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The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.

Gottfried Leibniz

And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Collection Compound Simplicity Substance
Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Accomplishment Greatness Law Nature Oneself
It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind’s labour.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Discover Labour Mindset Wonderful Worth
There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Fact Kind Reason Truth
The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Art Discover Greatness Reason Road Short
The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Invention Knowledge Need Resemble Service
But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Ideal Influence Simplicity
Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

God Human Natural Religion Soul
Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Divisible Element Extension Nature Part Shape
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Count Exercise Hide Music
I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Animal Known Large Ordinary Ourselves Ready System
The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Arithmetic Count Music Pleasure Unconscious
We should like Nature to go no further; we should like it to be finite, like our mind; but this is to ignore the greatness and majesty of the Author of things.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Author Ignorance Infinite Mindset Nature Ourselves
He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Knowledge Man Time Understand Wisdom
To love is to be delighted by the happiness of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define this as true love.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Define Delight Happiness Love Myself True
In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Choice Creation God Perfection Phenomena Regular World

The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.

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The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.

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