Taking Mathematics From The Beginning

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.

I Also Take It As Granted That Every Created Thing, And Consequently The Created Monad Also, Is Subject To Change, And Indeed That This Change Is Continual In Each One.

[alternate Translation:] The Divine Spirit Found A Sublime Outlet In That Wonder Of Analysis, That Portent Of The Ideal World, That Amphibian Between Being And Not-being, Which We Call The Imaginary Root Of Negative Unity.

In My Judgment An Organic Machine New To Nature Never Arises, Since It Always Contains An Infinity Of Organs So That It Can Express, In Its Own Way, The Whole Universe; Indeed, It Always Contains All Past And Present Times.

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.