British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13(3) 2005: 449 – 488

ARTICLE

LEIBNIZ’S MATHEMATICAL ARGUMENT AGAINST

A SOUL OF THE WORLD

Gregory Brown

In his wonderful book on infinity, José Benardete suggested that ‘both

Leibniz and Cantor, though arguing at cross-purposes, are equally guilty of
what Wittgenstein styles a puffed-up proof’ (Benardete 1964: 44). He quoted
Wittgenstein to this effect: ‘Our suspicion ought always to be aroused when
a proof proves more than its means allow it. Something of this sort might be
called a puffed-up proof.’1
The ‘puffed-up proofs’ that Benardete had in mind here are the arguments
that Leibniz and Cantor formulated to establish what they thought could be
inferred from the fact that an infinite set can be placed in one–one
correspondence with certain of its proper subsets. But their proofs were, as
Benardete indicates, at cross-purposes. For Cantor, by adopting one–one
correspondence as a criterion of equality for all sets – infinite as well as finite
– concluded that in the case of infinite sets, the part can be equal to the
whole. Leibniz, on the other hand, maintained that the part–whole axiom
must hold for infinite as well as finite multiplicities, and thus concluded that
infinite multiplicities could not be wholes – indeed that the notions of
infinite number and infinite whole are inconsistent. But Leibniz went on to
use this result to argue that there could be no soul of the world, thus
constructing a proof that one might say, in imitation of Wittgenstein, was
doubly puffed up.
Although the argument against the possibility of a world soul may at first
appear to be a rather parochial topic in Leibniz’s philosophy, it will become
clear from the following discussion that it actually involves a number of
centrally important themes in Leibniz’s metaphysics and philosophy of
mathematics, including the mathematical theory of the infinite, the notion of
demonstration, the analysis of part and whole, the relation between wholes
and substantial unities, as well as the distinction between accidental unities
and per se unities. Thus a careful analysis of this odd little argument actually
pays valuable dividends in the form of a deeper and clearer understanding of
several crucial Leibnizian doctrines.

1
Wittgenstein 1956: I, Appendix II, § 3; as quoted in Benardete 1964: 44–5.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

ISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online ª 2005 BSHP
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09608780500157205
450 GREGORY BROWN

LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A WORLD SOUL:

PRELIMINARIES

Leibniz alludes to the argument that I am interested in considering in a

number of different places, beginning in the early to mid-1680s. Here is a
selection:

That God is not the soul of the world can be demonstrated, for the world is
either finite or infinite. If the world is finite, then God, who is infinite, certainly
cannot be said to be the soul of the world; but if it is assumed that the world is
infinite, it is not one being, i.e. a body one in itself (unum per se corpus) (just as
it has previously been demonstrated that the infinite in number and magnitude
is neither one nor whole; but that only the infinite in perfection is one and
whole). Therefore, no soul can be understood as belonging to it. Certainly an
infinite world is no more one and whole than infinite number, which Galileo
demonstrated is neither one nor whole.

There are other arguments, as for example, that God is the continuous
producer of the world, but the soul is not the producer of the body itself.
(Deum non esse mundi animam (hereafter DNMA, Summer 1683–Winter 1685/
86(?)): A.VI.iv.1492)

The aggregate of all bodies is called the world, which, if it is infinite, is not
even one entity, any more than an infinite straight line or the greatest
number are. So God cannot be understood as the World Soul: not the soul of
a finite world because God himself is infinite, and not of an infinite world
because an infinite body cannot be understood as one entity (unum Ens), but
that which is not one in itself (unum per se) has no substantial form, and
therefore no soul. So Marianus Capella is right to call God an extramundane
intelligence.
De mundo praesenti
(hereafter DMP, March 1684–Spring 1686): A.VI.iv.1509 = RA.287)

The actual infinite in magnitude cannot be exposed to view in the same manner
as (the infinite) in multitude.

The arguments against the actual infinite suppose that if this is admitted, there
will an infinite number and that all infinities will be equal. But it must be
observed that an infinite aggregate is neither one whole, nor possessed of
magnitude, nor is it consistent with number. Accurately speaking, instead of
an infinite number, we ought to say that there are more than any number can
express, or instead of an infinite straight line that it is a straight line continued
beyond any magnitude that can be assigned, so that a larger and larger straight
line is always available. It is of the essence of a number, a line, or any whole to
be limited. Hence even if the world were infinite in magnitude, it would not be
one whole, nor could God be conceived, with certain of the ancients, as the
soul of the world, not only because he is the cause of the world, but also
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 451

because such a world would not be one body, nor could it be regarded as an
animal, nor, indeed, would it have any but a verbal unity. It is therefore an
abbreviated way of speaking when we speak of one thing where there are more
than can be understood in a single assigned whole, and we treat like a
magnitude that which does not have the properties of a magnitude. For just as
one cannot say of infinite number whether it is even or odd, so one cannot say
of an infinite straight line whether or not it is commensurable with a given
straight line.
(letter of 11 March 1706 to Des Bosses
(hereafter LDB): G.II.304–5)

There is an infinity of creatures in the smallest particle of matter, because

of the actual division of the continuum to infinity. And infinity, that is to
say the accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly
speaking, not a whole any more than infinite number itself, whereof one
cannot say whether it is even or uneven. That is just what serves to confute
those who make of the world a God, or who think of God as the Soul of
the world; for the world or the universe cannot be regarded as an animal or
substance.
(Theodicy §195, G.VI.232 = T.249)

For the moment I want to focus on the argument given in the first
passage, the one from DNMA. In his seminal study of Leibniz’s argument
against a world soul, Laurence Carlin offered this assessment of the
argument from DNMA:

The argument which begins with the second disjunct, I take it, is the same
one from Theodicy §195. It begins with the assumption that the world is
infinite. It follows from this, Leibniz seems to think, that the world is not
one body, nor one whole. If it is not one body or one whole, then it cannot
have a soul. Hence, there is no soul of the world. But why, we may ask,
should we admit that infinite aggregates, like the world, cannot admit of a
soul? After all, organic bodies, according to Leibniz, just are an
accumulation of infinitely many substances, yet he clearly thought they
had soul.
(Carlin 1997: 7)

Contrary to what Carlin suggests here, I think that there is an extremely

important difference between the argument offered in Theodicy §195 and
that offered in the passage from DNMA; indeed I think his own
interpretation of Leibniz’s argument against a world soul turns on there
being such a difference. But I want to postpone consideration of this
difference, as well the important question that Carlin raises at the end of
this passage, in order to follow Carlin a bit further in his development of
the issue. He continues by pointing out that ‘in the above passage Leibniz
writes that if the world is infinite, it is not ‘‘one being or one body per se’’,
which might lead one to suspect that what Leibniz has in mind is the claim
452 GREGORY BROWN

that the world does not have a substantial unity, and hence, cannot be said
to be endowed with a soul’ (ibid.); Carlin cites Bertrand Russell as one
commentator he believes interpreted Leibniz in just this way, quoting the
following passage from Russell’s book on Leibniz as evidence to that
effect:

Leibniz’s position is this: that the notion of a whole can only be applied to
what is substantially indivisible.

One whole must be one substance, and to what is not one whole, number
cannot be properly applied. The world is only verbally a whole . . . and even a
finite aggregate of monads is not a whole per se. The unity is mental or semi-
mental. In most passages, Leibniz only applies this doctrine against infinite
aggregates, but it is evident that it must apply equally against all aggregates.
(Russell 1937: 115–16)

Supposing what is likely – namely, that in saying that ‘one whole must
be one substance’, Russell meant not only to suggest that for Leibniz ‘the
notion of a whole can only be applied to what is substantially indivisible’,
but also that the notion of a whole can be applied to what is substantially
indivisible – Russell implies that Leibniz’s position is that the world
cannot be ‘substantially indivisible’ because it is not a whole.2 Thus, given
Leibniz’s position that a body cannot be a substance unless it is endowed
with a soul, Russell’s interpretation would imply, as Carlin contends, that
Leibniz might well have thought to argue that the world cannot be
endowed with a soul because it does not have a substantial unity. In this
case, Carlin suggests that Leibniz’s argument against a world soul would
take the following form:

Only bodies which are one per se can intelligibly be said to be endowed with a
soul. The world is infinite, and so is not one per se. Hence the world cannot
have a soul. Hence, God is not the soul of the world.
(Carlin 1997: 8)
But Carlin believes ‘that the concept of substantial unity is irrelevant to
(Leibniz’s) argument against the soul of the world thesis’, and he offers three
points that he thinks support this conclusion.

2
In this passage, Russell does not explicitly claim that for Leibniz, if something is a substantial
unity, then it is a whole. What he does explicitly claim is that Leibniz held the converse: if
something is a whole, then it is a substantial unity (‘the notion of a whole can only be applied to
what is substantially indivisible’). But it is the former proposition that is necessary to establish
that the world is not a substantial unity on the grounds that it is not a whole. The latter
proposition provides no avenue for establishing that the world is not a substantial unity.
Moreover, as will become clear later, it is not even something that Leibniz held. For Leibniz
thought that things could be wholes without being substantial unities.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 453

First, he argues that the argument that he thinks is suggested by Russell’s

interpretation

requires the premise that only bodies which are one per se can have a soul,
since on this interpretation, Leibniz’s use of the notion of a ‘whole’ just is the
notion of one per se.3 But this premise is flatly inconsistent with his attribution
of souls . . . to any bodies. Leibniz repeatedly claims that no organic body is, in
itself, a unity . . . Clearly, he could not, then, resist the soul of the world thesis
on the grounds that the world is not a unity, and consistently maintain, at the
same time, that organic bodies are endowed with souls.
(ibid.)

Second, Carlin suggests that the passage from DNMA is exceptional, and
he picks up on the point made by Russell at the end of the passage quoted
above, namely, that according to Leibniz every aggregate, whether it be
finite or infinite, lacks per se unity:

It must be emphasized that the passage from (DNMA) seems to be the only
place where Leibniz used the ‘one per se’ locution when presenting this
argument. In the other texts where the argument occurs, it is the idea that the
world is not a ‘whole’ . . . that Leibniz presents. In light of this, it would be odd
that Leibniz spent as much time as he did arguing for the view that the world,
an infinite accumulation, is not a whole, if he merely meant that it is not a
genuine unity. According to Leibniz, every aggregate lacks real unity simply in
virtue of its lacking the property of indivisibility, and the other properties of a
simple substance. That is, every aggregate, regardless of the fact that it is
infinite, lacks genuine unity. His criterion for something to count as an unum
per se does not hinge crucially on whether the relevant thing is infinite or not.
But in the passages where Leibniz sets out the relevant argument, the fact that
the world is infinite seems to play a crucial role. Thus it is difficult to believe
that in the numerous passages where Leibniz claims that the world is not a
whole because it is infinite, he simply means that it lacks substantial unity.
(ibid., 8–9)

Finally, Carlin points out that at times Leibniz seems to distinguish rather
sharply between wholes and unities (ibid., 9); in particular, Leibniz at times
argues that while wholes have parts, substantial unities do not (see ibid., 9,

3
The reason that Carlin says that the argument he thinks is suggested by Russell’s interpretation
‘requires the premise that only bodies which are one per se can have a soul’ is presumably
because in the passage that he quotes, Russell does not attribute to Leibniz the claim that if
something is a substantial unity, then it is a whole, which is required to establish what Russell
apparently wants to claim, namely, that for Leibniz the world cannot be a substantial unity
because it is not a whole. So if we add to what Russell actually attributes to Leibniz that which
is required, namely, that if something is a whole, then it is a substantial unity, we end up with
the equivalence of being a whole and being a substantial unity, or being one per se. As I
suggested earlier, the claim that ‘one whole must be one substance’, which Russell attributes to
Leibniz, may have been intended by Russell to express this equivalence.
454 GREGORY BROWN

22n19, 23n26). Therefore, it does not seem possible to suppose that Leibniz’s
argument against a world soul is like the argument inspired by Russell’s
interpretation; for the latter argument turns on the assumption that the
world cannot be a substantial unity because it is not a whole, which would
imply that if the world were a substantial unity, then it would be a whole,
contrary to the distinction that Leibniz draws between wholes and
substantial unities.
In light of the points made above, Carlin believes, as he puts it, that the
‘concept of metaphysical unity, or the idea of the world’s lack of substantial
unity (i.e. lack of being one per se), is (not) critical to the argument’ that
Leibniz formulates against the possibility of a world soul. On the other
hand, he does believe that the concept of a whole – understood to be
independent of the concept of a substantial unity – is central to the
argument. In broad terms, Carlin takes Leibniz’s argument to be this:

Assuming that the world is infinite in magnitude – that is, in spatial extent –
it cannot be regarded as a whole (i.e. a whole in respect of magnitude); the
organic bodies of corporeal substances within the world, on the other hand,
although being infinite in multitude – that is, in parts and hence not wholes in
respect of multitude – can be considered wholes in respect of magnitude
because they are finite in magnitude; since only wholes can be endowed with
souls, the organic bodies of corporeal substances within the world can be
endowed with souls, but the world itself, being infinite in magnitude, cannot
be so endowed. But again, it is important to note that in this argument,
Carlin assumes that being a whole neither entails, nor is entailed by, being an
unum per se.

