Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10.djvu/502

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MONAGHAN


448


MONARCHIANS


is, there are no two monads alike. At the same time the monads must have qualities; "otherwise", says Leibniz (Monadol., n. 8), "they would not even be entities. There must, therefore, be in each monad the power of representation, by which it reflects all other monads in such a manner that an all-seeing eye could, by looking into one monad, observe the whole universe mirrored therein. This power of represen- tation is different in different monads. In the lowest kind of substani'cs it is unconscious — Leibniz finds fault with the Cartesians because they overlooked the existence of unconscious perception. In the highc.st kind it is fully conscious. We may, in fact, distin- guish in every monad a zone of obscure representa- tion and a zone of clear representation. In the monad of the grain of dust, for example, the zone of clear representation is very restricted, the monad mani- festing no higher activity than that of attraction and repulsion. In the monad of the human soul the region of clear representation is at its maximum, this kind of monad, the "queen monad", being character- ized by the power of intellectual thought. Between these two extremes range all the monads, mineral, vegetable, and animal, each being differentiated from the monad below it by possessing a larger area of clear representation, and each being separated from the monad above it by having a larger area of obscure representation. There is then in every created monad a material element, the region of obscure rep- resentation, and an immaterial element, the area of clear representation. Everything in the created world is partly material and partly immaterial, and there are no abrupt differences among things, but only differences in the extent of the immaterial as com- pared with the material. Minerals shade off insensi- bly (in the case of crystals) into living things, plant life into animal life, and animal sensation into human thought. ".Ml created monads may be called souls. But, as feeling is sometimes more than simple percep- tion, I am wiUing that the general name monads, or entelechies, shall suffice for those simple substances which have perception only, and that the term souls shall be confined to those in which perceptions are dis- tinct, and accompanied by memory" (Monadol., n. 19). "We ascribe action to the monad in so far as it has distinct perceptions, and passivity, in so far as its perceptions are confused" (ibid., n. 49). If this is the only kind of activity that the monad possesses, how are we to account for the order and harmony everj'where in the universe? Leibniz answers by in- troducing the principle of Pre-established Harmony. There is no real action or reaction. No monad can influence another physically. At the beginning, however, God so pre-arranged the evolution of the activity of the myriads of monads that accord- ing as the body evolves its own activity, the soul evolves its activity in such a way as to corre- spond to the evolution of the activitj' of the bodj'. "Bodies act as if there were no .souls, and souls act as if there were no bodies; and yet both act as if one influenced the other" (Ibid., n. 81). This pre-established harmony makes the world to be a cos- mos, not a chaos. The principle extends, however, beyond the physical universe, and applies in a special manner to rational souls, or spirits. In the realm of spirits there is a subordination of souls to the benefi- cent rule of Divine Pro\-idence, and from this subordi- nation results the "sy.stem of souls", which consti- tutes the City of God. There is, therefore, a moral world within the natural world. In the former God is ruler and legislator, in the latter He is merely archi- tect. "God as architect satisfies God as legislator" (ibid., n. 89), because even in the natural world no good deed goes without its recompense, and no evil deed escapes its punishment. Order among monads is thus ultimately moral.

Since Leibniz' time the term monad has been used


■by various philosophers to designate indivisible cen- tres of force, but as a general rule these units are not understood to possess the power of representation or perception, which is the distinguishing cluuaclcristic of the Leibnizian monad. Exception should, how- ever, be made in the ease of Renouvicr, who, in his "Nouvelle nionadologie", teaches that the monad has not only internal actiWty but also the power of per- ception.

I.EiBNiz. Monadology, tr., in Journal of Spec. Phil. (1867), I, 12y sq. : Idem, tr. by Dttncvn in Leibniz' Philosophical Works (New Haven, 1890); Idem, tr. L.tTTA (Oxford. 1898); original in Opera Pttih.'i., ed. Erdmann (Berlin, 1840): Idem, with notes, ed. Piat (Paris. 1900); Jasper. Leibniz u. die Scholaslik (heipzig, 1899); RIekz, Leibniz in Blackwood's Phil. Classics (Edinburgh and London, 1884); RENOtrviER AND Prat, La nouvelle monadologie (Paris, 1899).

William Turner.

Monaghan, John James. See Wilmington,

Diocese of.

Monarchians, heretics of the second and third cen- turies. The word, Monarchiani, was first used by Tertullian as a nickname for the Patripassian group (adv. Prax., x), and was seldom used by the an- cients. In modern times it has been extended to an earlier group of heretics, who are distinguished as Dynamistic, or Adoptionist, Monarchians from the Mod;dist IMonarchians, or Patripassians.

I. Dynamists, OB Adoptionists. — All Christians hold the unity (/xopapxia) of God as a fundamental doc- trine. By the Patripassians this first jirinciple was used to deny the Trinity, and they an- with some rea- son called Monarchians. But the Ado])tionists, or Dynamists, have no claim to the title, for they did not start from the monarchy of God, and their error is strictly Christological. An account of them must, however, be given here simplj- because the name Mo- narchian has adhered to them in spite of the repeated protests of historians of dogma. But their ancient and accurate name was Theodotians. The founder of the sect was a leather-seller of Byzantium named Theodotus. He came to Rome under Pope Victor (c. 190-200) or earlier. He taught (Philosophumena, VII, xxxv) that Jesus was a man born of a virgin ac- cording to the counsel of the Father, that He lived like other men, and was most pious; that at His bap- tism in the Jordan the Christ came down upon Him in the likeness of a dove, and therefore wonders {ovvd^uls) were not wrought in Him until the Spirit (which The- odotus called Christ) came down and was manifested in Him. They did not admit that this made Him God; but some of them said He was God after His resurrection. It was reported that Theodotus had been seized, with others, at Byzantium as a Christian, and that he had denied Christ, whereas his compan- ions had been martyred ; he had fled to Rome, and had invented his heresy in order to excuse his fall, saying that it was but a man and not God that he had denied. Pope Victor excommunicated him, and he gathered together a sect in which we are told much secular study was carried on. Hippolytus says that they argued on Holy Scripture in syllogistic form. Euclid, Aristotle, and Theophrastus were their ad- miration, and Galen they even adored. We should probably assume, with Harnack, that Hippolytus would have had less objection to the study of Plato or the Stoics, and that he disliked their purely Uteral exe- gesis, which neglected the allegorical sense. They also emended the text of Scripture, but their versions differed, that of Asclepiodotus was different from that of Theodotus, and again from that of Hermophilus; and the copies of ApoUoniades did not even tally with one another. Some of them "denied the law and the Prophets", that is to say, they followed Marcion in re- jecting the Old Testament.

The only disciple of the leather-seller of whom we know anything definite is his namesake Theodotus the banker (6 TpairefiTijs). He added to his master's doc-