entertain; and there has been added to preceding ones, perhaps the most remarkable and instructive of all the records of the clouded wanderings of human reason. The discussions raised by Leibnitz have given birth to the philosophical systems of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and so to the now enormously accumulated materials of the Teutonic metaphysics.
The father of Leibnitz was Professor of Morals in the ancient University of Leipsic. He died during the childhood of his son. By his pious mother, the thoughts of the young Gottfried Wilhelm were much directed to religion; and this guidance no doubt gave to his subsequent speculations much of that theological cast by which they are distinguished. Both his parents were Lutherans. The first twenty years of his life were spent chiefly in Leipsic.[1] In the Nicolai School of that city, and also in the University, which he entered in 1661, he gave early evidence of his peculiar type of genius. His powers of mind were directed, in turn, to almost every object of knowledge. He eagerly studied history and the classics, in which his reading extended far out of the beaten track in which the ill-judged exertions of his narrow-minded teachers would fain have restrained him. It was, however, when he was introduced to Logic and Philosophy, that the strength of his genius, and the special direction of his mind, were fully shown. He read Aris-
- ↑ An interesting account of the remarkable self-educating process which the mind of Leibnitz underwent during these years, nearly related as that is to the subsequent development of his philosophy, is given by himself in the "Pacidii Introductio Historica." See Erdmann's Edition, p. 91, and see also p. 162.
