7.

The Many Faces of Leibniz In the dispersed and fractious republic of letters of late-seventeenth century Europe, Leibniz was something like a one-man intelligence agency. From operatives across the continent he regularly received discrete packets of information, which, like a savvy spymaster, he repackaged and distributed back to the network as he deemed appropriate. It is hardly surprising that he was among the first to pick up the alarming signals radiating from Holland about Spinoza.

Leibniz's first reference to his fellow philosopher predates the publication of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In his letter to Thomasius of April 1669, he includes the name of Spinoza on a list of several expositors of Descartes. At the time, Spinoza's sole publication was his Principles of the Cartesian Philosophy Principles of the Cartesian Philosophy, in which his stated aim is to present in logical form the master's chief doctrines. The book does include some strong hints of its author's personal views, however, and Leibniz's dismissive a.s.sertion that Spinoza, along with the other expositors, had done little more than repeat Descartes's arguments is hasty. (In fact, it suggests that the young German had not read the work he cites-which is not altogether surprising: at the age of twenty-two, Leibniz could hardly have been expected to master the works of all the authors he mentions in this letter to Thomasius.) One year later, Leibniz copied the text of his letter to Thomasius almost word for word into the preface for another work. Among the various minor edits: Spinoza's name disappears entirely from the doc.u.ment.

The emendation is easy enough to explain. In between Leibniz's two versions of the text, Spinoza published his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. The first of many to attack the book in print, as it turns out, was none other than Professor Thomasius. The "anonymous treatise on the freedom of philosophizing," Leibniz's tutor declaims in his review, is a "G.o.dless" work.

Leibniz did not hesitate to show his colors. In September 1670, he congratulates Thomasius: "You have treated this intolerably impudent work on the liberty of philosophers as it deserves."

From one of his Dutch agents, Leibniz soon learned-if he did not know already-the ident.i.ty of the anonymous author of the Tractatus. Tractatus. In April 1671, Professor Johann Georg Graevius of the University of Utrecht informs him that "last year was published a most pestilent book, whose t.i.tle is In April 1671, Professor Johann Georg Graevius of the University of Utrecht informs him that "last year was published a most pestilent book, whose t.i.tle is Discursus TheologicoPoliticus Discursus TheologicoPoliticus [ [sic]...which opens the window wide to atheism. The author is said to be a Jew, name of Spinoza, who was thrown out of the synagogue on account of his monstrous opinions."

Leibniz promptly replies: "I have read Spinoza's book. I deplore that a man of such evident erudition should have fallen so low.... Writings of this type tend to subvert the Christian religion, whose edifice has been consolidated by the precious blood, sweat, and prodigious sacrifices of the martyrs."

Evidently, Leibniz was keen to join the chorus of informed opinion on Spinoza. But here in his reply to Graevius he strikes two notes that seem slightly out of tune in the symphony of denunciation. Unlike most of his outraged colleagues, Leibniz indicates with phrases like "a man of such evident erudition" that he has high regard for the intellectual gifts of the author of the Tractatus Tractatus. Second, typically, Leibniz focuses his concern on the effects of Spinoza's arguments (e.g., subverting the Christian religion), and not on their truth.

Leibniz continued the a.s.sault on Spinoza in correspondence with the great theologian Antoine Arnauld. In a letter of October 1671, he complains about "the terrifying work on the liberty of philosophizing" and "the horrible book recently published on the liberty of philosophizing"-both unambiguous references to Spinoza's Tractatus Tractatus. As he so often did, Leibniz here simply held up a mirror to his addressee: Arnauld, as Leibniz would easily have guessed, thought that the Tractatus Tractatus was "one of the most evil books in the world." Interestingly, in his letter Leibniz carefully picks his way around the actual name of Spinoza. Evidently, he did not want the powerful Parisian to know that he knew the ident.i.ty of the anonymous author of the revolting treatise-although Professor Graevius had in fact pa.s.sed along that information six months previously. was "one of the most evil books in the world." Interestingly, in his letter Leibniz carefully picks his way around the actual name of Spinoza. Evidently, he did not want the powerful Parisian to know that he knew the ident.i.ty of the anonymous author of the revolting treatise-although Professor Graevius had in fact pa.s.sed along that information six months previously.

There was little that was unusual or unexpected in Leibniz's first official responses to Spinoza and his Tractatus Tractatus. The two philosophers, after all, were nothing if not natural enemies. One was the ultimate insider, the other a double exile; one was an orthodox Lutheran from conservative Germany, the other an apostate Jew from licentious Holland. Above all, one was sworn to uphold the very same theocratic order that the other sought to demolish. It would have been very surprising indeed if Leibniz had not declared Spinoza's work "horrible" and "terrifying," as he did to Arnauld.

And yet, Leibniz's next move was was very surprising. Six months after denouncing Spinoza to Graevius, and in the very same month he wrote to Arnauld pretending he didn't even know the name of the author of the very surprising. Six months after denouncing Spinoza to Graevius, and in the very same month he wrote to Arnauld pretending he didn't even know the name of the author of the Tractatus Tractatus, Leibniz took the first step into the labyrinth that would soon come to define his life and work. On October 5, 1671, he addressed a letter to "Mr. Spinoza, celebrated doctor and profound philosopher, at Amsterdam." (He was apparently unaware that the worthy sage now lived in The Hague.) "Ill.u.s.trious and most honored Sir," he writes. "Among your other achievements which fame has spread abroad I understand is your remarkable skill in optics." He goes on to raise some obscure questions in optical theory, and encloses for Spinoza's comment a recent treatise of his on the matter. He asks that Spinoza send any reply through a certain "Mr. Diemerbroek, lawyer" in Amsterdam.

