimed

113. Thus, too, those outside the Church to whom only
the external message—·the physical preaching·—has beendenied must be committed to the clemency and justice of thecreator, though we can’t know whom he will save or why.

at, among others, Descartes, who held that God’s will is what makes
things good or bad, right or wrong, and that there is no independent
moral standard by which God or his conduct could be evaluated.] But

this would make it hard to attribute any meaning to divine
justice, or to see how this sort of ruler of the universe would
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differ from an all-dominating force for evil. We could certainly
attribute to it tyranny and hatred of mankind.

proportions among themselves and tend toward the orderthat God has instituted.

118. It is evident that one would still have to fear such a
God because of his power, but not to love him because of
his goodness. For the actions of a tyrant certainly inspire
not love but hatred, however great his power. Indeed, themore power he has the greater the hatred, though one may
be terrified into not showing one’s hatred.

122. In this respect the geometricians imitate God, ina way, through the new infinitesimal analysis: from therelations that infinitely small and unassignable magnitudes
have among themselves they draw surprisingly importantand useful conclusions concerning assignable magnitudes.
123. Let us then reject that odious ·attribution to Godof· •callousness towards mankind and rightly support his
supreme •love for mankind. [Leibniz uses the terms •misanthropia
and •philanthropia.] He ardently wanted all men to achieve
the knowledge of truth, and to turn away from sin towards
virtue, and he has shown this by how often he has helped
us by his grace. If what he has wanted hasn’t always
happened, the responsibility for this rests with stubborn
human wickedness.

119. Men who flattered such a God by imitating him would
be driven away from charity towards hardness and cruelty.
Hence some authors have nastily attributed to God, on thepretext that his right is absolute ·rather than being subject
to some independent moral standard·, actions that theywould have to recognize as appalling if committed by a man.
Certain authors, to their discredit, have said that things thatwould be ignoble if done by others would not be so if doneby God because he is not bound by any law.

124. All the same (you might object), it wouldn’t have been
beyond his supreme power to overcome this stubbornness. I
agree, but I add that no law obliged him to do so, and there
was no other reason for him to do so.

120. Reason, piety, and God himself command us to believe
something very different about God. The combination of his
supreme wisdom and utter goodness brings it about that •hefully observes the laws of justice, equity, and virtue, that •hecares about all his creatures, especially the thinking ones,
whom he has made in his image, and that •he produces asmuch happiness and virtue as the model for the best worldcontains, and allows no vice or misery except what belongs
to the best ·possible· series ·of things and events·.

125. Yet (you will insist) the great benevolence that we rightly
attribute to God might have gone beyond what he was boundto provide; indeed, the supremely good God was bound, by
the very goodness of his nature, to provide the best possible.
126. At this point we must resort, with St. Paul, to thetreasures of supreme wisdom [Colossians 2:3], which has notallowed that God should •do violence to the order and natureof the universe, disregarding law and measure, •or disturb
the universal harmony, •or select any but the best ·possible·
series of events ·to become actual·. Now, in this series it was
included that all men are left with their freedom, and someamong them are therefore left with their depravity. We areconfirmed in accepting this ·theological theory· by the fact

121. ·Returning briefly to the matter discussed in section
116·: Although it is true that as compared with the infinite
God we appear as nothing, his infinite wisdom has theprivilege of being be able to care utterly for things that are
infinitely below him. There is no assignable proportion
between the created things and God, but ·his care hassomething to work on, because· created things keep certain18

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G. W. Leibniz

Greatness and goodness together

faithful or elect and •the condemned. They· require of a
•faithful person the firmest conviction that faith will staywith him until death, while they say that a •condemned
person will never be taken over by faith and is doomed tohave false beliefs. [The phrase *‘all the rest’ is an evasion of Leibniz’sthat this is what has actually happened. See also section
142.
127. Anyway, God’s love for all mankind—his wish to savethem all—is shown by his acts of help ·in the form of grace·.
This help is enough for anyone, even the reprobate, andindeed it is very often granted in abundance, although grace
doesn’t win out in everyone.

proskaroi (Greek), a biblical word for things that are temporary, or notdurably rooted, or (perhaps) not eternal. (Matthew 13:21, 2 Corinthians4:18). It is not clear why Leibniz uses this term here; but the doctrine

128. Moreover, in the cases where grace attains its full
effect I don’t see why it must do this by virtue of its own
nature, i.e. must do it unaided. It may well be that whena certain measure of grace doesn’t obtain its effect in one
man, because of his stubbornness or for other reasons, thatvery same measure of grace does obtain it in another man.
And I don’t see either how it could be proved, by reason
or from revelation, that whenever grace is victorious it ispresent with a strength that is great enough so that it could
have overcome any resistance, however strong, and the mostunfavourable circumstances. There is nothing wise about
applying superfluous forces.

he is expounding and attacking does clearly divide all mankind into justtwo groups—the elect and all the rest.]

131. This doctrine is purely arbitrary, has no foundation,and is entirely alien to the beliefs of the early church andof St. Augustine himself; but if understood strictly it could
have practical effects. On the one hand, wicked people
might draw from it an impudent confidence that they will besaved, while it might make pious folk doubtful and anxious
about their actual state of grace. Hence, a double danger:
too much security for the wicked, too much despair for thepious. That is why my zeal against this kind of ‘particularism’
is second only to my opposition to despotism. [By ‘despotism’

129. I don’t deny that God sometimes makes his grace
triumph over the greatest obstacles and the most intense
obstinacy; this is to persuade us never to despair of anyone.
But this should not be construed as a rule.

