PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE LEIBNITZ'S IDEAS. 49 



urged metaphysicians to empty spiritualism, and physicists 

 to'sophistical materialism. While knowledge of mind was 

 thus wasting itself in literary declamation, and knowledge 

 of Nature in desultory research, idle discussions multiplied, 

 oftener inspired by passion than by reason, giving weapons 

 to the least noble purposes that passion suggests, and 

 paralyzing the most praiseworthy undertakings of reason. 

 At the present time this state of things is disappearing, 

 and Leibnitz's philosophy, it seems, must be the strongest 

 ally of all who long for a fruitful union between science 

 and metaphysics. The highest minds in schools most 

 widely apart give us grounds for indulging that hope. 

 They do not rest satisfied with wishing for its fulfillment ; 

 they are laboring for that direct purpose, disregarding all 

 impediments of prejudices or of objections. 



The result most clearly ascertained by vivisections in 

 experimental physiology, and by observations in microsco- 

 pic anatomy, mainly through the labors of Claude Bernard 

 and Charles Robin, is, that living beings are agglomera- 

 tions of infinitely fine and delicate particles, real individu- 

 alities, each endowed with characteristic and consubstantial 

 properties. These active units, forms and forces in one, 

 bring about, following upon manifold interminglings, the 

 whole organization and the whole working of animal and 

 vegetable parts. Animals and plants have ceased to be 

 machines vivified by a power distinct from them, which 

 possesses and moves them ; they are systems of combined 

 monads in which life is deeply lodged, and by which it ex- 

 presses itself they are marvelously ordered collections of 

 minute springs, possessing certain innate tendencies. As 

 Leibnitz had said, every living being is made up of an in- 

 finity of living beings. Now, these corpuscles, known to 

 modern science as anatomical elements, have as their es- 

 sential principle what Leibnitz described by the term 

 " souls," forms of substance, essential powers, monads. In 