As will become clear in the following discussion, I now agree with Carlin
in thinking that the distinction between infinite multitude and infinite
magnitude is critical for understanding Leibniz’s argument against the
possibility of a world soul,4 but I nevertheless believe that his interpretation
of that argument is incorrect. In particular, I will argue that Leibniz’s
argument against a world soul is precisely the argument that Carlin thinks is
suggested by Russell’s interpretation – namely, that the world does not
possess a soul because it is not one per se. I will begin by examining the
structure of the argument as Leibniz presents it in the first two passages
quoted above – i.e. in the passage from Deum non esse mundi animam and in
the passage from De mundo praesenti – and I will defend that argument
against the three objections that Carlin brings against it and explain how
this argument differs significantly from the one that is presented at Theodicy
§195. I will then turn to the argument as it is presented in the letter of 11
March 1706 to Des Bosses and argue that Carlin’s interpretation of the
structure of that argument is mistaken. I will propose an alternative

4
I previously argued that such a distinction was not relevant to the argument. See Brown 1998:
115–16.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 455

interpretation of the argument in LDB that brings it into line with the
argument that is presented in DNMA and DMP. Finally, I shall turn to the
question of the soundness of Leibniz’s argument against infinite wholes in
light of Cantorian set theory.

WHOLES, PER SE UNITIES, AND SOULS: THE ARGUMENT

AGAINST A WORLD SOUL IN DNMA AND DMP

We have seen that Carlin argues that the passage from DNMA ‘seems to be
the only place where Leibniz used the ‘‘one per se’’ locution when
presenting’ his argument against a world soul, and he apparently wants to
dismiss the argument there on that account, especially in light of the three
points that he makes in support of his claim that ‘the concept of substantial
unity is irrelevant to (Leibniz’s) argument against the soul of the world
thesis’. But we have seen that the argument that Leibniz presents in DMP,
written approximately a year after DNMA, contains virtually the same
argument as that presented in DNMA.5 In particular, the argument in
DMP, like that in DNMA, emphasizes the fact that the world is not a unity
per se; and unlike the argument in DNMA, that in DMP does not so much
as mention the notion of a whole. In light of this fact, I do not think it is
reasonable to dismiss the claim that the world’s lacking per se unity is crucial
to Leibniz’s argument against a world soul – at least if Carlin’s three points
can be blunted, as I think they can.

To Carlin’s First Point

The text leading up to the formulation of the argument against a world soul
in DMP provides illuminating context that DNMA lacks.6 Near the
beginning of the piece, Leibniz draws a distinction that became a staple in
his later writings – namely, the distinction between an unum per se and an
unum per accidens:

Every real entity is either a unity in itself, or an accidental entity. An entity

(unity)7 in itself is, for instance, a man: an accidental entity (unity) – for
instance, a woodpile, a machine – is what is only a unity by aggregation, and
there is no real union in it other than a connection: perhaps a contact or even a
running together into the same thing, or at least an agreement observed by a
mind gathering it into a unity. But in an entity per se some real union is

5
It should be noted that DMP was not generally available at the time Carlin published his
article in 1997. It appeared subsequently (1999) in A.VI.iv.1505–13 and (2001) in RA.283–97.
6
The passage I have translated above from DNMA constitutes the whole of that piece.
7
Arthur notes that ‘above the Ens of both Ens per se and Ens per accidens Leibniz had written
the word unum (a unity); I have instead set it in parentheses afterwards’ (RA.421n3).
456 GREGORY BROWN

required, consisting not in the situation and motion of parts, as in a chain, a

house, or a ship, but in some unique individual principle and subject of its
attributes and operations, which in us is called a soul, and in every body a
substantial form, provided the body is a unity in itself.

(A.VI.iv.1506 = RA.283)
In his correspondence with Arnauld between 1686 and 1690, Leibniz
elaborated on this distinction in great detail. Arnauld was not impressed,
suggesting that Leibniz’s argument ‘comes down to saying that all bodies
whose parts are only mechanically united are not substances but only
machines or aggregates of many substances’ and that ‘there is in that
nothing but a dispute about words’; he added that Leibniz’s definition of a
substance as ‘that which has a true unity . . . has not yet been accepted’
(G.II.86 = LA.107). Leibniz responded indignantly in his letter of 30 April
1687:

(I)f my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a
definition that I had formulated in opposition to common usage, then the
dispute would be only one of words. But besides the fact that most philosophers
have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity
in itself (unum per se) and an accidental unity (unum per accidens), . . . I take
matters to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, I
believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren’t any real
beings. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real
unity . . . I have already said in another letter8 that the composite made up of the
diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of
diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer
to one another, it would be a being of imagination or perception, that is to say,
a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common
plan have no effect on substantial unity. . . . To put it briefly, I hold this identical
proposition, differentiated only by the emphasis, to be an axiom, namely, that
what is not truly one being is not truly one being either. It has always been
thought that one and being are reciprocal things. Being is one thing and beings
are another . . . I therefore believed that I would be allowed to distinguish beings
by aggregation from substances, since these beings have their unity in our mind
only, a unity founded on the relations or modes of true substances. If a machine
is one substance, a circle of men holding hands will also be one substance, and
so will an army, and finally, so will every multitude of substances.
(G.II.97 = LA.121–2 = AG.85–6)

The last two sentences in the preceding quotation do not appear in the
copy of the letter Arnauld received; but the point in question – that an
aggregate, or unum per accidens, is a mind-dependent entity, either through
thought or perception – is made cleanly a little further on in a passage that
was sent to Arnauld:

8
That is, in his letter of 8 December 1686. See G.II.76 = LA.94 = AG.79.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 457

I agree [he told Arnauld] that there are degrees of accidental unity, that an
ordered society has more unity than a confused mob, and that an organized
body, or rather a machine, has more unity than a society, that is to say, it is
more appropriate to conceive them as a single thing, because there are more
relations among the constituents. But in the end, all these unities become
realized only by thoughts and appearances, like colors and other phenomena,
which nevertheless, are called real.
(G.II.100 = LA.126 = AG.88–9)

Leibniz’s refrain to Arnauld – that a substance is an unum per se and

must be sharply distinguished from an aggregate, which is only an unum
per accidens whose unity is derived from the thought or perception of a
mind – was sounded repeatedly in Leibniz’s later writings. With this
distinction in hand, it is possible to address the first point that Carlin
makes in support of his contention ‘that the concept of substantial unity is
irrelevant to (Leibniz’s) argument against the soul of the world thesis’ –
namely, that Leibniz ‘could not . . . resist the soul of the world thesis on
the grounds that the world is not a unity, and consistently maintain, at the
same time, that organic bodies are endowed with souls’. His reason for
thinking this, again, is that ‘Leibniz repeatedly claims that no organic
body is, in itself, a unity’. But here, I think, Carlin misinterprets what
Leibniz means when he claims, in the arguments presented in DNMA and
DMP, that the world is not an unum per se. Carlin detaches the per se
modifier from unum and attaches it to the world, so that he interprets
Leibniz as saying that the world per se, i.e. the world considered apart from
soul, cannot be a unity, which leads him to ask, ‘Why . . . should we admit
that infinite aggregates, like the world, cannot admit of a soul?’ For ‘after
all, organic bodies (that is, corporeal substances considered apart from
their souls), according to Leibniz, just are an accumulation of infinitely
many substances, yet he clearly thought they had souls’ (Carlin 1997: 7). It
is true, of course, that Leibniz did regard the organic bodies of corporeal
substances as mere aggregates, which lack, ‘in themselves’, substantial
unity. For example, in a draft of his letter to Arnauld of 8 December 1686,
Leibniz wrote that

I do not know if the body, when the soul or the substantial form is set aside,
can be called a substance. It may well be a machine, an aggregate of many
substances, so that if I am asked what I have to say about the form of a
cadaver or of a block of marble, I will say that they are perhaps unities per
aggregationem, like a heap of stones, and not substances.
(G.II.73 = LA.89)
And in the letter itself he declared that

in my opinion, our body in itself (en luy meˆme) or the cadaver, setting the soul
apart, can be called a substance only in an improper sense, just as in the case of
a machine or a heap of stones, which are only beings by aggregation (des estres
458 GREGORY BROWN

par aggregation); for regular or irregular arrangement does not constitute

substantial unity (l’unite´ substantielle).
(G.II.75 = LA.93 = AG.78)
The point is repeated in Leibniz’s letter to Arnauld of 30 April 1687,
where he says that ‘I confess that the body itself, without the soul (le corps à
part, sans l’ame) has only a unity of aggregation’ (G.II.100 =
LA.125 = AG.88). But here care needs to be taken in interpreting the in
itself (en luy meˆme) or the by itself (à part) locution. For here it cannot be
taken to mean in fact and independently of how we are considering it; for if it
is taken in that sense, our body in itself cannot be a mere aggregate, since –
assuming that our body is in fact conjoined to our soul so as to make a
corporeal substance – our body in fact and independently of how we are
considering it is a substance with a soul. So in this case, to say, as Leibniz
does, that ‘our body in itself . . . can be called a substance only in an
improper sense’ is just to say that our body, inasmuch as we are considering it
apart from its soul, cannot be considered to be a substantial unity, even
though in fact and independently of how we are considering it, it is a
substantial unity.9 But the matter is quite different when we consider
Leibniz’s use of the expression unum per se. When Leibniz says, in the
arguments presented in DNMA and DMP, that the world cannot be an
unum per se, he does not mean that the world per se cannot be considered a
substantial unity inasmuch as we are considering it apart from soul, as he does
when he says that our body in itself, considered apart from soul, cannot be a
substantial unity; rather, he means that the world is not a unity in fact and
independently of how we are considering it, because it is an unum per accidens,
which is, in fact and independently of how we are considering (or perceiving)
it, an aggregate and not a substantial unity. Aggregates thought or perceived
as one are, as he told Arnauld, ‘beings in which there is something imaginary
and dependent on the fabrication (fiction) of the mind’ (G.II.94 = LA.
94 = AG.79, cf. G.II.102 = LA.128 = AG.90). So, too, the world, thought
of as one, is only a certain fiction of the mind; and thus in the New Essays he
wrote:

M. Descartes argues that when we speak of God we know what we are saying
and therefore have the relevant idea; but that is a misleading sign; for when we

9
Recall that in the passage from DMP quoted at the beginning of this section, Leibniz declares
that the principle of unity ‘in us is called a soul, and in every body a substantial form, provided
that the body is a unity in itself’. I mention this to illustrate the point that Leibniz often uses the
term ‘body’ to refer to a substantial unity or ‘a unity in itself’, that is, a corporeal substance. But
the context, as in the present passage, generally makes it clear that a ‘body’ so understood
possesses a substantial form. A body that lacks a substantial form is a mere aggregate that lacks
substantial unity; and so a body that actually possesses a soul, but is being considered apart from
soul, must be considered as an aggregate, even though it is in fact and independently of how we are
considering it a substantial unity in virtue of actually possessing a soul.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 459

speak of perpetual motion, for example, we know what we are saying and yet
such motion is an impossibility and so we can only appear to have an idea of it.
(A.VI.vi.438–439 = NE.438–9; cf. G.I.338)
Similarly, in Meditationes de cognitione, veritate, et ideis (1684), Leibniz
wrote:

We cannot safely use definitions for drawing conclusions unless we know first
that they are real definitions, that is, that they include no contradictions,
because we can draw contradictory conclusions from notions (notionibus) that
include contradictions, which is absurd. To clarify this I usually use the
example of the fastest motion, which entails an absurdity . . . At first glance we
might seem to have an idea of a fastest motion, for we certainly understand
what we say; but yet we certainly have no idea of impossible things. And so, in
the same way, the fact that we think about (nos cogitare de) a most perfect
being is not sufficient for us to assert that we have an idea of it . . . From this I
think that we can finally understand that one cannot always appeal safely to
an idea and that many use this splendid honorific improperly to prop up
certain creatures of their imagination, for we don’t always have an idea
corresponding to every thing we consciously think of (neque enim statim ideam
habemus rei, de qua nos cogitare sumus conscii), as I showed a while ago with
the example of the greatest speed.
(A.VI.iv.588–9 = AG.25–26 = L.293; cf. DM §25: A.VI.iv.1569–70 = AG.57)
Thus we may think of the world as one, or have a notion of the world as
one, so that it may thus ‘appear’ to unanalysed thought to be one, but if the
world is infinite, the notion of the world as one whole implies a
contradiction, since an infinite world conceived as one whole implies infinite
number, which, as we have seen, was itself something that Leibniz believed
implied a contradiction. Therefore, there can be no idea of the world as one
whole if it is infinite, and consequently the world itself cannot be an unum
per se – that is, a unity in fact and independently of how we are considering
it.10