Spinoza's reply is prompt, courteous, and not particularly encouraging about Leibniz's problems with optical theory. In fact, Spinoza seems to understand very well that the discussion of optics is merely an excuse to make contact. In the postscript to his reply, he gets to the point: Mr. Dimerbruck [sic] does not live here, so I am forced to give this to the ordinary letter-carrier. I have no doubt that you know somebody here at The Hague who would be willing to take charge of our correspondence. I should like to know who it is, so that our letters can be dispatched more conveniently and safely. If the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Tractatus Theologico-Politicus has not yet reached you, I shall send a copy if you care to have it. has not yet reached you, I shall send a copy if you care to have it.

Spinoza here shows that he is willing to conduct any future correspondence in a clandestine way, according to Leibniz's wishes, so that both may avoid the risk of publicly exposing their relationship. It is also quite evident that Spinoza clearly a.s.sumes that his correspondent is well aware of the fact that he is the author of the Tractatus Tractatus, and that the point of their exchange is to discuss its contents, and not optics.

Leibniz soon wrote one or more letters to Spinoza. In later correspondence, their mutual friend Georg Hermann Schuller reminds Spinoza that Leibniz "paid great attention to your Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and wrote you a letter on the subject, if you will recall." (The surviving letter, of course, says nothing about the and wrote you a letter on the subject, if you will recall." (The surviving letter, of course, says nothing about the Tractatus Tractatus.) In reply, Spinoza says: "I believe I know Leibniz through correspondence.... As far as I can tell from his letters letters, he seems to me to be a man of liberal spirit and versed in all the sciences [emphasis added]." In correspondence since destroyed, then, Leibniz evidently praised the book he elsewhere qualified as "intolerably impudent" and managed to make Spinoza think he was a "liberal spirit." And he did all of this through clandestine communications, so that no one else might discover the exchange.

Curiously, the only one of his colleagues at the time who seems to have sensed something of Leibniz's hidden sympathies was his partner in political adventures, Baron von Boineburg. On the back of a recently discovered copy of the Tractatus Tractatus, in Boineburg's hand, is a list of individuals divided into those deemed "pro" and "contra" Hobbes. To be pro-Hobbes, at the time, was to be edgy: a freethinker, a materialist, and possibly a heretic-just like Spinoza, in other words. In Boineburg's estimation, Leibniz was on the side of the pros.

With Professor Thomasius, Leibniz remained much more circ.u.mspect. Inexplicably, he waited ten months after learning the ident.i.ty of the author of the Tractatus Tractatus before letting his erstwhile tutor in on the news. On January 31, 1672, he finally wrote to Thomasius: "The author of the book...you exposed, in your brief but elegant refutation, is Benedict Spinoza, a Jew thrown out of the synagogue on account of his monstrous opinions, as one writes to me from Holland. For the rest, [he is] a man of very great learning, and above all, an eminent optician and maker of remarkable lenses." Here Leibniz suggests that he knows the ident.i.ty of the author of the before letting his erstwhile tutor in on the news. On January 31, 1672, he finally wrote to Thomasius: "The author of the book...you exposed, in your brief but elegant refutation, is Benedict Spinoza, a Jew thrown out of the synagogue on account of his monstrous opinions, as one writes to me from Holland. For the rest, [he is] a man of very great learning, and above all, an eminent optician and maker of remarkable lenses." Here Leibniz suggests that he knows the ident.i.ty of the author of the Tractatus Tractatus only through his contacts in Holland. He neglects to mention to his former mentor that he recently had the matter confirmed by the author himself, who some months previously offered to send him a copy of his book. only through his contacts in Holland. He neglects to mention to his former mentor that he recently had the matter confirmed by the author himself, who some months previously offered to send him a copy of his book.

Leibniz presented yet another, even more parsimonious version of the truth about Spinoza to Albert van Holten, a fellow defender of the faith. In late 1671, van Holten writes: "The Jew Spinoza, who bears a most inauspicious name...will be thrashed by the intellectuals, as he deserves." In his response of February 27, 1672, Leibniz says: "That Spinoza is the author of [the Tractatus Tractatus], it seems to me, is not certain." But, of course, Leibniz-writing a month after his last letter to Thomasius and four months after hearing back from Spinoza-knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Spinoza was the author of the Tractatus Tractatus. Why did he suddenly deploy yet another subterfuge, this time apparently to protect the atheist from the man who wanted him "thrashed"?

A missive to another of his friends quickly belies the notion that Leibniz secretly wished to shield the celebrated and profound philosopher of The Hague from attack. On March 8, 1672, just days after fending off the thrasher, Leibniz writes to Professor Spitzel, a stalwart Calvinist, to encourage him to savage the Tractatus Tractatus: You have seen without doubt the book published in Belgium, of the t.i.tle: Libertas philosophandi Libertas philosophandi. The author, one says, is a Jew. He puts forward a critique, learned, to be sure, but full of venom against...the authority of the sacred Scriptures. Piety urges that he should be refuted by a man of solid learning in oriental letters [i.e., Hebrew], such as you....

Again, the incorrect citation of the t.i.tle of Spinoza's book, like the implication that Leibniz knows that Spinoza is a Jew only because "one says" it is so, is intended to suggest that the writer's relation with the Jew in question is far more distant than is in fact the case. Furthermore, it now appears that Leibniz believes that Thomasius's refutation of Spinoza was not "elegant" enough and altogether too "brief," contrary to what he had earlier told his tutor, for, now he wants someone else to wield the hatchet with greater vigor. Spitzel, it turns out, was not interested in the a.s.signment; in his reply, he refers Leibniz back to Thomasius's review.

WHY DID LEIBNIZ write to Spinoza? Why would he have risked his job-and perhaps more-in this way? write to Spinoza? Why would he have risked his job-and perhaps more-in this way?

