more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
Our great perceptions and our great appetites of which we are conscious, are composed of innumerable little perceptions and little inclinations of which we cannot be conscious.
Gist of Idea
Our large perceptions and appetites are made up tiny unconscious fragments
Source
Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §2)
Book Ref
Leibniz,Gottfried: 'Leibniz Selections', ed/tr. Wiener,Philip P. [Scribners 1951], p.554
A Reaction
I think this is a wonderfully accurate report of how the mind is, in comparison with the much more simplistic views presented by most philosophers of that era. And so much understanding flows from Leibniz's account.
19415 | Passions reside in confused perceptions [Leibniz] |
19438 | Our large perceptions and appetites are made up tiny unconscious fragments [Leibniz] |
19439 | God produces possibilities, and thus ideas [Leibniz] |
12732 | Some necessary truths are brute, and others derive from final causes [Leibniz] |