III

We have seen that science, having pulverized the universe, necessarily ends up by spiritualizing the dust thus created. However, we now face an important objection. In any monadological or atomistic system, all phenomena are nebulous clouds resolvable into the actions emanating from a multitude of agents who are so many invisible and innumerable little gods. This polytheism—this myriadeism, one might almost say—leaves unexplained the universal agreement of phenomena, as imperfect as this may be. If the elements of the world are born separate, independent and autonomous, it is impossible to see why a great number of them and many of the groups formed by them (for example all atoms of oxygen or hydrogen) resemble each other, if not perfectly, as is often supposed without sufficient reason, at least within certain approximately fixed limits; it is impossible to see why many of them, if not all, appear to be captive and subjugated, and to have renounced the absolute liberty which their eternity implies; and finally, it is impossible to see why order and not disorder, and in first place the primary condition of order, namely increasing concentration rather than increasing dispersion, are the result of their relations. Thus it seems necessary to have recourse to new hypotheses. As a complement to the closure of his monads, Leibniz made each one a camera obscura where the whole universe of other monads is represented in a reduced form and from a particular angle; and moreover, he had to posit a pre-established harmony, in the same way that, as the complement of their wandering blind atoms, materialists must invoke universal laws or a single formula embracing all laws, a kind of mystical commandment which all beings would obey and which was not produced by any being, a kind of ineffable and unintelligible word which, having never been pronounced by anyone, nonetheless would be heard everywhere and forever. Besides, both atomists and monadologists equally represent their first elements, which they claim are the sources of all reality, as swimming in the same space and the same time, which are two realities or pseudo-realities of a singular kind: deeply penetrating throughout the material realities which were supposed impenetrable, and yet radically distinct from the latter, despite the intimacy of this penetration. All these characteristics are so many mysteries, which create a curious embarrassment for the philosopher. Is there any hope of resolving them by conceiving of open monads which would penetrate each other reciprocally, rather than being mutually external? I believe there is, and I note that on this point again, the progress of science, indeed of modern science in general and not only of its most recent developments, favours the blossoming of a renewed monadology. The Newtonian discovery of gravitation, of action at a distance (and at any distance) of material elements on one another, shows how difficult it will be to make a case for their impenetrability. Each element, hitherto conceived as a point, now becomes an indefinitely enlarged sphere of action (for analogy leads us to believe that gravity, like all other physical forces, is propagated successively);³⁰ and all these interpenetrating spheres are so many domains proper to each element, so many distinct though intermixed spaces, perhaps, which we wrongly take to be a single unique space. The centre of each sphere is a point, which is uniquely defined by its properties, but in the end a point like any other; and besides, since activity is the very essence of the elements, each of them exists in its entirety in the place where it acts. The atom, in truth, if we draw the implications of this point of view which is naturally suggested by Newton's law (which a few thinkers have occasionally tried, and failed, to explain by the pressure of the ether), ceases to be an atom; it is a universal medium [milieu universel] or aspires to become one, a universe in itself, not only, as Leibniz wished to argue, a microcosm, but the entire cosmos vanquished and absorbed by a single being. If, having thus resolved this rather supernatural conception of space into real particular spaces or domains, we could in the same way resolve a single Time, that hollow entity, into multiple realities and elementary desires, then the only remaining simplification would be to explain natural laws, the similarity and repetition of phenomena and the multiplication of similar phenomena (physical waves, living cells, social copies) by the triumph of certain monads who desired these laws, imposed these forms, subjected to their yoke and levelled with their scythe a people of monads thus subjugated and made uniform, although born free and original, all as eager (avides) as their conquerors to dominate and assimilate the universe.—Just as much as space and time, natural laws, those equally rootless and fantastical entities, would thus finally find their proper place and their point of application among known realities. They would all have begun, like our civil and political laws, by being the designs and projects of individuals.—Thus we would in the simplest way possible meet the fundamental objection made to any atomistic or monadological attempt to resolve the continuity of phenomena into an elementary discontinuity. What do we place within the ultimate discontinuity if not continuity? We place therein, as we will explain again below, the totality of other beings. At the basis of each thing are all real or possible things.

Notes

30. According to Laplace, the gravific fluid, to use his expression, is propagated successively, but with a velocity at least millions of times faster than light. In one place he says 50 million times, in another 100 million. ↩