The Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings |
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Common terms and phrases
absolute abstract according Accordingly activity actual actus purus aequi appetition Aristotle atoms body called Cartesian clear and distinct conatus conceived confused perception connexion conscious consequently consists continuity created degree Descartes Divine doctrine dominant Monad entelechy essence eternal existence explain expression Fichte force Foucher give hypothesis ideas indivisible infinite infinitely divisible Introduction Kant knowledge laws Leibniz Locke's logical materia matter means mechanical merely metaphysical metaphysical necessity mind esprit Mollat Monadology Monads motion necessary Nicholas of Cusa Nouveaux Essais object omits opinion organic perfect perfectly phenomena philosophy physical possible pre-established harmony principle of contradiction principle of sufficient Principles of Nature purely qualities quantity reads reality regard relation Scholastics self-consciousness sense simple substances soul space Spinoza sufficient reason tabula rasa Théod Théodicée theory things thought tion true truths ultimate unconscious unity universe whole
Popular passages
Page 242 - For I doubt not but, if it had been a thing contrary to any man's right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, ' that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square,' that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry, suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able.
Page 56 - ... and to observe that this or that is within us: and it is thus that, in thinking of ourselves, we think of being, of substance, simple or compound, of the immaterial and of God himself, conceiving that what is limited in us is in him without limits.
Page 102 - As for my own opinion, I have said more than once that I hold space to be something merely relative, as time is; that I hold it to be an order of co-existences as time is an order of successions. For space denotes, in terms of possibility, an order of things which exist at the same time, considered as existing together, without inquiring into their particular manner of existing.
Page 407 - ... its tendencies to pass from one perception to another), which are the principles of change.
Page 262 - The soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with each other in virtue of the preestablished harmony between all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe.
Page 414 - So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And- these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
Page 236 - There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible, and those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible.
Page 376 - At the height of the vogue for 'second Spiras', at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth...
Page 176 - Absolutely no human Reason (in fact no finite Reason like ours in quality, however much it may surpass it in degree) can hope to understand the production of even a blade of grass by mere mechanical causes.
Page 338 - ... the reason why there exists any world and why this world rather than some other. You may indeed suppose the world eternal ; but as you suppose only a succession of states, in none of which do you find the sufficient reason, and as even any number of...