The Past Is Pregnant With The Present.

It Has Long Seemed Ridiculous To Me To Suppose That The Nature Of Things Has Been So Poor And Stingy That It Provided Souls Only To Such A Trifling Mass Of Bodies On Our Globe, Like Human Bodies, When It Could Have Given Them To All, Without Interfering With Its Other Ends.

Of What Use Would It Be To You, Sir, To Become King Of China On Condition That You Forgot What You Have Been? Would It Not Be The Same As If God, At The Same Time He Destroyed You, Created A King In China?

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.

Although The Whole Of This Life Were Said To Be Nothing But A Dream And The Physical World Nothing But A Phantasm, I Should Call This Dream Or Phantasm Real Enough, If, Using Reason Well, We Were Never Deceived By It.

Now This Connection Or Adaption Of All Created Things With Each, And Of Each With All The Rest, Means That Each Simple Substance Has Relations Which Express All The Others, And That Consequently It Is A Perpetual Living Mirror Of The Universe.