conscious minds like yours or mine, and it is only for want of a better
word that we call them minds at all. They will be mere unselfconscious
representations of their physical environment, as it might be seen from the
physical point to which they belong by a human mind paying no attention at
all to its own seeing. How many of these rudimentary 'minds' will there be
in my body? As many as you like--as many as it is possible there should
be--say an infinite number and have done with it.

We may now observe how this hypothesis introduces real formal unity without
prejudicing mechanical plurality. Each of the mind-units in my body is
itself and substantially distinct. But since each, in its own way and
according to its own position, represents the superior and more developed
mind which I call 'me', they will order themselves according to a common
form. The order is real, not accidental: it is like the order of troops on
a parade-ground. Each man is a distinct active unit, but each is really
expressing by his action the mind of the officer in command. He is
expressing no less his relation to the other men in the ranks--to obey the
officer is to keep in step with them. So the metaphysical units of the
body, being all minds, represent one another as well as the dominant mind:
one another co-ordinately, the dominant mind subordinately.

But if the metaphysically real units of the body are of the nature of mind,
then _the_ mind is a mind among minds, a spirit-atom among spirit-atoms.
What then constitutes its superiority or dominance, and makes it a mind
_par excellence_? Well, what constitutes the officer an officer? Two
things: a more developed mentality and the fact of being obeyed. In
military life these two factors are not always perfectly proportioned to
one another, but in the order of Leibniz's universe they are. A fuller
power to represent the universe is necessarily combined with dominance over
an organized troop of members; for the mind knows the universe only in so