order and position of points of view, qualitatively identical, from
which the views might have been taken. In reality the points of view do
not exist, for there are only views, each given in an indivisible block
and representing in its own way the whole of reality, which is God. But
we need to express the plurality of the views, that are _unlike_ each
other, by the multiplicity of the points of view that are _exterior_ to
each other; and we also need to symbolize the more or less close
relationship between the views by the relative situation of the points
of view to one another, their nearness or their distance, that is to
say, by a magnitude. That is what Leibniz means when he says that space
is the order of coexistents, that the perception of extension is a
confused perception (that is to say, a perception relative to an
imperfect mind), and that nothing exists but monads, expressing thereby
that the real Whole has no parts, but is repeated to infinity, each time
integrally (though diversely) within itself, and that all these
repetitions are complementary to each other. In just the same way, the
visible relief of an object is equivalent to the whole set of
stereoscopic views taken of it from all points, so that, instead of
seeing in the relief a juxtaposition of solid parts, we might quite as
well look upon it as made of the _reciprocal complementarity_ of these
whole views, each given in block, each indivisible, each different from
all the others and yet representative of the same thing. The Whole, that
is to say, God, is this very relief for Leibniz, and the monads are
these complementary plane views; for that reason he defines God as "the
substance that has no point of view," or, again, as "the universal
harmony," that is to say, the reciprocal complementarity of monads. In
short, Leibniz differs from Spinoza in this, that he looks upon the
universal mechanism as an aspect which reality takes for us, whereas,
Spinoza makes of it an aspect which reality takes for itself.

It is true that, after having concentrated in God the whole of the real,
it became difficult for them to pass from God to things, from eternity
to time. The difficulty was even much greater for these philosophers
than an Aristotle or a Plotinus. The God of Aristotle, indeed, had been
obtained by the compression and reciprocal compenetration of the Ideas
that represent, in their finished state or in their culminating point,
the changing things of th