NEW SYSTEM 309 



ficial things, through not having great enough ideas of 

 the majesty of nature. They think that the difference 

 between nature's machines and ours is only a difference 

 of size. This has lately led a very able man 45 (the 

 author of the Entretiens sur la pluralite des Mondes 46 ) to 

 say that, when we look closely at nature, we find it less 

 wonderful [admirable] than we had thought, it being 

 merely a kind of workshop. It seems to me that this 

 is to give an idea of nature which is not quite just nor 

 worthy of it 47 , and that it is only our system which 

 shows how real and immense after all is the distance 

 between the least productions and mechanisms that are 

 made by the Divine wisdom and the greatest artistic 

 masterpieces of a limited mind [esprit] the difference 

 being not merely one of degree, but even one of kind. 

 Accordingly it is to be observed that the machines of 

 nature have a really infinite number of organs 48 and are 

 so well equipped and so proof against all accidents that it 

 is not possible to destroy them. A natural machine still 

 remains a machine in its smallest parts, and moreover 



45 Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757), a nephew of 

 Pierre Corneille, was secretary of the Acade'wie des Sciences at Paris 

 from 1699 to 1741. One of his duties as secretary was to prepare 

 every year filoges or tributes to the memory of those members of 

 the academy who had died during the year, and among the ablest 

 of these papers is his Eloge de Leibniz, published in the Histoire de 

 I' Academic Royale des Sciences de Paris, anne'e 1716. He wrote a great 

 deal of indifferent verse ; but his main work consisted in the 

 popularizing of scientific ideas. There is a saying of his (which 

 sounds like a parody of Leibniz) that 'everything is possible, and 

 everybody is right/ 



*" 'Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds.' This book (pub- 

 lished 1686) was intended to popularize the astronomical theories 

 of Copernicus. It has been several times translated into English. 



47 E. has merely 'which is not worthy of it.' 



48 A machine made by man has a finite number of ' organs ' or 

 parts having each a definite function in relation to the whole. 

 The tooth of a wheel is an < organ ' of the wheel and of the whole 

 machine. But the material particles which make up this tooth 

 are not 'organs' of the wheel or the machine. Nature, on the 

 other hand, is organic throughout : no part of it is not an 'organ ' 

 of the whole. Thus a natural machine has 'a really infinite 

 number of organs.' Cf. Monadology, 64. 



