The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. I, Nos. 1-4, 1867Various
Philosophy
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. I, Nos. 1-4, 1867
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
60. We see, moreover, in that which I have just stated, the _a priori_
reasons why things could not be other than they are. God, in ordering
the whole, has respect to each part, and specifically to each Monad,
whose nature being representative, is by nothing restrained from
representing the whole of things, although, it is true, this
representation must needs be confused, as it regards the detail of the
universe, and can be distinct only in relation to a small part of
things, that is, in relation to those which are nearest, or whose
relations to any given Monad are greatest. Otherwise each Monad would be
a divinity. The Monads are limited, not in the object, but in the mode
of their knowledge of the object. They all tend confusedly to the
infinite, to the whole; but they are limited and distinguished by the
degrees of distinctness in their perceptions.
61. And compounds symbolize in this with simples. For since the world is
a _plenum_, and all matter connected, and as in a _plenum_ every
movement has some effect on distant bodies, in proportion to their
distance, so that each body is affected not only by those in actual
contact with it, and feels in some way all that happens to them, but
also through their means is affected by others in contact with those by
which it is immediately touched—it follows that this communication
extends to any distance. Consequently, each body feels all that passes
in the universe, so that he who sees all, may read in each that which
passes everywhere else, and even that which has been and shall be,
discerning in the present that which is removed in time as well as in
space. “Συμπνόιει Πάντα,” says Hippocrates. But each soul can read in
itself only that which is distinctly represented in it. It cannot unfold
its laws at once, for they reach into the infinite.
62. Thus, though every created Monad represents the entire universe, it
represents more distinctly the particular body to which it belongs, and
whose Entelechy it is: and as this body expresses the entire universe,
through the connection of all matter in a _plenum_, the soul represents
also the entire universe in representing that body which especially
belongs to it.
63. The body belonging to a Monad, which is its Entelechy or soul,
constitutes, with its Entelechy, what may be termed a living (thing),
and, with its soul, what may be called an animal. And the body of a
living being, or of an animal, is always organic; for every Monad, being
a mirror of the universe, according to its fashion, and the universe
being arranged with perfect order, there must be the same order in the
representative—that is, in the perceptions of the soul, and consequently
of the body according to which the universe is represented in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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