  When Leibniz argues that bodies are the results of monads and that matter itself is a phenomenon, he has something very specific in mind. First, in Leibniz's system there is a special kind of order in the natural world corresponding to a hierarchy of monads. Consider first a well-known comment that Leibniz makes to De Volder, introducing a five-fold ontological scheme: “I distinguish: (1) the primitive entelechy or soul; (2) the matter, namely, the primary matter or primitive passive power; (3) the monad made up of these two things; (4) the mass [massa] or secondary matter, or the organic machine in which innumerable subordinate monads come together; and (5) the animal, that is, the corporeal substance, which the dominating monad makes into one machine” (G II 252/AG 177). One of the points Leibniz is making here is that in an animal there is a dominant monad that bears a special relation to all the monads subordinate to it that make the “organic machine” of that animal. But, ultimately, the picture is even more complex than this, for each of the subordinate monads can be considered as having an organic machine attached to it, and this relation continues on to the infinitely small. Thus, for example, Leibniz writes in the Monadology §70, “Thus we see that each living body has a dominant entelechy, which in the animal is the soul; but the limbs of this living body are full of other living beings, plants, animals, each of which also has its entelechy, or its dominant soul” (G VI 619/AG 222). Similarly, in a letter to Bierling, he writes, “Any mass contains innumerable monads, for although any one organic body in nature has its corresponding [dominant] monad, it nevertheless contains in its parts other monads endowed in the same way with organic bodies subservient to the primary one; and the whole of nature is nothing else, for it is necessary that every aggregate result from simple substances as if from elements” (G VII 502). In other words, each monad will have an organic body which is in turn composed of other monads, each of which likewise has an organic body. Similarly, any seemingly inanimate chunk of matter – a stone or, yes, a drop of urine – will be the result of an infinity of monads and their organic bodies, which are nothing more than more monads and their organic bodies. This view is associated with a panorganicist strand of Leibniz's thought. And it is for this reason that Leibniz will claim that “all of nature is full of life” (Principles of Nature and Grace §1: G VI 598/AG 207) and that “there are infinite degrees of life in the monads” (Principles of Nature and Grace §4: G VI 599/AG 208).