Leibniz, Pacidius Philalethi. Prima de motu philosophia (1676), Couturat edition

Companion source

Source: Internet Archive, Google scan opusculesetfrag00coutgoog; local OCR excerpt .txt, lines 38020–38930 of the archive’s _djvu.txt (printed pp. 605–618), retrieved 2026-09-29. Metadata: G. W. Leibniz, Pacidius Philalethi. Prima de motu philosophia (Hannover, Math. X, 11), headed “Scripta in navi qua ex Anglia in Hollandiam trajeci. 1676 Octob.”; in L. Couturat (ed.), Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz (Paris: Alcan, 1903), pp. 594–627. Extraction: archive.org OCR of the Couturat printing; Latin with editorial angle brackets for Leibniz’s additions and square brackets for deletions; many misreadings. Quotations in the notes are normalized by hand and need the scan for the final text. Rights: public domain.

Source digest

A dialogue written in October 1676, on the crossing from England to Holland, on the nature of change and the continuum as they bear on motion. Pacidius leads Charinus through the case against “quietulae interspersae”, the little rests that Empedocles and “docti quidam viri” among the moderns interposed to explain how one motion can be faster than another: the motions between the rests must be continuous or instantaneous leaps, and once continuous motion is admitted a rotating radius gives unequal speeds without any rest. He then states the leap doctrine as transcreation, the body annihilated in one place and recreated in another, and refutes leaps by proportion: size makes no difference, so a leap relegated to smaller bodies is relegated again, “nisi atomos scilicet admittamus”. For this project it is the Newton-age statement of the scale-selection objection to a floor, used in the continuity note.

Passage anchors

• Printed pp. 605–606: “ex veteribus Empedocles et ex recentioribus docti quidam Viri quietulas quasdam interspersas asseruêre”; the regress “tametsi indefinite progrederer subdividendo ac quietulas indefinite exiguas atque indesignabiles, motulis ejusdem naturae miscerem, opus tamen et tempusculis atque lineolis foret”; the authors “capere non potuerunt quomodo motus unus alio celerior esse possit, sine quiete interspersa”, answered by the rotating radius.
• Printed p. 609: “quietes interspersas (quas inutiles supra ostendi) et saltus admittendos esse quibus fiat ut mobile pluribus momentis haereat in uno puncto, et vicissim plura puncta absolvat uno momento”.
• Printed p. 617: “mobile E cum aliquandiu in loco A fuerit, extingui et annihilari, et in B momento post iterum emergere ac recreari; quod motus genus possimus dicere transcreationem”; Charinus: “cùm enim magnitudo aut parvitas nihil ad rem faciat”, the animalcula as much smaller than us as a human head is than the earth, “omnia proportione sibi respondent”, so the leap “tam in parvis quàm in magnis vitari debet”.
• Printed pp. 617–618: “saltus istos semper ad minora ac minora propelli et nusquam consistere posse in natura rerum … nulla autem ratio est, cur huic potius quàm illi corpusculorum gradui saltus illi miraculosi ascribantur, nisi atomos scilicet admittamus, seu corpora ita firma ut nullam subdivisionem nullumve flexum patiantur”; Leibniz denies such bodies by the same argument.

Coverage and limits

Reading level passage for pp. 605–618 from the OCR; the final wording needs the page images.