Savile - Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Leibniz and the Monadology

1 Monads, which are our concern here, are nothing other than simple substances. They are simple in that they have no parts. ( Theodicy , section 10)

2 There must be simple substances because there are compounds, and a compound is nothing other than a mass or aggregate of simples.

3 Now where there are no parts, neither extension nor shape nor division is possible. These monads are the true atoms of nature. In a word, they are the elements of things.

4 For them there is no dissolution to be feared, nor is there any way in which we can conceive of simple substances perishing by natural means. ( Theodicy , section 89)

5 For the same reason there is no natural way by which simple substances could come to be since they cannot be formed by composition.

6 So we can say that monads cannot begin or end save all at once. That is, they can only begin by way of Creation and end by way of Annihilation. By contrast, compounds begin and end by way of parts.

7 Nor is there any way of explaining how monads could be internally changed or altered by any other created beings. In them nothing permits of transposition, and one cannot conceive of any internal movement occurring in them that might be excited or directed or augmented or diminished as happens with compounds when there is change among their parts. Monads have no windows through which anything can come in or go out. Accidents cannot detach themselves from substances and wander about outside them, as the sensible species of the scholastics were said to do. So neither substances nor accidents can enter monads from without.

8 However, monads must have some qualities and undergo some changes, otherwise they would not be anything at all. If simple substances were nothing, composites too would be reduced to nothing. Monads are not mathematical points for those are only extremities, and lines cannot be composed of points. And if simple substances did not have different qualities from one another there would be no possibility of our being aware of changes in things. For what is found in compounds can only come from their simple ingredients. Being quite without qualities monads would be indistinguishable from one another because they would then also be quantitatively indistinguishable. Then too, supposing there to be no vacuum, each place would only receive the equivalent amount of motion as it had had in the past, and one state of affairs would be indistinguishable from any other. ( Theodicy , Preface)

9 It is even necessary that each monad be different from every other. For in nature there are never two beings that are exactly alike and where one cannot find some internal difference between them or one that is founded on some intrinsic denomination.

10 I take it for granted that every created thing is subject to change. So that holds too for created monads. I assume too that this change is continuous in each one.

11 It follows from what we have just said that the natural changes that come about in monads derive from an internal principle, which one might call their active force, since external causes can have no influence on their inner constitution. One can say quite generally that force is nothing but the principle of change. ( Theodicy , sections 396, 400)

12 Quite apart from this principle of change there must also be detailed complexity in what changes, which, so to speak, makes for the specification and the variety of simple substances.

13 This detailed complexity must embrace multiplicity in the one or in what is simple. All natural change being gradual, something always changes and something always remains. Consequently in simple substances there has to be a plurality of qualities and relations even though there are no parts.

14 The passing state that contains and represents a multitude in the one, or in the simple substance, is what is called perception. This must be distinguished from apperception or conscious awareness, as will be made plain below. The Cartesians have quite failed to see this and so entirely overlooked perceptions that we are not aware of. It is this that has led them to hold that the only monads are minds, and that animals have no souls and that there are no other sorts of entelechies. This is also why they have made the common mistake of confusing a long period of stupor with death in the strict sense of the word, and what has led them to accept the scholastic prejudice of souls completely separated [from the body (A.S.)] and what has encouraged some to embrace the misguided view that the soul is mortal.

15 The working of the internal principle that accounts for the transition from one perception to another may be called appetition. It is true that appetite [or desire (A.S.)] does not always completely attain what it strives for, but it always achieves something of it and so leads to new perceptions.

16 We ourselves experience multiplicity in the simple substance when we find that the least thought that we are aware of embodies variety in its object. So all those who recognize that the soul is a simple substance will acknowledge this inner multiplicity of the monad, and Monsieur Bayle should find no difficulty in accepting it, as he does in his Dictionary article Rorarius.

17 Further, we must admit that perception and everything that depends on perception is inexplicable on mechanical principles, that is, in terms of shapes and movements. If we imagine a machine whose structure allowed it to think, to feel and to perceive, we can conceive of it as being enlarged while conserving its proportions and so permitting us to enter it as into a mill. Supposing that to be the case, on visiting its interior we should only come across parts exerting pressure on one another and never find anything that might explain perception. So we must look for that in simple substances and not in aggregates or machines. And that is all we shall find in simple substances, namely perceptions and their changes. The inner actions of simple substances can consist in nothing else.

18 One could give the name entelechy to all simple substances or created monads, for they have within themselves a certain perfection ( echousi to enteles ). They enjoy a self-sufficiency ( autarkia ) that renders them the source of their internal actions and makes them, so to speak, incorporeal automata. ( Theodicy , section 87)

19 If we were to call souls everything that has perception and appetition in the general way I have just explained, then all simple substances or created monads could be called souls. But since sensation is something more than simple perception, I think that the general terms monad or entelechy are more appropriate to simple substances that only have that, and that we should call souls only those monads whose perceptions are more distinct and accompanied by memory.

20 We sometimes experience in ourselves states in which we remember nothing and have no distinct perceptions as when we fall into a faint or when we are overcome by a deep dreamless sleep. In such states our souls scarcely differ from those of bare monads. But since such states are of short duration and we emerge from them, souls are something more than they are.

21 It by no means follows that in those states simple substances are altogether without perceptions. For the reasons given above that could not be. They cannot perish, nor can they exist without possessing some qualities, and those are their perceptions. But when there is a great number of minute perceptions in which nothing is distinguished, then we are dazed as when we turn round constantly in the same direction a number of times and we suffer a vertigo which can make us faint and permits us to distinguish nothing. Death may produce such a state in animals for a time.