GENERAL PRINCIPLES 55 



as clear to me that I have different thoughts; that now 

 I think of A, now of JB, (fee. 1 ' An Ego is one of an 

 infinite number of substances, and its self-consciousness 

 is thus not the ground of its existence, but a difference 

 in degree of quality between it and others 2 . The self- 

 conscious Monad is merely one which has developed its 

 representative or perceptive nature more fully than those 

 which we describe as animal souls or bare Monads. In 

 other words, we are i Egos ' before we think of ourselves, 

 realize ourselves, or reflect upon ourselves as Egos. We 

 are l raised to the knowledge of ourselves and of God 3 . ' 



The difference between the self-conscious Monad and 

 others consists in the greater clearness and distinctness 

 of its perceptions and ideas. But, as clearness and dis- 

 tinctness are relative terms (every Monad having percep- 

 tions in some degree clear and distinct), the specific 

 perceptions of a self-conscious being must be further 

 defined. Leibniz, as we have seen, cannot accept the 

 Cartesian view which totally rejects confused and obscure 

 ideas and makes clearness and distinctness the sole criteria 

 of truth *. In addition to being clear and distinct, the 



1 Nouveaux Essais, bk. iv. ch. 2, i (E. 341 a ; G. v. 348). Cf. G. 

 iv. 327 : ' These two things I regard as mutually independent of 

 one another and as equally original.' Also Lettre a Foucher (1676) 

 (G. i. 370) : * There are two absolute general truths, that is to say, 

 general truths which speak of the actual existence of things : the 

 one is that we think, the other that there is a^great variety in our 

 thoughts. From the first it follows that we are, from the second 

 it follows that there is something other than ourselves, that is to 

 say something other than that which thinks, something which is 

 the cause of the variety in what appears to us. Now the one of 

 these truths is as unquestionable, as independent as the other, and 

 M. Descartes, having in the order of his meditations taken account 

 only of the first of them, has failed to reach the perfection he set 

 before himself.' 



2 * To say, I think, therefore I am [exist] is not strictly to prove 

 existence by thought, since to think and to be thinking are the 

 same thing ; and to say I am thinking is already to say I am.' 

 Nouveaux Essais, bk. iv. ch. 7, 7 (E. 362 a ; G. v. 391). 



3 Monadology, 29. 



* Cf. Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis (1684) (E. Sob ; G. iv. 

 425), translated in Appendix to Baynes's ed. of Port-Royal Logic : 

 'And I also see that the men of our time abuse that vaunted 



