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METAPHYSICS: REPRESENTATION. 275 but a living mirror {miror vivant de runivers), which gener- ates the images of things by its own activity or develops j them from inner germs, without experiencing influences from { without. The monad has no windows through which any-^ thing could pass in or out, but in its action is dependent ^ only on God and on itself. All monads represent the same universe, but each one represents it differently, that is, from its particular point of view — represents that which is near at hand distinctly, and that which is distant confusedly. Since they all reflect the same content or object, their difference consists only in the energy or degree of clearness in their representations. So far then, as their action consists in representation, distinct representation evidently coincides with complete, unhindered activity, confused representation with arrested activity, or passivity. The clearer the representations of a monad the more active it is. To have clear and distinct perceptions only is the prerogative of God ; to the Omnipresent everything is alike near. He alone is pure activity; all finite beings are passive as well, that is, so far as their perceptions are not clear and distinct. Retaining the Aristotelian-Scholastic terminology, Leibnitz calls the active principle form, the passive matter, and makes the monad, since it is not, like God, purns actus and pure form, consist of form (entelechy, soul) and matter. This matter, as a constituent of the monad, does not mean corporeality, but only the ground for the arrest of its activity. The materia prima (the principle of passivity in the monad) is the ground, the materia sccunda (the phenomenon of corporeal mass) the result of the indis- tinctness of the representations. For a group of monads appears as a body when it is indistinctly perceived. Who- ever deprives the monad of activity falls into the error of Spinoza ; whoever takes away its passivity or matter falls into the opposite error, for he deifies individual beings. recognizing this empty formalism was, no doubt, the fact that for him the mere form of representation was at once filled with a manifold experiential content, with the whole wealth of spiritual life, and that the quantitative differences in represen- tation, which for him meant also degrees of feeling, desire, action, and progress, imperceptibly took on the qualitative vividness of individual characteristics. Moreover, it must not be overlooked that the spiritual beings represent not merely the universe but the Deity as well, hence a very rich object.