STATEMENT OF LEIBNIz's PHILOSOPHY 115 



Though, on the one hand, no soul is limited to any 

 particular phenomenal aggregate as its body, yet on the 

 other hand, no soul can be completely and instantaneously 

 severed from its body and transferred to another. Again, 

 the birth and the death of any organism are simply forms 

 of this metamorphosis 1 . There is no absolute birth, that 

 is to say, no direct and immediate implanting of soul in 

 body, and there is no absolute death, no complete sever- 

 ance of soul from body. All the Monads which constitute 

 the sole reality of a compound substance are alike unborn 

 (ingenerdble) and imperishable 2 . They proceed directly 

 from God : they are produced by ' fulgurations of His 

 Divinity 3 .' None of them comes out of anything else. 

 Thus the phenomena we call 'birth' and 'death' are 

 transformations, changes in the relations between Monads. 

 When we speak of an animal being born, we mean that 

 the body of a microscopic animalcule has enormously 

 increased in size, and that its dominant Monad has under- 

 gone a corresponding internal change. The animal was 

 an animal from the first, even in the microscopic, sper- 

 matic stage. In being born it has merely become an 

 animal of a higher kind. In every case the process of 

 birth is, in fact, similar to the change which takes place 

 when a caterpillar develops into a butterfly, 'nature being 

 wont to reveal in some particular cases her secrets, which 

 she conceals on other occasions 4 .' Birth is thus indis- 

 tinguishable from growth, increase, development. And 

 on the other hand, when we speak of an animal as dying, 

 we mean that its body has decreased in size or been 

 broken up into new compounds. The animal has not 

 ceased entirely to exist, but has been contracted so that 

 it is no longer perceived. Death is thus the same as 

 decay, decrease, involution 5 . There is no spontaneous 



1 Monadology, 73 sqq. 2 Cf. Principles of Nature and of Grace, 6. 



3 Monadology, 47 ; see the note to that section. 



4 Lettre a Arnauld (1686) (G. ii. 75). 



5 Monadology, 74 and 75. Cf. Theodicee, 90 (E. 527 b; G. vi. 

 152). 



I 2 



