Monad (philosophy)

“ They are so conceived as to be originally physically separated, but psychologically and ideally united. “Their natural harmony resides in an ideal of perfect activity, while in actual existence they are independent.” The ideal which unites them is God, the last term in the graded series of the monads. He is the monad of monads, because He is perfect, conscious activity. Just as the various groups of monads are ruled by a central soul-monad, so the world of these groups is an hierarchy, which derives its unitary and harmonious character from this dominating monad. ”

“ He called his substances “monads”, and maintained that every monad mirrors the universe, and develops along lines which correspond, point by point, with those along which every other monad is developing. A man’s soul or mind is a single monad, while his body is a collection of monads, each mental in some degree, but less so than the monad which is his soul. Inferior monads mirror the world in a more confused way than higher ones do, but there is some element of confusion in the perceptions of even the most superior monads. ”

“ Matter, in the vulgar sense, as something conceived to be without mind, does not at all exist. How now must the inner connection of the universe be conceived? In the following way. Every monad is a representative being, and at the same time, each one is different from every other. This difference, therefore, depends alone upon the difference of representation: there are just as many different degrees of representation as there are monads, and these degrees may be fixed according to some of their prominent stages. ”

“ But in simple substances this is merely an ideal influence of one Monad upon another, which can pass into effect only by the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God one Monad has a right to demand that God, in regulating the rest from the commencement of things, shall have regard to it; for since a created Monad can have no physical influence on the interior of another, it is only by this means that one can be dependent on another. ”

“ Still higher ascends the life of the monad when [Pg 216] it attains to sensation and memory, as is the case in the animal kingdom. The lower monads may be said to sleep, and the brute monads to dream. When still farther the soul rises to reason or reflection, we call it mind, spirit.—The distinction of the monads from each other is, therefore, this, that each one, though mirroring the whole and the same universe in itself, does it from a different point of view, and, therefore, differently, the one more, and the rest less perfectly. ”

“ In every monad, therefore, the all-seeing and all-knowing one might read every thing, even the future, since this is potentially contained in the present. Every monad is a kind of God. (Parvus in suo genere Deus.) ”

“ Alas, our souls are becoming mere bundles of theories. We follow the trail of the Monad, but often it is only in the pages of The Secret Doctrine. And we talk much of Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. Could we not speak of them in our own tongue and the language of today will be as sacred as any of the past. No wonder that the Manasa do not incarnate. We cannot say we do pay reverence to these awful powers. We repulse the living truth by our doubts and reasonings. We would compel the Gods to fall in with our philosophy rather than trust in the heavenly guidance. ”

“ There is also no intelligible way in which a Monad can be altered or changed in its interior by any other creature, since it would be impossible to transpose anything in it, or to conceive in it any internal movement—any movement excited, directed, augmented or diminished within, such as may take place in compound bodies, where there is change of parts. The Monads have no windows through which anything can enter or go forth. It would be impossible for any accidents to detach themselves and go forth from the substances, as did formerly the Sensible Species of the Schoolmen. ”

“ A monad may remain for perhaps millions of years, till the Pralaya comes, this time can be almost called infinity, but it is as nothing in comparison to the existence of the Logos itself.
Is the ego ever really wiped out or effaced?
The monad is never killed though the man may be. Yon call the monad by a particular name so long as it retains the owner's subjective experiences, but when the monad is made quite clean, you can say the experiences are wiped out. A monad is only a centre of energy. ”

“ Now, it is essential to Monadism that the monads, because ultimately independent, shall only seem to interact. They appear to form a single world with a history in which each distinct state of each monad is a stage. But really, while the successive states of the individual monad are, what they seem to be, a connected process of development, the various processes do not make up a single-world history at all. They only seem to do so by an inevitable illusion. Hence the unity of the whole system must after all be not only ideal, but, strictly speaking, imaginary. ”

“ All living things are but developing monads, at whose bottom slumbers what will one day be an imperial human soul! And these monads develope off their surfaces continually; the longer and more varied the process, the more beautiful the grand result at each successive stage. Thus the monad whose highest manifestation ten thousand years ago, may have been a thistle, perchance looks up to heaven this day from the glorious eyes of a rose-bush, or a dove. ”

“ In short, the mineral monad is one—the higher animal and human monads are countless. Otherwise, how could one account for and explain mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four kingdoms? The "monad" is the combination of the last two Principles in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad" applies only to the Spiritual Soul, not to its highest spiritual vivifying Principle. But since divorced from the latter the Spiritual Soul could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called. ”

“ Further, since all substances are of the nature of force, it follows that—“in imitation of the notion which we have of souls”—they must contain something analogous to feeling and appetite. It is the nature of the monad to represent the many in one, and this is perception, by which external events are mirrored internally (p. 438) . Through their own activity the monads mirror the universe (p. 725) , but each in its own way and from its own point of view, that is, with a more or less perfect perception (p. 127) ”

“ He has founded upon him a theory of the universe, which the creature bears without resentment, for the monad is a gentleman. Small as he is, the monad contains all the powers and possibilities needful to his evolution into a German philosopher of the first class —altogether a very capable little fellow. He is not to be confounded with the microbe, or bacillus; by its inability to discern him, a good microscope shows him to be of an entirely distinct species. ”

