A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



what Bacon's did for England and the rest of the 

 world in general. 



Only a comparatively small part of his philosophical 

 writings concern us here. According to his theory of 

 the ultimate elements of the universe, the entire 

 universe is composed of individual centres, or monads. 

 To these monads he ascribed numberless qualities by 

 which every phase of nature may be accounted. 

 They were supposed by him to be percipient, self- 

 acting beings, not under arbitrary control of the 

 deity, and yet God himself was the original monad 

 from which all the rest are generated. With this con- 

 ception as a basis, Leibnitz deduced his doctrine of 

 pre-established harmony, whereby the numerous in- 

 dependent substances composing the world are made 

 to form one universe. He believed that by virtue of 

 an inward energy monads develop themselves spon- 

 taneously, each being independent of every other. 

 In short, each monad is a kind of deity in itself a 

 microcosm representing all the great features of the 

 macrocosm. 



It would be impossible clearly to estimate the 

 precise value of the stimulative influence of these 

 philosophers upon the scientific thought of their time. 

 There was one way, however, in which their influence 

 was made very tangible namely, in the incentive they 

 gave to the foundation of scientific societies. 



SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES 



At the present time, when the elements of time 

 and distance are practically eliminated in the prop- 

 agation of news, and when cheap printing has mini- 



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