To Carlin’s Second Point

To vary Carlin’s question slightly, we might now ask: if the world

conceived as one thing implies a contradiction, why does not every body
we conceive as one thing imply a contradiction, given that for Leibniz
every body, considered in itself and apart from soul, is an infinite
aggregate? To begin with, we need to note that the expression ‘infinite
aggregate’ is ambiguous as between ‘aggregate that is infinite in
multitude’ and ‘aggregate that is infinite in magnitude’; and this actually

10
As the preceding passage makes clear, Leibniz uses the term ‘notion’ in a broader sense than
‘idea’. Notions include thoughts of both consistent and inconsistent concepts, but there can be
ideas only of consistent concepts.
460 GREGORY BROWN

brings me to the second point that Carlin makes in support of his

contention ‘that the concept of substantial unity is irrelevant to
(Leibniz’s) argument against the soul of the world thesis’ – namely, that
in light of Leibniz’s position that all aggregates, finite as well as infinite,
lack per se unity, ‘it is difficult to believe that in the numerous passages
where Leibniz claims that the world is not a whole because it is infinite,
he simply means it lacks substantial unity’. I agree that this would be
difficult to believe if in claiming that the world is not a whole because it
is infinite, Leibniz meant to suggest that the world lacks substantial unity
in virtue of its being infinite in multitude, as Carlin’s remarks seem to
suggest. But I don’t think that this is what Leibniz did mean to suggest.
Rather, we must distinguish. Every body considered apart from soul is,
as such, an aggregate that lacks substantial unity. But all aggregates, as
we have seen, are also una per accidens, which ‘have their unity in our
mind only’ (G.II.97 = LA.121 = AG.86); ‘in the end, all these unities
become realized only by thoughts and appearances, like colors and other
phenomena, which, nevertheless, are called real’ (G.II.100 =
LA.126 = AG.89). The issue for Leibniz is whether some bodies that
are aggregates considered apart from soul – which all bodies are, whether
they be finite or infinite in multitude – may nonetheless be una per se –
that is, unities in fact and independently of how they appear to unanalysed
thought or to perception. Leibniz wishes to allow for this latter possibility
– that is, for the possibility that some bodies that we think of, or
perceive, as one actually are one. But he also wants to maintain that
some bodies cannot be una per se – that is, unities in fact and
independently of how they appear to unanalysed thought or to perception –
even though they may be thought of as one. And it is precisely those
bodies that are infinite in magnitude that, while they may be thought of
as one, cannot be unities in fact and independently of how they appear to
unanalysed thought or to perception, that is, they cannot be una per se.
For the ancient philosophers that Leibniz often mentions in his
discussion of the matters at hand, it was the soul that could make the
many one, reducing the parts of an aggregate to unity; and Leibniz wants
to leave open the possibility that there may be corporeal substances,
bodies possessing a genuine unity. But it was never thought that a soul
could make a finite magnitude out of an infinite one; so even if we might
imagine that a body infinite in magnitude should be one in multitude, it
could not but remain infinite in magnitude; and as we have seen, for
Leibniz what is infinite in magnitude, if it were actually one whole, would
imply infinite number, which he regarded as something that itself implies
a contradiction. So nothing infinite in magnitude could be supposed to be
one thing without that implying a contradiction. So soul cannot be
attributed to an infinite world, because a world infinite in magnitude
cannot be an unum per se, even though it may appear to unanalysed
thought to be one. On the other hand, if, as the ancients taught, there is
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 461

something, a soul or form, that can make the many one, then there may
be bodies of finite magnitude that are una per se even though they are,
inasmuch as they are considered apart from soul, infinite in multitude; and
if there are such bodies, a soul must be attributed to them. As Leibniz
said in a passage quoted earlier from DMP, ‘in an entity per se some real
union is required, consisting . . . in some unique individual principle and
subject of its attributes and operations, which in us is called a soul, and
in every body a substantial form, provided the body is a unity in itself ’
(A.VI.iv.1506 = RA.283; my emphasis) – which, of course, the world, if it
is infinite in magnitude, cannot be. So, to return to Carlin’s second point,
it can be said that where Leibniz argues that the world cannot be a
whole because it is infinite, it is not because he thinks that an aggregate
of finitely many things can be any more an unum per se than an
aggregate of infinitely many things. The contrast being drawn in these
arguments is not between aggregates that are finite in multitude and
aggregates that are infinite in multitude, but rather between aggregates
that are finite in magnitude, though, perhaps, infinite in multitude, and
those that are infinite in magnitude. And Leibniz’s point is that whereas
none of the latter can be una per se, it is at least possible that some of
the bodies that are finite in magnitude and, inasmuch as they are
considered apart from soul, infinite in multitude, might nevertheless be una
per se, that is, again, una in fact and independently of how they appear to
unanalysed thought or to perception.
What I have been saying accords well, I think, with what Leibniz says in
DNMA and DMP. In both places, Leibniz presents the would-be defender
of the claim that God is the soul of the world with a dilemma – one horn of
which supposes that the world is finite in magnitude and the other of which
supposes that the world is infinite in magnitude.11 He then argues that God,
who is infinite, cannot be supposed to be the soul of a world that is finite in
magnitude; but neither can God be supposed to be the soul of a world that is
infinite in magnitude, since a body infinite in magnitude cannot be an unum
per se, and what is not an unum per se does not possess a soul. Although, as I
have noted earlier, the argument in DMP does not explicitly mention the
notion of a whole, in the argument presented in DNMA Leibniz does point
out that ‘an infinite world is no more one and whole than infinite number’,
and it is clear that the fact that an infinite world is not one whole is also in
the background of the argument presented in DMP. For in the argument
presented in DMP, Leibniz argues that ‘the world . . ., if it is infinite, is not
even one entity, any more than an infinite straight line or the greatest
number are’, and his argument against infinite magnitude and infinite
number turn precisely on rejecting the idea that they can be considered

11
Although Leibniz himself does not use the expressions ‘finite in magnitude’ and ‘infinite in
magnitude’, using rather ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’ simpliciter, I do not believe the terms he uses in this
context can bear any other reading.
462 GREGORY BROWN

wholes without implying a contradiction. Furthermore, in the paragraph

immediately preceding the one in which he formulated the argument against
a world soul in DMP, Leibniz wrote:

In most cases it is debatable whether a body is only a machine and

conglomeration of parts, or whether it is really endowed with a substantial
form or soul. This is a matter of controversy concerning animals themselves,
and much more so still concerning plants and stones and metals, but most of
all concerning stars and the world as a whole.
(A.VI.iv.1508 = RA.287)
This is an interesting passage because it reflects a scepticism about the
reality of corporeal substances that Leibniz was never able to shake. But it
is important for our present discussion because, although Leibniz suggests
that the reality of corporeal substances is generally debatable, the question
of whether ‘the world as a whole’ is endowed with a soul is among the
most controversial. Yet despite this, the question concerning the world as
a whole is the one question in this debate about the reality of corporeal
substances that Leibniz seemed to think was definitively resolvable. For his
argument is that, however debatable the other cases may be, the world, if
infinite, cannot be one entity; and he makes it clear that the criterion for
deciding whether something has a soul is whether it is an unum per se:
‘every body [has] a substantial form, provided the body is an unum per se’
(A.VI.iv.1506 = RA.283). Similarly, in an important piece written about
the same time as DMP – which the editors of the Akademie edition have
entitled Definitiones notionum metaphysicarum atque logicarum (hereafter
DNML) and have tentatively dated from around the middle of 1685 –
Leibniz wrote:

If when several things are posited, by that very fact some unity is immediately
understood to be posited, then the former are called parts, the latter a whole.
Nor is it even necessary that they exist as the same time, or at the same place; it
suffices that they be considered at the same time. Thus from all the Roman
emperors together, we construct one aggregate. But actually no entity that is
really one is composed of a plurality of parts, and every substance is
indivisible, and those things that have parts are not entities, but merely
phenomena. For which reason the ancient philosophers rightly attributed
substantial forms, such as minds, and souls or primary entelechies, to those
things which they said make an unum per se, and denied that matter per se is
one entity.
(A.VI.iv.627 = RA.271)

This passage is important, not only because it makes clear that Leibniz
agrees with the ‘ancient philosophers’ in making per se unity a necessary and
sufficient condition for being endowed with a soul, but also because it
broaches the topic that is central to Carlin’s third, and most important point
in support of his contention ‘that the concept of substantial unity is
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 463

irrelevant to (Leibniz’s) argument against the soul of the world thesis’ –

namely, that substances, unlike wholes, do not have parts.

To Carlin’s Third Point

As we have seen, one serious problem that Carlin raises against

supposing that Leibniz’s argument against a world soul turns on whether
or not the world is a substantial unity is that that argument relies on the
assumption that an infinite quantity cannot be a whole, and the only way
to derive the desired conclusion from that assumption is to suppose that
a substantial unity is a whole. But the latter assumption seems clearly at
odds with the passage just quoted from DNML. According to that
passage, a whole presupposes parts, and it is explicitly denied that an
unum per se has parts. But Carlin himself does not mention the passage
from DNML. Instead, he refers to the definition of a whole that Leibniz
gives in a considerably later work that Couturat dates between 1702 and
1704 (see C.437). There Leibniz defines a whole as ‘that whose many
constituents, when they come together properly, are called parts’ (C.476),
and then added that ‘more strictly, a whole is assumed to have
homogenous parts’ (ibid.). Carlin remarks that ‘such definitions strictly
imply that wholes have parts’, but then adds that ‘substantial unities
always lack parts; so no whole can be a substantial unity’ (Carlin 1997:
22n19). However, it is important for Carlin’s interpretation that we
suppose, as he says, ‘that Leibniz did not develop a strict notion of a
whole until after 1700 or so’ (Carlin 1997: 22n19, 23n26) – where by ‘a
strict notion of a whole’, Carlin means one according to which ‘a whole
is something which has homogenous parts’ (Carlin 1997: 23n26). As we
saw earlier, Carlin believes that the argument against a world soul
presented in DNMA is exceptional in that it appears to turn on the fact
that the world is not one per se, whereas other, and later, formulations of
the argument turn on the world’s not being a whole, where being a whole
neither entails, nor is entailed by, being one per se. I have already held
that the argument in DMP, written about a year after DNMA, also
clearly turns on the fact that the world is not one per se, and I have
suggested that both the argument in DNMA and that in DMP actually
do turn on the idea that the world is not one per se precisely because it is
not a whole. But since both of these pieces appeared considerably before
1700, I suppose that Carlin would not regard either of them as posing a
significant threat to his overall interpretation. Carlin’s idea, I take it, is
that prior to around 1700 Leibniz held that substances were wholes – in
fact, that wholes just were una per se. But then, after coming to ‘a strict
notion of a whole’ sometime around 1700 – a notion that essentially
involves the notion of parts – Leibniz came to see that he could no
longer consistently regard substances, or una per se, which he regarded as
464 GREGORY BROWN

indivisible and without parts, as wholes. Consequently, his argument

against a world soul had to be modified in such a way that it did not
turn on the assumption that what is an unum per se is a whole.
Therefore, the arguments that Leibniz formulated against the possibility
of a world soul after 1700 – and, in particular, the argument to that
effect that he formulated in LDB, the details of which we shall consider
later – no longer turn on the claim that the world is not an unum per se
because it is not a whole. Rather, the later arguments turn on the world’s
not being a whole, where being a whole, again, is no longer regarded as
either entailing, or entailed by, being an unum per se.
However, I do not think this scenario is credible. For one thing, in a
paper that the editors of the Akademie edition entitle De magnitudine and
tentatively date from early 1676, and thus twenty-four years before 1700,
Leibniz had already defined a whole as ‘that to whose nature there can be
understood to belong several homogenous things, which are called ‘parts’’
(A.VI.iii.483 = P.41). For another, we have seen that in DNML – a piece
dated from around the middle of 1685 and hence fifteen years before
1700 – Leibniz had stated that ‘if when several things are posited, by that
very fact some unity is immediately understood to be posited, then the
former are called parts, the latter a whole’, which of course again implies
that a whole has parts; and in the same piece, he explicitly argued that
‘no entity that is really one is composed of a plurality of parts, and every
substance is indivisible, and those things that have parts are not entities,
but merely phenomena’, which of course implies that no unum per se can
be a whole. Moreover, as we have also seen, the argument against a
world soul presented in DMP – a piece written around the same time as
DNML – turns on the same claim as the argument presented in DNMA,
namely, that the world is not an unum per se because it cannot be a
whole. There is no indication that Leibniz’s declared conviction in
DNML, that una per se are not wholes because they lack parts, involved
any change in his thinking about how the argument against a world soul
ought to formulated. Finally, the evidence that Carlin offers in support of
his claim that Leibniz had a different conception of whole prior to 1700
from the one that he had after is extremely thin. It consists of a single
passage from Leibniz’s letter to Arnauld of 9 October 1687, in which he
wrote:

