operating in the change which comes to pass in themselves; for this
determination of which the author speaks is nothing but a limitation.

Now if after that one reviews all the demonstrations or corollaries of the
letter, one will be able to admit or reject the majority of its assertions,
in accordance with the interpretation one may make of them. If by 'reality'
one means only perfections or positive realities, God is the only true
cause; but if that which involves limitations is included under the
realities, one will deny a considerable portion of the theses, and the
author himself will have shown us the example. It is in order to render the
matter more comprehensible that I used in the Essays the example of a laden
boat, which, the more laden it is, is the more slowly carried along by the
stream. There one sees clearly that the stream is the cause of what is
positive in this motion, of the perfection, the force, the speed of the
boat, but that the load is the cause of the restriction of this force, and
that it brings about the retardation.

It is praiseworthy in anyone to attempt to apply the geometrical method to
metaphysical matters. But it must be admitted that hitherto success has
seldom been attained: and M. Descartes himself, with all that very great
skill which one cannot deny in him, never perhaps had less success than
when he essayed to do this in one of his answers to objections. For in
mathematics it is easier to succeed, because numbers, figures and
calculations make good the defects concealed in words; but in metaphysics,
where one is deprived of this aid (at least in ordinary [391]
argumentation), the strictness employed in the form of the argument and in
the exact definitions of the terms must needs supply this lack. But in
neither argument nor definition is that strictness here to be seen.

The author of the letter, who undoubtedly displays much ardour and
penetration, sometimes goes a little too far, as when he claims to prove
that there is as much reality and force in rest as in motion, according to
the fifth corollary of the second proposition. He asserts that the will of
God is no less positive in rest than in motion, and that it is not less
invincible. Be it so, but does it follow that there is as much reality and
force in each of the two? I do not see this conclusion, and with the same
argument one would prove that there is as much force in a strong motion as
in a weak motion. God