produces in itself sometimes joy, sometimes pain, etc., and not of many
beings, one of which produces hope, another despair, etc.

'In these observations I have merely cleared and unfolded those which M.
Leibniz has done me the honour to examine: and now I shall make some
reflexions upon his answers.

'VIII. He says (ibid., p. 332) that _the law of the change which happens in
the substance of the animal transports him from pleasure to pain at the
very moment that a solution of continuity is made in his body; because the
law of the indivisible substance of that animal is to represent what is
done in his body as we experience it, and even to represent in some manner,
and with respect to that body, whatever is done in the world_. These words
are a very good explication of the grounds of this system; they are, as it
were, the unfolding and key of it; but at the same time they are the very
things at which the objections of those who take this system to be
impossible are levelled. The law M. Leibniz speaks of supposes a decree of
God, and shows wherein this system agrees with that of occasional causes.
Those two systems agree in this point, that there are laws according to
which the soul of man is _to represent what is done in the body of man, as
we experience it_. But they disagree as to the manner of executing those
laws. The Cartesians say that God executes them; M. Leibniz will have it,
that the soul itself does it; which appears to me impossible, because the
soul has not the necessary instruments for such an execution. Now however
infinite the power and knowledge of God be, he cannot perform with a
machine deprived of a certain piece, what requires the concourse of such a
piece. He must supply that defect; but then the effect would be produced by
him and not by the machine. I shall show that the soul has not the
instruments requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it
I shall make use of a comparison.