16 Philosophy of the Human Mind. 



contended were of a lower order, and subservient 

 to the dominant monads. But every monad, of 

 whatever order, he represented as a complete sub- 

 stance in itself, having no parts, and indestructi- 

 ble by any power less than Divine, which there 

 is no reason to believe will ever be exerted in 

 the annihilation of any being which it has created. 

 Finally, he maintained that monads of a lower 

 order may, by a regular evolution of their powers, 

 rise to an higher order; that they may be succes- 

 sively joined to organized bodies, of various forms, 

 and different degrees of perception ; but that they 

 can never die, nor cease to be, in some degree, 

 active and percipient. 



This philosopher distinguished between percep- 

 tion and apperception. The former he supposed 

 common to all monads. The latter, implying con- 

 sciousness, reflection, and a capacity to compre- 

 hend abstract truths, he believed to be peculiar to 

 the higher orders, such as the soul of man. He 

 conceived that our bodies and minds are united in 

 such a manner that neither has any physical in- 

 fluence on the other, each performing all its ope- 

 rations by its own internal powers; yet the opera- 

 tions of one corresponding exactly with those of 

 the other, by a pre-established harmony. Ac- 

 cording to this system, all our perceptions of ex- 

 ternal objects would be the same, though those ob- 

 jects had never existed, or though they should, by 

 Divine power, be annihilated. We do not per- 

 ceive external things because they exist, but be- 

 cause the soul was originally so constituted as to 

 produce in itself all its successive changes and per- 

 ceptions independently of external objects. Every 

 operation of the soul is the necessary consequence 

 of that state of it which preceded the operation; 

 and that state the necessary consequence of the 

 state immediately preceding it, and so backwards, 



