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degrees termed “ clear,” and “ distinct/’ up to, or at least 
approaching, that called “ adequate.” 
Man, then, may have “ insensible perceptions” or ideas. They 
are too “ small ” or too numerous to be separately noted, or, 
owing to the distraction of our attention from them or the 
complete suspension of attention (as in sound sleep), we are not 
aware of them. But all of them have their effect. In virtue 
of them, we may be said to “ know many things ” (for example, 
the “ eternal truths,” whose possession by man, Leibnitz defends 
against Locke), “of which we have never thought in the past, 
and may never think in the future.” The importance of these 
“ slight ” (joetites ) or “ insensible perceptions,” both in theory 
and in practice, is estimated by Leibnitz as fundamental. 
They are, he affirms, as essential to the theory of spirit 
(“ pneumatique,” psychology in the very broadest sense) as are 
to physics the “ insensible corpuscles ” (the impalpable atoms) 
which it assumes. By them he accounts for our indeliberate 
actions and tastes. In so far as it is under their form that 
“ general principles ” are practically present to our minds, they 
constitute the “ soul and connecting link of our thoughts.” 
“ They form the tie ( liaison ) which binds each being to all the 
rest of the universe.” Each monad is in its internal state a 
“ representation, from its point of view, of the whole universe.” 
The soul of man, the monad of higher order, “ in view of the 
variety of its modifications, should be compared to the universe, 
which, according to its point of view, it represents, and even in 
some sense to God, whose infinity the soul, because of its con- 
fused and imperfect perception of the infinite, but finitely 
represents, rather than to a material atom.” “ It may even be 
said that in consequence of these slight perceptions the present 
is full of the future, and laden with the past, that all things 
consent together, and that in the least of substances eyes as 
piercing as those of God could read the whole suite of things 
in the universe.” Matter, as extended substance, is literally 
unreal, is purely phenomenal, and space and time exist 
neither as substances nor as attributes, but simply as “ relations 
of order.”* 
It is to be noted that in this theory of Leibnitz there is 
no postulating of an unconscious principle to perform the work 
* Tlie above account of the doctrines of Leibnitz is founded principally 
on his Monadologie, Principes de la Nature, et de la Grace, Nouveaux 
JEssais sur V Entendenient humain, and Rcplique aux Objections de Bayle. 
All citations, with the one exception indicated in the text, are from the four 
works here named. 