In part, Leibniz approached Spinoza in the same spirit that he first contacted Hobbes, Arnauld, Oldenburg, and all the other luminaries of the republic of letters. His self-appointed mission was to become the grand conciliator of the entire known universe of thought, the chief erudit erudit of Europe. Spinoza, whatever the critics said, had suddenly emerged as a very large part of that universe, and Leibniz could not afford to forgo contact with the latest supernova in the intellectual firmament. Nor could he avoid seeing Spinoza as something of a rival in the quest for recognition. Leibniz's overture to the philosopher of The Hague, in brief, was the fruit of his ambition and his careerism. of Europe. Spinoza, whatever the critics said, had suddenly emerged as a very large part of that universe, and Leibniz could not afford to forgo contact with the latest supernova in the intellectual firmament. Nor could he avoid seeing Spinoza as something of a rival in the quest for recognition. Leibniz's overture to the philosopher of The Hague, in brief, was the fruit of his ambition and his careerism.

Yet there was more to it than that. There is good reason to suspect that Spinoza's hardheaded critique of revealed religion found a sympathetic listener in Leibniz. It is a fact worthy of notice that, although he lived in a century noted for its Bible thumping, Leibniz rarely bothered to cite the scriptures in his philosophical works. His grandest aim, after all, was to build the respublica Christiana respublica Christiana on a foundation of pure reason, not of biblical interpretation. According to Eckhart, furthermore, the philosopher often claimed that he saw nothing in the New Testament "that is not part of simple morality," and he frequently described himself as a "priest of nature"-sentiments that are clearly in tune with those of the author of the on a foundation of pure reason, not of biblical interpretation. According to Eckhart, furthermore, the philosopher often claimed that he saw nothing in the New Testament "that is not part of simple morality," and he frequently described himself as a "priest of nature"-sentiments that are clearly in tune with those of the author of the Tractatus Tractatus.

Perhaps the most intriguing link between the two philosophers may be found in those sections in the Tractatus Tractatus in which Spinoza outlines the contents of a desirable "popular religion." The essence of the creed Spinoza proposes to sell to the ma.s.ses is the belief that "there is a Supreme Being who loves justice and charity and whom all must obey in order to be saved, and must worship by practicing charity and justice to their neighbor." Spinoza's exoteric religion, it turns out, bears a striking resemblance to the theological doctrines concerning G.o.d, justice, and charity that Leibniz so strenuously advocates in his own work as "advantageous" and "useful" to humankind. In fact, though Spinoza himself stops short of providing the details, it would not be implausible to suggest that the central tenet of the exoteric "religion" most suitable for ensuring good behavior within Spinoza's modern ideal of a free republic might well be the principle of charity combined with the doctrine of metaphysical individualism-i.e., the belief in the sanct.i.ty of the individual-that lies at the core of all of Leibniz's thought. in which Spinoza outlines the contents of a desirable "popular religion." The essence of the creed Spinoza proposes to sell to the ma.s.ses is the belief that "there is a Supreme Being who loves justice and charity and whom all must obey in order to be saved, and must worship by practicing charity and justice to their neighbor." Spinoza's exoteric religion, it turns out, bears a striking resemblance to the theological doctrines concerning G.o.d, justice, and charity that Leibniz so strenuously advocates in his own work as "advantageous" and "useful" to humankind. In fact, though Spinoza himself stops short of providing the details, it would not be implausible to suggest that the central tenet of the exoteric "religion" most suitable for ensuring good behavior within Spinoza's modern ideal of a free republic might well be the principle of charity combined with the doctrine of metaphysical individualism-i.e., the belief in the sanct.i.ty of the individual-that lies at the core of all of Leibniz's thought.

Behind the unexpected exoteric parallels, too, one may glimpse some further, esoteric links between the two philosophers who first exchanged letters in the autumn of 1671. Leibniz's very way of thinking-in particular, his unalterable commitment to the guidance of reason-compelled him to embrace some of the radical notions first expressed in an oblique way in the Tractatus Tractatus. In May 1671-the same month in which he informed Professor Graevius that he had read Spinoza's deplorable book-Leibniz penned a thoughtful letter to a friend named Magnus Wedderkopf concerning the nature of G.o.d. If we accept that G.o.d is omniscient and omnipotent, he writes, then we are bound to conclude that G.o.d "decides everything," that is, that he is "the absolute author of all." In the book Leibniz had just finished reading, Spinoza writes that "whatever occurs does so through G.o.d's...eternal decree" and that as a result "Nature observes a fixed and immutable order" and "nothing happens in Nature that does not follow from her laws."

In thinking along such lines, Leibniz recognizes that he now faces a "hard conclusion": He must acknowledge that the sins of a sinner-he names Pontius Pilate-are ultimately attributable to G.o.d: "For it is necessary to refer everything to some reason, and we cannot stop until we have arrived at a first cause-or it must be admitted that something can exist without a reason for its existence, and this admission destroys the demonstration of the existence of G.o.d and of many philosophical theorems." There is no clearer statement of one of Leibniz's core commitments: the world must be reasonable reasonable, that is, everything must have a reason, and even G.o.d must partic.i.p.ate in this chain of reasons. The principle of sufficient reason binds everything together in a chain of necessity; its iron grip must begin with G.o.d and include even all those things we call evil, too.

But the same commitment to reason, understood in a certain way, is the very foundation of Spinoza's philosophy, too. The challenge of showing that his own conception of G.o.d does not not lead directly to Spinozism would come to dominate all of Leibniz's mature philosophy. Even in his letter to Wedderkopf, he indicates an awareness of the danger he courts. In the closing paragraph he warns his friend: "But this is said to you; I should not like to have it get abroad. For not even the most accurate remarks are understood by everyone." Many years later, perhaps fearing that his earlier remarks might be too well understood, Leibniz took the trouble to dig up the letter and scrawl in the margins: "I later corrected this." lead directly to Spinozism would come to dominate all of Leibniz's mature philosophy. Even in his letter to Wedderkopf, he indicates an awareness of the danger he courts. In the closing paragraph he warns his friend: "But this is said to you; I should not like to have it get abroad. For not even the most accurate remarks are understood by everyone." Many years later, perhaps fearing that his earlier remarks might be too well understood, Leibniz took the trouble to dig up the letter and scrawl in the margins: "I later corrected this."

