[Editor's Note: These two selections are from the appendix to Clarke's edition of his exchange with Leibniz. I give Clarke's translation of Leibniz's texts and add their standard titles and references. With these texts, Clarke clearly tried to show that Leibniz's own words proved that he held that matter is a substance; that, consequently, it always acts; that it is imbued with a spiritual principle, and consequently that it has some sort of proto-perception. In short, Clarke viewed Leibniz as a dangerous crypto-hylozoist.]

2[Wiv, 701–4].

“We must know that spontaneity, strictly speaking, is common to us with all simple substances, and that this, in an intelligent and free substance, amounts to a dominion over its own actions. … Naturally, every simple substance has perception” etc. (Theodicy, p. 291) [section 291].

“But active force contains a certain act or efficacy, and is something of a middle nature between the faculty of acting and action itself. It involves a conatus or endeavor, and is of itself carried towards action; and stands in need of no help but only that the impediment be taken away. This may be illustrated by the examples of a heavy body stretching the string it is hung by, and of a bow bent.