Leibnitz: His "Pre-established Harmony.11. Leibnitz, also, studiously avoided all acknowledgment of matter as the transmitting cause of our cognitions. He supposed a double series of phenomena running on simultaneously in the mind and in the body, and coincident, although absolutely independent of each other. No influence of any kind passed from mind to body, or from body to mind; but the preconcerted arrangements of each brought about an entire concordance between the two series of changes—a concordance in which the mental representations were never at variance with the bodily impressions, although in no respect induced by them; nor the bodily movements ever at cross-purposes with the mental volitions, although in no degree dependent upon them—just as two clocks may keep time together, although no sort of influence is transmitted from the one to the other. This is the doctrine of Pre-established Harmony—a scheme which differs from that of "occasional causes" only in this respect, that by the former hypothesis the accordance of the mental and the bodily phenomena was supposed to be pre-arranged, once for all, by the Divine Power, while by the latter their harmony was supposed to be effected by His constant and ever-renewed interposition.
Character of these hypotheses.12. Extravagant as these hypotheses may seem, they are less so than the position which they controverted; the doctrine, namely, of physical influx,