CHAPTER XI LeibnizLEIBNIZ ( 1646-1716) was one of the supreme intellects of all time, but as a human being he was
not admirable. He had, it is true, the virtues that one would wish to find mentioned in a
testimonial to a prospective employee: he was industrious, frugal, temperate, and financially
honest. But he was wholly destitute of those higher philosophic virtues that are so notable in
Spinoza. His best thought was not such as would win him popularity, and he left his records of it
unpublished in his desk. What he published was designed to win the approbation of princes and
princesses. The consequence is that there are two systems of philosophy which may be regarded as
representing Leibniz: one, which he proclaimed, was optimistic, orthodox, fantastic, and shallow;
the other, which has been slowly unearthed from his manuscripts by fairly recent editors, was
profound, coherent, largely Spinozistic, and amazingly logical. It was the popular Leibniz who
invented the doctrine that this is the best of all possible worlds (to which F. H. Bradley added the
sardonic comment "and everything in it is a necessary evil"); it was this Leibniz whom Voltaire
caricatured as Doctor Pangloss. It would be unhistorical to ignore this Leibniz, but the other is of
far greater philosophical importance.
Leibniz was born two years before the end of the Thirty Years' War, at Leipzig, where his father
was professor of moral philosophy. At the university he studied law, and in 1666 he obtained a
Doctor's degree at Altdorf, where he was offered a professorship, which he refused, saying he had
"very different things in view." In 1667 he entered the service of the archbishop of Mainz, who,
like other West German princes, was oppressed by fear of Louis XIV. With the approval of the
archbishop, Leibniz tried to persuade the French king to invade Egypt rather than Germany, but
was met with a polite reminder that since the time of Saint Louis the holy war against the