LIFE AND WORKS 7 



Leibniz has rightly been called 'the father of German 

 philosophy,' he is only to a very small extent a German 

 author. 



The four years' residence of Leibniz in Paris was 

 broken by a brief visit to England in the early months 

 of 1673. Leibniz had already sought the favour of Eng- 

 lish learning by dedicating one of his publications to the 

 Koyal Society, and he had also been greatly interested in 

 the philosophy of Hobbes, with which to a great extent 

 he found himself in agreement, especially as regards 

 questions of physics, although he was strongly opposed 

 to his political theories. In 1670 he wrote a letter 

 to Hobbes, to which he received no answer, and after- 

 wards he began another letter, but left it unfinished. It 

 has recently been maintained that, up to the year 1670, 

 Leibniz was 'more deeply affected by Hobbes than by 

 any other of the leading spirits of the new time V When 

 Leibniz visited London, Hobbes was still living there, 

 but he was eighty-five years of age, and some years 

 earlier Leibniz had heard from his countryman Olden- 

 burg, who was secretary of the Koyal Society, that 

 Hobbes was in his dotage. Accordingly it is not sur- 

 prising that they did not meet. Apart from Oldenburg, 

 the man with whom Leibniz seems to have had most 

 intercourse during this visit to London wasKobert Boyle, 

 the famous physicist ; but there is no reason to suppose 

 that Leibniz gained much from his stay in England, 

 except an additional stimulus to the study of the higher 

 mathematics, which he carried on more systematically 

 after his return to Paris. As a fitting conclusion of his 

 Parisian period came the discovery of the Differential 

 Calculus, which was practically accomplished by Leibniz 



1 See Tonnies in Philos. Monatshefte, vol. xxiii. pp. 557-573. Cf. 

 Leibniz's Letter to Holies (1670) (G. i. 85): 'I constantly maintain 

 among my friends, and, with the help of God, I will always publicly 

 maintain also, that I know no writer who has philosophized more 

 accurately, more clearly, and more elegantly than you, not even 

 excepting a man of such excellent genius as Descartes himself.' 