“ And one of these monads is analogous to the production in wholes through music, and to the harmonious providence of things that are moved. But another is analogous to the power which is subversive of all disorder, and of the confusion and tumult which are contrary to form, and to the arrangement of wholes. And the remaining monad which supplies all things with an unenvying and exuberant communication of what is beautiful, which extends the beneficial, and imparts true blessedness, closes indeed the solar principles, but guards its triple progression. ”

“ It is only the highest, that is to say the most active and the most representative, of all monads. It stands, indeed, at the head of the scale, but not outside it. From the monad which reveals its presence in that stone which with blinded eyes we call dead, through that which acts in the plant, in the animal, up to that of man, there is no chasm, no interruption. ”

“ For every where difference is in the three monads, but it particularly unfolds the multitudes of numbers, according to the third monad, generates more partial Gods, and divides being in conjunction with the Gods. For neither is deity in these imparticipable, because unity is not separate from being, nor is essence destitute of deity, because neither is being deprived of the one. ”

“ We would not be able to comprehend how the soul, considered as a monad or simple element, should have by this fact the faculty of thinking, and yet two or several monads united and forming a body would not possess the same power. ”

“ If the real universe is what you say it is, why do our minds represent it to us as they do?' The philosopher's answer is, 'Because they represent it. According to the truth of things, each monad is simply its own mental life, its own world-view, its own thoughts and desires. To know things as they are would be simultaneously to live over, as though from [25] within and by a miracle of sympathy, the biographies of an infinite number of distinct monads. This is absolutely impossible. Our senses represent the coexistent families of monads in the gross, and therefore conventionally ”

“ God, in ordering the whole, has respect to each part, and specifically to each Monad, whose nature being representative, is by nothing restrained from representing the whole of things, although, it is true, this representation must needs be confused, as it regards the detail of the universe, and can be distinct only in relation to a small part of things, that is, in relation to those which are nearest, or whose relations to any given Monad are greatest. ”

“ Having had the experience of all the kingdoms below us, the monad knows them, and our all, as far as human nature is concerned, is that of which we are able {567} to think; therefore it is right to say, that the real man knows that which the ordinary man comprises under the term "all," and even more, because the all for the man of the present day is less than the all of those who served to clothe the monad at some earlier periods. ”

“ The difficulty with both is, that they carry this dualistic view of nature too far, leaving it an unreconciled dualism. The supreme Monad is lost sight of in this ever-present Duad. Let us see how this view of evil, or the dual element in life, appears in other systems.
As the Monad in religion is an expression of one infinite supreme presence, pervading all nature and life, so the Duad shows the antagonism and conflict between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, good and evil, the infinite perfection and the finite imperfection. ”

“ These never die out but start into active existence again. All the human beings whose experiences have been brought to the Logos by the travelling monad may be said to have gained immortality, but sometimes the monad becomes so opposed in its magnetic effect to the Logos from which it has emanated, that its absorption is impossible. This happens only in the case of a very wicked man, and then that monad never gains immortality ”

“ Since the monads do not metaphysically act upon one another, what rational purpose is subserved by the real existence of so many? The mere dream of them by one would do as well. Why should each monad have the three peculiar characters of intelligence, passion, and will, or why should any phenomena be as they are? In short, the absolutely inexplicable pervades the whole system, while one supremely antirational nominalism is supreme over the whole. Continuity is nothing but that modification of generality which is proper to the logic of relatives; and generality is of the essence of rationality. ”

“ There you come to a very serious difference with the Theosophical view of the universe, for according to that view of the universe, when all these functions have been suppressed, then the Monad is ruler over matter and is prepared for a new cycle of activity, no longer slave but master. ”

“ I take it also for granted that every created being, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and even that this change is continual in each. ”

“ Hence, these monads are, so to speak, the givings off of his spirit. God's Spirit is the element, Soul; but of this Soul, none but Himself knoweth.
And as I floated there on the sea of knowledge, animpulse sprung up to know more; and these questions were fashioned in my soul, and that soul derived from out the mystery the answers appended to each question: "Is not man forever in the human form?" In human form, yes; in human shape, no: Man was once the monad—a finite sun. ”

“ But in God these attributes are absolutely infinite or perfect; and in the created Monads or the Entelechies (or perfectihabiae, as Hermolaus Barbarus translated the word) there are only imitations of these attributes, according to the degree of perfection of the Monad. (Theodicy 87.)
49. A created thing is said to act outwardly in so far as it has perfection, and to suffer [or be passive, pâtir] in relation to another, in so far as it is imperfect. ”

“ And God is not good, but beyond it; is not truth, but its foundation; is not power, nor Life, nor Think, but beyond, beneath, above all these! Spirit may be represented as the soul of matter: Soul as the inmost of Spirit; Monad as the base of Soul; Think, as the essence of Monad; God as the Soul of Think. Here, let no man smile at these uncouth expressions; they stand as symbols of mighty truths. I have said that Monads were scintillations from God's brain: They are: That Matter was the proceeding from his body Monads are forms of thought, and are the bubbles on His ever-rising tide of Soul. ”

“ For we experience in ourselves a condition in which we remember nothing and have no distinguishable perception; as when we fall into a swoon or when we are overcome with a profound dreamless sleep. In this state the soul does not perceptibly differ from a bare Monad; but as this state is not lasting, and the soul comes out of it, the soul is something more than a bare Monad. (Theodicy 64.)
21. And it does not follow that in this state the simple substance is without any perception. ”