Leibniz spent his life trying to correct the error, yet he never quite erased the suspicion that he was just showing the pretty side of some hideous ideas borrowed from another. To be sure, it would be naive to imagine that Leibniz and Spinoza fell neatly into putative roles as, respectively, the exoteric and esoteric philosophers of modernity. But, even in the days of their first exchange, there was already at least a hint of the possibility that, far from being pure contraries, Leibniz and Spinoza were two very different faces of the same philosophical coin, always looking in the opposite directions as they spin through the air, yet always landing in the same place.

LEIBNIZ'S BEHAVIOR AROUND the time of his first contact with Spinoza inevitably raises a question about the extent of his duplicity. That Leibniz was practiced in deceit and manipulation seems undeniable. When he praised the the time of his first contact with Spinoza inevitably raises a question about the extent of his duplicity. That Leibniz was practiced in deceit and manipulation seems undeniable. When he praised the Tractatus Tractatus to Spinoza and d.a.m.ned it to Arnauld, he must have been lying to someone. Was he pathological? to Spinoza and d.a.m.ned it to Arnauld, he must have been lying to someone. Was he pathological?

Leibniz is almost unequaled among the great philosophers of western history in the degree of mistrust that he has inspired. Some historians have concluded that he was indeed a scoundrel-a self-serving careerist masquerading as one of humanity's great benefactors. Bertrand Russell, for example, accuses him of debasing his genius in the quest for "cheap popularity." Eike Hirsch's recent biography opens with a depressing confession: "The more I got to know Leibniz, the more he seemed to me all-too-human, and I quarreled with him. For he often struck me as boastful, sometimes downright petty, and at those times he seemed to me to be driven by ambition or even addicted to money and t.i.tles." The suspicions have afflicted not just historians, but some of the philosopher's contemporaries, too. Leibniz had a talent for making enemies. Many (though certainly not all) of his peers thought there was something sneaky about the man.

In recent times, however, a phalanx of Leibniz scholars has risen to the philosopher's defense, explicitly rejecting the portrait drawn by Russell and others. The same biographer who laments Leibniz's cra.s.s ambition, for example, claims to see in his "weaknesses" a way to know his "greatness" as a "visionary of the truth." What Russell describes as pandering the scholar Christia Mercer now labels "the rhetoric of attraction"-that is, the n.o.ble effort to adjust one's message to one's listeners' needs and abilities so as to "attract" them to the correct view. "It is always risky to speculate on motives," concludes the scholar Nicholas Rescher, "but in my own mind there is no doubt that the aspirations which actuated [Leibniz] were, in the main, not those of selfishness but of public spirit."

Guessing motives, however, is not just risky, as Rescher says; in this case, it may miss the more interesting point. With Leibniz, there were always ulterior motives. He almost never made explicit all of the reasons for any of his actions. The aspiration to promote the general good; the desire to be seen to promote the general good; the quest for truth; the yearning for recognition; the love of money and t.i.tles; compet.i.tive rivalry; and sheer, untrammeled curiosity-all of these impulses and others typically shuffled around in the background of whatever it was that Leibniz said he was doing at any one point in time. Behind some of his apparently selfish motives one may often discover some public-spirited ones; and the inverse, unfortunately, is also true. And yet, as one peels back each layer of purposivity to arrive at the next, the suspicion grows that the process will never end-that there is no self-consistent package of intentions that explains the complex totality of Leibniz's behavior. The truly disconcerting prospect is that, at the end of the day, one will find not a "mean" spirit, but no spirit at all.

The alarming fact about Leibniz is not that he did not always tell the truth, but that he was, in a certain sense, const.i.tutionally-or perhaps metaphysically-incapable of telling the truth. In his handling of his first contact with Spinoza, to cite the most pressing example, what we observe is not straightforward duplicity, but a much more complex phenomenon that deserves the name "multiplicity"-that is, showing a variety of related but mutually incompatible faces, none of which seems to enjoy the privilege of being entirely "true" or entirely "false." From Leibniz's multidirectional correspondence on the subject of Spinoza, we may conclude neither that he was an anti-Spinozist intending to lure the sage of The Hague into a trap, nor that he was a crypto-Spinozist who concealed his true ident.i.ty from his orthodox colleagues. Rather, he was-always to some degree, depending on the listener, the context, and the particular purposes in play-a subtle and indeterminate mixture of both. As Lewis White Beck has said, he was "all things to all men" but the price paid for such omnidexterity was that he was no one thing to everybody.

Leibniz's apparent corelessness stands for a fundamental philosophical problem, a quandary that reaches to the foundations of his system of philosophy. In the metaphysics he later presented to the world, Leibniz claimed that the one thing of which we can all be certain is the unity, permanence, immateriality, and absolute immunity to outside influence of the individual mind. In identifying the mind as a "monad"-the Greek word for "unity"-he positioned himself in direct opposition to Spinoza, whose allegedly materialist philosophy of mind he adamantly rejected. And yet, the philosopher who made the unity of the individual the fundamental principle of the universe was himself incomparably fragmented, multiplicitous, exposed to the influence of others, and impossible to pin down. How could a monad be so multifarious, not to say nefarious?

