German - Philosopher | July 1, 1646 - November 14, 1716
I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity.
Gottfried Leibniz
UnityRealityGenuineWithoutAny
There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible.
TruthImpossiblePossibleTwoKinds
Whence it follows that God is absolutely perfect, since perfection is nothing but magnitude of positive reality, in the strict sense, setting aside the limits or bounds in things which are limited.
PositiveGodPerfectionLimitsSense
The ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.
GodLieChangesReasonSourceCall
I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one.
ChangeTakeCreatedEverySubject
Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.
MusicMindHumanPleasureWithout
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.
TruthIdeasTruth IsReasonAnalysis
Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof.
SimpleIdeasPrinciplesNeedProof
I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general.
WithoutEssenceBeingActivityBare
Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.
MenPracticeMemoryWithoutActFar
But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.
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For since it is impossible for a created monad to have a physical influence on the inner nature of another, this is the only way in which one can be dependent on another.
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