CONTENTS
| EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION | page [7] |
| PREFACE | [49] |
| PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH REASON | [73] |
| ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL, IN THREE PARTS | [123], [182], [276] |
| APPENDICES | |
| SUMMARY OF THE CONTROVERSY, REDUCED TO FORMAL ARGUMENTS | [377] |
| EXCURSUS ON THEODICY, § 392 | [389] |
| REFLEXIONS ON THE WORK THAT MR. HOBBES PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH ON 'FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND CHANCE' | [393] |
| OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK CONCERNING 'THE ORIGIN OF EVIL', PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN LONDON | [405] |
| CAUSA DEI ASSERTA | [443] |
| INDEX | [445] |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
I
Leibniz was above all things a metaphysician. That does not mean that his head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences lacked interest for him. Not at all—he felt a lively concern for theological debate, he was a mathematician of the first rank, he made original contributions to physics, he gave a realistic attention to moral psychology. But he was incapable of looking at the objects of any special enquiry without seeing them as aspects or parts of one intelligible universe. He strove constantly after system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative reason. He embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. Nothing could be less like the spirit of ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with the duties of his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at all, though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by showing them up as confused forms of something else. A chair in metaphysical philosophy becomes analogous to a chair in tropical diseases: what is taught from it is not the propagation but the cure.
Confidence in metaphysical construction has ebbed and flowed through philosophical history; periods of speculation have been followed by periods of criticism. The tide will flow again, but it has