Parts can constitute a whole, whether or not it has a genuine unity. It is

true that the whole which has a genuine unity can remain the strictly the
same individual, although it loses or gains parts, as we experience in
ourselves.
(G.II.120 = LA.153)

Carlin comments that ‘here Leibniz allows that something endowed

with true unity can be a whole’, and then points out that ‘Leibniz’s
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 465

standard definition of a whole is something which has homogenous

parts’. The suggestion seems to be that here, prior to 1700, Leibniz is
maintaining that a genuine unity can be a whole, which, given that a
genuine unity lacks parts, must imply that a whole need not have parts,
which conflicts with ‘Leibniz’s standard definition of a whole’ – the one
supposedly formulated after 1700. But the passage from the letter to
Arnauld explicitly maintains that ‘the whole which has a genuine unity’
has parts, so there is, contrary to what Carlin seems to suggest, no
apparent conflict with Leibniz’s ‘standard definition of a whole’. Rather,
the passage conflicts with Leibniz’s position, clearly announced in the
passage from DNML quoted above, that an unum per se lacks parts.
But it must be borne in mind that the passage in question was omitted
from the letter that Leibniz actually sent to Arnauld, so it seems likely
that Leibniz realized that what he had said in that passage was
inconsistent with his position, clearly stated in DNML, that an unum
per se lacks parts. More to the point, he may have realized that, given
his belief that the body of a corporeal substance consists of an infinity
of parts, to suppose that these parts are also parts of the genuine unity
that is the corporeal substance would be to commit himself to an
infinite multitude of parts that is one whole, which would imply infinite
number.
So there seems little reason to think that Leibniz changed his view
about wholes around 1700. But if not we are left with explaining how
Leibniz could maintain that the world is not an unum per se because it
is not a whole. For that implies that if something is an unum per se, it
is a whole and, because wholes have parts, that an unum per se has
parts, contrary to what is said in DNML. Understandably, Carlin is
driven to ask, ‘But in what sense does a genuine unity have parts, since
it is ex hypothesi, indivisible into parts?’ (Carlin 1997: 23n26). In order
to resolve the problem this presents, we must remember that what is at
issue in the argument against the possibility of an infinite world’s
possessing a soul is whether what is infinite in magnitude can be an
unum per se. Now, a corporeal substance is extended, and, according to
Leibniz, ‘the extended is that which has magnitude and situation’
(A.VI.iv.267 = RA.237). Thus, a corporeal substance has magnitude in
virtue of being extended. But in De analysi situs, a work dating from
around 1679 (see Couturat 1901: 396), Leibniz argued that ‘magnitude is
in fact measured by the number of determinate parts (determinatarum
partium multitudine). This number may nevertheless vary for a thing that
remains fixed, according as one or another measure or unit is assumed’
(G.V.179 = L.254).
In a work dated by the editors of the Akademie edition from between
summer 1687 and the end of 1696, we have: ‘Magnitude is the number of
equivalent parts (multitudo partium aequivalentium)’ (A.VI.iv.868). Another
work, dated from the end of 1687, has it that ‘Magnitude is the number of
466 GREGORY BROWN

determinate parts, for example, three feet’ (A.VI.iv.873). And in a work

dating from around 1700, Leibniz wrote:

Magnitude is what is designated by the number of congruent parts (quod

designator numero partium congruentium). Thus the magnitude of the arm
span (orgyia) is designated by six feet, for feet are congruent with each
other, or by the number 72 of inches, if we take the inch as the measure,
which is the twelfth part of a foot. And thus the general number
designating a magnitude varies as the measure to be repeated is taken in
different ways.
(LH XXXV, 1, 9, p. 9 recto; as printed in Grosholz and Yakira 1998: 89)

From all of this, it again seems to follow that a corporeal substance,

which is supposed to be an unum per se, is a whole that has parts; for it
has extension, and therefore magnitude, which presupposes parts. But here
again we need to distinguish. In his argument against a world soul, Leibniz
is considering whether a world infinite in magnitude can be a whole, by
which he clearly must mean whole in magnitude. I assume that for Leibniz
the magnitude of something is not the number of its actual parts. In the
short piece De magnitudine of 1676, Leibniz wrote that ‘I once used to
define magnitude as the number of parts, but later I considered that to be
worthless, unless it is established that the parts are equal to each other, or
of a given ratio’ (A.VI.iii.482 = P.37); and as we have seen, in that piece
he ends up defining magnitude, not as the number of parts, but as ‘the
number of equivalent parts’ (my emphasis), and in other places again as
the number of congruent or determinate (that is, determinate relative to a
given measure) parts. But the actual parts of a thing need not be
congruent, so how can magnitude apply to actual extended things? It
applies to them, at least, in virtue of their being extended. But the
extension of a thing, Leibniz tells us, ‘is only an abstract thing’
(G.VI.584 = AG.261). This comes from the quite late work, Entretien de
Philarete et d’Ariste, suite du premier entretien d’Ariste et de Theodore
(1712, revised 1715), but what Leibniz says there about the relation
between extension and space, on the one hand, and matter and body, on
the other, may help illuminate how magnitude, according to Leibniz,
applies to actual extended things:

I would always distinguish between extension and the attribute to which

extension or diffusion (a relative notion) relates, which would be situation or
locality. Thus, the diffusion of place would form space, which would be like
the proton dektikon, or the primary subject of extension, that through which it
would also apply to other things in space. Thus, extension, when it is the
attribute of space, is the diffusion or continuation of situation or locality, just
as the extension of body is the diffusion of antitypy or materiality. For place is
in points as well as in space, and consequently, there can be place without
extension or diffusion. But diffusion simply in length makes up a local line
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 467

endowed with extension. It is the same for matter; it is in points as well as in

body, and its diffusion simply in length constitutes a material line. The other
continuations or diffusions in width and in depth constitute the surface and the
solid of geometry – in a word, space with respect to place, and body with
respect to matter.
(G.VI.585 = AG.262)
Although this passage is not entirely pellucid, some relevant lessons may
be drawn from it. First, space is said to be a ‘diffusion of place’, and ‘the
primary subject of extension’, or ‘that through which it (i.e. I presume,
extension) would also apply to other things in space’. So the ‘diffusion of
antitypy or materiality’ would constitute the extension of body because it is
that by which it fills a certain extension of space.12 Space, for Leibniz, is, of
course, something which is itself abstract, constructed from the relations of
distance, or situation, that obtain between bodies and that determine places,
so that ‘space is that, which results from places taken together’ (Lz.V.47,
G.VII.400 = HGA.70). And speaking of two bodies, A and B, which have
at different times the same relation of coexistence with other bodies assumed
to remained fixed, Leibniz says:

It may not be amiss to consider the difference between place, and the relation
of situation, which is in the body that fills up the place. For, the place of A and
B, is the same; whereas the relation of A to fixed bodies, is not precisely and
individually the same, as the relation which B (that comes into its place) will
have to the same fixed bodies; but these relations agree only. For, two different
subjects, as A and B, cannot have precisely the same individual affection; it

12
In fact, considered abstractly, apart from their subjects, I take it that for Leibniz the extension
of space and the extension of body are the same. In his Fifth Letter to Clarke, Leibniz does say
that ‘finite space is not the extension of bodies: as time is not their duration’. Rather, ‘things
keep their extension; but they do not always keep their space’. So ‘every thing has its own
extension, its own duration; but it has not its own time, and does not keep its own space’
(Lz.V.46, G.VII.399 = HGA.69). But I assume that the distinction between finite space and
extension of body is made because, as Leibniz says in the Entretien de Philarete et d’Ariste, the
extension of the one, namely, space, relates to the ‘diffusion or continuation of situation or
locality’, whereas the extension of the other, namely, body, relates to the ‘diffusion of antitypy
or materiality’. But considered abstractly, I take it that for Leibniz the extension of space and of
body are the same, which is why, in the New Essays, he denies that there is a double extension,
one of body and one of space:
Although it is true that in conceiving body one conceives something in addition to space, it does not
follow that there are two extensions, that of space and that of body. Similarly, in conceiving several
things at once one conceives something in addition to the number, namely the things numbered; and
yet there are not two pluralities, one of them abstract (for the number) and the other concrete (for the
things numbered). In the same way, there is no need to postulate two extensions, one abstract (for
space) and the other concrete (for body). For the concrete one is as it is only by virtue of the abstract
one: just as bodies pass from one position in space to another, i.e. change how they are ordered in
relation to one another, so things pass also from one position to another within an ordering or
enumeration – as when the first becomes the second, the second becomes the third, etc. In fact, time
and place are only kinds of order.
(A.VI.vi.127 = NE.127)
468 GREGORY BROWN

being impossible, that the same individual accident should be in two subjects,
or pass from one subject to another. But the mind not contented with an
agreement, looks for an identity, for something that should be truly the same;
and conceives it as being extrinsic to the subjects: and this is what we call place
and space. But this can only be an ideal thing; containing a certain order,
wherein the mind conceives the application of relations.
(Lz.V.47, G.VII.400–401 = HGA.70)

Place and space are thus abstracted, or constructed, from bodies and their
relations, but they are then considered ‘as being extrinsic to the subjects’.
Just so, in the Entretien de Philarete et d’Ariste, Leibniz maintains that
‘duration and extension are attributes of things, but time and space are
taken to be outside of things and serve to measure them’
(G.VI.584 = AG.261; my emphasis). Place and space are, for Leibniz, only
‘ideal things’, which means that they are continuous, unlike actual bodies,
which are discreet:

In actual bodies there is only discrete quantity . . . But a continuous quantity is

something ideal which pertains to possibles and to actuals only insofar as they
are possible. A continuum, that is, involves indeterminate parts, while on the
other hand, there is nothing indefinite in actual things, in which every division
is made that can be made. Actual things are compounded as is number out of
unities, ideal things as is a number out of fractions; the parts are actually in the
real whole but not in the ideal whole. But we confuse ideal with real substances
when we seek for actual parts in the order of possibilities, and indeterminate
parts in the aggregate of actual things, and so entangle ourselves in the
labyrinth of the continuum and in contradictions that cannot be explained.
Meanwhile the knowledge of the continuous, that is, of possibilities, contains
eternal truths which are never violated by actual phenomena, since the
difference is always less than any given assignable amount.
(G.II.282–3 = L.539)

Thus, despite the fact that place and space are ideal and continuous, they
nonetheless can ‘serve’, as Leibniz says ‘to measure’ actual things, for ‘the
difference is always less than any given assignable amount’. ‘The point’, as
Robert Adams has argued,

presumably is that while in actual phenomena (bodies) the division into parts
is given and determinate, there is some such actual, given division (or series of
divisions) as close as you please to any arbitrary line that might be drawn
through the body, because the body is actually divided to infinity.
(Adams 1994: 233–4)

To return, then, to the question of how magnitude applies to actual

things, I suggest that, for Leibniz, magnitude applies to actual bodies in
virtue of the fact that they fill a certain extension of space, or occupy a
certain place. ‘Extension’, Leibniz tells us, ‘is magnitude of space’
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 469

(GM.VII.18 = L.667). Since space is ideal, it can potentially be divided

into arbitrary, and congruent, parts that can serve as a ‘measure’ by which
the magnitude of a particular space, or place, can be determined; for
magnitude we recall, ‘is what is designated by the number of congruent
parts’. The magnitude of a body is thus given by the magnitude of the
space, or place, that it occupies, which means that its magnitude can be
measured even if it does not consist of actual parts that are congruent.
More to the point, the magnitude of a body can be measured even if it
does not have any actual parts at all, as for Leibniz is true of the body of
a corporeal substance considered as it is in itself – that is with a form or
soul. For its magnitude can be said to be equal to that of the magnitude of
the space that it occupies, and it can be said to be a whole in magnitude
when the parts of the space that it occupies, and by which its magnitude is
measured, are finite in number. And with this we are finally in a position
to offer an answer to the question of how Leibniz can claim that an
infinite world is not an unum per se because it is not a whole, without
thereby implying that substantial unities have parts in the sense that that is
denied in DNML and elsewhere. For given that Leibniz is denying that an
infinite world is not a whole in magnitude, he can be interpreted as saying
that the magnitude of the space that such a world would have to occupy
would be infinite – that is, the number of congruent parts into which it
would have to be divided in order to determine its magnitude would be
infinite. But since no infinite can be considered a whole without that
implying a contradiction, an infinite world cannot be a whole in magnitude,
which implies that it cannot be an unum per se. But, again, this does not
imply that an unum per se consists in actual parts – the sense of ‘parts’ that
I take it is at issue when Leibniz asserts that an unum per se lacks parts –
since the parts in question are the arbitrary parts assigned to the space
that a body occupies and by which its magnitude is measured. So Leibniz
can argue that whereas it may be possible for a body of finite magnitude,
but perhaps of infinite actual parts considered apart from soul, to be an
unum per se (given that souls are thought to be able to make the many into
one), it is not possible for a body of infinite magnitude to be an unum per
se. For even if such a body were considered as one in multitude, and thus
as not having actual parts, it would still not be a whole in magnitude; and
what is not one whole in magnitude cannot be an unum per se.

LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A WORLD SOUL AT

THEODICY §195

I noted in the first section of this paper that there is a significant difference
between the argument that Leibniz presents against the possibility of a
world soul in DNMA and DMP and the one that he presents at Theodicy
§195, and it would be appropriate to discuss that difference now, before
470 GREGORY BROWN

turning to an examination of the argument that is presented in LDB. Here

again is the passage from Theodicy §195:

There is an infinity of creatures in the smallest particle of matter, because of

the actual division of the continuum to infinity. And infinity, that is to say the
accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly speaking, not a
whole any more than infinite number itself, whereof one cannot say whether it
is even or uneven. That is just what serves to confute those who make of the
world a God, or who think of God as the Soul of the world; for the world or
the universe cannot be regarded as an animal or substance.
(Theodicy §195, G.VI.232 = T.249)

The important point to note is that this argument claims that the world
cannot be a whole because it is infinite in multitude, whereas, as we have
seen, the arguments in DNMA and DMP claim that the world cannot be a
whole because it is infinite in magnitude. But this, I think, renders the present
argument unacceptable for at least two reasons. First, as Carlin has pointed
out, if the world is simply assumed to be an aggregate of substances, the fact
that it is an infinite aggregate in multitude is actually irrelevant to the
argument, since any aggregate – whether finite or infinite in multitude –
would not, by Leibniz’s lights, constitute a substantial unity. Second, since
the argument begins by assuming that the world is just an ‘accumulation of
an infinite number of substances’, it actually begs the question against those
who maintain that there is a soul of the world; for, as we have seen, Leibniz
essentially defines an ‘aggregate’, or an ‘accumulation’, as a multiplicity that
lacks substantial unity. Leibniz is willing to allow the possibility that a
finitely extended body that is infinite in multitude when considered apart
from soul may nonetheless be an unum per se in fact and hence actually
possess a soul; thus he cannot consistently exclude the possibility of a world
soul simply on the basis that the world, when considered apart from soul, is
an aggregate of infinitely many substances. The argument as it is formulated
in DNMA and DMP, on the other hand, does not simply assume that the
world is an aggregate of substances; rather the argument as it is formulated
in DNMA and DMP, as I have interpreted it, is that if the world were
infinite in magnitude, it could not be one whole in magnitude even if it could
be one whole in multitude, and consequently it cannot be an unum per se.13

13
It is true that the argument as it is presented in DMP begins with the assumption that ‘the
aggregate of all bodies is called the world’ (A.VI.iv.1509 = RA.287), and that two paragraphs
earlier, Leibniz had argued that ‘bodies that lack a substantial form . . . are merely aggregates of
bodies, like a woodpile or a heap of stones’ (A.VI.iv.1508 = RA.287). But since the assumption
that the world is an aggregate plays no essential role in the argument presented there against the
possibility of a world soul—at least as I interpret that argument—I think that the term
‘aggregate’ should, in the context of the argument, be interpreted in some neutral sense that
does not rule out the possibility that the world might be one in multitude.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 471

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST A WORLD SOUL IN THE LETTER TO

DE BOSSES OF 11 MARCH 1706

I come finally to the argument against the possibility of a world soul that
Leibniz presents in his letter to De Bosses of 11 March 1706 (LDB). It is
upon this formulation of the argument that Carlin bases his interpretation
of how Leibniz understood the argument after he ‘develop(ed) a strict
notion of a whole’, around 1700, essentially involving the notion of
homogenous parts. I have already argued that the claim that Leibniz came
to a different notion of whole around 1700 from the one he had before
cannot be sustained. But the fact that Carlin accepts this claim leads him to
believe that Leibniz gave up the view that he had held earlier, namely, that
the world cannot be an unum per se because it is not whole. For this entails
that an unum per se must be a whole, which, given that a whole presupposes
parts, entails that an unum per se has parts, contrary to Leibniz’s notion of
an unum per se. So, as we have seen, Carlin argues that after 1700, and in
LDB in particular, the argument against the possibility of a world soul turns
not on the claim that the world is not an unum per se, as it had previously in
DNMA, but upon the claim that the world is not a whole, where being a
whole neither entails, nor is entailed by, being an unum per se.
Carlin takes it to be significant that in the second paragraph of LDB,
Leibniz asserts that ‘being and one are convertible terms, but as there is
being by aggregation, so also is there one (by aggregation), although this
entity and unity is semi-mental’ (G.II.304). He correctly notes that ‘Leibniz
permitted talk of the oneness of bodies, provided we keep in mind that this
oneness is ‘‘semi-mental’’ (ibid.), and he takes this to be connected in some
significant way to the claim made in the third paragraph of the letter,
namely, that ‘the body of an animal, which is not one being in itself (unum
per se Ens), but an aggregate, . . . has arithmetical unity, not metaphysical
unity’ (G.II.304). Although he is not entirely explicit about the matter,
Carlin seems clearly to think that by ‘arithmetical unity’, Leibniz means
‘semi-mental unity’, which is to be contrasted with ‘metaphysical unity’:

Given that whatever has metaphysical unity is something Leibniz would call
‘one,’ then it seems clear that metaphysical unity implies arithmetical unity (or,
arithmetical ‘oneness’). But more importantly, the reverse does not hold:
arithmetical unity does not entail metaphysical unity, for, as Leibniz says, the
body of an animal has arithmetical unity, but lacks metaphysical unity.
(Carlin 1997: 10–11)
It is true, as we have seen, that Leibniz did contrast per se, metaphysical
unity with the semi-mental unity that he thought was possessed by
aggregates. But I doubt that the notion of an ‘arithmetical unity’, as
Leibniz speaks of it in the third paragraph of LDB, is actually relevant to
the argument against a world soul that is presented in the fifth paragraph of
that letter, as Carlin thinks that it is. For one thing, the third paragraph of
472 GREGORY BROWN

the letter addresses a completely different concern of Des Bosses than the
fifth paragraph, in which the argument against a world soul is presented.
The third paragraph addresses the following remarks that Des Bosses had
made in his letter of 2 March:

If being and one are convertible, then nothing exists simpliciter et actu a parte
rei except what is one actu simpliciter. But a fraction of unity, i.e. of one actu
simpliciter, is not one actu simpliciter, else the one consisting of matter and
entelechy, whose fraction we accept, would be an aggregate of unities, and thus
not one. Therefore, fractions of unities and of every simple thing are only
mathematical entities which result from an abstraction of the mind.

Again: all matter has parts, therefore any part of matter is one or many. If
many, the part of the part is one, for where there is not one, neither are there
many. Furthermore, that which is one is not many. Therefore, insofar as
matter is subject to one entelechy, it is not actually many.
(G.II.302)

Leibniz replied as follows:

Being and one are convertible terms, but as there is being by aggregation, so
also is there one (by aggregation), although this entity and unity is semi-
mental.

Numbers, unities, fractions have the nature of relations. And to that extent,
they can in some way be called beings. A fraction of unity is no less one being
than unity itself. Nor is it to be thought that a formal unity is an aggregate of
fractions, for its notion is simple, applying to divisibles and indivisibles, and
there is no fraction of indivisibles. And yet a material unity, or unity as
actually employed (but at the same time generally assumed) in the works of
arithmeticians, is formed from two halves, when the subject admits of them, as
1 1
2 + 2 = 1, or, for example, as the value of a fig is the aggregate of the value of
two half figs. I spoke otherwise of substances. In that case, a fraction or half of
an animal is not one being per se, since it cannot be understood except of the
body of an animal, which is not one being per se, but an aggregate, and has
arithmetical unity, not metaphysical unity. But as the matter itself does not
make one being if an adequate entelechy is not present, so neither does a part
of it. Nor do I see what would prevent many things being made subject to one
entelechy; indeed, this is necessary. Matter (secondary, that is) or a part of
matter exists in the same way as a flock or a house, i.e. as an entity by
aggregation.
(G.II.304)

Thus, I think it is clear from the context that what Leibniz means by an
‘arithmetical unity’ here is simply something that is an aggregate and hence
divisible, rather than an unum per se, which is not divisible; and that is
essentially what Carlin suggests. But of course in that sense the world is also
an arithmetical unity, since it is, by Leibniz’s lights, an aggregate that is
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 473

divisible. So it is hard to see how the notion of an arithmetical unity could

provide the kind of contrast between the world and an animal body that is
needed in order to claim that the latter can have a soul but the former
cannot. In any event, here is how Carlin interprets the argument against a
world soul that is presented in the fifth paragraph of LDB:

(Leibniz) . . . emphasize(s) that ‘although the world is infinite in size, it is not

one whole,’ and for this reason God cannot intelligibly be seen as the soul of
the world. It was Leibniz’s view, as we have seen, that there is no such thing as
an infinite quantity, and therefore infinite entities are not wholes. That is, the
actual infinite does not even possess what Leibniz would call arithmetical unity
(let alone metaphysical unity). The world, according to Leibniz, is infinite in
every conceivable aspect: size and number. As such, it cannot intelligibly be
labeled a ‘whole,’ because, as Leibniz says, ‘it is the essence . . . of whatever is a
whole to be limited.’ But since the world is unlimited with respect to size and
quantity, it cannot be properly called one whole, or one thing. All we need do
now to complete the argument is to supply the implicit premise, viz. only
entities which are wholes can be endowed with souls (alternatively: only things
which have arithmetical unity can be endowed with souls). It follows that there
is no soul of the world. This is not altogether implausible given his views on
the infinite and the notion of a whole, for when we attribute a soul to the
world, we are not attributing it, arithmetically speaking, to any one thing.
(Carlin 1997: 12–13)

We recall that Carlin maintains that at the time of his letter to Des Bosses,
Leibniz no longer held the view that the world is not an unum per se because
it is not a whole, since that would imply that an unum per se would have to
be a whole and consequently have parts. But he nevertheless suggests that
for Leibniz, ‘since the world is unlimited with respect to size and quantity, it
cannot properly be called one whole, or one thing’. So whatever Carlin
means by ‘one thing’ here, it presumably cannot be an unum per se, and he
seems to take ‘one thing’ to be simply an ‘arithmetical unity’. But as we have
seen, what Leibniz seems to mean by an ‘arithmetical unity’ in LDB is ‘an
aggregate’, something that is ‘semi-mental’, as Carlin himself suggests. But
then my earlier point remains in force, namely, that because the world is, by
Leibniz’s lights, itself an aggregate, there can be no difference between the
world and an animal body on that head. And in response to Carlin’s claim
that ‘when we attribute a soul to the world, we are not attributing it,
arithmetically speaking, to any one thing’, it could be replied that the world
is as much an ‘arithmetical unity’ as an animal body – at least as Leibniz
seems to understand the notion of an arithmetical unity in the third
paragraph of LDB. After all, if it is said that an animal body can be
perceived as one – even though it is not one in fact and independently of
perception – it can equally be said that the world can be thought of as one,
even though it is not one in fact and independently of unanalysed thought. But
in any event the issue for Leibniz is not whether we are attributing a soul to
474 GREGORY BROWN

any one thing ‘arithmetically speaking’, but rather whether we are

attributing a soul to any one thing metaphysically speaking; for by his
lights, we cannot attribute a soul to anything that is merely ‘arithmetically
one’, but only to something that is metaphysically one, that is, an unum per
se, that is, something that is one in fact and independently of how it appears to
unanalysed thought or to perception.14 I have argued that Leibniz is willing to
entertain the possibility that a body finite in magnitude, but consisting in an
infinity of parts when considered apart from soul, may be an unum per se –
that is, again, one in fact and independently of how it appears to unanalysed
thought or to perception; but I have also argued that for Leibniz, a body that
is infinite in magnitude cannot be one in fact and independently of how it
appears to unanalysed thought or to perception.
Richard Arthur, who has defended Carlin’s interpretation of Leibniz’s
argument against a world soul, seems to interpret what Leibniz means by an
‘arithmetical unity’ in LDB as a whole in the sense of being finite in
magnitude; for his defence involves showing that a finite body can be
conceived as having parts that sum to a finite quantity, whereas the parts of
a body infinite in magnitude cannot be conceived to sum to a finite quantity,
and thus such a body implies infinite number, which Leibniz rejects (Arthur
2001: 111–12). But I can find no textual basis for construing what Leibniz
calls an ‘arithmetical unity’ in LDB as something that is finite in magnitude,

