also the animal soul. There is no generation out of nothing, and no
absolute death. Birth is expansion, development, growth; and death
is contraction, envelopment, decrease. The monads which are destined
to become human souls have existed from the beginning in organic
matter, but only as sentient or animal souls, without reason. They
remain in this condition until the generation of the human beings to
which they belong, and then develope themselves into rational souls.
The different organs and members of the body are also relatively
souls which collect around them a number of monads for a specific
purpose, and so on _ad infinitum_. Matter is not only infinitely
divisible, but infinitely divided. All matter (so called) is living
and active. "Every particle of matter may be conceived as a garden of
plants, or as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of each plant,
each member of each animal, each drop of their humors, is in turn
another such garden or pond." [23]

[Footnote 23: _Monadol._ 67.]

The connection between monads, consequently the connection between
soul and body, is not composition, but an organic relation,--in some
sort, a spontaneous relation. The soul forms its own body, and
moulds it to its purpose. This hypothesis was afterward embraced and
developed as a physiological principle by Stahl. As all the atoms in
one body are organically related, so all the beings in the universe
are organically related to each other and to the All. One creature,
or one organ of a creature, being given, there is given with it the
world's history from the beginning to the end. _All bodies are
strictly fluid; the universe is in flux_.

The principle of continuity answers the same purpose in Leibnitz's