306 NEW SYSTEM 



and other able men have not been very far from this 

 opinion. 



7. But there still remained the greater question, what 

 becomes of these souls or forms at the death of the 

 animal or on the destruction of the individual, of the 

 organic substance ? This is a most perplexing question, 

 inasmuch as there seems little reason in thinking that 

 souls remain uselessly in a chaos of confused matter 37 . 

 Accordingly I came to the conclusion that there is only 

 one view that can reasonably be taken, namely, that 

 which affirms the conservation not only of the soul but 

 also of the animal itself and its organic mechanism ; 

 although the destruction of its grosser parts has reduced 

 it to a minuteness which makes it as little perceptible 

 to our senses as it was before its birth 38 . Thus no one 

 can exactly note the real time of death, which for a time 

 may be taken for a mere suspension of perceptible 

 activities and which at bottom is never anything else 

 than this in the case of mere animals : witness the re- 

 suscitation of flies which have been drowned and then 

 buried in powdered chalk, and several similar instances 

 which are sufficient to inform us that there might be 

 other resuscitations, even when the destruction of the 

 organic substance had gone much farther, if men were 

 in a position to reconstruct the [animal] mechanism 39 . 

 And apparently it was about something like this that 

 the great Democritus spoke (thorough atomist as he 

 was), though Pliny laughs at what he said 40 . Accord- 

 position of perfectly hard atoms in a perfect fluid. In 1704 he 

 became Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Diisseldorf, and 

 from 1706 to 1712 he discussed his philosophy of nature with 

 Leibniz in a correspondence to which Leibniz frequently refers 

 in his letters to Des Bosses. The correspondence is given by 

 Gerhardt, iii. 483. Cf. Third Explanation of the New System, p. 334. 



87 That is, matter which is (comparatively) inorganic. 



38 Cf. Monadology, 73 and 77. 



39 Cf. Monadology, 14, note 23 and 21 ; Principles of Nature and 

 of Grace, 6 and 12. 



40 Cf. Lettre a des Naizeaux (1711) (E. 676 b ; G. vii. 535) : 'Plato 

 believed that material things are in a perpetual flux, but that 



