scholar, but includes them both. Feuerbach calls him "the personified thirst for Knowledge; " Frederic the Great pronounced him an "Academy of Sciences;" and Fontenelle said of him that "he saw the end of things, or that they had no end." It was an age of intellectual adventure into which Leibniz was born,-fit sequel and heir to the age of maritime adventure which preceded it. We please ourselves with fancied analogies between the two epochs and the nature of their discoveries. In the latter movement, as in the former, Italy took the lead. The martyr Giordano Bruno was the brave Columbus of modern thought, the first who broke loose from the trammels of medieval ecclesiastical tradition, and reported a new world beyond the watery waste of scholasticism. Campanella may represent the Vespucci of the new enterprise; Lord Bacon its Sebastian Cabot, "Novum Organum" being the Newfoundland of modern experimental science. Descartes was the Cortes, or shall we rather say the Ponce de Leon, of scientific discovery, who, failing to find what he sought, the Principle of Life (the Fountain of Eternal Youth),-yet found enough to render his name immortal and to make mankind his debtor. Spinoza is the spiritual Magalhaens, who, emerging from the straits of Judaism, beheld

"Another ocean's breast immense, unknown."

the

Of modern thinkers he was

"the first

That ever burst

Into that silent sea."

that

He discovered the Pacific of philosophy, theory of the sole Divine Substance, the All-One, which Goethe in early life found so pacifying to his troubled spirit, and which, vague and barren as it proves on nearer acquaintance, induces at first, above all other systems, a sense of repose in illimitable vastness and immutable necessity.

But the Vasco de Gama of his day was Leibniz. His triumphant optimism rounded the Cape of theological Good Hope. He gave the chief impulse to modern intellectual commerce. Full freighted, as he was, with Western thought, he revived the forgotten interest in the Old and Eastern World, and brought the ends of the earth together. Circumnavigator of the realms of mind, wherever he touched he appeared as discoverer, as conqueror, as lawgiver. In mathematics he discovered or invented the Differential Calculus, the logic of transcendental analysis, the infallible method of astronomy, without which it could never have compassed the large conclusions of the "Mécanique Céleste." In his "Protogæa," published in 1693, he laid the foundation of the science of Geology. From his observations as Superintendent of the

Harz Mines, and those which he made in his subsequent travels through Austria and Italy; from an examination of the layers, in different localities, of the earth's crust, he deduced the first theory, in the geological sense, which has ever been propounded, of the earth's formation. Orthodox Lutheran as he was, he braved the theological prejudices which then, even more than now, affronted scientific inquiry in that direction. "First among men," says Flourens, "he demonstrated the two agencies which successively have formed and reformed the globe, -fire and water." In the region of metaphysical inquiry he propounded a new and original theory of Substance, and gave to philosophy the Monad, the Law of Continuity, the Pre-established Harmony, and the Best Possible World.

Born at Leipsic in 1646,- left fatherless at the age of six years, — by the care of a pious mother and competent guardians, young Leibniz enjoyed such means of education as Germany afforded at that time, but declares himself, for the most part, self-taught. So genius must always be, for want of any external stimulus equal to its own impulse.

1

1 "Duo mihi profuere mirifice (quæ tamen alioqui ambigua, et pluribus noxia esse solent), primum quod fere essem avtodidak· TOS, alterum quod quærerem nova in unaquaque scientia." -LEIBNIT.: Opera Philosoph. (Erdmann, p. 162.)

No normal training could keep pace with his abnormal growth. No school discipline could supply the fuel necessary to feed the consuming fire of that ravenous intellect. Grammars, manuals, compends, all the apparatus of the classes, were only oil to its flame. The master of the NicolaiSchule in Leipsic, his first instructor, was a steady practitioner of the martinet order. The pupils were ranged in classes corresponding to their civil ages their studies graduated according to the baptismal register. It was not a question of faculty or proficiency, how a lad should be classed and what he should read, but of calendar years. As if a shoemaker should fit his last to the age instead of the foot! Such an age, such a study. Gottfried is a genius, and Hans is a dunce; but Gottfried and Hans were both born in 1646: consequently, now, in 1654, they are both equally fit for the Smaller Catechism. Leibniz was ready for Latin long before the time allotted to that study in the Nicolai-Schule; but the system was inexorable all access to books cut off by rigorous proscription. But the thirst for knowledge is not easily stifled, and genius, like love, "will find out his way."

He chanced, in a corner of the house, to light on an odd volume of Livy left there by some student boarder. What could Livy do for a child of eight

years, with no previous knowledge of Latin and no lexicon to interpret between them? For most children, nothing. Not one in a thousand would have dreamed of serious grappling with such a mystery. But the brave Patavinian took pity on our little one, and yielded something to childish importunity. The quaint old copy was garnished, according to a fashion of the time, with rude woodcuts, having explanatory legends underneath. The young philologer tugged at these until he had mastered one or two words. Then the book was thrown by in despair, as impracticable to further investigation. Then, after one or two weeks had elapsed, for want of other employment, it was taken up again, and a little more progress made. And so by degrees, in the course of a year, a considerable knowledge of Latin had been achieved. But when, in the Nicolai order, the time for this study arrived, so far from being pleased to find his instructions anticipated, or welcoming such promise of future greatness; so far from rejoicing in his pupil's proficiency, the pedagogue chafed at the insult offered to his system by this empiric antepast. He was like one who suddenly discovers that he is telling an old story where he thought to surprise with a novelty; or like one who undertakes to fill a lamp, which, being (unknown to him) already full, runs over, and his oil is spilled.