16. The extraordinary intervention of God is not excluded in that which our particular essences express because this expression includes everything. Such intervention however goes beyond the power of our natural being or of our distinct expression because these are finite and follow certain subordinate regulations.

17. An example of a subordinate regulation in the law of nature which demonstrates that God always preserves the same amount of force but not the same quantity of motion; against the Cartesians and many others.

18. The distinction between force and the quantity of motion is, among other reasons, important as showing that we must have recourse to metaphysical considerations in addition to discussions of extension, if we wish to explain the phenomena of matter.

19. The utility of final causes in physics.

20. A noteworthy disquisition by Socrates in Plato's Phaedo against the philosophers who were too materialistic.

21. If the mechanical laws depended upon geometry alone without metaphysical influences, the phenomena would be very different from what they are.

22. Reconciliation of the two methods of explanation, the one using final causes and the other efficient causes, thus satisfying both those who explain nature mechanically and also those who have recourse to incorporeal natures.

23. Returning to immaterial substances we explain how God acts upon the understanding of spirits, and ask whether one always keeps the idea of what he thinks about.

24. What clear and obscure, distinct and confused, adequate and inadequate, intuitive and assumed knowledge is, and the definition of nominal, real, causal and essential.

25. In what cases knowledge is added to mere contemplation of the idea.

26. Ideas are all stored up within us. Plato's doctrine of reminiscence.

27. In what respect our souls can be compared to blank tablets and how conceptions are derived from the senses.

28. The only immediate object of our perceptions which exists outside of us is God and in him alone is our light.

29. Yet we think directly by means of our own ideas and not through God's.

30. How God inclines our souls without necessitating them; that there are no grounds for complaint; that we must not ask why Judas sinned because this free act is contained in his concept, the only question being why Judas the sinner is admitted to existence, preferably to other possible persons; concerning the original imperfection or limitation before the fall and concerning the different degrees of grace.

31. The motives for election, faith foreseen, partial knowledge, the absolute decree and that the whole inquiry is reduced to the question why God has chosen and resolved to admit to existence such a possible person whose concept involves such a sequence of gifts of grace and of free acts. This at once overcomes all the difficulties.

32. Applicability of these principles in matters of piety and of religion.

33. Explanation of the inter-relation of soul and body which has been usually considered inexplicable and miraculous; also concerning the origin of confused perceptions.

34. The difference between spirits and other substances, souls or substantial forms, and that the immortality which people wish for includes remembrance.

35. Excellence of spirits; that God considers them preferably to the other created things; that spirits express God rather than the world while other simple substances express rather the world than God.

36. God is the monarch of the most perfect republic which is composed of all the spirits, and the felicity of this city of God is his principal purpose.

37. Jesus Christ has disclosed to men the mystery and the admirable laws of the Kingdom of Heaven and the greatness of the supreme happiness which God has prepared for those who love him.

II: Arnauld to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels

March 13, 1686.

I have received, Monseigneur, the metaphysical thoughts which Your Highness sent me from Mr. Leibniz as a witness of his affection and his esteem for which I am very grateful to him. But I have been so busy ever since that only within the last three days have I been able to read his missive.

And at the present time I have such a bad cold that all that I can do now is to tell Your Highness in a couple of words that I find in his thoughts so many things which frightened me and which if I am not mistaken almost all men would find so startling that I cannot see any utility in a treatise which would be evidently rejected by everybody.