14
It is easy to get the impression that Carlin takes Leibniz’s argument to be that the world
cannot become a substance because it is not a whole. But this, I think, would be a confusion.
For Leibniz often points out that corporeal substances do not come to be, that no body that
lacks a soul ever comes to possess one, although a body may come to be incorporated within the
body of an existing corporeal substance and hence come to be a part of a body that possesses a
soul. Thus, for example, at Monadology §§72–6, Leibniz wrote:
The soul changes body only little by little and by degrees, so that it is never stripped at once of all its
organs . . . That is why there is never total generation nor, strictly speaking, perfect death, death
consisting in separation of the soul. And what we call generations are developments and growths, as
what we call deaths are enfoldings and diminutions. . . . Today, when exact inquiries on plants,
insects, and animals have shown us that organic bodies in nature are never produced from chaos or
putrefaction, but always through seeds in which there is, no doubt, some preformation, it has been
judged that, not only the organic body was already there before conception, but there was also a soul
in this body; in brief, the animal itself was there, and through conception this animal was merely
prepared for a great transformation, in order to become an animal of another kind. . . . I have,
therefore, held that if the animal never begins naturally, it does not end naturally, either; and not
only will there be no generation, but also no complete destruction, nor any death, strictly speaking.
(G.VI.619–20 = AG.222–23; cf. G.VI.601–2 = AG.209, A.VI.iv.1466 = RA.264–5;
A.VI.iv.1649 = AG.34 = MP.92, G.IV.480–81 = AG.140–1 = MP.118–19)

Thus whatever corporeal substances there are have, according to Leibniz, existed from creation
and, barring miraculous annihilation, will never cease to be. Consequently, it would make little
sense on Leibniz’s view to suggest, as Carlin seems to, that a body cannot come to possess a soul
in virtue of its lacking some particular property or other; for on Leibniz’s view, no body
whatsoever can come to possess a soul. The issue for Leibniz is not whether a body can come to
possess a soul but rather, as I have argued, whether it actually does possess a soul; and
according to Leibniz the criterion for determining whether a body does possess a soul is whether
the body is an unum per se.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 475

as opposed to something that is simply divisible and hence an aggregate; and

I have already argued that there appears to be little basis for thinking that
what Leibniz says about ‘arithmetical unity’ in paragraph three of LDB is
even relevant to the argument against a world soul that he presents in
paragraph five of that letter. On the other hand, if Arthur took Leibniz’s
argument against a world soul to turn on the fact that a world infinite in
magnitude cannot be an unum per se because it is not a whole in magnitude,
then his interpretation of the argument would be much the same as the one I
have been arguing for in this paper. But in fact he does not interpret
Leibniz’s argument in just that way, precisely because he agrees with
Carlin’s point that for Leibniz a substance cannot be a whole, because
wholes have parts and substances do not.15 Instead, he follows Carlin in
supposing that it is the notion of a whole, not of an unum per se, that is
relevant to the argument against a world soul, where being a whole is again
understood neither as entailing, nor as entailed by, being an unum per se.
Rather, the relevant notion of a whole is simply that of an ‘arithmetical

15
In response to questions that were raised about how he was conceiving the relationship
between wholes and substances, Arthur notes that it ‘was quite correct to challenge any hint in
my previous paper that ‘true wholes’ could be identified with substances, which have no parts’
(Arthur 2001: 115n20). But there were more than simply hints to that effect. For example, at one
place Arthur argued as follows:
There is no bound to an infinite division, such as occurs in any body, so that the infinite parts of a
body do not constitute it as an infinite collection or true whole. Consequently, a Cartesian body,
regarded as pure extension, is not something complete, and cannot be a substance.
(Arthur 1999: 111)

But if, as is asserted here, it follows from the fact that ‘the infinite parts of a body do not
constitute it as an infinite collection or true whole’ that a Cartesian body ‘is not something
complete, and cannot be a substance’, then a substance must, in fact, be a ‘true whole’. In the
same paper again, Arthur wrote that if Leibniz had ‘embraced infinite numbers and wholes . . .
(b)odies would be real wholes’ and ‘matter would . . . be real, and would not need immaterial
principles to complete it’. Furthermore, ‘human bodies would form real unities without the need
of immaterial souls’ (ibid.). But if bodies would be ‘real wholes’ and ‘matter would be real . . .
and not need immaterial principles to complete it’ under the assumption that infinite number
and wholes are possible, then it is hard to see how this does not involve the assumption that
‘real wholes’ are substances. And it seems that the only way to understand the claim that if
infinite number and wholes were possible, then ‘human bodies would form real unities’ is by
assuming that wholes are ‘real unities’. Finally, in the introduction to his recently published
book, Arthur still writes that ‘in order for the various parts to be said truly to belong to the
same whole, to the same substance, it is necessary that there should be a substantial form, a
principle that underlies the changing phenomena’ (RA.lxx). But this surely seems to imply that
substances are wholes with parts.
In any event, one reason it is difficult to keep the notions of whole and substance distinct in
Leibniz is, I think, because he does hold that substances must be wholes in magnitude; but, as I
have argued, this does not violate the assumption that una per se lack actual parts, since the
parts involved in measuring magnitude are not actual parts of a body or of a corporeal
substance. I must confess, however, that I myself had previously thought that it was Leibniz’s
position that substances could not be wholes on the grounds that he held that substances, unlike
wholes, cannot have parts.
476 GREGORY BROWN

unity’, interpreted as something finite in magnitude and hence as something

that ‘could appear as one thing to perception’:

The body of the universe, conceived as a whole, would involve, per impossibile,
infinite number, which finite body would not. The infinite parts of a finite
body, on the other hand, although not possessing a true unity, could appear as
one thing to perception; and as Carlin says, it seems to be a tacit premise for
Leibniz that only such a phenomenal body is a candidate for being the body of
a real substance.16

Arthur’s argument here seems to involve an obvious mistake, inasmuch as

he supposes that the ‘body of the universe, conceived as a whole, would
involve . . . infinite number, which finite body would not’. For as we have
seen, Leibniz argues that a finite body that is actually divided into an infinity
of parts cannot be a whole any more than can a body infinite in magnitude,
since its being a whole would entail infinite number. But earlier Arthur had
made a relevant distinction:

The infinite aggregate of parts of a finite organic body . . . could be understood

as a distributive whole: Leibniz would be no more committed to construing an
organic body as an infinite collection of parts, than to construing a converging
infinite series as an infinite collection of all its terms.
(Arthur 2001: 111–12)
So Arthur’s point is that ‘conceiving the infinite aggregate of parts of a
finite organic body’ as a whole need not involve infinite number if it is
conceived as a ‘distributive whole’ rather than as an ‘infinite collection of
parts’. But this seems odd in light of the fact that the same can be said
about the body of the universe; for it too, if conceived as a ‘distributive
whole’ rather than as an ‘infinite collection of parts’, would seem not to
involve infinite number. And though it is true that if the universe is
conceived as an ‘infinite collection of parts’ it would involve infinite
number, the same is true of an organic body conceived as an ‘infinite
collection of parts’. The cases seem thus far perfectly symmetrical. So if
there is any relevant difference between an infinite universe and an organic
body finite in magnitude, it is that the latter can, as Arthur puts it, ‘appear
as one thing to perception’, but the former cannot; and then the entire
argument against a world soul comes down to Leibniz’s alleged ‘tacit
premise . . . that only such a phenomenal body is a candidate for being the
body of a real substance’. Since the argument interpreted in this way turns
essentially on this ‘tacit premise’, it is rather difficult to believe that
Leibniz would have gone to the trouble of formulating the argument

16
Arthur 2001: 113. It should be noted that Carlin himself does not say that ‘it seems to be a
tacit premise for Leibniz that only such a phenomenal body is a candidate for being the body of
a real substance’.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 477

without having made this premise explicit. Moreover, if the relevant

difference between a universe infinite in magnitude and an organic body
finite in magnitude were the fact that the latter can and the former cannot
‘appear as one thing to perception’, then Leibniz’s point about infinite
number involving a contradiction would seem, well, beside the point. For
why not simply state straightaway that ‘only such a phenomenal body is a
candidate for being the body of a real substance’ and be done with it?
After all, Leibniz could not have believed that those who were tempted to
hold that God was soul of the world were actually assuming that a world
infinite in magnitude could be grasped in its entirety in a single perception,
so there would be no need to establish that by appealing to the rather
more obscure point that infinite number involves a contradiction.
Furthermore, the point about infinite number involving a contradiction
actually seems irrelevant to establishing that an infinite universe cannot be
given at once in perception. After all, a finite body for Leibniz can be
given in perception even though it cannot actually be one without implying
a contradiction, so why couldn’t a world infinite in magnitude be given at
once in perception even though such a world cannot actually be one
without implying a contradiction? The fact that the universe cannot be
given at once in perception seems to be due to a fact about perception and
infinity that is independent of whether one thinks infinite number involves
a contradiction. Finally, the interpretation that Arthur seems to offer
renders Leibniz’s argument against a world soul lame and ineffective. For
why would any of the supposed defenders of a world soul be expected to
accept the ‘tacit premise’ upon which Arthur supposes that that argument
essentially turns? After all, in his formulation of the argument in DNMA
and DMP, Leibniz himself explicitly assumes that no finite world could be
a plausible candidate for God’s body, since God is infinite. Only an infinite
body could be adequate to an infinite soul, and the defenders of the thesis
that God is soul of the world could be expected heartily to agree. So the
‘tacit premise’ could be expected to be rejected precisely in the case that is
at issue here, namely, in the case of a substance whose soul is conceived to
be an infinite being.
For these reasons, I think it is a mistake to suppose, as Arthur does, that
the argument against a world soul in LDB turns on the ‘tacit premise’ that
‘only . . . a phenomenal body is a candidate for being the body of a real
substance’; but let me add a further thought that I hope will reinforce the
interpretation of the argument that I have been defending. To suppose that
the argument turns on the fact that a body finite in magnitude can be an
object of perception but a body infinite in magnitude cannot is to suppose
that whether something can have a soul turns on the question of whether,
when conceived apart from soul, it can still be an unum per accidens – that is,
on the question of whether we can perceive it as one even when we consider it
apart from soul – rather than, as I have argued, on the question of whether
it is an unum per se – that is, on the question of whether it is one in fact and
478 GREGORY BROWN

independently of how it appears to unanalysed thought or to perception. But

this seems odd in light of the fact that a universe infinite in magnitude can be
thought of as one just as a finite but infinitely divided body can be perceived
as one. In face of Leibniz’s alleged ‘tacit premise’, why could not the
defender of a world soul simply agree that an infinite universe cannot be
perceived as one but still maintain that it can be thought of as one? Of course,
Leibniz would say, as he said in the passage form the New Essays quoted
earlier, that ‘when we speak of perpetual motion, for example, we know
what we are saying and yet such motion is an impossibility and so we can
only appear to have an idea of it’. But by the same token, when we speak of
a finite body as being one we know what we are saying, and yet it is
impossible for an infinitely divided body actually to be one, and it only
appears to perception to be one. Neither a body infinite in magnitude nor an
infinitely divided body can actually be one in fact and independently of how it
appears to unanalysed thought or to perception, for that would imply a
contradiction. Again, the cases seem perfectly symmetrical. Therefore, I do
not think that the argument can be interpreted as turning on how something
is perceived or thought of; rather it must turn, as I have suggested, on
whether something might be an unum per se; that is, on whether something
might be one in fact and independently of how it appears to unanalysed
thought or to perception. And again, Leibniz is willing at least to entertain
the possibility that a body that we perceive as one, even though consisting of
an infinity of parts when thought of apart from soul, might also be one in
fact and independently of how it appears to unanalysed thought or to
perception. But for reasons already discussed, while a body infinite in
magnitude might be one in multitude, just as a finite body might in the event
that it possessed a soul, Leibniz did not think a body of infinite magnitude
could be one in fact and independently of how it appears to unanalysed thought
or to perception, since it cannot be a whole in magnitude. He told Des Bosses
that

it is . . . an abbreviated way of speaking when we speak of one thing where

there are more than can be understood in a single assigned whole, and we treat
like a magnitude that which does not have the properties of a magnitude.
(G.II.305)

