.

There is another solution to the question of the soul's origin,
which has been propounded by some philosophers and may be called
the speculative theory. Its statement is that the germs of souls
were created simultaneously with the formation of the material
universe, and were copiously sown abroad through all nature,
waiting there to be successively taken up and furnished with the
conditions of development.8 These latent seeds of souls, swarming
in all places, are drawn in with the first breath or imbibed with
the earliest nourishment of the

6 Hennings, Geschichte von den Seelen der Menschen, s. 500.

7 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. I. b. ix. ch. iv.
sect. 4.

8 Ploucquet, De Origin atque Generatione Anima Humana ex
Principiis Monadologicis stabilita.

new born child into the already constructed body which before has
only a vegetative life. The Germans call this representation
panspermismus, or the dissemination theory. Leibnitz, in his
celebrated monadology, carries the same view a great deal further.
He conceives the whole created universe, visible and invisible, to
consist of monads, which are not particles of matter, but
metaphysical points of power. These monads are all souls. They are
produced by what he calls fulgurations of God. The distinction
between fulguration and emanation is this: in the latter case the
procession is historically defined and complete; in the former
case it is momentaneous. The monads are radiated from the Divine
Will, forth through the creation, by the constant flashes of His
volition. All nature is composed of them, and nothing is
depopulated and dead. Their naked being is force, and their
indestructible predicates are perception, desire, tendency to
develop. While they lie dormant, their potential capacities all
inwrapped, they constitute what we entitle matter. When, by the
rising stir of their inherent longing, they leave their passive
state and reach a condition of obscure consciousness, they become
animals. Finally, they so far unwind their bonds and evolve their
facultative potencies as to attain the rank of rational minds in
the grade of humanity. Generation is merely the method by which
the aspiring monad lays the organic basis for the grouped building
of its body. Man is a living union of monads, one regent monad
presiding over the whole organization. That king monad which has
attained to full apperception, the free exercise of perfect
consciousness, is t