GENERAL PRINCIPLES 39 



to the principle of continuity that not only should I not 

 be astonished to learn that there had been found beings 

 which, as regards several properties for instance, those 

 of feeding or multiplying themselves might pass for 

 vegetables as well as for animals, and which upset the 

 common rules, founded upon the supposition of a complete \ 

 and absolute separation of the different orders of beings 

 which together fill the universe : I say, I should be so 

 little astonished at it that I am even convinced that there 

 must be such beings, and that natural history will perhaps 

 some day come to know them, when it has further studied 

 that infinity of living beings whose smallness conceals 

 them from ordinary observation, and which lie hid in the 

 bowels of the earth and in the depths of the waters * . . . ' 



T}ie pre-established Harmony between Substances. 



There is, then, in the system of the Monads a perfectly 

 continuous and infinite gradation of intension, that is to 

 say, of perception or representation, combined with appe- 

 tition or spontaneous change. And thus the universe is 

 at once continuous and not only infinitely divisible, but 

 infinitely divided, consisting of an infinity of real ele- 

 ments 2 . But we still have to consider how the principle I 

 of continuity, as thus interpreted, is consistent with the B 

 changes which take place in real things. In the system 

 of Monads the principle of continuity corresponds to the 



1 <M. Malpighi, founding upon very considerable analogies in A 

 anatomy, is much inclined to think that plants may be included ji 

 in the same genus as animals, and that they are imperfect animals.' ft 

 Lettre a Arnauld (1687) (Q-. ii. 122). ** 



2 Cf. Lettre a Foucher (1693) (G-. i. 416) : 'I hold by the actual 

 infinite to such an extent that, in place of admitting that nature 

 abhors it, as is commonly said, I maintain that nature affects it 

 everywhere, so as the better to indicate the perfections of its 

 Author. Thus I think that there is no part of matter which is 

 not, I do not say merely divisible, but actually divided ; and 

 consequently the smallest particle must be regarded as a world 

 filled with an infinity of different creatures.' Also Lettre a Arnauld 

 (1686) (G. ii. 77) : * Not only is the continuous infinitely divisible ; 

 but every part of matter is actually divided into other parts.' See 

 Monadology, 65 note. 



