18 Mechanical Philosophi/. 



the Creator, in the beginning of its existence, eti^ 

 dowed with certain active and perceptive powers, 

 sufficient to produce all the changes which it under- 

 goes, from the beginning to eternity; which 

 changes, though they may seem to us to be the ef- 

 fects of causes operating from without, are only 

 the gradual and successive evolutions of the monads 

 own internal powers, which would have produced 

 the same motions and changes, although there had 

 been no other being in the universe. He supposed, 

 farther, that die universe is completely filled with 

 monads, without any chasm or void, and thereby 

 every body acts upon every other body, according 

 to its vicinity or distance, and is mutually reacted 

 upon by every other body; hence he considered 

 every monad as a kind of living mirror, which re- 

 flects the wdiole universe, according to its point of 

 view, and represents the whole more or less dis- 

 tinctly. The adoption of this visionary system 

 led Leibnitz to oppose, with considerable warmth, 

 several of the leading doctrines of New^ton, and 

 especially his great principle of gravitation. The 

 hostility of the German philosopher tovv^aid the 

 illustrious Briton, was particularly displayed in his 

 controversy with the learned and acute Dr. Samuel 

 Clarke. The papers which gave rise to this con- 

 troversy, together with the various answers, re- 

 plies, and rejoinders which took place in the course 

 of it, were transmitted from the one party to the 

 other, through the hands of Queen Caroline, 

 consort of George I. and the patron and corres- 

 pondent of Leibnitz. They were afterwards pub- 

 lished, and hold an important place in the philoso- 

 phical history of the age. 



Soon after the theory of monads was published. 

 Christian Wolfe, a philosopher of Breslau, 

 formed, on the foundation of this theory, a new 

 system of Cosmologj/^ digested and demonstrated 



