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How did Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz criticize Democritus’s atoms?

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Bronze bust of Epicurus with a full beard and draped clothing, displayed on a round inscribed base at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. — Atomism Epicurus, bronze bust from a Greek original, c. 280–270 bce; in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz criticized the atoms of Democritus by arguing that they failed to qualify as true unities.1

Because Democritus’s atoms were defined by physical properties such as size and shape, Leibniz contended that they remained divisible in principle and therefore could not serve as the ultimate constituents of reality. In contrast to the material, extended atoms of ancient atomism, Leibniz proposed that the fundamental building blocks of the universe must be metaphysical points of real existence, which he termed monads.1

Unlike the material atoms of Democritus, which were essentially physical particles, Leibniz’s monads are spiritual substances that lack extension and function as centers of action and perception. By conceiving of these monads as analogous to the soul, Leibniz moved away from the mechanistic, materialist framework of classical atomism toward a pluralistic, rationalist metaphysics.213