Plotinus also affirms, that “there must be in bodies some principle, or substratum, entirely different from any thing corporeal.”
These quotations accord with passages in Plutarch concerning Heraclitus. There are passages in Stobæus, from Epicurus, Xenocrates, and Diodorus, to a similar purport; and a remarkable one in Hebrews xi. 3. “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”[318]
It every where appears that Leibnitz drew many of his notions from Plato; and he defines his “monads,” just as Plato does his ideas, τα ὁντπως ὁντα, “things really existing.” An erudite German says, “I am assured by one of my friends, who was himself informed of it by a learned Italian, who went to Hanover to satisfy an ardent desire he had of being acquainted with Mr. Leibnitz, and spent three weeks with him, that this great man, at parting, said to him: ‘Sir you have often been so good as to insinuate, that you looked upon me as a man of some knowledge. Now, sir, I’ll show you the sources whence I drew it all;’ and immediately taking him by the hand, led him into his study, showing him all the books he had; which were Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, Euclid, Archimedes, Pliny, Seneca, and Cicero.”
Leibnitz and Parmenides agree in these particulars:—
1. The existence and essence of things are different.
2. The essence of things existent, is without the things themselves.
3. There are, in nature, similar and dissimilar things.
4. The similar are conceived, as in existence essentially the same.
5. Whatever exists is reducible to certain classes, and specific forms.
6. All those forms have their existence in the unity; that is, in God; and hence the whole is one.