On the Ultimate Origination of Things

(Originally written June 2, 2007 in Book 14)

On the Ultimate Origination of Things
November 23, 1697
Gottfried Leibniz

Beyond the scope of all finite things exists some One Being who rules the universe which he fashioned and created.

This One Being is the ultimate reason for things.

The present world is physically or hypothetically, but not absolutely or metaphysically necessary.

Ultimate ground must be found in something metaphysically necessary.

Temporal, contingent or physical truths arise from eternal, essential or metaphysical truths.

A certain "Divine Mathematics" or "Metaphysical Mechanism" is used in the origination of things.

Possibility is the foundation of essence. Perfection (degree of essence) is the foundation of existence.

The Author of the World (God) can therefore be free and yet everything happens determinately because He acts from a principle of perfect wisdom.

Whatever exists must be grounded ultimately in metaphysical necessity because any thing or series of things cannot provide its own grounding (unless it is metaphysically necessary). But physical things are not metaphysically necessary. Furthermore only existing things can produce/ground existing things. Therefore, metaphysically necessary truths actually exist, if only in the mind of God.

The ultimate reason for the reality of both essences and existences lie in one source, namely God.

The world is physically, metaphysically and morally the most perfect it could be.

But yet, our experience leads us to doubt this fact. "In the end, the world appears to be a certain confused chaos rather than a thing ordered by some supreme wisdom, especially if one takes note of the conduct of the human race... it is unjust to make judgment unless one has examined the entire law... We know but a small part of the eternity which extends without measure, for how short is the memory of several thousand years which history gives us. But yet, from such meager experience we rashly make judgments about the immense and eternal" (Leibniz, 46).