260 THE MONADOLOGY 



it has become known, through careful studies of plants, 

 insects, and animals, that the organic bodies of nature are 

 never products of chaos or putrefaction, but always come 

 from seeds, in which there was undoubtedly some pre- 

 formation m ; and it is held that not only the organic 



except in appearance : Aristotle mentions this (De Caelo, bk. iii. 

 ch. 2). And the author of the De Diaeta, bk. i. (which is attributed 

 to Hippocrates), expressly says that an animal cannot be engendered 

 absolutely [tout de nouvcau] nor completely [tout a fait] destroyed. 

 Albeitus Magnus and John Bacon seem to have thought that sub- 

 stantial forms were already hidden in matter from the beginning 

 of time. Fernel makes them descend from heaven, to say nothing 

 of those who regard them as taken off from the soul of the world. 

 They have all seen a part of the truth ; but they have not developed 

 it. Several have believed in transmigration, others in the traduc- 

 tion of souls' [i.e. in the soul of the offspring being as it were 

 begotten of the soul of the parent] ' instead of transmigration and 

 the transformation of an animal already formed. Others, not 

 being able to explain otherwise the origin of forms, have admitted 

 that they begin in a real creation, but while I allow that this 

 creation takes place in time only in respect of the rational soul, 

 and hold that all forms which do not think were created along 

 with the world, they believe that this creation takes- place every 

 day when the smallest worm is begotten.' Cf. New System, notes 

 43 and 44. 



117 ' The living [animee] and organic seed is as old as the world.' 

 Lettre a la Heine Sophie Charlotte (Gr. vi. 517). Immediately before the 

 time of Leibniz, the origin of life in the individual plant, animal, 

 or man was explained either by a theory of traduction or by 

 a theory of eduction. According to the theory of traduction, the 

 'form' of the offspring comes from the parental 'form' or 'forms' 

 in the same way as the body of the offspring comes from the parental 

 body or bodies. According to the theory of eduction, on the other 

 hand, life comes from inorganic matter, from 'chaos or putrefaction.' 

 Eduction thus corresponds to what we now call ' spontaneous gene- 

 ration.' According to the theory of preformation, adopted by 

 Leibniz, the germ contains in miniature the whole plant or animal, 

 point for point, and accordingly the ' form * of the plant or animal 

 exists in the spermatozoon in a contracted or 'enveloped' state, and 

 it has existed since the beginning of time. For, as we have seen 

 ( 65), there is no limit to the smallness of things, and even a sper- 

 matozoon may contain an indefinite number of other living beings. 

 This theory of preformation, which was based on the microscopic 

 investigations of Malpighi and Leuwenhoek, has now been entirely 

 abandoned, as the result of more thorough observations. Cf. Sande- 



