that every individual is ultimately isolated from the other one, in the development of his own rationality. The classical philosophical expression of this situation is Leibniz’s monadology, his doctrine that the world concists of monads, each of which is developing within itself, each of which is more or less clear or dark consciousness—even in the inorganic matter, there are innumerable monads of this type; they have a very dark consciousness in the inorganic matter, a lighter one or brighter one in the realm of living beings; and a potentially complete one, namely the state of rationality, in the human monad, the human which makes man man. Now this monad develops within itself and has no windows and doors, as Leibnitz says, towards other monads. Every monad and his development of rationality is completely included in itself. This is the classical philosophy of society, in contrast to a philosophy of community. It is society which consists of atomized monads, which are beside each other, which have no possible communion with each other, and if they communicate with each other, they do it by signs, by signs which are mutually understood, but there is no participation of the one in the other, and each is left to his own inner development.

This has many consequences, for instance for language: language is a means of communication; external signs are enough because words and letters are nothing but signs in the social cooperation which makes this cooperation possible. I may make here a footnote about the new language, for which I am too old, unfortunately (or fortunately—I don't know yet), namely the language of abbreviations. There are very few people who still use words; when they