LIFE AND WORKS 17 



were crooked. His household arrangements (if they can 

 be called * arrangements ') were very irregular. He had 

 no fixed hours for meals, but, when a convenient oppor- 

 tunity came in the course of his studies, he sent out for 

 something to eat. He once made a proposal of marriage 

 (when he was fifty years of age), but the lady took time to 

 consider, and (Fontenelle says) i this gave Leibniz also 

 time to consider, and he never married.' He slept little, 

 but well : he often spent the night in his chair, and 

 sometimes he would remain in it for several days at a 

 time. This enabled him to do a great deal of work ; but 

 it led to illness, for which, disliking physicians, he em- 

 ployed remedies more ' heroic ' than wise. He enjoyed 

 intercourse with all sorts and conditions of men, believing 

 that he could always learn something even from the 

 most ignorant. ' Cum Socrate semper ad disc endum par atus 

 sum. 9 l He spoke well of everybody,' says Eckhart, 'and 

 made the best of everything ' (er kelwte alles zum Besten). 

 He often congratulates himself on being self-taught 

 (avroSt'SaKTos), and thus able to avoid acquiescence in super- 

 ficial, ready-made knowledge and to strike out paths of 

 his own. For he is ever (he teljs us) ' eager to penetrate 

 into all things more deeply than is usually done and to 

 find something new.' 



'When,' says Diderot, 'one considers oneself and 

 compares one's talents with those of a Leibniz, one is 

 tempted to throw books away and seek some hidden 

 corner of the world where one may die in peace. < This 

 man's mind was a foe of disorder : the most entangled 

 things fell into order when they entered it. He com-' 

 bined two great qualities which are almost incompatible 

 with one another the spirit of discovery and that of 

 method ; and the most determined .and varied study, 

 through which he accumulated knowledge of the most 

 widely differing kinds, weakened neither the one quality 

 nor the other. In the fullest meaning these words can 

 bear, he was a philosopher and a mathematician V 

 1 Encyclopedic, (Euvres (Assezat's ed.), vol. xv. p. 440. 

 C 



