34 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



characteristics. Van Helmont, in the next century, 

 preached the same doctrine. Leibnitz, too, had 

 his Monads of matter ; and though their activity 

 was regulated by " pre-established harmony," yet 

 he gave them " appetition," and talked of " petites 

 perceptions," which combined and increased into 

 " apperceptions," and thus gave a continuity to all 

 souls, " from the soul of a pebble to that of an 

 angel." Matter, to Leibnitz, was alive in every 

 atom. " Whence it appears that in the smallest 

 particle of matter there is a world of creatures, liv- 

 ing beings, animals, entelechies, souls." " Each por- 

 tion of matter may be conceived as a garden full of 

 plants, and like a pond full of fishes." " Thus there 

 is nothing sterile and nothing dead in the universe." 



The exact significance of Leibnitz's terms 

 " appetition " and " perception " it is not easy to 

 discover. Professor Latta puts it thus : " As 

 representative or symbolic of the whole, the part 

 in Leibnitz's terminology has Perception^ while in so 

 far as in the part the potential whole tends to realise 

 itself, the partis said to have Appetition." What- 

 ever the exact meaning of the term, the fact 

 remains that Leibnitz gave matter some rudiment 

 of sensibility. 



This tendency, however, to revert to a soul of 

 matter, never overcame the other tendency to con- 

 sider matter dead, and to explain it on mechanical 