AT THE SAME time that he was juggling his many perspectives on the Spinoza affair, the mult.i.tasking Leibniz was also energetically pushing the Egypt Plan toward its logical conclusion. On January 20, 1672, Baron von Boineburg sent a letter to Arnauld's nephew Pomponne, the French foreign minister, expressing his desire to consult with Louis XIV in person concerning a secret proposal of gravest consequence. The real author of the letter, of course, was Leibniz. Taking care not to reveal his mysterious plan, the writer teases the French sovereign with a list of twenty-two incredible advantages that he would gain from said plan. (For example: the plan will make Louis the "master of the seas" and it will please both churches and all nations in Europe, with the notable exception of the abominable Dutch.) time that he was juggling his many perspectives on the Spinoza affair, the mult.i.tasking Leibniz was also energetically pushing the Egypt Plan toward its logical conclusion. On January 20, 1672, Baron von Boineburg sent a letter to Arnauld's nephew Pomponne, the French foreign minister, expressing his desire to consult with Louis XIV in person concerning a secret proposal of gravest consequence. The real author of the letter, of course, was Leibniz. Taking care not to reveal his mysterious plan, the writer teases the French sovereign with a list of twenty-two incredible advantages that he would gain from said plan. (For example: the plan will make Louis the "master of the seas" and it will please both churches and all nations in Europe, with the notable exception of the abominable Dutch.) On February 12, the bemused Pomponne sent back an equally vague expression of possible interest in whatever it was that was preoccupying the Germans.

No more encouragement was required. On March 4, Boineburg let the Elector of Mainz know that he was sending Leibniz to Paris. Boineburg himself would stay behind to attend to some other matters. The youthful privy counselor of justice immediately made preparations for his top secret mission to the French capital.

On the morning of March 19, having dispatched the last of his initial flurry of letters on the Spinoza affair just eleven days previously, Leibniz hastened for the waiting carriage. The preparations for the journey were made in such secrecy that his friends and family were left uninformed of his plans to leave. Only courtiers of the highest rank knew of the official purpose of his mission. And even they might have been surprised to learn of his unofficial agenda: to storm the citadel of the republic of letters.

Just before leaving, Leibniz had the chance the read the last letter from his sister, Anna Catharina, who had died only weeks previously. In this note, she warned her brother that unsavory rumors about him were circulating in Leipzig. People were saying that he was planning some kind of treachery against the Lutherans. Or maybe he was a spy in the employ of some foreign king. Dark actors in Mainz were on to him, the rumormongers whispered. From the other side of the grave, Anna Catharina fretted that his enemies were plotting to get her brother out of the way with poison.

None of it had any basis in fact, of course-at least, so far as we know. But it is perhaps less surprising than one might have hoped that, as his carriage lurched down the road to Paris, the young man from Leipzig should have been trailing the cloud of suspicions that seemed to follow him wherever he went.

8.

Friends of Friends The air was sweeter in The Hague than in Amsterdam, or so Spinoza maintained. Dominated by the Royal Palace that still occupies its center, the nominal capital of the United Provinces of the Netherlands was a small, wealthy, and sophisticated town of 30,000 inhabitants who, then as today, were better known for their political, military, and bureaucratic connections than their commercial ac.u.men. The English traveler Edward Browne ranked it as "one of the two greatest villages, or unwalled places, in Europe." Samuel Pepys, who picked up a number of paintings at discount Dutch prices on his visit in 1660, remarked that "this is a most neat place in all respects." The ladies dressed especially well, he noted with pleasure, and just about everybody spoke French.

Spinoza lived in The Hague for the final six years of his life, laboring over his Ethics Ethics, tending to the lung complaint that was in all likelihood aggravated by the gla.s.s dust billowing from his lens-grinding lathe, and fending off the threats that inevitably came the way of a rebel living in plain view. Spinoza's newfound notoriety brought about some somber realignments in the circle of his friendships. A number of his old friends deserted him or were killed in action-casualties in one way or another of the revolution being fought around the author of the Tractatus Tractatus. New friends came his way, some of whom soon showed that were not entirely deserving of his trust. Among the new companions were the two individuals who ultimately engineered his encounter with Leibniz in 1676.

IF SPINOZA CHERISHED any hopes for increased toleration in the United Provinces as a result of the publication of his treatise on the liberty of philosophizing, those hopes were soon crushed by Louis XIV's armies. The French invasion of Holland in 1672 was a typically gory affair, spreading death and starvation across the Low Countries (not to mention large volumes of muddy seawater, thanks to the use of dikes as defense). any hopes for increased toleration in the United Provinces as a result of the publication of his treatise on the liberty of philosophizing, those hopes were soon crushed by Louis XIV's armies. The French invasion of Holland in 1672 was a typically gory affair, spreading death and starvation across the Low Countries (not to mention large volumes of muddy seawater, thanks to the use of dikes as defense).

In the face of the French onslaught, the Dutch managed to keep their country; but they were not so fortunate with respect to their republic. The mult.i.tudes placed the blame for Louis XIV's heinous act of war on the leaders of the Republic, Johann de Witt, and his brother Cornelis, whom they accused (quite unjustly) of conspiring with the French in the plunder of their land. On an August afternoon in 1672, a surly mob cornered the brothers in the fortress in the center of The Hague. The rabble shot the door down, dragged the de Witts into the street, stripped them naked, clubbed, stabbed, and bit them, hung their (by now hopefully dead) bodies upside down, and hacked them into "two-penny pieces," according to the report of a visiting English sailor. Some of the bits of flesh were roasted and served as a treat for the rebellious populace; others were sold as souvenirs. William of Orange-the leader of the royal house that had waited in limbo during the years of the Republic-a.s.sumed the powers of a true monarch, and the Dutch golden age began its inevitable slide into the history books.

