Cosmologia Generalis

provided that one brings appropriate attention to the reading. We show how primitive corpuscles arise from elements, derivative ones from primitive ones, masses of different kinds and mixed bodies from derivative ones, organs from mixed masses, and finally organic bodies from these. You will find here directive notions for philosophizing correctly about the changes of bodies, which are wonderfully useful. I do not define the specific difference of these elements from other simple substances with which they coexist in the same genus, nor do I labor anxiously to define it, since we may safely ignore it in Physics. Wherefore I leave to Leibniz his opinion concerning monads, nor do I make my own the controversy stirred up by men not born to discuss sublime matters, even though a response to their trivial objections is not difficult. For it is all the same to me whether one prizes the Leibnizian monads highly, or condemns and rejects them. It was necessary for me to treat the laws of motion so that the order of nature and its contingency, as well as the freedom of nature, could be demonstrated apart from absolute necessity; and furthermore, for the reason that mathematicians, in setting out to demonstrate the rules of motion, assume them. Yet I have set forth individual points with such ease that they can be understood by one who has barely tasted mathematics with his first lips. For since certain laws of motion [are derived] from the rules of
motion