4 INTRODUCTION 



Boineburg and the Elector of Mainz. 

 In Niirnberg, at that time the capital of a small 

 republic, which had suffered less than many other 

 German States from the Thirty Years' War, Leibniz spent 

 a year, in the course of which his extensive curiosity led 

 him to become a member of a secret society of the 

 Rosicrucians, who were trying to find the philosopher's 

 stone. Fontenelle tells us that Leibniz's method of 

 gaining admission to the society was to collect from 

 books on alchemy all the most obscure phrases he could 

 find and to make of them an unintelligible letter, which 

 he produced as evidence of his fitness for membership. 

 The society was so impressed that it immediately ap- 

 pointed him to be its secretary. The chief gain to Leibniz 

 appears to have been that through this society he became 

 acquainted with Baron von Boineburg, ' one of the most 

 celebrated diplomatists of his age/ who had formerly 

 been minister to the Elector and Archbishop of Mainz, 

 the most powerful man in the Empire. With Boineburg 

 Leibniz went to Frankfort, where he wrote and pub- 

 lished a paper on legal education, which was the means 

 of introducing him to the archbishop, in whose service 

 he remained for some time. This was the beginning of 

 his career as a diplomatist. The long war had left 

 Germany in ruins, and, ere there was time to rebuild, 

 the whole empire was threatened by the immense power 

 of Louis XIV, who was dreaming of world-wide sway. 

 The Elector of Mainz, says Leibniz, 'had seen the miseries 

 of Germany, whose ruins were still smoking : he was one 

 of those who had laboured most to bring back rest to the 

 land, from which life seemed almost to have gone. The 

 country was (as one might hardly say) " peopled " with 

 little children, and if war were to break out again (as 

 might be expected when Sweden was irritated and France 

 threatening) there was every reason to fear that this seed 

 of a new population would be destroyed and a great part 



