36 NATURE AND LIFE. 



discover in the will. We can conceive of spiritual sub- 

 stance in an infinite number of various degrees, which may 

 be either superior or inferior to the self / we can conceive 

 of nothing active that is not similar to it. Since all our 

 ideas proceed from profound reflection on ourselves, we 

 could know nothing of being, if we did not find being in 

 ourselves. This is the same as saying that the intellect 

 contains in itself certain primordial notions, which are the 

 starting-point and the condition of all others. In other 

 words, it is declaring that ideas exist in the mind anterior 

 to experience, dependent on the very constitution of that 

 mind. Aristotle and Locke compared the soul to a blank 

 tablet, on which the senses and experience proceed to in- 

 scribe their teachings. Leibnitz maintains that it origi- 

 nally holds the principles of many ideas and doctrines, 

 which outward objects merely call into action at fitting 

 times. With Plato, with St. Paul, when he declares that 

 the law of God is written in our hearts, with Scaliger, who 

 called them seeds of eternity, the author of " Monadology " 

 admits these fundamental concepts of the understanding as 

 the bases of all knowledge. He compares them to living 

 fires, to luminous rays hidden within us, which the contact 

 of sense and of outward objects brings to view, as sparks 

 that leap out on striking flint with steel. And these 

 flashes are visible more than in any other thing in the gift 

 of perceiving the connection of things, that is, in the reason. 

 In what relation does the soul, this especially active 

 monad, find itself to be with those monads of a lower 

 order, the elements of the body ? In Leibnitz's view, that 

 organized mass by which the soul makes itself known, being 

 of a nature very similar to it, acts in turn of its own accord, 

 whenever the soul wills it, without any clashing between 

 the laws of either, the spirits and the blood performing at 

 such times exactly the required motions in correspondence 

 with the soul's passions and perceptions. It is this mutual 



