Monad

MONAD. - The term, from the Greek μονάς ("unity"), was already used by Pythagoras and his disciples who, with the theory of number as the essence of things, made the m. the ultimate element of reality (Philolaus: ἡ μὲν μονάς ὡς ἂν ἀρχὴ οὖσα πάντων: ed. H. Diels, Vorsokrat., 32 B 8). Subsequently it was often used to indicate either the indivisible particle of things, as a synonym of the more common term atom, or the principle of unity, such as the ideas of Plato and God.

(by courtesy of Fr. J. Pfaß)
MONACO AND FRISINGA, ARCHDIOCESE of - Cardinal M. Faulhaber imparts the blessing with the Most Blessed Sacrament, during the Corpus Christi procession (1951), from the top of the "Maxburg," formerly the State Ministry, near Pacelliplatz - Munich.

However, the term is chiefly to be remembered for the use made of it by Leibniz (v.). In the Leibnizian system the m. are unextended, simple, spiritual substances, endowed with perception and appetition, closed in upon themselves "without doors or windows," connected to one another by pre-established harmony, each representing the entire universe as in a living mirror, and arranged in a continuous gradation from the lowest, which constitute bodies, through the soul and the mind, up to God, the primitive m.