420 LEIBNITZ
landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels, and Madame da Brinon, the aim is obviously to make converts to Catholicism, not to arrive at a compromise with Protestantism, and when it was found that Leibnitz refused to be converted the correspondence ceased. A further scheme of church union in which Leibnitz was engaged, that between the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, met with no better success.
Returning from Italy in 1690, Leibnitz was appointed librarian at Wolfenbüttel by Duke Anton of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Some years afterwards began his connexion with Berlin through his friendship with the electress Sophie Charlotte of Brandenburg and her mother the princess Sophie of Hanover. He was invited to Berlin in 1700, and on the 11th July of that year the academy he had planned was founded, with himself as its president for life. In the same year he was made a privy councillor of justice by the elector of Brandenburg. Four years before he had received a like honour from the elector of Hanover, and twelve years afterwards the same distinction was conferred upon him by Peter the Great, to whom he gave a plan for an academy at St Petersburg, carried out after the czar's death. At Berlin, in the pleasant suburb of Charlottenburg, Leibnitz read and philosophized with his royal pupil, whose death in 1705 was the greatest loss he ever suffered. After this event his visits to Berlin became less frequent and less welcome, and in 1711 he was there for the last time. In the following year he undertook his fifth and last journey to Vienna, where he stayed till 1714. An attempt to found an academy of science there was defeated by the opposition of the Jesuits, but he now attained the honour he had coveted of an imperial privy councillorship (1712), and either at this time or on a previous occasion, was made a baron of the empire (Reichsfreiherr). Leibnitz returned to Hanover in September 1714, but found the elector George Louis had already gone to assume the crown of England. Leibnitz would gladly have followed him to London, but was bidden remain at Hanover and finish his history of Brunswick.
During the last thirty years Leibnitz's pen had been busy with many matters. Mathematics, natural science,[1] philosophy, theology, history, jurisprudence, politics (particularly the French wars with Germany, and the question of the Spanish succession), economics, and philology, all gained a share of his attention; almost all of them he enriched with original observations.
His genealogical researches in Italy – through which he established the common origin of the families of Brunswick and Este – were not only preceded by an immense collection of historical sources, but enabled him to publish materials for a code of international law.[2] The history of Brunswick itself was the last work of his life, and had covered the period from 768 to 1005 when death ended his labours. But the Government, in whose service and at whose order the work had been carried out, left it to lie unheeded in the archives of the Hanover library, till it was published by Pertz in 1843.
It was in the years between 1690 and 1716 that Leibnitz's chief philosophical works were composed, and during the first ten of these years the accounts of his system were, for the most part, preliminary sketches. Indeed, he never gave a full and systematic account of his doctrines. His views have to be gathered from letters to friends, from occasional articles in the Acta Eruditorum, the Journal des Savants, and other journals, and from one or two more extensive works. It is evident, however, that philosophy had not been entirely neglected in the years in which his pen was almost solely occupied with other matters. A letter to the duke of Brunswick, and another to Arnauld, in 1671, show that he had already reached his new notion of substance; and it seems to have been the want of leisure and opportunity alone that prevented the systematic expression of his views. In a letter to Arnauld, of date March 23, 1690, the leading peculiarities of his system are clearly stated. The appearance of Locke's Essay in 1690 induced him (1696) to note down his objections to it, and his own ideas on the same subjects. In 1703-4 these were worked out in detail and ready for publication, when the death of the author whom they criticized prevented their appearance (first published by Raspe, 1765). In 1710 appeared the only complete and systematic philosophical work of his life-time, Essais de Theodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme, et l'origine du mal, originally undertaken at the request of the late queen of Prussia, who had wished a reply to Bayle's opposition of faith and reason. In 1714 he wrote, for Prince Eugene of Savoy, a sketch of his system under the title of La Monadologie, and in the same year appeared his Principes de la nature et de la grace. The last few years of his life were perhaps more occupied with correspondence than any others, and, in a philosophical regard, were chiefly notable for the letters which, through the desire of the new queen of England, he interchanged with Clarke, sur Dieu, l'âme, l'espace, la dureé.
Leibnitz died on the 14th November 1716, his closing years enfeebled by disease, harassed by controversy, embittered by neglect, darkened by the loss of his dearest friend; but to the last he preserved the indomitable energy and power of work to which is largely due the position he holds as, more perhaps than any one in modern times, a man of almost universal attainments and almost universal genius. Neither at Berlin, in the academy which he had founded, nor in London, whither his sovereign had gone to rule, was any notice taken of his death. At Hanover, Eckhart, his secretary, was his only mourner; no courtiers, no clergyman followed him to the grave; not till 1787 was the simple monument that marks the place erected; "he was buried," says an eye-witness, "more like a robber than what he really was, the ornament of his country."[3] Only in the French Academy was the loss that had been sustained recognized, and a worthy eulogium devoted to his memory (November 13, 1717).
Accustomed from his boyhood to a studious life, Leibnitz possessed a wonderful power of rapid and continuous work, and for days together would hardly leave his chair. Even in travelling his time was employed in solving mathematical problems. He is further described as moderate in his desires and habits, quick of temper but easily appeased, charitable in his judgments of others, and tolerant of differences of opinion, though impatient of contradiction on small matters. He is also said to have been fond of money to the point of covetousness; he was certainly desirous of honour, and felt keenly the neglect in which his last years were passed.
Leibnitz's Philosophy. – The central point in the philosophy of Leibnitz was only arrived at after many advances and corrections in his opinions. This point is his new doctrine of substance (p. 702[4]), and it is through it that unity is given to the succession of occasional writings, scattered over fifty years, in which he explained his views. More inclined to agree than to differ with what he read (p. 425), and borrowing from almost every philosophical system, his own standpoint is yet most closely related to that of Descartes, partly as consequence, partly by way of opposition. Cartesianism, Leibnitz often asserted, is the ante-room of truth, but the ante-room only. Descartes's separation of things into two heterogeneous substances only connected by the omnipotence of God, and the more logical
- ↑ In his Protogæa, (1691) he developed the notion of the historical genesis of the present condition of the earth's surface. Cf. O. Peschel, Gesch. d. Erdkunde, Munich, 1865, pp. 615 sq.
- ↑ Codex juris gentium diplomaticus, 1693; Mantissa codicis juri gentium diplomatici, 1700.
- ↑ Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland, by himself, 1726, i. 118.
- ↑ When not otherwise stated, the references are to Erdmann's edition of the Opera philosophica.