Leibniz presumably means the view that God is a ‘despot’ in the sense of
not being subject to any value judgments or moral rules because he is
the source of all value; see sections 76 (for the word ‘despot’) and 77 (forthe doctrine). ‘Particularism’ is a standard label for the view that some130. Much graver is the error of those who restrict to theelect the privileges of grace, faith, justification, and rebirth,
as though *all the rest were hypocrites—which is contrary toexperience—and could receive no spiritual help from baptism,
from the eucharist, or from any other word or sacraments.
This erroneous doctrine implies that an elect person, once
he is truly justified, cannot relapse into crime or deliberatesin; or—a version of the doctrine that some prefer—he canplunge into crime without losing the grace of his born-again
status. These same theologians ·divide people into •thepeople are selected for salvation while the rest are damned.]132. Fortunately it turns out that a majority of these
theologians soften the strictness of this new and paradoxicaland dangerous doctrine, and that its other partisans confine
themselves to defending it merely as a theoretical positionin theology, and don’t carry into practice its odious consequences. The most pious among them work on their own
salvation, with filial respect and loving confidence, inspiredby a better Christian doctrine.
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G. W. Leibniz

133. As to ourselves, we can be assured of our faith, grace,and justification because we are aware of what goes on in ourconsciousness. We also have good hope for ourselves in theafter-life, though tempered with anxiety because the Apostle
himself has warned us: ‘Let him that thinketh he standeth
take heed lest he fall’ [1 Corinthians 10:12]. Our confidence
that we are elected should never induce us to slacken in our
pious zeal, or to rely on future repentance ·to enable us tolive badly in this life without being punished in the next·.

Greatness and goodness together

137. Analogously, in building or decorating something one
won’t always select the most beautiful or the most precious
stone, preferring to use the one that fits best into the empty
space.
138. The safest thing to say about this topic is that all men,being spiritually dead, are equally evil but in different ways.
They differ in what their depraved inclinations are, and it
may come about that preference is given to those •whom theseries of things has given more favourable conditions, those•who (at the end of their lives, anyway) find less opportunity
to manifest their particular vices and more to receive gracethat answers to their needs.

134. That is enough against the accusation that God is
callous towards mankind. Now it must be shown that it isequally wrong to accuse God of favouritism, implying that
there were no reasons for his deciding what he did about
who is elected. The foundation of election is Jesus Christ;
but those whose share in Christ is less ·than others’· owe
this to their own eventual wickedness; God foresaw that theywould be like this, and reproved it.

139. Our theologians have also acknowledged, on the basisof experience, that men in the same state of •inner grace
may differ greatly in what •external helps to salvation theyget. This leads them, confronted by the arrangements ofexternal circumstances that affect our lives, to take refugein the •‘depth’ of St. Paul. [This refers to Romans 11:33, a

135. Why is divine aid—internal and especially external
aid—distributed so differently among different people, triumphing over wickedness in one person and defeated by it inanother? This question leads to doctrinal splits. •Some thinkthat God grants greater help to those who are less evil or atleast to those who will resist grace less obstinately. •Others
maintain that the same help ·is given to everyone but· ismore efficient in those who are less evil. •Others again won’t
have it that individual people are distinguished before God
by the privilege of having better (or anyway less bad) natures.

favourite passage of Leibniz’s (he will allude to it again in section 142).
Paul, having written of apparent unfairnesses in how grace and salvation
are distributed, writes: ‘O the •depth of the riches both of the wisdom
and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his
ways past finding out!’] For men are frequently either perverted

or improved by what comes to them in the way of birth,education, social contacts, ways of life, and chance events.
140. So we don’t know any basis for election or for the giftof faith other than Christ, and the believer’s ultimate perseverance in the state of salvation through which he sticks to
Christ (a perseverance which God foresees). We shouldn’t
set up any rule ·purporting to draw the line between electand non-elect·: we wouldn’t know how to apply it, and ·its
only effect would be to· make people complacent about theirown situation and mocking about others’.

136. Among the reasons for someone’s being elected are, nodoubt, his qualities as measured by the standard of God’s
wisdom; but the ·ultimate· reason for an election is not always the person’s qualities considered in themselves. There
will often be more weight given to how suitable the person isfor a certain purpose given a certain set of conditions.
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141. God does indeed sometimes vanquish the worst
wickedness and the stubbornest resistance, in order thatno-one should despair of his mercy, as St. Paul has pointed
out regarding his own case. Sometimes even men of longstanding goodness lapse midway, so that we shouldn’t be
too self-confident. ·Most of what happens, however, lies wellaway from those two extremes·: mostly those who resist
with less wickedness and put in more effort to achieve truthand goodness experience more completely the effect of divine
grace; it is just not believable that a person’s conduct has
no influence on his salvation. See also section 112.
142. But in the •depths of the treasure-house of divine
wisdom, i.e. in the hidden God and (which comes to thesame) in the universal harmony of things, lie the reasons
why the actual ·event·-series of the universe, comprehending
the events we admire and the judgments we worship, hasbeen chosen by God as the best and as preferable to all

Greatness and goodness together

others. See also section 126.
143. The theatre of the material world reveals to us more
and more of its beauty, even in this life and through the•light of nature, since the systems of the macrocosm andthe microcosm have begun to be revealed by the recent
inventions ·of the telescope and the microscope·.
144. But the most magnificent part of all this, the City ofGod, is a sight to which we shall at last be admitted someday, shining in the •light of the divine glory, and then weshall be able to know its beauty. For in our present state
here below this City is accessible only to the •eyes of faith,i.e. through absolute trust in the divine perfections. The
better we understand that the City of God expresses not only
the power and wisdom but also the goodness of the supreme
spirit, the more ardently will we love God and burn to imitate
his goodness and justice as far as we can.

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