254 THE MONADOLOGY 



64. Thus the organic body of each living being is a kind 

 of divine machine or natural automaton, which infinitely 

 surpasses all artificial automata. For a machine made by 

 the skill of man is not a machine 103 in each of its parts. 

 For instance, the tooth of a brass wheel has parts or 

 fragments which for us are not artificial products, and 

 which do not have the special characteristics of the 

 machine, for they give no indication of the use for which 

 the wheel was intended. But the machines of nature, 

 namely, living bodies, are still machines in their smallest 

 parts ad infinitum 10 *. It is this that constitutes the dif- 



103 i. e. not a machine made by man. From another point of view, 

 as a product of nature, it is (as this section says) a machine in its 

 smallest parts, for in reality all bodies are living bodies. Thus the 

 words ' for us ' in the next sentence of this section were added by 

 Leibniz in a revision of his original manuscript, evidently in order 

 to suggest that while the fragments of the wheel are not products 

 of ' human art,' they are yet products of ' divine art.' 



104 Cf. Lettre a M. Vfctiqw de Meaiix (Bossuet) (1692), (Foucher de 

 Careil, i. 277 ; Dutens, i. 531). ' The machines of nature are 

 machines throughout, however small a part of them we take ; or 

 rather the least part is itself an infinite world, which even 

 expresses in its own way all that there is in the rest of the 

 universe. That passes our imagination, yet we know that it must 

 be so ; and all that infinitely infinite variety is animated in all its 

 parts by a constructive [architectonique] wisdom that is more than 

 infinite. It may be said that there is Harmony, Geometry, Meta- 

 physics, and, so to speak, Ethics [morale] everywhere, and (what 

 is surprising) in one sense each substance acts spontaneously as 

 independent of all other created things, while in another sense, all 

 others compel it to adapt itself to them ; so that it may be said 

 that all nature is full of miracles, but miracles of reason, miracles 

 which become miracles in virtue of their being rational, in a way 

 which amazes us. For the reasons of things follow one another in 

 an infinite succession [s't/ pousse a un progres infini\ so that our 

 mind while it sees that things must be so, cannot follow so as to 

 comprehend. Formerly people admired nature without in any 

 way understanding it, and that was supposed to be the right 

 thing to do. Latterly they have begun to think nature so easy to 

 understand that they have developed a contempt for it, and some 

 of the new philosophers even encourage themselves in idleness by 

 imagining that they know enough about nature already.' See also 

 Introduction, Part iii. p. 108. 



