LIFE AND WORKS 3 



acquainted with the works of some of the modern philo- 

 sophers, beginning with Bacon's De Augmentis Scientiarum. 

 At this time also, as he himself tells us, he read with 

 interest the works of Cardan and Campanella and the 

 suggestions of a better philosophy in Kepler, Galileo, and 

 Descartes. But he was no l read ing-machine, all wound 

 up and going/ He thought for himself : he read in order 

 to ' weigh and consider. ' And thus in after-years he re- 

 calls how, when he was fifteen years of age, he walked 

 alone in a wood near Leipzig, called the Rosenthal, to 

 consider whether or not he should retain in his philo- 

 sophy the 'Substantial Forms' of the Scholastics 1 . 

 Although his favourite teacher at Leipzig was Jacob 

 Thomasius, a Professor of Philosophy, deeply versed in 

 ancient and scholastic learning, the private reading of 

 Leibniz at first prevailed in his thought and he turned 

 from the older philosophies to * mechanism ' and mathe- 

 matics. The ' Substantial Forms * were for the time set 

 aside, to reappear, transmuted, in later years. His 

 scholastic studies, however, bore fruit in the earliest of 

 his published writings, a graduation thesis with the 

 significant title De principle individui, in which he de- 

 fended the Nominalist position. Intending to devote him- 

 self to the profession of law, he went for a year (in 1663) 

 to Jena, where the mathematician, Erhard Weigel, was 

 lecturing on 'the Law of Nature,' or what we should now 

 call Jurisprudence in general. Doubtless the influence 

 of Weigel tended to confirm Leibniz's mathematical 

 bent, and he still continued his study of history. In 

 1666 the University of Leipzig, ostensibly on the ground 

 of his youth, refused to give him the Doctorate in Law ; 

 but his thesis, De casibus perplexis in jure, was immediately 

 accepted by the University of Altdorf (near Niirnberg), 

 where he declined the offer of a professorship. Thus 

 ended his connexion with Leipzig. 



1 Lettre a M. Remond (1714) (E. 7028 ; G. iii. 606). 

 B 2 



