LIFE AND WORKS II 



Leibniz with the value of teleological considerations, and 

 he was already seeking in that direction an escape from 

 the imperfections of the mechanical view of things. But 

 his general hostility to Spinoza's system did not show 

 itself until ten years later, when he had settled the 

 essential points of his own doctrine of substance. At 

 this time Leibniz was still seeking light in every 

 quarter. 



Residence in Hanover. Correspondence and Growth of 

 his System. 



Leibniz arrived at Hanover in the last days of 1676. 

 Efforts had already been made to convert him to the 

 Roman Catholic faith, and he had begun a correspondence 

 with Pellisson (a distinguished convert from Protes- 

 tantism) in the hope of finding some means of Church 

 reunion. This correspondence led to others, of which the 

 most important was one with Bossuet. But, though 

 Leibniz was more or less occupied with these discussions 

 throughout the rest of his life, nothing practical came of 

 them. Bossuet's attitude in the discussion was only too 

 well expressed in his exclamation regarding Leibniz : 

 Utinam ex nostris esset ! ; Would that he were one of 

 us ! ' And Leibniz was too much of a scientific inquirer 

 to unite two opposed religious communions. He might 

 draw up a statement of dogma to which both sides could 

 assent *, but inevitably it would express the real belief of 

 neither. The endeavour to convert Leibniz was not given 

 up for a very long time, and a brief visit of his to Rome 

 in 1689 seems to have caused a flutter of excitement. 

 He was offered the librarianship of the Vatican and other 

 posts with a vista of preferment ; but conversion was so 

 far from his mind that we hear of him bringing from 

 the Catacombs a piece of glass, reddened with the blood 

 of martyrs, in order to submit it to chemical analysis ! 



1 He actually attempted this, in what has been grandiloquently 

 called the Systema Theologicum, written in 1686. 



