The papers of correspondence basically revolved around various subjects, which are as follows:
1. Space as the Sensorioum of God:
The correspondence mainly starts with the letter sent by Leibniz to Caroline accusing Newton’s works of having contributed to the decline of the natural religion in England. Here he is basically referring to the two passages in Newton’s books ‘Principia’ and ‘Opticks’. Firstly, Leibniz refers to an instance where Newton’s argues space as the ‘sensorium of God’. Leibniz interprets this phrase as space being a sense organ of God. Secondly, Newton in his writings mentions that God occasionally intervenes in the universe. Leibniz ridiculed this statement by comparing God to a watch maker who has to involve in the mending and the winding up of both the time and the watch.
2. The Vacuum:
Leibniz here uses two arguments to oppose the existence of Vacuum in nature. Firstly, he argues the more the matter in the universe, the more perfect the universe would be and therefore God would have filled the whole universe with matter giving no way for the existence of Vacuum. Secondly, he claims that if there was an existence of vacua, then there would be no sufficient
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Leibniz in his second paper clearly claims that having both this and the principle of contradiction, one would be able to deduce the whole of metaphysics and natural theology. Clarke agrees to the above view and further replies to that this principle but suggests that the reason might sometimes be the will of God. This clearly shows that there was a clear difficulty in addressing the sufficient reason as God’s actions. By examining Leibniz, it is clearly seen that by saying sufficient reason, he meant three things namely: causal principle (nothing happens on its own without a cause), God must always have a motive to act and finally and God will always act for the