Leibniz's conception relative to this is, as we have seen, that there is no physical _influxus_, or _commercium_, of monads, but ideal consensus. _Really_ each shuts out every other; _ideally_, or representatively, it includes every other. His positive thought in the matter is that a complete knowledge of any portion of the universe would involve a perfect knowledge of the whole, so organic is the structure of the universe. Each monad sums up the past history of the world, and is big with its future. This is the conception of inter-relation; the conception of all in one, and one as a member, not a part of a whole. It is the conception which Leibniz brought to birth, the conception of the thorough unity of the world. In this notion there is no denial of community of relation; it is rather the culmination of relation. There is no isolation. But according to his presupposed logic, individuality can mean only identity excluding distinction,--identity without intrinsic relation, and, as Leibniz is bound at all hazards to save the notion of individuality, he is obliged to think of this inter-relation as only ideal, as the result of a predetermined tendency given at its creation to the self-identical monad by God. But of course Leibniz does not escape the contradiction between identity and distinction, between individuality and universality, by this means. He only transfers it to another realm. In the relation of the monad to God the diversity of its content, the real or universal element, is harmonized with the identity of its law, its ideal or individual factor. But if these elements do not conflict here, why should they in the relation of the monads to one another? Either there is already an immanent harmony between the individual and universal, and no external arrangement is needed to bring it about, or there is no such harmony, and therefore no relation possible between God and the individual monad. One side of the Leibnizian philosophy renders the other side impossible.