412 PRINCIPLES OF NATURE AND GRACE 



5. There is a connexion among the perceptions of 

 animals which has some likeness to reason ; but it is 

 based only on the memory of facts or effects 23 , and not 

 at all on the knowledge of causes. Thus a dog avoids 

 the stick with which it has been beaten, because memory 

 represents to it the pain which this stick has caused it. 

 And men, in so far as they are empirics, that is to say 

 in three-fourths of their actions, do not act otherwise 

 than the lower animals. For instance, we expect that 

 there will be daylight to-morrow because our experience 

 has always been so : it is only the astronomer who 

 rationally foresees it, and even his prediction will ulti- 

 mately fail when the cause of daylight, which is not 

 eternal, ceases 24 . But genuine reasoning depends upon 

 necessary or eternal truths, such as those of logic, of 

 number, of geometry, which produce an indubitable 

 connexion of ideas and infallible inferences. The animals 

 in which these inferences do not appear are called the 

 lower animals [betes] ; but those which know these neces- 

 sary truths are properly those which are called rational 

 animals, and their souls are called minds [esprits]. These 

 souls have the power to perform acts of reflexion and 

 to observe that which is called ego, substance 25 , soul, 

 mind [esprit], in a word, immaterial things and truths. 

 And this it is which makes science or demonstrative 

 knowledge possible to us* 6 . 



6. Modern research has taught us, and reason confirms 

 it, that the living beings whose organs are known to 

 us 27 , that is to say, plants and animals, do not come 



33 G. reads ou effects ; E. omits this. 



24 Cf. Munadology, 26-28. 



' a E. reads ' Monad ' between ' substance' and ' soul'; G. omits it. 



26 Cf. Monadology, 29 and 30. In the Matiadology God is added 

 as an object of the self-conscious soul. 



37 All Monads have organic bodies, and the series of Monads and 

 of organisms extends continuously from the lowest of Monads with 

 the least perceptible of organisms up to the Monad of Monads, God. 

 At both ends of the scale there are beings whose organs are not 

 known to us. 



