234 THE MONADOLOGY 



30. It is also through the knowledge of necessary 

 truths, and through their abstract expression, that we 

 rise to acts of reflexion, which make us think of what is 

 called J, and observe that this or that is within us : 

 and thus, thinking of ourselves, we think of being, of 

 .substance, of the simple and the compound, of the 

 immaterial, and of God Himself, conceiving that what is 

 limited in us is in Him without limits. And these acts of 

 reflexion furnish the chief objects of our reasonings 49 . 

 (Theod. Pref. [E. 469 ; G. vi. 27].) 



ness or knowledge of these truths is knowledge of ourselves, and 

 it is at the same time knowledge of God, who is the final reason of 

 all things. Cf. Nouveaux Essais, bk. i. ch. i, 4 (E. 207 b ; G. v. 

 72). 'A pretty general agreement among men is an indication 

 and not a demonstration of an innate principle ; but the exact and 

 decisive proof of these principles consists in showing that their 

 certainty come^ only from what is in us. ... It may be said that 

 all Arithmetic and all Geometry are innate and are in us in a 

 virtual manner, so that we could find them by attentively con- 

 sidering aiid arranging what is already in our mind, without 

 making use of any truth learned by experience or by external 

 tradition, as Plato has shown in a dialogue ' [Meno, 82 sqq.] ' in 

 which he introduces Socrates leading a child to abstruse truths 

 by questions alone, without giving him any information.' Cf. 

 Principles of Nature and of Grace, 5. 



49 Thus consciousness becomes self-consciousness (reflective con- 

 sciousness) when we realize the eternal truths as eternal, that is 

 to say, as the innate principles of our being and of the whole 

 world. Substance is always a soul of some kind, because it must 

 be something analogous to what we find in ourselves. Cf. Nouveaux 

 Essais, bk. i. ch. i, 21 (E. 211 b ; G. v. 70). 'Very often know- 

 ledge of the nature of things is nothing but knowledge of the 

 nature of our mind [esprit] and of those innate ideas, which there 

 is no need to look for outside of it/ Cf. also 23 (E. 212 b ; G. v. 

 71) : 'Intellectual ideas or ideas of reflexion are derived from our 

 mind ; and I should like very "much to know how we could have 

 the idea of being, were it not that we ourselves are beings and thus 

 find being in ourselves.' We see here (in however imperfect 

 a form) the germ of the Kantian transition from ' substance ' to 

 'subject' as the ultimate metaphysical reality. Cf. p. 190. 



Boutroux finds in this passage the indication of a succession of 

 stages in the progress of self-conscious reflexion. The nature 

 of God is the truth or ultimate reality of our nature. Thus in 

 1 reflexion, that is to say, in the return of the being towards its 