What I think has led both Carlin and Arthur astray in their
interpretations of Leibniz’s argument against a world soul is the
assumption that that an unum per se cannot be a whole, since a whole
involves parts. But as I have argued previously, something can be a whole
in magnitude without that implying that it has actual parts. In denying that
an infinite universe can be unum per se because it cannot be a whole in
magnitude, Leibniz does not imply that an unum per se can have actual
parts; and I think it is only actual parts that Leibniz finds incompatible
with the notion of an unum per se.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 479

WHAT IS WRONG WITH LEIBNIZ’S ALLEGED DEMONSTRATION

OF THE PREMISE THAT INFINITE NUMBERS AND WHOLES ARE
IMPOSSIBLE: THE RELEVANCE OF CANTOR’S THEORY OF THE
ACTUAL INFINITE

I now return to the puffed-up nature of Leibniz’s ‘proof’ that infinite

number and infinite wholes are impossible. In one particularly confident
passage from a letter of August (?)1698 to Johann Bernoulli, Leibniz wrote:

Gregory of Saint Vincent somewhere said that the axiom that a whole is
greater than the part does not apply in the infinite. But it seems to me that
something else ought to be said, namely, that the infinite is not really one
whole, i.e. the infinite, if it is a whole, and is nevertheless not greater than its
part, is absurd. Indeed many years ago I demonstrated that the number or
multitude of all numbers implies a contradiction, if taken as one whole. The
same is true of a greatest number and a least number, i.e. of a least fraction.
And concerning these things it must be said what is said of the fastest motion
and similar things. And even the universe is not one whole, nor ought to be
conceived as an animal whose soul is God.
(GM.III.535)

The problem with treating infinite aggregates as wholes, as Leibniz saw it,
arises in connection with what has come to be known as Galileo’s paradox –
i.e. the fact that an infinite set can be placed in one–one correspondence with
a proper subset of itself. In the context of the passage from the letter to
Bernoulli, where the matter concerns numbers, Leibniz had in mind an
argument of the sort that he presented in the following passage from a letter
of 22 June 1679 to Malebranche:17

The number of all numbers implies a contradiction, which I show thus: To any
number there is a corresponding number equal to its double. Therefore the
number of all numbers is not greater than the number of even numbers, i.e. the
whole is not greater than its part. It is no use responding that our finite mind
cannot comprehend the infinite, for we can demonstrate something about what
we do not comprehend. And here we comprehend at least the impossibility, if
this only means that there is a certain whole which is not greater than its part.
(G.I.338)

As this passage makes clear, Leibniz assumes that the part–whole axiom
applies to all quantities, including infinite ones, so the fact that the even
numbers can be placed in one–one correspondence with all the natural
numbers, of which they are a proper subset, shows that something has to

17
Leibniz had arrived at the argument that he presented to Malebranche several years earlier. In
a paper from December 1675, he had argued that ‘the number of all numbers is a contradiction,
i.e. there is no idea of it; for otherwise it would follow that the whole is equal to the part, or that
there are as many numbers as there are square numbers’ (A.IV.iii.463 = P.7).
480 GREGORY BROWN

give. In conformity with what he was later to tell Bernoulli, Leibniz made it
clear in a text from 1676 that what he thought had to give was the
assumption that an infinite multiplicity can constitute a whole:

Among numbers there are infinite roots, infinite squares, infinite cubes.
Moreover, there are as many roots as numbers. And there are as many squares
as roots. Therefore there are as many squares as numbers, that is, there are as
many square numbers as there are numbers in the universe. But that is
impossible. Hence it follows that in the infinite the whole is not greater than
the part, which is the opinion of Galileo and Gregory of St. Vincent and which
I cannot accept; or that infinity itself is nothing, i.e. that it is not one and not a
whole.
(A.VI.3.168; cf. A.VI.iv.551 = RA.176–7)

Leibniz made a related point in a geometrical context. In two papers

written in the 1670s,18 he presented an argument to establish that there is a
contradiction in assuming that lines are composed of an infinity of
indivisible points. Given a rectangle and its diagonal, it can be shown by
construction that the points on the diagonal can be placed in one–one
correspondence with the points on a side, so that there as many points in the
diagonal as in the side. On the other hand, the length of the diagonal is
clearly greater than the length of the side, and so the side is equal to a part of
the diagonal. It follows, therefore, that the part is equal to the whole, which
violates the part–whole axiom that Leibniz accepts as a necessary truth. So
Leibniz concludes that lines cannot be composed of indivisible points. I have
argued elsewhere,19 following Samuel Levey,20 that Leibniz’s argument here
is unsound. Having assumed that the length of the side of a rectangle is
obviously less than the length of the diagonal, Leibniz concludes that the
side of the rectangle is equal to a part of the diagonal and thence that the
part is equal to the whole, contrary to the part–whole axiom. But the sense
in which the side is said to be ‘less than’, and hence equal to a ‘part’ of, the
whole (i.e. the diagonal) makes appeal to a congruence criterion of ‘less than’,
whereas the sense in which the side is said to be equal to, and not less than,
the whole (the diagonal) makes appeal to the criterion of equality with
which Leibniz begins, namely, that in terms of a one–one correspondence of
component points. Thus, no inconsistency with the part–whole axiom will
be forthcoming unless it is assumed that the criterion according to which the
side of the rectangle fails to be less than the diagonal is the same criterion for
‘less than’ that is involved in the part–whole axiom; and there seems little
reason to think that these criteria need be the same. If the part–whole axiom
18
One of these is a piece that the editors of the Akademie edition entitle De minimo et maximo
and date between the fall of 1672 and the winter of 1672/73, and the statement of the paradox
may be found at A.VI.iii.97–8. The other is Pacidius Philalethi (1676), and Leibniz’s statement
of the paradox in this work may be found at A.VI.iii.549–50 = RA.175–7.
19
See Brown 2000: 22.
20
Levey 1998: 62; cf. also Benardete 1964: 47–8.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 481

is interpreted as invoking a congruence criterion of equality, rather than the

criterion of one–one correspondence of component points, then the side and
diagonal of the rectangle will indeed satisfy the part–whole axiom,
consistently with the assumption that lines are composed of an infinity of
indivisible points. So the part–whole axiom applies if ‘less than’ is read as
invoking a congruence criterion of equality, but it fails to apply if ‘less than’
is read as invoking a criterion of equality in terms of one–one
correspondence of parts.
A similar argument might be thought to show that Leibniz’s numerical
argument against infinite wholes is also unsound. For again, the sense in which
it is said that the number of square numbers, say, is ‘less than’, and hence equal
to a ‘part’ of, the whole (i.e. the natural numbers) involves a proper-subset
criterion of ‘less than’, whereas the sense in which it is said that the number of
square numbers is equal to, and hence not less than, the whole involves a
criterion of ‘less than’ in terms of one–one correspondence. So, as before, there
will be no inconsistency with the part–whole axiom unless it is assumed that
these two criteria must be equivalent; otherwise it can simply be said that the
part–whole axiom applies in relation to the proper-subset criterion of ‘less
than’ and that it fails to apply in relation to the criterion in terms of one–one
correspondence. In this case, however, Cantorian set theorists would agree
that the criterion in terms of one–one correspondence gives the appropriate
sense of ‘less than’ for both finite and infinite sets. But unlike Leibniz, who
argued that since the part–whole axiom applies universally, this must imply
that the notions of infinite number and infinite whole are inconsistent – so that
infinite sets cannot be said to be equal to, or less than, or greater than each
other – the Cantorian set theorists would argue that this simply shows that the
part–whole axiom fails for infinite sets. And given the consistency of
Cantorian set theory, it would again appear that Leibniz’s argument against
infinite number and infinite wholes must be unsound.
Richard Arthur has maintained that to suggest in this way that Leibniz’s
argument against infinite number and infinite wholes is unsound simply begs
the question against Leibniz:

(This) argument (like those of Cantor, Russell and Rescher before it) reduces to
this: if with Cantor one assumes . . . that an infinite collection (such as the set of
all numbers) is a whole or unity, then one can establish a consistent theory of
infinite number; therefore Leibniz’s argument against it is unsound. But is this
not to argue in effect that since C (that an infinite collection is a whole or unity)
entails *W (that the part–whole axiom does not apply to infinite collections), it
is unsound to infer *C (that an infinite collection is not a whole or unity) from
W (that the part–whole axiom applies to infinite collections)? . . . (T)o say that
Leibniz’s argument is unsound on the basis of the success of Cantor’s theory is
to assume the truth of C, and thus to beg the question (unless one has an
independent argument for C, which Cantor does not).
(Arthur 2001: 105)
482 GREGORY BROWN

Arthur acknowledges, of course, that this point cuts both ways (see ibid.),
for neither does Leibniz have an independent argument for the assumption
that the part–whole axiom holds in the infinite. And it is for just this reason
that Benardete argued, as we have seen, that both Leibniz’s proof and
Cantor’s proof of what they thought could be inferred from the fact that an
infinite set can be placed in one–one correspondence with certain of its
proper subsets are, to use Wittgenstein’s memorable expression, ‘puffed-up’.
But Arthur seems clearly mistaken when he claims that ‘to say that Leibniz’s
argument is unsound on the basis of the success of Cantor’s theory is to
assume the truth of C, and thus to beg the question (unless one has an
independent argument for C, which Cantor does not)’. For all that one need
assume in order to establish that Leibniz’s argument is unsound is that C –
that is, the proposition that an infinite collection is a whole or unity – is
consistent; there is no need to assume, in addition, that it is true in the sense
that it implies that *C itself implies a contradiction. The reason for this is
that Leibniz himself thought, as we have seen, that he had demonstrated the
inconsistency of infinite number and wholes. But in Leibniz’s technical
vocabulary, to demonstrate a proposition is, with the aid of definitions, to
resolve it in a finite number of steps into identical propositions, or ‘primae
veritates’:

The primary truths are those which assert the same thing of itself or deny the
opposite of its opposite. For example, ‘A is A’, or ‘A is not not-A’; or ‘if it is
true that A is B, then it is false that A is not B or that A is not-B’. Also ‘every
thing is as it is’, ‘every thing is similar or equal to itself’, ‘nothing is greater
than itself’, and others of this sort. Although they themselves may have their
degrees of priority, nonetheless they can all be included under the name
‘identities’.

