We now turn from the formal framework of general laws, to the actual, to that which, obeying these laws, constitutes the living content of the world.

%2.  The Organic World.%

A living being is a machine composed of an infinite number of organs.  The natural machines formed by God differ from the artificial machines made by the hand of man, in that, down to their smallest parts, they consist of machines.  Organisms are complexes of monads, of which one, the soul, is supreme, while the rest, which serve it, form its body.  The dominant monad is distinguished from those which surround it as its body by the greater distinctness of its ideas.  The supremacy of the soul-monad consists in this one superior quality, that it is more active and more perfect, and clearly reflects that which the body-monads represent but obscurely.  A direct interaction between soul and body does not take place; there is only a complete correspondence, instituted by God.  He foresaw that the soul at such and such a moment would have the sensation of warmth, or would wish an arm-motion executed, and has so ordered the development of the body-monads that, at the same instant, they appear to cause this sensation and to obey this impulse to move.  Now, since God in this foreknowledge and accommodation naturally paid more regard to the perfect beings, to the more active and more distinctly perceiving monads than to the less perfect ones, and subordinated the latter, as means and conditions, to the former as ends, the soul, prior to creation, actually exercised an ideal influence—­through the mind of God—­upon its body.  Its activity is the reason why in less perfect monads a definite change, a passion takes place, since the action was attainable only in this way, “compossible” with this alone.[1] The monads which constitute the body are the first and direct object of the soul; it perceives them more distinctly than it perceives, through them, the rest of the external world.  In view of the close connection of the elements of the organism thus postulated, Leibnitz, in the discussions with Father Des Bosses concerning the compatibility of the Monadology with the doctrine of the Church, especially with the real presence of the body of Christ in the Supper, consented, in favor of the dogma, to depart from the assumption that the simple alone could be substantial and to admit the possibility of composite substances, and of a “substantial bond” connecting the parts of living beings.  It appears least in contradiction with the other principles of the philosopher to assign the role of this vinculum substantiate to the soul or central monad itself.

[Footnote 1:  Cf.  Gustav Class, Die metaphysischen Voraussetzungen des Leibnizischen Determinismus, Tuebingen, 1874.]