the "Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus";— works involving an incredible amount of labor and research, but adding little to his posthumous fame. His philosophical studies, after entering the Hanoverian service, which he did in his thirtieth year, were pursued, as he tells his correspondent Placcius, by stealth,—that is, at odd moments snatched from official duties and the cares of state. Accordingly, his metaphysical works have all a fragmentary character. Instead of systematic treatises, they are loose papers, contributions to journals and magazines, or sketches prepared for the use of friends. They are all occasional productions, elicited by some external cause, not prompted by inward necessity. The "Nouveaux Essais," his most considerable work in that department, originated in comments on Locke, and was not published until after his death. The "Monadology" is a series of propositions drawn up for the use of Prince Eugene, and was never intended to be made public. And, probably, the "Théodicée" would never have seen the light except for his cultivated and loved pupil, the Queen of Prussia, for whose instruction it was designed.
It is a curious fact, and a good illustration of the state of letters in Germany at that time, that Leibnitz wrote so little— almost nothing of importance—in his native tongue. In Erdmann's edition of his philosophical works there are only two short essays in German; the rest are all Latin or French. He had it in contemplation at one time to establish a philosophical journal in Berlin, but doubts, in his letter to M. La Croye on the subject, in what language it should be conducted: "Il y a quelque tems que j'ay pensé à un journal de Savans qu'on pourroit publier à Berlin, mais je suis un peu en doute sur la langue . . . . . . Mais soit qu'on prit le Latin ou le François,"[1] etc. It seems never to have occurred to him that such a journal might be published in German. That language was then, and for a long time after, regarded by educated Germans very much as the Russian is regarded at the present day, as the language of vulgar life, unsuited to learned or polite intercourse. Frederic the Great, a century later, thought as meanly of its adaptation to literary purposes as did the contemporaries of Leibnitz. When Gellert, at his request, repeated to him one of his fables, he expressed his surprise that anything so clever could be produced in German. It may be said in apology for this neglect of their native tongue, that the German scholars of that age would have had a very inadequate audience, had their communications been confined to that language. Leibnitz craved and deserved a wider sphere for his thoughts than the use of the German could give him. It ought, however, to be remembered to his credit, that, as language in general was one among the numberless topics he investigated, so the German in particular engaged at one time his special attention. It was made the subject of a disquisition, which suggested to the Berlin Academy, in the next century, the method adopted by that body for the culture and improvement of the national speech. In this writing, as in all his German compositions, he manifested a complete command of the language, and imparted to it a purity and elegance of diction very uncommon in his day. The German of Leibnitz is less antiquated at this moment than the English of his contemporary, Locke.
LEIBNITZ'S PHILOSOPHY.
The interest to us in this extraordinary man—who died at Hanover, 1716, in the midst of his labors and projects—turns mainly on his speculative philosophy. It was only as an incidental pursuit that he occupied himself with metaphysic; yet no philosopher since Aristotle— with whom, though claiming to be more Platonic than Aristotelian, he has much in common—has furnished more luminous hints to the elucidation of metaphysical problems. The problems he attempted were
- ↑ Kortholt. Epistolæ ad Diversos, Vol. I.
