What are Monads?

15. Appetition* is the action of the internal principle which brings about change (i.e. the transition from one perception to another).

Appetite cannot always completely attain the whole perception it is aiming for. But it always obtains something of it, and arrives at new perceptions.

16. We experience a multiplicity in a simple substance. For example, we find that our smallest thought includes a variegation within its object.

Anyone who accepts that the soul is a simple substance must accept this multiplicity within the monad.

17. Perception, and anything that depends on it, cannot be explained in terms of mechanistic causation in terms of shapes and motions.

Let us pretend that:

• a machine could think, sense, and have perceptions.
• it was possible for you to go inside it, like going into a mill.

Your tour inside it would show you the working parts pushing each other, but never anything which would explain a perception.

So perception is to be sought, not in compounds (or machines), but in simple substances.

Simple substances show only perceptions and their changes.

• The internal actions of simple substances can only be perceptions and their changes.

18. You could call all simple substances, or created monads, entelechies, since they have within themselves a certain perfection (echousi to enteles [in Greek]).

There is a certain self-sufficiency (autarkeia), which makes them the source of their internal actions, and (so to speak) incorporeal automata.

19. All monads could be called ‘souls’.

But since sensation is something more than simple perception, then:

• ‘monad’ or ‘entelechy’ is sufficient for simple substances which only have simple perceptions
• ‘soul’ is that which has more distinct perceptions accompanied by memory

20. We experience within ourselves a state where we remember nothing, and have no distinct perceptions

For example, when we fall into a faint, or are overcome by a deep sleep without any dreams.

In this state, the soul is not discernibly different from a simple monad.

But the soul is something more than a simple substance, since this state does not persist, and the soul can emerge from it.

21. Simple substances:

• have perceptions which are also affections
• exist eternally

Unconsciousness is a state where all perceptions are united into 1 perception.

For example, if we spin around without stopping, we faint from dizziness. This prevents us from distinguishing anything.

Death can temporarily put animals into this state.

22. In the natural course of events, every present state of a simple substance is the consequence of its preceding state.

Its present state is pregnant with the future.

23. When you wake out of unconsciousness, you become conscious of your perceptions.

Consequently, you must have been perceiving before even though you were not conscious of it.

This is because a perception can only arise from a previous perception just as a motion can only arise from a previous motion.

24. We would be in a perpetual state of unconsciousness, if our perceptions contained nothing distinct, or (so to speak) highlighted, or spicier.

Completely bare monads are in such a state.

25. Nature has given heightened perceptions to animals through their sense organs.

There is something similar in the senses of smell, taste, and touch, and perhaps also many other senses which are unknown to us.

26. Memory supplies souls with a sort of following of one thing from another, which imitates reasoning, but which must be distinguished from it.

If an animal was struck by a stick, their perception of a similar-looking stick in their memory leads them to expect being struck again.

They will then have feelings similar to the ones they had before. This will make them bark or run away.

27. Imagery powerful enough to strike them forcibly and rouse them to activity, is the result either of the preceding perceptions':

• strong quality
• plentiful quantity

Often a single powerful impression has the same effect of many weaker perceptions frequently repeated.

28. People behave in the same way as animals in so far as the following of one perception from another occurs only in accordance with the principle of memory.

They are like the doctors of the empirical school of medicine, who rely on practical experience alone, without any theorising.

3/4 of the time, our behaviour is purely like that of the empiricists.

For example, we behave as empiricists when we expect the sun to rise tomorrow since that has always happened up till now.

It is only astronomers who come to this judgment on the basis of reasoning.

29. The knowledge of necessary and eternal truths distinguishes us from animals.

It gives us reason and the sciences, by elevating us to knowledge of ourselves and of God.

This is what in us is called the ‘rational soul’, or spirit.

30. The knowledge of necessary truths, and what can be abstracted from them, raises us to reflection.

This makes us think of the self, and to consider that this or that is in us.

In thinking of ourselves, we think of:

• being
• substance
• the simple and the compound
• the immaterial
• God

We form a conception of what is limited within us, and without limits in him. These acts of reflection provide us with the primary objects of our reasonings.