These are to take final leave of you as to this world. I look upon myself as a dying man. God requite your kindness expressed anyways towards me a hundredfold, bless you with confluence of all good things in this world, and eternal life and happiness hereafter, and grant us a happy meeting in heaven. I am, sir, eternally yours." 1 Ray died on the 17th of January, 1705. T GOTTFRIED W. LEIBNITZ. 1646-1716. HE seventeenth century is wonderfully rich in scientific names. Before Bacon died Pascal was born: Boyle entered the world three years after Pascal: Ray came only one year later: after the lapse of three years Barrow followed: two years later Locke appeared: and in another decade Newton saw the light. He did not complete the entire circle of philosophers who shone as a constellation in that highly favoured age. When Newton was little more than an infant, and Locke and Barrow were boys at school, and Ray and Boyle were pursuing their university studies, and Pascal was beginning to make himself a name in Parisian society, there was a child born at Leipzig, son of a professor in the university there, who for versatility of endowments came to be distinguished above them all. In each of the three dissertations prefixed to the Encyclopædia Britannica the name of GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNITZ is introduced with equal prominence, as illustrious in the annals of metaphysical, ethical, mathematical and physical science. "So various, indeed, are the phases of his character and genius, so numberless his accomplishments, that we may apply to him the well-known lines of Dryden, divested of the satire which was designed in their original application: 'A man so various that he seemed to be, From first to last his story is full of marvels. He has painted his own portrait, and we see him plainly, in stature of middle height, with pale face, bright eyes, shrill voice, pronouncing with difficulty the German gutturals; graceful in his movements, and active in all his ways; often he did not go to bed, but after two or three hours' sleep in a chair would be hard at work again. He was self-taught, and could devote himself in immediate succession to varied employments. He read all sorts of books, and could talk on all sorts of subjects. Not that he was garrulous, for he informs us himself that he was not much addicted to conversation; when he began he went on fast enough, and could enjoy a joke; but he more frequently smiled than laughed. The noting down of so many minute particulars about himself is enough to show that egotism is to be added to the other qualities of this extraordinary man. As a boy he stumbled on two books, Livy, and the Opus Chronologicum of Calvisius. History and chronology thus, at the outset of his studies, challenged his attention; and though he knew little or nothing of Latin at the time, by poring over the contents of these tomes, skipping at first over what puzzled him, and then coming back to it when better informed, he with surprising rapidity mastered the contents without a dictionary. At first his preceptor did not know what to make of him, and strove to repress his presumptuous efforts; but at last he per HIS WORK ON JURISPRUDENCE. 195 suaded the father to open his library to this precocious son, who, ransacking the shelves, dived into Cicero, and Quintilian, and Seneca, and Pliny, and Herodotus, and Xenophon, and Plato, and the Greek and Latin fathers. He revelled in them, and he tells us, "before I was yet twelve years old I understood the Latin writers tolerably well, began to lisp Greek, and wrote verses with tolerable success." We must be content with enumerating the branches of study which he pursued in mature life, together with the occupations which he filled and the intellectual exploits which he achieved. First of all he devoted himself to the science of jurisprudence, being destined by his relatives to the profession of the law. "The knowledge previously acquired of history and philosophy," he says, "I now found however, of essential service. It enabled me readily to apprehend the theory and principles of the science of law; and not setting a very high value on that which it cost me so little to understand, I immediately entered upon the study of the practical part of my profession."1 When only twenty-two, he wrote an essay entitled, Nova Methodus discendæ docendæque Jurisprudentiæ, a bold undertaking indeed! An attempt to construct a new system of learning, and teaching the principles of government, startled the statesmen and scholars of Saxony, and made the young man the talk of all Germany. The Elector was deeply interested in the work, and it happened at the time that a learned jurist in his dominions was being employed upon a 1 Life of Leibnitz, founded on a German work by J. Mackie, p. 31. revision of Roman law, with a view to its adaptation to existing circumstances. Leibnitz was appointed his assistant, and soon became leader, publishing, in the same year 1668, a pamphlet entitled, Ratio Corporis Juris reconcinnandi. The title-page bore both names, but the contents were the product of one pen, that of the young student. Two years afterwards, we meet with him carrying to a distinguished statesman an introductory letter from Baron von Boineberg, with these words in it, "He is a young man from Leipzig, of four and twenty, doctor of laws, and learned beyond all credence." "The theory, and, what is to be wondered at, the practice also, of law is perfectly familiar to him." 1 At twenty-four Leibnitz plunged into politics. The Electors of Mentz and Trèves, with the Duke of Lorraine, were busy in the summer of 1670, at Schwabach, consulting about the affairs of Western Germany. They discussed the formation of an alliance with England, Holland, and Sweden, against France. Leibnitz, with his friend Boineberg, was present, and ventured to oppose the policy of the magnates. He recommended that the German princes should form a league amongst themselves, and act independently; but when war had commenced, and the French were overrunning Lorraine, Leibnitz aimed at diverting the attention of Louis XIV. to the revival of an old scheme propounded in the fourteenth century, for an invasion of Egypt, and the establishment of a Christian empire under the shadow of the Pyramids-a renewal, in short, of the medieval crusades. He even prepared a 1 Life of Leibnitz, p. 46. |