Abstract
Pauline Phemister (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom), in the paper Souls of Seeds, argues that Leibniz’s pre-established harmonious unfolding of individuals’ essences is rightly granted a pivotal role in his metaphysics. Most commonly understood in terms of the unfolding of monadic sequences of perceptions and appetitions, the closely related theories of organic-body preformation and the unfolding into visibility of plants and animals from their seeds have until recently largely been ignored. The author questions why, despite the thoroughgoing mechanical preformation of organic bodies, Leibniz insisted that the preformed seeds of animals and other living things must contain souls, entelechies or substantial forms. The issue is raised through contrast with Malebranche’s doctrine of preformation that makes no such claim.
With grateful thanks to the organizer, Adrian Nita, and to the participants of the Oltenia Colloquium in Early Modern Philosophy at which this paper was first presented in draft.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Leibniz believed that God created all souls and organic bodies at once. Hence seeds are not primary in the sense of being created first, before others. Rather, at the moment of Creation, all seeds were ‘primary seeds’. The phrase ‘primary seeds’ presumably refers to the initial states of seeds, that is, to seeds as they were when first created. Correspondingly, non-primary or subsequent seeds can be understood as seeds in their post-creation developed states.
- 3.
Conway (1996, 64).
- 4.
Leibniz’s Fifth letter to Clarke, ALC 93, GP VII, 417–18.
- 5.
“Configuration”, Malebranche defines as, “the shape of the unobservable parts of which large bodies are composed” (Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, Dialogue X; DMR 181; R-L II, 859).
- 6.
See also, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, Dialogue XI DMR 195–96; R-L II, 874.
- 7.
Author note: “The germ of the egg is under a tiny white spot that is on the yolk. See the Liv. de formatione pulli in ovo, by Malpighi”.
- 8.
Author note: “See Miraculum naturae, by Swammerdam”.
- 9.
Similarly, of trees, that they exist “in the seeds of their seeds in miniature” (Search After Truth, LO 26; R-L I, 56).
- 10.
See Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, Dialogue X (DMR 188–89; R-L II 866–67) for Malebranche’s account of how the motion of matter fashions the parts in the seeds into the organised bodies of humans, animals and plants.
- 11.
Malebranche offered various negative reasons to support his denial of animal souls, among them being the avoidance of divine injustice. Regarding all pain or suffering as God’s way of punishing sinful behaviour, recognising that any feeling creature will at times experience pain, and assuming that animals are innocent creatures, we can be assured that an “infinitely just and omnipotent God” will not provide animals with souls that enable them to be sensible of their circumstances (Search After Truth, LO 323; R-L I, 467).
- 12.
For instance, Search After Truth, LO 26; R-L I, 56. Malebranche’s writings display an impressive awareness and understanding of contemporary scientific studies of the natural world. Wilson (1997, 158) suggests that it was his reading Malebranche’s Search After Truth that led Leibniz to appreciate the metaphysical import of microscopy.
- 13.
New System, GP IV 480; AG 140. Leibniz favoured Leeuwenhoek’s animalist position; Malebranche, the ovism of Malpighi and Swammerdam. See DMR 175, n6.
- 14.
For all Leibniz’s protestations, on this point, the scientific evidence must be silent. No empirical confirmation of the presence of immaterial perceiving souls in animals or in their seeds can be provided solely by the observation of their physical bodies.
- 15.
See also, Principles of Nature and Grace, §6; GP VI, 601; AG 209.
- 16.
Although the issue is of course highly relevant, I will not divert our attention here to the methods of species classification preferred by Leibniz and contrasted in the New Essays with Locke’s thoroughgoing nominalism. For discussion of Leibniz on the classification of biological species, see Smith (2011, 235–274).
- 17.
In the Considerations on the Principles of Life and on Plastic Natures, Leibniz described death and generation as “only the transformation of the same animal, which is sometimes augmented and sometimes diminished” (GP VI, 543; L 589). This can be read as claiming either that the transformation itself is subjected to augmentation or that it is the transformed animal that is augmented. In either case, however, transformation is presented as something more than mere augmentation.
- 18.
Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, Dialogue XI; R-L I, 878; DMR 200.
- 19.
See also R-L II, 881; DMR 203.
- 20.
Malebranche also appealed to God’s strict application of the universal laws of motion and His refusal to intervene in particular instances in order to account for the frequent occurrences of “monstrous animals” (DMR 196, R-L II, 874). See also Search After Truth (R-L I, 183; LO 118) where God’s adherence to the criteria of simplicity, continuity, and order are highlighted: “having had a plan to produce an admirable work by the simplest means, and to link all His creatures with one another, He foresaw certain effects that would necessarily follow from the order and nature of things”. That this would sometimes give rise to monstrous births in humans and other living things “did not deter Him from his plan”.
- 21.
See Search After Truth, R-L I, 1070–71; LO 723.
- 22.
See also, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, Dialogue XI; R-L II, 884; DMR 205.
- 23.
