Page:Leibniz as a Politician.djvu/41

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LEIBNIZ AS A POLITICIAN
39

graphical critics (Kuno Fischer) Leibniz's original fault was the impulse, which he found irresistible, towards multiplying the tasks and problems of his intellectual life, together with the spheres of his personal activity and the duties they involved, in a measure which no human mind and no single career could ever fully meet. That was his fault—but it was not a fault which posterity can visit heavily on one who, as I have already reminded you, did perhaps more than any other modern has done to suggest and supply means and methods both for the distribution of higher intellectual work and for the cooperation of those devoted to it in learned bodies which would recognise research—in the widest sense of the word—as the crown of their endeavours. That, I say, was his fault; his merit was the willing sacrifice of himself to the cause of progress, which is the cause of truth, however large be the unavoidable admixture of transitory error. The genius of Leibniz, his love of truth, which is eternal, and his aspirations for harmony, which is from on high these were true to themselves even in that secondary and subsidiary branch of his intellectual activity to which, for this reason, I have thought it not unfitting to call your attention to-day.


BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Blumstengel, K. G. Leibniz s Aegyptischer Plan. Bine historischkritische Monographie. Leipzig, 1869.

Curtius, E. Der Wetteifer der Nationen in der Wiederentdeckung der Lander des Alterthumes. Alterthum und Gegenwart. Vol. II. Berlin, 1882.

Erdmannsdorffer, B. Deutsche Geschichte von Westfalischen Frieden bis zum Regierungsantritt Friedrichs des Grossen, 1648 1740. 2 vols. 1892-3.

Fischer, Kuno. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leben, Werke und Lehre. 4th edn. Heidelberg, 1902.

Foucher de Careil, A. Leibniz et les deux Sophies. Paris, 1876. Guhrauer, G. E. Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von Leibnitz. Eine Biographic. 2 Parts. Breslau, 1846.

Hecht, F. Leibniz als Jurist. Preussische Jahrbucher. Vol. XLIII. Berlin, 1879.