New System of Nature

The article in which Leibniz first told the public that soul and body never act on each other.

by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz36 passages held

French, the original language

Original title: Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances
First published: 1695(aged 49)
Original language: French

Overview

Within three months of this article's appearance Simon Foucher, a canon of Dijon, was in print against it, and within two years Pierre Bayle had given it a note in his Historical and Critical Dictionary. Leibniz had been turning these ideas over in private for years; the article he placed in the Paris Journal des Sçavans, printed in two instalments from 27 June 1695 and signed only with initials, was the first time he laid his system before the public. It opens by recalling, without naming him, Antoine Arnauld: one of the greatest theologians of the age, who had first found these views paradoxical and then generously changed his mind. The question it answers had defeated the Cartesians. If mind and body are wholly different substances, how can either affect the other? Descartes, Leibniz wrote, had given up on the problem, and his followers made God the one who moves the body whenever the soul wills. Leibniz's alternative: no created substance acts on any other. God made each so that everything it will ever perceive unfolds from its own nature, in step with all the rest. Early the next year he compared soul and body to two clocks made so well that they keep time without ever touching, and in April 1696 he answered Foucher in the same journal. The argument with Bayle ran on until 1702 in the second edition of his Dictionary, under the name Leibniz had by then given his doctrine: pre-established harmony.

Key concepts

What is pre-established harmony?

Leibniz’s name for the view that no created substance acts on another: God made each so that everything it will ever perceive unfolds from its own nature, in step with all the rest. Soul and body agree not because either affects the other but because each was made to keep pace with the other from the start.

What was the Cartesian view the New System rejects?

The view of Descartes’ followers, now called occasionalism, that God moves the body whenever the soul wills. Descartes himself, Leibniz wrote, had given up on the problem of how two wholly different substances could affect each other. The followers answered it by making God the one real mover, and Leibniz offered his system as the alternative.

What is the two-clocks comparison?

Leibniz’s image, from early 1696, for soul and body: two clocks made so well that they keep time without ever touching. Neither moves the other and no one adjusts them as they go; their agreement was built in when they were made. The image answers the question of the article without giving up the independence of each substance.

Who was the great theologian mentioned at the start?

Antoine Arnauld, though the article does not name him: one of the greatest theologians of the age, who had first found these views paradoxical and then generously changed his mind. Leibniz had been turning the ideas over in private for years, and this 1695 article was the first time he laid his system before the public.

How did the New System reach its readers?

In the Paris Journal des Sçavans, in two instalments from 27 June 1695, signed only with initials. Within three months Simon Foucher, a canon of Dijon, was in print against it, and Leibniz answered him in the same journal in April 1696. Pierre Bayle gave it a note in his Historical and Critical Dictionary, and that argument ran on until 1702.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Two Clocks That Never Touch

If mind and body are wholly different substances, how can either affect the other? The question had defeated the Cartesians, and Leibniz’s answer was that neither ever does.

Descartes, Leibniz wrote, had given up on the problem, and his followers made God the one who moves the body whenever the soul wills. Leibniz’s alternative: no created substance acts on any other. God made each so that everything it will ever perceive unfolds from its own nature, in step with all the rest. Early the next year he compared soul and body to two clocks made so well that they keep time without ever touching. Foucher and then Bayle objected in print, and by the time the argument reached Bayle’s Dictionary the doctrine had its name: pre-established harmony.

pre-established harmony
mind-body problem
causation
occasionalism
substance
divine providence
perception
rational souls
soul
god

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 36
distinct concepts: 74
by passages held, corpus-wide: #698