The event almost cost Spinoza his life, too, if Leibniz is to be believed. In one of the precious few comments he later made concerning their meeting in The Hague, Leibniz preserves the story: "He told me that on the day of the de Witt ma.s.sacre, he was moved to go out in the night and put up a paper somewhere near the site of the murders saying: ultimi barbarorum ultimi barbarorum [the last of the barbarians]. But his landlord locked him in the house to prevent him from leaving, for otherwise he would have risked being ripped to shreds." The implication that Spinoza believed that he (or at least his Latin placards) had a concrete role to play in the political affairs of the day seems to be confirmed by his decision to accept the invitation of Le Grand Conde, Prince Louis II of Bourbon, the leader of the French expeditionary force, to visit him at his temporary headquarters in Utrecht in 1673. [the last of the barbarians]. But his landlord locked him in the house to prevent him from leaving, for otherwise he would have risked being ripped to shreds." The implication that Spinoza believed that he (or at least his Latin placards) had a concrete role to play in the political affairs of the day seems to be confirmed by his decision to accept the invitation of Le Grand Conde, Prince Louis II of Bourbon, the leader of the French expeditionary force, to visit him at his temporary headquarters in Utrecht in 1673.

Notwithstanding the fact that he was spending most of his time crushing unarmed peasant villages, the great Conde was apparently rather liberal on philosophical matters. Unfortunately, by the time Spinoza arrived in Utrecht, the general had been called away on business, so the philosopher whiled away three weeks in the company of some of his advisers and other intellectuals of the town. Among those he met was Professor Johann Georg Graevius-the same man who, two years earlier, had denounced the Tractatus Tractatus to Leibniz as "a most pestilent book." Graevius apparently got along quite well with the atheist Jew, and indeed Spinoza's extant correspondence includes a brief letter in which the philosopher reminds his newfound friend to return a borrowed Cartesian ma.n.u.script. Yet, only a few more years would pa.s.s before Graevius would denounce Spinoza to Leibniz in still more vicious terms. to Leibniz as "a most pestilent book." Graevius apparently got along quite well with the atheist Jew, and indeed Spinoza's extant correspondence includes a brief letter in which the philosopher reminds his newfound friend to return a borrowed Cartesian ma.n.u.script. Yet, only a few more years would pa.s.s before Graevius would denounce Spinoza to Leibniz in still more vicious terms.

In Utrecht the visiting heretic was also seen chatting amiably with the Conde's aide Colonel Stouppe. Yet this same Stouppe had just published The Religion of the Dutch The Religion of the Dutch, a book in which he laments the decline of religious observance in the Netherlands and cites as a particular outrage the fact that the Dutch have tolerated the existence of one Spinoza-"a very bad Jew and hardly a better Christian" whose work "destroys the foundations of all religions."

It is with friends such as Graevius and Stouppe in mind, presumably, that Lucas writes: "since there is nothing so deceitful as the heart of man, it appeared subsequently that most of these friendships were feigned, those who were most indebted to him having treated him...in the most ungrateful manner that one can imagine." Spinoza clearly had a talent for attracting false friends along with true ones-a fact that surely testifies to a certain naivete or ingenuousness on his part.

Upon Spinoza's return to The Hague, an angry mob gathered outside his lodgings on the Paviljoensgracht. The vigilantes-presumably the same group responsible for the grisly de Witt barbecue-clamored that Spinoza was guilty of treachery in his efforts to meet with the French general.

"Fear nothing on my account," the unruffled philosopher reportedly told his fretful landlord. "There are people enough, and even some of the most considerable persons of state, who know very well why I went to Utrecht." Unfortunately, the persons in question left no record on the matter, and so we have no very clear idea why the philosopher went to Utrecht in the first place. In any case, Spinoza was spared a popular grilling, and the affair ended well enough.

Even as he acquired false friends, Spinoza lost a true one. In 1674 news arrived from Paris of the tragic end of his first mentor, Frans van den Enden. Three years earlier, the philosopher's former schoolmaster had moved to the French capital, claiming, quite improbably, that he had been offered a position as medical counselor to Louis XIV. In fact, once in Paris, van den Enden had joined in a conspiracy to incite a rebellion in the northern regions of France, in hopes of establishing a democratic republic there with liberty, justice, and free education for all. The notorious advocate of free love had decided to put his (and in some sense Spinoza's) radical political theory into practice. The Chevalier de Rohan-a n.o.bleman and war veteran with a confusing record of alternately opposing and supporting Louis XIV-a.s.sumed the leadership of the rebellion, and van den Enden became its chief ideologist.

On the evening of September 17, 1674, Frans arrived back in Paris from a covert journey to Brussels, where he had attempted to secure Spanish support for the uprising. He was just sitting down to dinner when he was told that the plot had been discovered. The Chevalier de Rohan had been arrested in Versailles six days previously, in the middle of a church service. It seems that one of van den Enden's Latin students, having noticed strange comings and goings from the schoolmaster's offices, had alerted the government to the conspiracy. Leaving his hot dinner on the table, Frans rushed off into the night, one step ahead of the king's police. The next morning, however, the police caught up with him on the outskirts of Paris and hauled him off to the Bastille.

The conspirators were allowed to stand trial, but the verdict was a foregone conclusion. Louis XIV himself oversaw the investigation, in which few techniques of interrogation were left untried. At four o'clock in the afternoon of a November day in 1674, in the inner courtyard of the Bastille, a crowd watched with quiet satisfaction as a gang of n.o.ble men and women were beheaded, one after the other. The last in line was Frans van den Enden. As a foreigner and a commoner, he was deemed unfit for the ax. So he was hanged.

Among those who followed the van den Enden case was Leibniz. Even as he was plotting against the state, as it happens, the radical schoolmaster had taken to running a salon of sorts on behalf of the chattering cla.s.ses. One of his intellectual guests, surprisingly, was the theologian Antoine Arnauld; another, perhaps less surprisingly, was the omnipresent Leibniz, who expressed some resentment at Frans's unwonted success in attracting attention from the great Arnauld. In his later Theodicy Theodicy, the German philosopher seems to greet the news of Frans's end with a knowing shrug.

