Intellectum, parenti suo parem et æqualem, atque ita comparatum, ut solus paternæ magnitudinis capax esset. Atque hunc Intellectum et Monogenem et Patrem et principum omnium rerum appellant. )
Somehow or other this must have come to Jacob Böhme's hearing from the History of Heresy, and Herr von Schelling must have received it from him in all faith.
§ 9. Leibnitz.
It was Leibnitz who first formally stated the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a main principle of all knowledge and of all science. He proclaims it very pompously in various passages of his works, giving himself great airs, as though he had been the first to invent it ; yet all he finds to say about it is, that everything must have a sufficient reason for being as it is, and not otherwise : and this the world had probably found out before him. True, he makes casual allusions to the distinction between its two chief significations, without, however, laying any particular stress upon it, or explaining it clearly anywhere else. The principal reference to it is in his "Principia Philosophise," § 32, and a little more satisfactorily in the French version, entitled " Monadologie " : En vertu du principe de la raison suffisante, nous considerons qu'aucun fait ne saurait se trouver vrai ou existant, aucune enonciation veritable, sans qu'il y ait une raison suffisante, pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement. [1]
§ 10. Wolf.
The first writer who explicitly separated the two chief significations of our principle, and stated the difference between them in detail, was therefore Wolf. Wolf, however,
- ↑ Compare with this § 44 of his "Theodicée," and his 5th letter to Clarke, § 125.