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “mind-body problem” and “pre-established harmony”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 6 concepts, joined by 13 pairings. 17 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
mind-body problem	pre-established harmony	9
causation	pre-established harmony	8
causation	mind-body problem	7
divine providence	pre-established harmony	4
pre-established harmony	substance	4
causation	substance	2
divine providence	mind-body problem	2
divine providence	substance	2
metaphysics	substance	2
mind-body problem	substance	2
causation	divine providence	1
divine providence	metaphysics	1
metaphysics	pre-established harmony	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1684 Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas (Meditationes de cognitione, veritate et ideis)
A journal article of 1684, written into the Arnauld–Malebranche quarrel over ideas; its grades of knowledge return in the Discourse on Metaphysics and the New Essays.
LA
1691 Whether the Essence of a Body Consists in Extension (Lettre sur la question si l'essence du corps consiste dans l'étendue)
Against the Cartesian view that body is nothing but extension: a letter to the Paris Journal des Sçavans in 1691, followed by a second in 1693.
FR
1695 New System of Nature (Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances) you are here FR
1698 On Nature Itself (De ipsa natura)
An answer to Johann Christoph Sturm in the Acta Eruditorum of 1698, defending forces inside created things and tying the dynamics to the metaphysics of substance.
LA
1710 Theodicy (Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal)
Published anonymously at Amsterdam in 1710, it was the book by which the eighteenth century knew Leibniz, and the one Voltaire answered with Candide.
FR
1717 The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Recueil des lettres entre Leibniz et Clarke)
Ten papers exchanged through the Princess of Wales in 1715–16, cut off by Leibniz's death and published by Clarke in 1717.
FR
1718 Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason (Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison)
A companion summary from the same Vienna months as the Monadology, long mistaken for it and printed before it, in 1718.
FR
1720 Monadology (Monadologie)
Written in French in 1714, it was known for over a century only in German and Latin translation.
FR
1765 New Essays on Human Understanding (Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain)
The book-length reply to Locke, written as a dialogue in 1703–04, withheld after Locke's death and first printed in 1765.
FR
1840 Discourse Touching the Method of Certitude and the Art of Discovery (Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et l'art d'inventer)
A plea for royal patronage of the sciences, addressed to an unnamed king, apparently Louis XIV, setting out the method of certainty and art of discovery Leibniz pursued for decades.
FR
1840 On the Ultimate Origination of Things (De rerum originatione radicali)
A short Latin essay of 1697 on why there is a world at all, left in manuscript until 1840.
LA
1840 Reflections on the Doctrine of a Single Universal Spirit (Considérations sur la doctrine d'un Esprit Universel Unique)
A French essay written in 1702 at the Prussian queen's palace outside Berlin, and left unprinted until 1840.
FR
1846 Discourse on Metaphysics (Discours de métaphysique)
The opening statement of Leibniz's mature metaphysics, written early in 1686 and left unprinted until 1846.
FR
1846 The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence (Correspondance de Leibniz et d'Arnauld)
The exchange of 1686 to 1690 between Leibniz and Arnauld over the Discourse on Metaphysics, every letter carried by the Landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels.
FR
1854 Refutation of Spinoza (Animadversiones ad Joh. Georg. Wachteri librum de recondita Hebraeorum philosophia)
Private Latin notes on Wachter's book about Spinoza and the Kabbalah, given their title by the French scholar who published them in 1854.
FR
1890 Tentamen Anagogicum: An Anagogical Essay in the Investigation of Causes (Essai anagogique dans la recherche des causes)
A French essay of about 1696, from the years of Leibniz's dynamics, defending final causes against the mechanical philosophers.
FR
1903 New Openings (Nouvelles Ouvertures)
Written in French in 1686, by the Academy edition's dating, and left in manuscript until Couturat printed it in 1903.
FR
1903 Preface to the General Science (Préface de la Science générale)
Probably from 1677, an unfinished preface to the universal language of reasoning, unprinted until 1903.
FR
1915 Confessio Philosophi (Confessio philosophi)
Leibniz's first developed theodicy, a Latin dialogue from his Paris years; revised after Steno's objections, its account of sin returns much changed in the Theodicy of 1710.
LA

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