34 NATURE AND LIFE. 



atoms of substance, that is, real unities, absolutely devoid 

 of parts, which are the sources of action, the first principles 

 in the composition of things, and the last elements, so to 

 speak, in the analysis of substances. These might be 

 called, as Leibnitz calls them, metaphysical points : they 

 possess some vitality, and a kind of perception ; and mathe- 

 matical points are the mode employed in using them to 

 express the universe; but, when corporeal substances are 

 compressed, the aggregate of their organs makes but one 

 physical point, as we regard it. Thus physical points only 

 seem to be indivisible, but are not really so ; mathematical 

 points are exact, but they are only modes of thought. 

 Nothing is complete and real except metaphysical points, 

 or points of substance (the forms or souls of Leibnitz), and 

 without them no reality would exist, since without true 

 units there can be no multitude. 



Points of substance, or monads, without extension or 

 form, are then truly the inner and specific forces of things. 

 We can conceive them, but cannot shape their image. Just 

 as we should be incapable of knowledge if we had not the 

 signs of language, so, without the support of those repre- 

 sentations to the senses furnished by body and motion, we 

 must remain ignorant of force. They do not, however, 

 help us to escape the inference that force is the reality of 

 which body and motion are merely the concrete and sen- 

 sible images, not intelligible ones. Briefly, there is some- 

 thing more in the world than a display of phenomena, some- 

 thing more than visible forms and express motion : there is 

 energy, spring, concealed activity at rest, concentrated and 

 condensed inner potency, ever ready to be translated into 

 numberless appearances. Beyond perception and without 

 extension, these mother-forces, fertile sources of all action 

 and all life, compose, as Leibnitz teaches, the very essence 

 of things. 



How do these forces engender bodies and souls, and 