The tragic fate of van den Enden cannot but have reinforced the message conveyed by the mob that greeted Spinoza on his return from Utrecht in the previous year: that he should exercise extreme caution in all of his dealings with France. And this, in turn, may further help to explain the nature of the reception he gave Leibniz when the latter attempted to renew from Paris the exchange that began in 1671. Indeed, it seems unlikely that Spinoza would ever have opened his doors for Leibniz, had it not been for the acquisition of a new friend.

Tall, aristocratic, arrogant, willful, and p.r.i.c.kly, Walther Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus was a brilliant mathematician with a talent for freewheeling metaphysical speculation and a desire to stay away from home for as long as possible. The son of a count, Walther manifested his intellectual skills and taste for adventure early in life, and so in 1668, at the age of seventeen, he was sent to Holland to study at the renowned University of Leiden. When Louis XIV launched his invasion of Holland in 1672, the young German enlisted with the Dutch in their fight for liberation. He rose rapidly in the ranks and distinguished himself in battle. When the hostilities ceased two years later, he returned to the university, where he studied mathematics, developed a fascination with Descartes and his philosophy, and formed an a.s.sociation with Georg Hermann Schuller, a young medical student.

Little is known about Schuller, and almost none of it is good. He called himself a doctor, though there is no evidence that he completed his studies. From the surviving correspondence it seems that he was a jack of several languages and the master of none; and he proved to be skilled chiefly in the art of spending other people's money, usually in pursuit of ill-advised alchemical schemes. Pieter van Gent, a scholar who shared his lodgings with Schuller for a time, described him to Tschirnhaus as a "good-for-nothing." "If only he had not deceived his girlfriend so shamefully!" van Gent added, regretfully failing to provide us with further detail. One of Leibniz's friends in Germany advised the courtier: "Above all, confide nothing in Dr. Schuller.... He cannot keep his mouth shut. With his prattle he has brought me to the brink of the greatest misfortune." Another complained that Schuller "was quite a nuisance to me and to others, with his false processes." The "false processes" in question, of course, were alchemical ones. Leibniz, however, failed to heed the advice of his friends. He took up a bizarre correspondence with Schuller, totaling sixty-six letters, many of which concerned money that the philosopher unwisely invested in the good doctor's surefire ideas for making gold.

But the important fact for the moment is that Schuller was an enthusiastic-if not particularly capable or scrupulous-admirer of Spinoza. Through Schuller, Tschirnhaus fell under the spell of the philosopher of The Hague. He studied Spinoza's available writings and wrote to the philosopher himself with penetrating questions on the finer points of his doctrines. By most scholars' accounts, their exchanges are some of the most fruitful in Spinoza's extant correspondence. In late 1674, Tschirnhaus traveled to The Hague and met with the master in person. The meeting was evidently a great success, for, in a sure sign of trust and respect, Spinoza rewarded his youthful acolyte with ma.n.u.script copies of some of his unpublished writings-including at least an extract of the Ethics Ethics. However, Spinoza requested that Tschirnhaus promise to reveal the secret writings to no one without his express consent.

That Tschirnhaus was a seeker of truth with genuine talent in his own right is clear; whether he was a man of his word, on the other hand, is rather more debatable. The major work of philosophy he produced in later life, Medicina Mentis et Corporis Medicina Mentis et Corporis, betrays a considerable influence from Spinoza; but the author nowhere acknowledges the debt. When Christian Thomasius, the son of Leibniz's university mentor, leveled the heinous charge of Spinozism against him, Tschirnhaus went so far as to claim that he had never met Spinoza-a fact that, unfortunately, was directly contradicted by the letters published in Spinoza's posthumous works. To this deceit the wayward count added what must count as an exquisitely awful defense: "Even if I were the follower of a philosopher who is Jewish, that is of no importance, since almost all the Scholastics were committed to Aristotle, who certainly was not a Christian." As in his mathematics, where he tended to favor proof through the brute power of algebraic computation, Tschirnhaus was somewhat lacking in the remarkable talent for generalization, synthesis, and, above all, finesse with which Leibniz was so amply endowed.

In early 1675, with Spinoza's thoughts in his head and Spinoza's ma.n.u.scripts in his valise, Tschirnhaus left Holland on a voyage of discovery that would last many years and take him through England, France, and Italy. He longed to see the world; and he was determined to avoid returning to Germany, where he feared that his father would force him to marry and settle down into the dreary life of a country squire.

His first stop was London. Presumably on Spinoza's advice, and possibly with his letter of recommendation, he called on Henry Oldenburg. When Tschirnhaus sat down with Spinoza's old friend in the dowdy offices in Gresham College, however, he discovered to his dismay that the secretary of the Royal Society had formed a "queer impression" of Spinoza's character. Having spent a few months in the Tower of London for political offenses in 1667, it seems, Oldenburg was a frightened man. With his natural conservatism stiffened by application of the rod, he now viewed Spinoza as possibly evil and in any event dangerous to know.

With all the enthusiasm of a true believer, Tschirnhaus brought Oldenburg around. He not only succeeding in dispelling the secretary's dire thoughts about Spinoza, but he even induced him "to return to a most trustworthy and favorable opinion of you, and also to hold in high esteem the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," as he reported to Spinoza via Schuller. After relating the joyful news of the rehabilitation pa.s.sed on from Tschirnhaus, Schuller injected a curious comment of his own: "In view of your directions, I did not venture to inform you of this." The implication is that Spinoza instructed Tschirnhaus not to discuss his person or his work with Oldenburg (or anybody else either, presumably). Tschirnhaus, perhaps ominously, broke his promise-though with apparently happy results in this case.

