258 THE MONADOLOGY 



71. But it must not be imagined, as has been done by 

 some who have misunderstood my thought, that each soul 

 has a quantity or portion of matter belonging exclusively 

 to itself or attached to it for ever 112 , and that it conse- 

 quently owns other inferior living beings, which are 

 devoted for ever to its service. For all bodies are in a 

 perpetual flux like rivers ns , and parts are entering into 

 them and passing out of them continually. 



72. Thus thd sottl changes its body only by degrees, 

 little by little, so that it is never all a^on^ deprived of 

 all its organs ; and there is often metaniorpnoBis~~in 

 animals, but never metempsychosis or transmigration of 

 souls 1U ; nor are there souls entirely separate [from 



112 The misunderstanding probably arose from a confusion of 

 materia prima, the passive element in the individual created Monad, 

 which is inseparable from the active or soul element, with materia 

 secunda, the changing body of a compound substance, which is 

 phenomenal and not perfectly real, although it is founded upon 

 reality. Cf. Introduction, Part. iii. pp. 95 sqq. 



113 The phrase is as old as Heraclitus, who, according to Plato, 

 ' likened things to the flowing of a river/ Cratylus, 402 A. Cf. 

 Aristotle, Metaph., A, 6, gQ^ 32. See also Burnet, Early Greek Philo- 

 sophy, p. 149. 



114 While soul and body are quite distinct from one another, 

 their union is of the closest possible kind. Changes in the one 

 correspond to changes in the other. But as the perceptions of the 

 soul are clearer and more distinct than those of the body, the 

 changes in the soul cause or explain the changes in the body. 

 Transmigration of souls is inconsistent with this, because it means 

 that the body remains the same, though the soul is changed. 

 Accordingly, in Leibniz's view, the identity of any individual 

 substance means 'the preservation of the same soul.' Nouveaux 

 Essais, bk. ii. ch. 27, 6. (E. 278 b ; G. v. 216.) He argues against 

 Locke that identity is not fixed by time and place, and that the 

 identity of plant, animal, and man does not consist in the possession 

 of the same organic body. Thus, according to Leibniz, every soul 

 or entelechy, whether conscious or not, has what he calls 'real and 

 physical identity ' (i. e. not a derived identity, but an identity 

 belonging to its own nature, Qvais}, and is, in virtue of this, im- 

 perishable (incessable], while the self-conscious soul has in addition 

 a 'personal* or 'moral' identity, in virtue of which it is immortal. 

 Neither continued consciousness nor memory is essential to the 

 maintenance of this ' moral ' identity. ' If I were to forget all the 