Moreover, all remaining truths are reduced to primary truths with the help of
definitions, that is, through the resolution of notions; in this consists a priori
proof, proof independent of experience.
(A.VI.1644 = AG.30–1 = MP.87 = L.267)

Every truth is either basic (originaria) or derivative. Basic truths are those for
which we cannot give a reason; identities or immediate truths, which affirm the
same thing of itself or deny the contradictory of its contradictory, are of this
sort. Derivative truths are, in turn, of two sorts, for some can be resolved into
basic truths, and others, in their resolution, give rise to a series of steps that go
to infinity. The former are necessary, the latter contingent. Indeed, a necessary
proposition is one whose contrary implies a contradiction. Every identical
proposition and every derivative proposition is resolvable into identical
propositions is of such a kind, as are truths called metaphysical or geometrical
necessities. For demonstrating is nothing but displaying a certain equality or
coincidence of the predicate with the subject (in the case of a reciprocal
proposition) by resolving the terms of a proposition and substituting a
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 483

definition or part of one for that which is defined, or in other cases at least
displaying the inclusion so that what lies hidden in the proposition and was
contained in it virtually is made evident and explicit through demonstration . . .
But in contingent truths, even though the predicate is in the subject, this can
never be demonstrated, nor can a proposition ever reduced (revocari) to an
equality or to an identity, but the resolution proceeds to infinity .
(A.VI.iv.1655–6 = AG.95–6 = MP.108–9; cf. A.VI.iv.1515–16 = MP.96–7;
A.VI.iv.1616 = MP.75)

Given that Leibniz claims to have demonstrated that infinite number and
wholes imply a contradiction, his argument is that any proposition that
asserts that the possibility of infinite numbers or wholes is necessarily false,
or impossible, and any proposition that asserts the impossibility of infinite
number or wholes is necessarily true.
We have seen that in his letter to Bernoulli of August (?) 1698, Leibniz
considered, but summarily rejected, Gregory of St. Vincent’s suggestion that
‘the axiom that a whole is greater than the part does not apply in the
infinite’; and his reason for doing so was that he thought that this ‘axiom’
could itself be demonstrated, as in this passage from a piece that the editors
of the Akademie edition entitle Principia logico-metaphysica and tentatively
date between the spring and fall of 168921

As an example (of an a priori proof), I shall give this proposition from among
the axioms accepted equally by mathematicians and others alike: ‘the whole is
greater than its part’, or ‘the part is less than the whole’, something easily
demonstrated from the definition of ‘less’ or ‘greater’, with the addition of the
primitive axiom, that is, the axiom of identity. For the less is that which is
equal to a part of the other (the greater), a definition easy to understand and in
agreement with the practice of the human race, when people compare things
with one another and, taking away from the greater something equal to the
lesser, they find something that remains. Hence there is an argument of this
sort: the part is equal to a part of the whole (it is, of course, equal to itself
through the axiom of identity, that each and every thing is equal to itself), and
what is equal to a part of a whole is less than the whole (from the definition of
‘less’). Therefore the part is less than the whole.
(A.VI.iv.1644 = AG.31 = MP.87 = L.267)

Thus, as Leibniz indicates, not only did he think that there was an a-priori
proof of the part–whole ‘axiom’, he in fact believed that it could be
demonstrated, since its resolution into identities could be carried out in a
finite number of steps. This resolution is mediated, of course, by a definition,
namely, that of ‘less’ (‘the less is that which is equal to a part of the other

21
Leibniz had in fact formulated his ‘demonstration’ of the part–whole axiom many years
before this, in a paper that the editors of the Akademie edition entitle Demonstratio
propositionum primarum and date between fall 1671 and the beginning of 1672 (see A.VI.ii.482–
3).
484 GREGORY BROWN

(the greater)’), which, in a much later formulation of the ‘demonstration’ of

the part–whole ‘axiom’ given in Initia rerum mathematicarum metaphysica
(after 1714), Leibniz referred to as an ‘indemonstrable’:

If a part of one thing is equal to the whole of another, the former is called
greater, the latter less. Hence the whole is greater than a part. If A is the whole
and B the part, then I say that A is greater than B, because a part of A itself
(namely, B) is equal to the whole B. This can also be expressed in a syllogism
whose major proposition is a definition, its minor an identity:

Whatever is equal to a part of A is less than A, by definition.

But B is equal to a part of A (namely, to B), by hypothesis.

Therefore B is less than A.

Here we see that demonstrations are ultimately resolvable into two kinds of
indemonstrables (indemonstrabilia): definitions or ideas, and primitive
propositions, i.e. identities, such as these: B is B, each thing is equal to itself,
and many others of this kind.
GM.VII.20 = L.668)

In saying that ‘definitions or ideas’ are, although not themselves

identities, like identities in being indemonstrable, Leibniz seems to imply
that they are necessarily true and that their denials are impossible. This is
important, of course, because it is precisely this definition of ‘less than’
that Cantor and his followers would later protest. They would maintain
that there are perfectly coherent definitions of ‘less than’, ‘greater than’,
and ‘equal to’ that can be given in terms of one–one correspondence of
sets, so that one set A is ‘less than’, or ‘greater than’, or ‘equal to’ another
set B if and only if, respectively, the members of A cannot be placed in
one–one correspondence with those of B, or the members of B cannot be
placed in one–one correspondence with those of A, or the members of A
and B can be placed in one–one correspondence with each other. Thus
when ‘part’ is interpreted as ‘proper subset’, it follows that a part of the
natural numbers, say the even numbers, may be said to be equal to the
natural numbers, since the former can be placed in one–one correspon-
dence with the latter. Upon such definitions Cantor erected his theory of
infinite number; and given that that theory is consistent, Leibniz’s
demonstration that infinite number implies a contradiction cannot be
regarded as sound.
That Leibniz believed that his definition of ‘less’ was ‘a real definition’
– i.e. such that ‘the (defining) property makes known the possibility of
the thing’ (A.VI.iv.1568 = AG.57 = MP.34 = L.319), rather than ‘a
nominal definition’, i.e. such that ‘one can still doubt whether the notion
defined is possible’ (A.VI.iv.1568 = AG.57 = MP.33 = L.319) – seems
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 485

reasonably clear. At DM §24 he distinguished three kinds of real

definition, as follows:

For when the possibility is proved only by experience, as in the definition of

quicksilver, whose possibility we know because we know that there actually is
such a body which is an extremely heavy but rather volatile fluid, the definition
is merely real and nothing more; but when the proof of the possibility is a
priori, the definition is both real and causal, as when it contains the possible
generation of the thing. And when a definition pushes the analysis back to
primitive notions without assuming anything requiring an a priori proof of its
possibility, it is perfect or essential.
(A.VI.iv.1569 = AG.57 = MP.34 = L.319)

Leibniz doubted that finite minds were capable of resolving ideas into
their primitive components in order to establish their consistency and hence
the possibility of their objects, so he generally believed that the last of the
three types of real definition, the ‘perfect or essential ones’, were impossible
for humans to obtain (see DM §24, A.VI.iv.1568 = AG.56 = MP.33 =
L.319; cf. A.VI.iv.590 = AG.26 = L.293). But that his definition was at least
‘merely real’, and indeed ‘both real and causal’, is something I think Leibniz
may have thought he could establish by his curious appeal to the ‘practice of
the human race’ in justifying his definition of ‘less’ in the presentation of his
demonstration of the part–whole ‘axiom’ in Principia logico-metaphysica:
‘For the less is that which is equal to a part of the other (the greater), a
definition easy to understand and in agreement with the practice of the
human race, when people compare things with one another and, taking
away from the greater something equal to the lesser, they find something
that remains’ (A.VI.iv.1644 = AG.31 = MP.87 = L.267). Leibniz may have
believed that in this practice of human beings it is shown how to produce the
less by taking away a part of a whole, so that his definition of ‘less’ was not
only ‘merely real’, but in fact ‘both real and causal’. On the other hand, since
a finite mind can neither have a distinct perception of an infinity of things
nor understand a constructive process by which one infinite multiplicity
might be taken away from another, he may also have thought that a
definition of ‘less’ for infinite sets of the sort that would later be accepted by
the Cantorians could not be real in any sense. And if it could not be real,
then it had to be only nominal, which means that ‘one can still doubt
whether the notion defined is possible’. As such, it could not be admitted
within mathematical demonstrations, which are supposed to render
knowledge certain. But to argue that there can be no real definition, in
Leibniz’s sense, of ‘less than’, or ‘greater than’ or ‘equal to’ in the case of
infinite sets, is still to fall far short of demonstrating that infinite number
and wholes are impossible in the way that Leibniz seems to have thought
that he could do.
It is curious that, despite his attempt to defend the soundness of Leibniz’s
argument against infinite number and wholes, Arthur himself seems to
486 GREGORY BROWN

suppose that the Cantorian theory of the infinite is consistent,22 and he

asserts that ‘perhaps, pace Cantor, there is more than one consistent theory
of the actual infinite’. I say that this is curious because it was Leibniz who
had argued that his own argument against infinite numbers and wholes was
a demonstration and hence had a conclusion that held with absolute
necessity. So, given that for Leibniz the denial of what is necessarily true is
impossible, his argument against infinite number and wholes cannot be
deemed sound if one assumes that Cantor’s theory of infinite numbers is
consistent. On the other hand, I suppose that one might argue that, for all
we know and he knew, Leibniz’s argument against infinite number and
wholes might be sound; for despite the fact that most mathematicians now
seem to assume that Cantorian set theory is consistent in light of its long
record of success and the absence of any proof of its inconsistency, it
remains true that neither does there exist a general consistency proof for that
theory. It remains at least possible, I suppose, that Leibniz’s argument
against infinite number and wholes is sound, and that there really is some
inconsistency lying dormant and undiscovered in the assumption that the
part–whole axiom fails in the case of the infinite – and ultimately some
inconsistency lying dormant and undiscovered in the Cantorian definitions
of ‘less than’, ‘greater than’, and ‘equal to’ for infinite sets – so that infinite
wholes are indeed impossible. But that concession, I think, would have been
small comfort to Leibniz. In default of the demonstration that he thought he
had achieved – that infinite number and wholes are in fact impossible –
Leibniz could at best argue hypothetically against a soul of the world: ‘If
infinite number and infinite wholes are impossible, then an infinite world
cannot possess a soul’. Although not without its own interest, this
conclusion, I am confident, is not one that Leibniz would have found very
satisfying. There is no doubt that his ‘proof’ that infinite number and wholes
are impossible was indeed ‘puffed-up’; but his ‘proof’ that there could be no
soul of an infinite world was doubly so.23

ABBREVIATIONS

A Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, edited

by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenscaften (Darmstadt and
Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1923–). Cited by series, volume and
page, e.g. A.VI.iv.587.

22
See Arthur 2001: 113.
23
I am very grateful to Mark Kulstad for the many invigorating conversations we have had
concerning the matters discussed in this paper, and for the many helpful comments and
suggestions that he has made along the way. I should also like to thank Laurence Carlin and
Richard Arthur who, each in his own way, have forced me to think much harder than I had
thought was necessary to understand Leibniz’s odd little argument against the possibility of a
world soul.
 LEIBNIZ’S ARGUMENT AGAINST A SOUL OF THE WORLD 487

AG Leibniz: Philosophical Essays, ed. and trans. by R. Ariew and

D.Garber (Indianapolis: Hackett 1989).
C Opuscles et fragments ine´dits de Leibniz, ed. by L. Couturat (Paris:
Alcan 1903; reprint Hildesheim: Olms 1961).
DM Discourse on Metaphysics, cited by section.
DMP De mundo praesenti (March 1684–Spring 1686): A.VI.iv.1505–
13 = RA.282–96.
DNMA Deum non esse mundi animam (1683–Winter 1685/86(?)):
A.VI.iv.1492.
G Die Philosophische Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 7
vols., ed. by C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin: Weidmann 1875–1890; reprint
Hildesheim: Olms 1960). Cited by volume and page, e.g.
G.III.235.
GM Leibnizens Mathematische Schriften, ed. by C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols.
(Berlin and Halled: Asher and Schmidt 1849–1863; reprint
Hildesheim: Olms 1971. Cited by volume and page, e.g.
GM.III.58.
HGA The Leibniz Clarke Correspondence, ed. with introduction and
notes by H. G. Alexander (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1956). Leibniz’s letters are cited by number and section, e.g.
Lz.V.47.
L Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters,
ed. and trans. by Leroy Loemker (Dordrecht: D. Reidel,
1969).
LA The Leibniz–Arnauld Correspondence, ed. and trans. by H. T.
Mason with an introduction by G. H. R. Parkinson (Manchester
University Press 1967).
LDB Letter to Des Bosses, 11 March 1706. G.II.304–8.
LH Leibniz-Handschriften: Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Ha-
noever, as listed in Eduard Bodemann, [IT]Die Leibniz-
Handschriften der königlichen öfftenlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover
(Hanover and Leipzig: Hann’sche Buchhandlung, 1895; reprint
Hildesheim: Olms 1966).
MP Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans.
by M. Morris and G. H. R. Parkinson (London: J. M. Dent &
Sons, 1973).
NE New Essays on Human Understanding, ed. and trans. by P.
Remnant and J. Bennett (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996).
P G. W. Leibniz, De Summa Rerum: Metaphysical Papers and
Letters, 1675–1676, ed. and trans. by G. H. R. Parkinson (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
RA G. W. Leibniz: The Labyrinth of the Continuum, ed. and transl.
with an intro. by R. Arthur (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2001).
488 GREGORY BROWN

T G. W. Leibniz: Theodicy, ed. with an intro. by A. Farrer and

trans. by E. M. Huggard (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1985).
Cited by section, e.g. Theodicy §195, and by page, e.g. T.87.

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Arthur, R. (1999) ‘Infinite Number and the World Soul: in Defence of
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——— (2001) ‘Leibniz on Infinite Number, Infinite Wholes, and the Whole
World: A Reply to Gregory Brown’, The Leibniz Review 11: 103–16.
Benardete, J. (1964) Infinity: An Essay in Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford
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Brown, G. (1998) ‘Who’s Afraid of Infinite Numbers? Leibniz and the
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——— (2000) ‘Leibniz on Wholes, Unities, and Infinite Number’, The
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Carlin, L. (1997) ‘Infinite Accumulations and Pantheistic Implications:
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Couturat, L. (1901) La Logique de Leibniz, Paris: Presses Universitaires de
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University of Houston