chine. Nothing but this, also, can be found in the simple substance; and it is in this alone that all the internal actions of simple substances consist.

18. The name of entelechies (entities) might be given to all simple substances or created monads, for they have within themselves a certain perfection; there is a certain sufficiency which renders them the sources of their internal actions, and so to speak, incorporeal

automata.

19. If we care to give the name soul to everything that has perceptions and desires in the general sense which I have just explained, all simple substances or created monads may be called souls, but as feeling is something more than a simple perception, I am willing that the general name of monads or entelechies shall suffice for those simple substances which have only perception, and that only those substances shall be called souls whose perception is more distinct and is accompanied by memory.

20. For we experience in ourselves a state in which we remember nothing and have no distinguishable perceptions, as, for instance, when we fall in a swoon or when we are overpowered by a profound and dreamless sleep. In this state the soul does not differ sensibly from a simple monad; but as this state is not continuous and as the soul frees itself from it, it is something more than a simple monad.

21. Yet it does not all follow that therefore the simple substance is without any perception. This is indeed impossible, for the reasons mentioned above; for it cannot perish, nor can it exist without some affection, which is nothing else than perception; but when there is a great number of minute perceptions, where nothing is distinct, we are stunned, as when we turn round and round in the same direction many times, whence arises a dizziness which may make us lose consciousness, and which does not allow us to see anything distinctly. So death may for a time produce this condition in animals.

And as the present state of every simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, so its present is big with its future.

23. Therefore, since on being awakened from a stupor, we are aware of our perceptions, we must have had them immediately before although we were entirely unconscious of them; for one perception can

come naturally only from another perception as one motion can come naturally only from another motion.

24. From this we see that if there were nothing distinct, nothing, as may be said, in relief or of a higher flavor, in our perceptions, we should always be in a dazed state. This is a condition of the naked monad.

25. Thus we see that nature has given to animals higher perceptions, by the care she has taken to furnish them with organs which collect many rays of light or many undulations of air, in order to render them more powerful by their union. There is something of the same kind in odor, in taste, in touch and perhaps in a multitude of other senses which are unknown to us. I shall presently explain how what takes place in the soul represents what occurs in the organs.

26. Memory gives the souls a sort of consecutiveness which is like reason, but which ought to be distinguished from it. We observe that animals, seeing something which may strike them and of which they have had a similar perception before, expect, through their memory, what was associated with it in the preceding perception, and experience feelings similar to those which they had at that time. For instance, if we show dogs the cane, they remember the pain it has caused them and whine and run.

27. And the powerful imagination which strikes and moves them, arises either from the magnitude or the multitude of preceding perceptions. For often a strong impression produces all at once the same effect as a long continued habit, or as many repeated moderate perceptions.

28. Men are like the brutes in so far as the consecutiveness of their perceptions only results from the principle of memory, resembling the empirical physicians who practice without theory, and we are mere empirics in three-fourths of our actions. For example, when we expect that there will be daylight to-morrow, we are acting as empirics, because this has always taken place. It is only the astronomer who expects it from grounds of reason.

29. The knowledge of necessary and eternal truths is what distinguishes us from mere animals and gives us reason and the sciences, by raising us to a knowledge of ourselves and of God. This is what we call the reasonable soul or spirit within us.

30. It is also by this knowledge of necessary truths, and their abstractions, that we rise to acts of reflection, which make us think of that which calls itself" I," and consider that this or that is within us; and it

is thus that, in thinking of ourselves, we think of being, of substance, simple or compound, of the immaterial and of God Himself, conceiving that what with us is limited is with Him unlimited. These reflective acts constitute the principal objects of our reasonings.

31. Our reasonings are founded on two great principles, that of contradiction, by virtue of which we judge that to be false which involves self-contradiction and that true, which is opposed or contradictory to the false.

32. And that of the sufficient reason, by virtue of which we consider that no fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there is a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise, although for the most part these reasons cannot be known to us.

33. There are also two sorts of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible, and those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths until we reach those that are elemental.

34. It is thus that mathematicians by analysis reduce speculative theorems and practical canons to definitions, axioms and postulates.

35. Finally there are simple ideas, definitions of which cannot be given; there are also axioms and postulates, in a word, elementary principles, which cannot be proved and indeed need no proof, and these are identical propositions, the opposite of which contains a self-contradiction.

