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| 19414 | Men are related to animals, which are related to plants, then to fossils, and then to the apparently inert |
| Full Idea: Men are related to animals, these to plants, and the latter directly to fossils which will be linked in their turn to bodies which the senses and the imagination represent to us as perfectly dead and formless. | |||
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Varignon [1702], 1702) | |||
| A reaction: Leibniz would be a bit surprised to find the way in which this has turned out to be largely true, since he is basing it on his picture of a hierarchy of monads. Nevertheless, the idea that we are all related wasn't invented in 1859. |