Daily Inspiration Quote by Gottfried Leibniz

Leibniz is doing something sly here: he bans causal contact between souls, then smuggles dependence back in through the side door. A “created monad” can’t physically alter another monad’s “inner nature” because monads, in his system, have no windows. They don’t exchange pushes, particles, or psychic messages. Each is a self-contained center of perception. That sounds like metaphysical solitary confinement, until Leibniz pivots: if influence is impossible, dependence must mean something else.

The intent is to rescue both science and theology from the era’s brewing crisis about causation. The new physics makes the world look like matter in motion; the old theology wants minds with agency; the skeptical worry is that neither can coherently touch the other. Leibniz answers with “pre-established harmony”: God programs every monad’s internal unfolding so that what looks like interaction is actually perfect coordination. Your decision to raise your hand and your body’s hand-raising don’t causally connect; they coincide like two clocks set to the same time.

The subtext is political as much as metaphysical: he’s protecting autonomy while insisting on order. Nothing invades you, yet you’re not unmoored; relations exist, but they’re relational without being mechanical. “This is the only way” carries the hard edge of a system-builder drawing boundaries: if you want genuine individuality and a law-governed universe, you must accept dependence as correspondence, not contact. It’s a philosophy of connection for a world newly suspicious of miracles and hungry for intelligible design.