Steadying monitoring processes without starting them

[windoverwater]

Hi all,

Pseudo newbie question - is it possible to start monitoring a process service 
that has start and stop rules WITHOUT starting the process - specifically, 
without monit calling the start command?

Been trying to achieve this by setting the mode to manual and just issuing a 
'monit monitor foo'. But monit seems to always call the start function when 
monit starts monitoring (when mode=manual).

Tried quitting monit, deleting the monit state file, restating monit.  But even 
in that test case issuing a monitor command to the service starts the service. 

I was hoping that one would have to issue a start command to the service to 
start the service and that issuing a monitor command would only start 
monitoring. 

Does the mode have to be set to passive for this to work this way?  If so, does 
that mean that monit will not automatically restart the process service if it 
stops?

This is on monit 5.14 on centos 6.7.

Thanks much for any pointers/clarifications.

-sandy