The Past Is Pregnant With The Present.

I Hold That The Mark Of A Genuine Idea Is That Its Possibility Can Be Proved, Either A Priori By Conceiving Its Cause Or Reason, Or A Posteriori When Experience Teaches Us That It Is In Fact In Nature.

The Monad, Of Which We Shall Speak Here, Is Nothing But A Simple Substance Which Enters Into Compounds; Simple, That Is To Say, Without Parts.

When A Truth Is Necessary, The Reason For It Can Be Found By Analysis, That Is, By Resolving It Into Simpler Ideas And Truths Until The Primary Ones Are Reached. It Is This Way That In Mathematics Speculative Theorems And Practical Canons Are Reduced By Analysis To Definitions, Axioms And Postulates.

According To Their [newton And His Followers] Doctrine, God Almighty Wants To Wind Up His Watch From Time To Time: Otherwise It Would Cease To Move. He Had Not, It Seems, Sufficient Foresight To Make It A Perpetual Motion. Nay, The Machine Of God's Making, So Imperfect, According To These Gentlemen; That He Is Obliged To Clean It Now And Then By An Extraordinary Concourse, And Even To Mend It, As Clockmaker Mends His Work.

Each Portion Of Matter May Be Conceived Of As A Garden Full Of Plants, And As A Pond Full Of Fishes. But Each Branch Of The Plant, Each Member Of The Animal, Each Drop Of Its Humors, Is Also Such A Garden Or Such A Pond.