PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE—LEIBNITZ’S IDEAS. 43 
science has confirmed these ideas. Life does dwell in the 
infinitely little ; it holds its silent and secret flow under the 
“manifold disguises” Hamlet speaks of, eluding search 
_ while it still plays in every pulse, and finding its food in 
death. 
Leibnitz also turns his attentiort to species, which he 
defines by generation in such sort that the being similar to 
another which comes from the same origin, or the same 
seed, is also of the same species. ‘The various classes of 
beings appear to him only as ordinates of the same curve, 
and form but one chain, in which these classes, like so 
many links, hold so closely to each other that it is impos- 
sible to fix the point at which any one of them begins or 
ends. All species, he says with remarkable exactness, 
which border upon or occupy parts of the curve where it 
is bent or returned on itself, must be endowed with equivo- 
cal characteristics. Then, looking at the subject as a whole, 
and bringing it under the law of continuity, he arranges 
species, and beings generally, in an immense series, from 
man to the simplest existences; he holds that there is so 
close an approach between animals and vegetables that, 
taking the least perfect of the former and the most perfect 
of the latter, they can hardly be distinguished. It accords, 
too, with the superb harmony of the universe, with the 
grand plan as well as with the goodness of its Sovereign 
Architect, that the various kinds of creatures should rise by 
degrees toward his infinite perfection. Leibnitz admits the 
existence of creatures more perfect than ourselves, but of 
whom he confesses that we can have no clear conception. 
He also believes that in the series of existing things there 
are voids, possible things non-existent, The variation of spe- 
cies, several instances of which he examines, seems to him 
to be real, but not their transmutation; he is for limited 
variableness, that is, he allows the action of modifying cir- 
cumstances within a wide range, yet does not go so far as 
