Leibniz himself says that the very nature of representation excludes interaction.  By representing environment a mind does not do anything to environment, that is plain.  But it is no less plain that environment does nothing to it, either.  The act of representing is simply the act of the mind; it represents in view of environment, of course, but not under the causal influence of environment.  Representation is a business carried on by the mind on its own account, and in virtue of its innate power to represent.

Very well; but does this consideration really drive us into theology?  Is not Leibniz the victim of a familiar fallacy, that of incompletely stated alternatives? ’Either finite beings interact or else they do not directly condition one another.  Monads do not interact, therefore they do not directly condition one another.  How then explain the actual conformity of their mutual representation, without recourse to divine fore-ordaining?’ It seems sufficient to introduce a further alternative in the first line of the argument, and we are rid of the theology.  Things may condition the [26] action of a further thing, without acting upon it.  It acts of itself, but it acts in view of what they are.  We are tempted to conclude that Leibniz has introduced the Deus ex machina with the fatal facility of his age.  ’Where a little further meditation on the characters in the play would furnish a natural denouement, he swings divine intervention on to the scene by wires from the ceiling.  It is easy for us to reconstruct for him the end of the piece without recourse to stage-machines.’

Is it?  No, I fear it is not.  There is really no avoiding the pre-established harmony.  And so we shall discover, if we pursue our train of reflexion a little further.  It is natural, we were saying, than an idea should represent an environment; indeed, it is the representation of one.  Given no environment to represent, it would be empty, a mere capacity for representation.  Then every idea or ideator, taken merely in itself, is an empty capacity.  But of what is the environment of each made up?  According to the Leibnitian theory, of further ideas or ideators:  of empty capacities, therefore.  Then no idea will either be anything in itself, or find anything in its neighbours to represent.  An unhappy predicament, like that of a literary clique in which all the members are adepts at discussing one another’s ideas—­only that unfortunately none of them are provided with any; or like the shaky economics of the fabled Irish village where they all lived by taking in one another’s washing.