40 NATURE AND LIFE. 
the series of substances, whose totality makes up the 
world. We must rise, therefore, fom physical or hypo- 
thetical necessity, which determines the succeeding state 
of the world accordantly with an anterior state, to absolute 
or metaphysical necessity, of which we can give no ac- 
count, and this last reason is the reason of all the others. 
As a thoughtful interpreter of Leibnitz’s teaching says,’ 
thought, will, are at the bottom of all things ; phenomena, 
in all their degrees, appear in the last result only as so 
many refractions in the variously-disturbed media of sole 
and universal light—light which shines most of all in our 
own soul, because it is the focus in which are concentrated 
the everywhere dispersed rays of that diffused effulgence. 
From action to action, from power to power, we must thus 
soar to a potency which at last suffices singly for itself— 
that is, to perfect spontaneity. 
In time, then, as in space, all things are subject toa 
law of inflexible interdependence. This idea of beholding 
the universe in the microcosm, of regarding the infinitely 
great in the infinitely little, monads in incessant reciprocal 
action, each part bearing the stamp of the absolute which 
shines forth in the all, and this all moving onward in grand, 
harmonious might toward an end of which our intelligence 
can catch perchance but a dim glimpse, but which it feels 
in deep conviction—this idea is the glory of Leibnitz. It 
is determinism in its all-embracing fullness. Descartes, too, 
had formed an image of the world accordantly with supreme 
laws ; but he had shut up those laws within the limits of 
mechanism. Leibnitz beholds a grander sphere, and views, 
beyond mechanism, energy, life, love, and good; he gazes 
upon the true God in his magnificence. The God of Descartes 
isnumber and force ; the God of Leibnitz is life and beauty. 
From his bosom all wells forth and radiates in floods of 
eternal light, as thoughts emanate from our own existence. 
1 Ravaisson, “ Philosophy in France in the Nineteenth Century.” 

