man would be an epitome of the history of his time. The number and variety of his public engagements were such as would have crazed any ordinary brain. And to these were added private studies not less multifarious. "I am distracted beyond all account," he writes to Vincent Placcius. "I am making extracts from archives, inspecting ancient documents, hunting up unpublished manuscripts; all this to illustrate the history of Brunswick. Letters in great number I receive and write. Then I have so many discoveries in mathematics, so many speculations in philosophy, so many other literary observations, which I am desirous of preserving, that I am often at a loss what to take hold of first, and can fairly sympathize in that saying of Ovid, 'I am straitened by my abundance.'"[1]
His diplomatic services are less known at present than his literary labors, but were not less esteemed in his own day. When Louis XIV., in 1688, declared war against the German Empire, on the pretence that the Emperor was meditating an invasion of France, Leibnitz drew up the imperial manifesto, which repelled the charge and triumphantly exposed the hollowness of Louis's cause. Another document, prepared by him at the solicitation, it is supposed, of several of the courts of Europe, advocating the claims of Charles of Austria to the vacant throne of Spain, in opposition to the grandson of Louis, and setting forth the injurious consequences of the policy of the French monarch, was hailed by his contemporaries as a masterpiece of historical learning and political wisdom. By his powerful advocacy of the cause of the Elector of Brandenburg he may be said to have aided the birth of the kingdom of Prussia, whose existence dates with the commencement of the last century. In the service of that kingdom he wrote and published important state-papers; among them, one relating to a point of contested right to which recent events have given fresh significance: "Traité: Sommaire du Droit de Frédéric I. Roi de Prusse à la Souveraineté de Neufchâtel et de Vallengin en Suisse."
In Vienna, as at Berlin, the services of Leibnitz were subsidized by the State. By the Peace of Utrecht, the house of Habsburg had been defeated in its claims to the Spanish throne, and the foreign and internal affairs of the Austrian government were involved in many perplexities, which, it was hoped, the philosopher's counsel might help to untangle. He was often present at the private meetings of the cabinet, and received from the Emperor the honorable distinction of Kaiserlicher Hofrath, in addition to that, which had previously been awarded to him, of Baron of the Empire. The highest post in the gift of government was open to him, on condition of renouncing his Protestant faith, which, notwithstanding his tolerant feeling toward the Roman Church, and the splendid compensations which awaited such a convertite, he could never be prevailed upon to do.
A natural, but very remarkable consequence of this manifold activity and lifelong absorption in public affairs was the failure of so great a thinker to produce a single systematic and elaborate work containing a complete and detailed exposition of his philosophical, and especially his ontological views. For such an exposition Leibnitz could find at no period of his life the requisite time and scope. In the vast multitude of his productions there is no complete philosophic work. The most arduous of his literary labors are historical compilations, made in the service of the State. Such were the "History of the House of Brunswick," already mentioned, the "Accessiones Historiæ," the "Scriptores Rerum Brunsvicensium Illustrationi inservientes," and
- ↑ "Quam mirifice sim distractus dici non potest. Varia ex archivis eruo, antiquas chartns inspicio, manuscripta inedita conquiro. Ex hic lucem dare conor Brunsvicensi historiæ. Magno numero litteras et accipio et dimitto. Habeo vero tam multa nova in mathematicis, tot cogitationes in philosophicis, tot alias literarias observationes, quas vellem non perire, ut sæpe inter agenda anceps hæream et prope illud Ovidianum sentiam: Iniopem me copia facit."
