2 INTKODUCTION 



Providence or Fortune seemed to say to him, Tolle, lege ; 

 and it is significant for the philosophy to come that he 

 turned first to the Ancients, to Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca, 

 Pliny, Herodotus. Xenophon, Plato, the historians of the 

 Roman Empire, and the Fathers of the Church. Of these 

 he tells us that * he understood at first nothing, then 

 gradually something, and finally enough'; but uncon- 

 sciously his mind was coloured by their style and thought, 

 ' as men walking in the sun have their faces browned 

 without knowing it,' and under their inspiration he made 

 it the rule of his life ever to seek clearness in speaking 

 and a useful purpose in acting (in verbis daritas, in rebus 

 usus). Thus at fourteen years of age he was counted by 

 his fellows a prodigy of learning and ability, and already 

 his reading of Logic and intense determination towards 

 clearness of thought and speech had led him to ideas 

 which were afterwards developed into the suggestion of 

 a logical Calculus and an 'Alphabet of Concepts' as 

 means to the discovery of truth 1 . 



University Life. 



At fifteen years of age Leibniz became a student at the 

 University of Leipzig, and about the same time he became 



little account, exposition (Darlegen) as of much account, and when 

 a new book comes into my hands I look for what I can learn 

 from it, not for what I can criticize in it.' Schreiben an G. Wagner 

 (1696) (E. 425 b; G. vii. 526). 



1 ' Before I reached the school-class in which Logic was taught, 

 I was deep in the historians and poets ; for I had begun to read 

 the historians almost as soon as I was able to read at all, and in 

 verse I found great pleasure and ease ; but as soon as I began to 

 learn Logic I found myself greatly excited by the division and 

 order of thoughts which I perceived therein. I immediately began 

 to notice, so far as a boy of thirteen could, that there must be a 

 great deal in it. I took the greatest pleasure in the Predicaments ' 

 (i. e. the Categories) ' which came before me as a muster-roll of all 

 the things in the world, and I turned to "Logics" of all sorts to 

 find the best and most detailed form of this list. I often asked 

 myself and my schoolfellows to which Predicament and also to 

 which sub-class this or that thing might belong/ Schreiben an 

 (?. Wagner (E. 420 a ; G. vii. 516). 



