PRINCIPLES OF NATURE AND GKACE 419 



from the condition of stupor into which death or some 

 other accident may put them 51 . 



13. For all is regulated in things, once for all, with as 

 much order and mutual connexion as possible, since 

 supreme wisdom and goodness can act only with perfect 

 harmony. The present is big with the future, the future 

 might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the 

 near. We might get to know the beauty of the universe 

 in each soul, if we could unfold all that is enfolded in 

 it and that is perceptibly developed only through time. 



51 Conscious Monads may for a time fall into unconsciousness ; 

 but that they should remain permanently in that Condition would 

 be against the general order of things. For the tendency of all 

 created Monads is to advance to higher perceptions. In this 

 advance each Monad is essentially limited to some extent ; but 

 apart from this essential limitation, which is independent of the 

 will of God, no other permanent limitation is imposed. Thus, if 

 a Monad has once been conscious, it may be conscious again, for 

 manifestly it is not essentially limited to the unconscious state. And 

 it must some day be conscious again, for the wor]d is the best of all 

 possible worlds, not merely on the whole but as regards each of 

 its parts, which is equivalent to saying that the world is so con- 

 structed that each of the Monads constituting it shall rise to the 

 highest point of perfection (i. e. of perception and appetition) which 

 its essential limitations allow. Leibniz elsewhere speaks of the 

 world in terms which, with slight alteration, he would apply to 

 the individual soul. l You are right in saying that our globe ought 

 to have been a kind of Paradise, and I add that, if that is so, it 

 can quite well become one yet, and it may have drawn back in 

 order to make a better leap forward.' Lettre a Bourguet (1715) (E. 

 731 a ; G. iii. 578). Cf. Lettre touchant ce qui est independent des Sens 

 et de la Matiere (1702) (G. vi. 507) : 'Always when we penetrate 

 into the depths of any things, we find in them the most beautiful 

 order that could be desired, even beyond what we imagined, as all 

 those who have gone deeply into the sciences are aware ; and 

 accordingly we may hold that the same is the case as regards all 

 other things, and, that not only do immaterial substances always 

 continue to exist but their lives, their progress and their changes 

 also are regulated so as to attain a certain end, or rather to 

 approach it more and more, as asymptotes do. And although we 

 sometimes fall back, like lines which have bends in them, advance 

 none the less prevails in the end and gets the victory.' Cf, New 

 Essays, Introduction, note 74. 



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