November 1716, Leibnitz ceased to breathe. It is affecting to the imagination to contemplate a human spirit, whose course of thought throughout life was unsurpassed for power of speculation, and daring range of mind among the higher objects of knowledge, and who, at the very period of its departure, was in the depths of a controversy about the mysteries of the supersensible world,—thus summoned into that world, to become conversant in his final relations with the Being who had intrusted him with mental power, and whose nature and attributes had so often tasked his speculative energies.
The effect, upon many minds, of the record of the life of this Philosopher, may be, perhaps, akin to a confused amazement at the spectacle of continued mental exercises so unparalleled in kind and variety. Yet a vague impression of this sort ought not to be the predominant one. A grand unity pervades the seeming confusion in which this man's life seems enveloped. A reigning idea which diffuses a community of principle through the whole cycle of his works, we have traced back in the earliest operations of his reflecting powers. Conversant through his life with those mysteries in proof of which no reason can be given, and with real or seeming demonstrations founded on these "first principles," we find in Leibnitz the type or model of the speculative metaphysician. The present seems a fit occasion for bestowing the notice of a short discussion on this suggested subject, which is connected with an important contribution made by Leibnitz to philosophy. The consideration of
