INTRODUCTION. 



67 



No account of the thought of our century would be 

 complete or satisfactory which took no notice of this great 

 volume of immethodical and unsystematic thought which 

 lies buried in the general literature and in the art of 

 the age. Both have shown a vitality, originality, and 

 versatility which exceed that of any except the few 

 favoured periods those of Athens under Pericles, Italy 

 during the Eenaissance, and England under Elizabeth. 

 In one of the arts, in music, our age has, according to the 

 opinion of many competent judges, exceeded in originality 

 and certainly in productiveness all former ages. In 

 poetry Goethe and Wordsworth have raised our tastes h 



Goethe and 



and demands to a higher level, in fiction France and Wordsworth 



^ raised our 



England have almost created a new branch of literature, ^^***- 

 whilst the peculiar features of modern English landscape- 

 painting were unknown to previous centuries. All this, 

 though produced under no scientific or philosophical rule 



writiugs. See ' Nouv. Ess.,' Pre- 

 face, Leibniz, Philosophische Werke, 

 ed. Gerhardt, vol. v. p. 48 : 



"Ces petites perceptions sont done 

 de plus grandeefficace par leur suites 

 qu'on ne pense. Ce sont elles qui 

 forinent ce je ne S9ay quoy, ces 

 gouts, ces images des qualites des 

 sens, claires dans I'assemblage, mais 

 confuses dans les parties, ces im- 

 pressions que des corps environnans 

 font sur uous, qui enveloppent 

 I'infini, cette liaison que chaque 

 estre a avec tout le reste de I'uni- 

 vers. On peut meme dire qu'eu 

 consequence de ces petites percep- 

 tions le present est gros de I'avenir 

 et charge du passe, que tout est 

 conspirant {cn'ifji.Trvoia iravTa, comme 

 disoit Hippocrate) et que dans la 

 moiudre des substances, des yeux 

 aussi per9ans que ceux de Dieu 



pourraient lire toute la suite des 

 choses de I'uuivers. 



" Quae sint, quae fuerint, quae 

 mox futura trahantur. . . . C'est 

 aussi par les perceptions insensibles 

 que s'explique cette admirable har- 

 monie preestablie de I'ame et du 

 corps, et meme de toutes les Mon- 

 ades ou substances simples, quisup- 

 plee b, I'influence insoutenable des 

 uns sur les autres, et qui au juge- 

 ment de I'auteur du plus beau des 

 Dictionnaires exalte la grandeur 

 des perfections divines au del^ de 

 ce qu'on eu jamais congu." 



The importance of this idea of 

 Leibniz has been dwelt on at length 

 by Kuno Fischer in his ' Geschichte 

 der neueren Philosophic,' where he 

 also traces its influence in the 

 development of philosophy and 

 literature in Germany after Leibniz. 