36. But there must also be a sufficient reason for contingent truths, or those of fact, that is, for the series of things throughout the universe. of created objects-where the analysis into particular reasons might run into a detail without limits, on account of the immense variety of objects and the division of bodies ad infinitum. There is an infinity of figures and of movements, present and past, which enter into the efficient cause of my present writing, and there is an infinity of trifling motives and dispositions, past and present, of my soul, which enter into the final

cause.

37. And as all such detail only depends on other contingents, anterior or more detailed, each one of which needs a like analysis for its explanation, we make no advance, and the sufficient or final reason must be outside of the sequence or series of this detail of contingencies, however infinite it may be.

38. And thus it is that the final cause of things must be found in a necessary substance, in which the detail of changes exists only transcendently, as in their source, and this is what we call God.

39. Now this substance being the sufficient reason of all this detail, which also is linked together throughout, there is but one God, and this God suffices.

40. We may judge also that this supreme essence, which is unique, universal and necessary, having nothing outside of itself which is independent of it, and being the simple series of possible being, must be incapable of limitations and must contain as much of reality as is possible.

41. Hence God is absolutely perfect, perfection being only the extension of positive reality taken in its strictest sense, setting aside the limits or bounds to what is limited. And there where there are no limits, that is, in God, perfection is absolutely infinite.

42. It follows also that creatures take their perfections from the influence of God, but that their imperfections arise from their own nature, which is incapable of existing without limits. For it is by this that they are distinguished from God.

43. It is also true that in God is the ground not only of existence but also of essences, so far as they are real, or of what is real in the possible. This is because the understanding of God is the source of eternal truths, or of the ideas on which they depend, and because, without him, nothing possible would be real and there would be not only nothing existing but also nothing possible.

44. Nevertheless, if there is any reality in essences or possibilities or in eternal truths, this reality must be founded in something existing and actual; consequently in the existence of the necessary being in whom essence involves existence or with whom to be possible is sufficient to be actual.

45. Hence God (or the necessary being) alone has the characteristic that he must exist if it is possible. And since nothing can hinder the possibility of that which has no limitations, no negation, and, consequently, no contradiction, this alone is enough to establish the existence of God a priori. We have also proved it by the reality of eternal truths. But we have just proved it also a posteriori, since contingent beings do exist which can have their final cause or sufficient reason only in a necessary being who has the reason of his existence in himself.

46. But it must not be thought, as is sometimes done, that eternal truths, being dependent upon God, are arbitrary and depend upon his

will, as Descartes seems to have conceived, and afterwards M. Poiret. This is true only of contingent truths, the principle of which is fitness or the choice of the best, whereas necessary truths depend solely on his understanding and are its internal nature.

47. Thus God alone is the elemental unity or the original simple substance; of which all monads, created or derived, are the products, and are born, so to speak, from moment to moment by continual emanation of the Divinity, limited by the capacity of the creature, to which limitation is essential.

48. In God is Power, which is the source of all things; then Knowledge, which contains the detail of ideas; and finally Will, which effects changes or products according to the principles of what is best. It is this which corresponds to what in created monads forms the subject or basis, the faculty of perception and desire. But in God these attributes are absolutely infinite or perfect, and in the created monads or in the entelechies (or perfectihabies, as Harmolaus Barbarus translated the word), they are only imitations proportioned to their perfection.

49. The creature is said to act in its environment in so far as it is perfect, and to suffer from another in so far as it is imperfect. Thus action is attributed to the monad in so far as it has clear perceptions, and passiveness in so far as it has confused perceptions.

50. And one creature is more perfect than another in that there is found in it what can account a priori for what takes place in another, and it is in this way that one is said to act upon another.

51. But in simple substances the influence of one monad upon another is purely ideal, since it can take effect only through the mediation of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God a monad may demand with reason that God in regulating the others from the commencement of things, have regard to it. For since a created monad can have no physical influence upon the interior of another, it is only in this way that one can be dependent upon another.

52. And hence it is that the action and passiveness of creatures are mutual. For God, in comparing two simple substances, finds in each one reasons which compel him to adjust the other to it, and consequently that which in certain respects is active, is from another point of view, passive; active in so far as what is known distinctly in it, serves to account for what takes place in another; and passive in so far as the cause of what takes place in it, is found in what is clearly known in another.