XII THE HOLISTIC UNIVERSE 333 



theory of Monads. They agree in having an innerness, in 

 being little worlds of their own, with their own inner laws 

 of development and with a certain measure of inner self- 

 direction or self-conservation which makes them partial 

 mirrors or expressions of the greater reality. But the 

 monads according to Leibniz are essentially spiritual entities 

 or selves, conceived on the analogy of the human mind, and 

 their activities are of a purely psychical character such as 

 perception. They are, moreover, absolutely closed, isolated, 

 self-contained units, each with its own immutable inner 

 system, uninfluenced by any other monad; and all main- 

 tained in harmony with each other by some divine pre- 

 established order outside of them. The greater and lesser 

 selves of the universe lead their own inner self-existences, 

 without any contact between one another, and only the 

 divine interposition maintains a Pre-established Harmony 

 between them. There is a scale of these monads, from the 

 lowest most simple, such as atoms or molecules, whose con- 

 fused perceptions produce the world of matter, to the highest 

 most complex in the universe, such as human minds, whose 

 clear and distinct perceptions produce the world of spirit. 

 God himself is but the Supreme Monad of monads on this 

 view. It will be seen how different this monadic conception 

 is from that of wholes developed in this work. In the first 

 place, wholes are not all spiritual entities, and the world is 

 not a hierarchy of spirits exclusively, as Leibniz conceived it. 

 Spiritual wholes are merely the apex and crowning feature of 

 the universe, while non-spiritual (material or organic) wholes 

 compose its earlier phases. In the second place, wholes are 

 not closed, isolated systems externally; they have their fields 

 in which they intermingle and influence each other. The 

 Holistic universe is a profoundly reticulated system of inter- 

 actions and inter-connections rising into a real society in its 

 later phases. In the third place, genetic relationships con- 

 nect the entire Holistic universe. Wholes from the lowest to 

 the highest are akin and form one great family, and are 

 derived from one another in the process called Evolution. 

 In the fourth place, it is the ascertainable character of this 



