SPREADS AND THE SYMMETRICAL TOPOS II

We continue our investigation of distributions on a topos, the symmetr ic monad, and complete spreads. Our tool is the pure dense/complete sp read, or comprehensive, factorization of a geometric morphism. We obta in, among other results, a characterization of the algebras for the sy mmetric monad that translates into a ''Waelbroeck'' theorem for topose s. We also investigate the connection between complete spreads and the fundamental group of a topos. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All righ ts reserved.