“The silkworm is nourished by the leaves of the mulberry tree, but the tiny worm contained in the egg is nourished by nothing; it has everything it needs next to it. True, it does not always eat. But it conserves itself without eating, and for six thousand years has been conserving itself. We find it strange that certain animals spend the winter without nourishment. What a marvel it is, then, that silkworms organize their nourishment so exactly, that they lack it precisely only when they are strong enough to break out of their prison and when the mulberry trees have spouted tender leaves to nourish them anew” (Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, Dialogue XI, R-L I, 881; LO 202).
- 24.
In the Principles of Nature and Grace, Leibniz even inferred the transformation of the animal or plant from the preformation of the seed: “Modern investigations have taught us, and reason confirms it, that living things whose organs are known to us, that is, plants and animals, do not come from putrefaction or chaos, as the ancients believed, but from preformed seeds, and consequently, from the transformation of preexistent living beings” (§6, GP VI, 601; AG 209).
- 25.
Monadology §74, GP VI, 619.
- 26.
Besides this, many common alterations to bodies are not judged to be transformations of an animal from one species to another. Wine turns into vinegar, milk into cheese. Why should we consider the change from caterpillar to butterfly as anything more than the ordinary changes that happen to inanimate masses? One response is to highlight the generative capacities of living things. Wine turns into vinegar, but vinegar never becomes wine. Caterpillars, on the other hand, become butterflies and butterflies then produce the larvae of future caterpillars, completing the natural cycle of the birth and death of living things. On the self-sustaining and self-reproducing abilities of living things, see Smith (2011, 70–72). Generally, biological reproduction is effected through the production of seeds or eggs. This too, however, begs the question as to whether seeds and other means of generative replication are rightly regarded as signs of life and the presence of souls.
- 27.
For Leibniz, the infinitely divided nature of the body of the corporeal substance identifies it as a living body and marks the distinctive difference between machines of divine construction and those made by mere humans that have only a finite number of parts. For discussion, see Nachtomy (2011).
- 28.
Having earlier in the paper asserted his belief in the existence and immortality of the soul, Leibniz continued: “Thus, one finds himself forced to maintain at the same time both the pre-existence of the soul with that of the animal and also the subsistence of the animal with that of the soul” (GP VI, 543; L 589).
- 29.
The notion sits uneasily beside Leibniz’s more usual stance whereby composite bodies, because they are composite, are naturally destructible (e.g. Monadology §6, GP VI, 607; AG 213). Moreover, the animate machine or living organic body is in constant flux, with parts leaving and others arriving at every moment. There is no inherent unity among them. If it is said that the animate body does possess a unity that persists despite the flux of its parts, this implicitly re-introduces the soul as the source of that unity, contrary to Leibniz’s reasoning here. If, as is implied here, indestructibility is due to the similarity of the infinitely enfolded parts, a non-Leibnizian animalculism is indicated, while if the parts are not exactly the same and change of species can occur, the continuing identity of the animal (and hence also its indestructibility) is assumed, not proven.
- 30.
Leibniz does argue elsewhere that we can extrapolate from our own experience to the probability that other creatures have experiences also. See Phemister (2004).
- 31.
I am indebted to Dr Jeremy Dunham for reminding me of this passage.
- 32.
To Arnauld, 28 November/8 December 1686; GP II, 74; Mason 92.
- 33.
“[W]e perceive other bodies only through their relationship to ours” (to Arnauld, 9 October 1687; GP II, 113; Mason 145).
- 34.
Thus, Leibniz continued, although the soul expresses the whole universe, unless it perceives some things more distinctly than others, “there would be no distinction between souls” (to Arnauld 30 April 1687; GP II, 90; Mason 113).
- 35.
Thus seeds are ensouled organic bodies, that is, they are the organic bodies of tiny corporeal substances waiting in the wings ready to unfold.
References
Conway, A. 1996. The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy. Trans. and ed. Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Duchesneau, F. 2010. Leibniz: le vivant et l’organisme. Paris: Vrin.
Nachtomy, Ohad. 2011. Leibniz on Artificial and Natural Machines: Or What it Means to Remain a Machine to the Least of its Parts. In Machines of Nature and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz, eds. Justin E. Smith and Ohad Nachtomy, 61–80. Dordrecht: Springer.
Phemister, Pauline. 2004. ‘All the time and everywhere, everything’s the same as here’: The Principle of Uniformity in the Correspondence between Leibniz and Lady Masham. In Leibniz and his Correspondents, ed. Paul Lodge, 103–213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, J.E.H. 2011. Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Strickland, Lloyd, ed. & tr. 2011. Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies.
Wilson, C. 1997. Leibniz and the Animalcula. In Studies in Seventeenth Century European Philosophy, ed. M. A. Stewart, 153–175. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Phemister, P. (2015). The Souls of Seeds. In: Nita, A. (eds) Leibniz’s Metaphysics and Adoption of Substantial Forms. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 74. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9956-0_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9956-0_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9955-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9956-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)