419 LEIBNITZ
But it is only since the appearance of the edition of Leibnitz's works begun by Onno Klopp in 1864 that the full history of the scheme has been made known.
Leibnitz had other than political ends in view in his visit to France. It was as the centre of literature and science that Paris chiefly attracted him. Political duties never made him lose sight of his philosophical and scientific interests. At Mainz he was still busied with the question of the relation between the old and new methods in philosophy. In a letter to Jacob Thomasius (1669) he contends that the mechanical explanation of nature by magnitude, figure, and motion alone is not inconsistent with the doctrines of Aristotle's Physics, in which he finds more truth than in the Meditations of Descartes. Yet these qualities of bodies, he argues in 1668 (in an essay published without his knowledge under the title Confessio naturæ, contra atheistas), require an incorporeal principle, or God, for their ultimate explanation. He also wrote at this time a defence of the doctrine of the Trinity against Wissowatius (1669), and an essay on philosophic style, introductory to an edition of the Antibarbarus of Nizolius (1670). Clearness and distinctness alone, he says, are what makes a philosophic style, and no language is better suited for this popular exposition than the German. In 1671 he issued a Hypothesis physica nova, in which, agreeing with Descartes that corporeal phenomena should be explained from motion, he carried out the mechanical explanation of nature by contending that the original of this motion is a fine æther, similar to light, or rather constituting it, which, penetrating all bodies in the direction of the earth's axis, produces the phenomena of gravity, elasticity, &c. The first part of the essay, on concrete motion, was dedicated to the Royal Society of London, the second, on abstract motion, to the French Academy.
Leibnitz thus came to Paris, not merely as a young diplomatist on an important if not very hopeful mission, but also as an author who had already made his début in the world of science and philosophy. At Paris he met with Arnauld, Malebranche, and, more important still, with Christian Huygens. This was pre-eminently the period of his mathematical and physical activity. Before leaving Mainz he was able to announce[1] an imposing list of discoveries, and plans for discoveries, arrived at by means of his new logical art, in natural philosophy, mathematics, mechanics, optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, and nautical science, not to speak of new ideas in law, theology, and politics. Chief among these discoveries was that of a calculating machine for performing more complicated operations than that of Pascal – multiplying, dividing, and extracting roots, as well as adding and subtracting. This machine was exhibited to the Academy of Paris and to the Royal Society of London, and Leibnitz was elected a fellow of the latter society in April 1673.[2] In January of this year he had gone to London as an attaché; on a political mission from the elector of Mainz, returning in March to Paris, and while in London had become personally acquainted with Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, with whom he had already corresponded, with Boyle the chemist, and Pell the mathematician. It is from this period that we must date the impulse that directed him anew to mathematics. By Pell he had been referred to Mercator's Logarithmotechnica as already containing some numerical observations which Leibnitz had thought original on his own part; and, on his return to Paris, he devoted himself to the study of higher geometry under Huygens, entering almost at once upon the series of investigations which culminated in his discovery of the differential and integral calculus. For the history of this discovery and of the controversies to which it gave rise, see vol. xiii. p. 8 sq.
Shortly after his return to Paris in 1673, Leibnitz ceased to be in the Mainz service any more than in name, but in the same year entered the employment of Duke John Frederick of Brunswick-Lüneburg, with whom he had corresponded for some time. In 1676 he removed at the duke's request to Hanover, travelling thither by way of London and Amsterdam. At the latter place he saw and conversed with Spinoza, now in the last year of his life.
For the next forty years, and under three successive princes, Leibnitz was in the service of the Brunswick family, and his headquarters were at Hanover, where he had charge of the ducal library. In leaving the electorate of Mainz for the dukedom of Brunswick, Leibnitz passed into a political atmosphere formed by the dynastic aims of the typical German state. The recognition of the rights of the dukedom amongst the states of Europe, the consolidation and permanence of the reigning house, the union of the two branches of the Brunswick family, and lastly, – the aim to which all the others led up – the attainment of the electoral hat, were the ends of its political action. Leibnitz had thus to support by his pen the claim of Hanover to appoint an ambassador at the congress of Nimeguen (1676)[3] to defend the establishment of primogeniture in the Lüneburg branch of the Brunswick family; and, when the proposal was made to raise the duke of Hanover to the electorate, with the charge of the imperial banner, he had to show that this did not interfere with the rights of the duke of Würtemberg, who was the hereditary custodian of the imperial colours. It was in 1692 that the duke of Hanover was made elector. Before, and with a view to this, Leibnitz had been employed by him to write the history of the Brunswick-Lüneburg family, and, to collect material for his history, had undertaken a journey through Germany and Italy in 1687-90, visiting and examining the records in Marburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Munich, Vienna (where he remained nine months), Venice, Modena, and Rome. At Rome he was offered the custodianship of the Vatican library on condition of his joining the Catholic Church.
About this time too his thoughts and energies were partly taken up with the scheme for the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches. While at Mainz he had joined in an attempt made by the elector and Boineburg to bring about a reconciliation, and now, chiefly through the energy and skill of the Catholic Royas de Spinola, and from the spirit of moderation which prevailed among the theologians he met with at Hanover in 1683 it almost seemed as if some agreement might be arrived at. It was in these circumstances that, in 1686, Leibnitz wrote his Systema theologicum,[4] in which he strove to find common standing-ground for Protestants and Catholics in the details of their creeds. But the English Revolution of 1688, and the establishment of the Protestant succession, became a political obstacle to the prosecution of the scheme in Hanover, while it was soon found that the religious difficulties were greater than had at one time appeared. Spinola's practical and conciliatory tone did not make full allowance for the ecclesiastical and dogmatical claims of Rome, and the moderation of the Hanover theologians was not fairly representative of the spirit of the Protestant Churches. In the letters to Leibnitz from Bossuet, the
- ↑ In a letter to the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (autumn 1671), Werke, ed. Klopp, iii. 253 sq.
- ↑ He was made a foreign member of the French Academy in 1700.
- ↑ Cæsarini Furstenerii tractatus de jure suprematus ac legationis principum Germaniæ, Amsterdam, 1677; Entretiens de Philarète et d'Eugène sur le droit d'ambassade, Duisb., 1677.
- ↑ Not published till 1819. It is on this work that the assertion has been founded that Leibnitz was at heart a Catholic – a supposition clearly disproved by his correspondence.