At Tschirnhaus's urging, Oldenburg picked up his plume and dashed out a note to his estranged friend in The Hague. He confessed to Spinoza that, previously, he had taken a dim view of the Tractatus: Tractatus: "At the time some things seemed to tend to me to the endangerment of religion." Now, he says, he thinks his earlier judgment was "premature." He understands that "far from intending any harm to true religion, on the contrary, you are endeavoring to commend and establish the true purpose of the Christian religion, together with the divine sublimity and excellence of a fruitful philosophy." He asks Spinoza to let him know, in strict confidence, what his future plans are for promoting his philosophical form of the Christian religion. "At the time some things seemed to tend to me to the endangerment of religion." Now, he says, he thinks his earlier judgment was "premature." He understands that "far from intending any harm to true religion, on the contrary, you are endeavoring to commend and establish the true purpose of the Christian religion, together with the divine sublimity and excellence of a fruitful philosophy." He asks Spinoza to let him know, in strict confidence, what his future plans are for promoting his philosophical form of the Christian religion.

Spinoza embraced the renewal of amicable relations, and wrote to Oldenburg to say that he intended now to publish a five-part treatise-the long awaited Ethics Ethics-which he hoped to be able to forward to him soon. Clearly, the furor over the Tractatus Tractatus and the fate of van den Enden had not dissuaded the philosopher from continuing to promulgate his explosive views. and the fate of van den Enden had not dissuaded the philosopher from continuing to promulgate his explosive views.

But it soon became apparent that this wasn't the same old Oldenburg. Ten years earlier the secretary beseeched Spinoza in the name of humanity to publish his works. Now he implores him not to publish "anything that may seem in any way to undermine the practice of religious virtue." As for Spinoza's offer to send him copies of his new book, Oldenburg says cagily, "I shall not decline to receive some copies of the said Treatise" but he insists that they be sent to him under cover to a third party. "There would be no need to mention the fact that the particular books have been forwarded to me," he adds, to drive home the point.

In late July 1675 Spinoza traveled to Amsterdam with the intention of overseeing the publication of his Ethics Ethics. In his next letter to Oldenburg, he tells the story best himself: While I was engaged in this business, a rumor became widespread that a certain book of mine about G.o.d was in the press, and in it I endeavor to show that there is no G.o.d. This rumor found credence with many. So, certain theologians, who may have started this rumor, seized the opportunity to complain of me before the Prince and the Magistrates. Moreover, the stupid Cartesians, in order to remove this suspicion from themselves because they are thought to be on my side, ceased not to denounce everywhere my opinions and my writings, and still continue to do so. Having gathered this from several trustworthy men who also declared that the theologians were everywhere plotting against me, I decided to postpone the publication until I should see how matters would turn out, intending to let you know what course I would then pursue. But the situation seems to worsen day by day, and I am not sure what to do about it.

Spinoza's concerns, as it happens, were well founded. Church records in The Hague from the summer of 1675 indicate that the local minister was under orders to "work to discover exactly as possible the state of affairs regarding [Spinoza], his teaching and its propagation." One theologian of the time sent a letter to one of his colleagues, warning that Spinoza intended to publish another book "even more dangerous than the first" and urging that they take steps "to make sure this book does not get published."

While in Amsterdam, Spinoza joined some friends for a private dinner party. Among the guests was an acquaintance of an acquaintance named Philip Limborch, a scholar and a theologian. Limborch had many friends among the enlightened folk of the city, but he was himself congenitally pious and conservative in his politics. Ominously, he was already on record identifying Spinoza as the sp.a.w.n of Satan.

Limborch was shocked to find himself seated across the table from the great unbeliever. During the benediction before the meal, he later recounted with horror, Spinoza "showed his irreligious character by summoning gestures by which he apparently wished to demonstrate to those of us who were praying to G.o.d the stupidity of what we were doing."

What gestures did Spinoza make? Did he roll his eyes during prayer? Or did Limborch concoct the event out of his own anxieties, reading sacrilege into an absentminded yawn or naturally drooping eyelids?

In any case, two things are certain. First, this was one dinner invitation Spinoza should never have accepted. Evidently, he misjudged the nature of his mealtime companions, just as he had misjudged Stouppe, Graevius, the grain merchant Blijenburgh, and others before. Second, the event, whether real or imagined, left a permanent dent in Limborch's mind. The scandalized prelate told the story here six years after the dinner party from h.e.l.l, and then he repeated it to a visitor twenty-eight years on. Once again, Spinoza's expression (or possibly his mere existence) touched off an avalanche of hatred.

Spinoza's relationship with Oldenburg, too, was now headed for a moment of truth. In the same letter in which he related the story of his misadventures in trying to publish the Ethics Ethics, Spinoza thanked Oldenburg for his "friendly warning" not to publish anything outre and asked him to name which of his doctrines offend against the practice of religious virtue. He also invited his correspondent to identify any particularly obnoxious pa.s.sages in the Tractatus Tractatus. It is almost incredible that Spinoza should have been unclear about the matter: a ravenous pack of theologians, after all, had just finished telling him what they thought was wrong with his work. Nonetheless, Oldenburg obliged. The worst pa.s.sages, he replied, are those where Spinoza seems to confuse G.o.d with Nature.

"I see at last what it was that you urged me not to publish," Spinoza responds, as though just having experienced a revelation. However, he observes, "this is the princ.i.p.al basis of all of the contents of the treatise which I had intended to issue." It is now December 1675-fourteen years and twice as many letters after they first met in the garden of the cottage in Rijnsburg. Spinoza at last sees that Oldenburg never properly understood the implications of the central doctrine of his philosophical system, and that now that he does so, he is utterly appalled-in short, that Oldenburg is not exactly a "man of reason."

All that remains is for the two old friends to get clear about the fact that Spinoza, for his part, isn't much of a Christian, which they do. Oldenburg asks for clarification of Spinoza's views on the Resurrection. Spinoza, in his final letter to Oldenburg, replies: "the death and burial of Christ I accept literally, but his resurrection I understand in an allegorical sense." Oldenburg almost shrieks back with alarm: "To seek to turn all this into an allegory is the same as if one were to set about destroying the entire truth of Gospel history." Oldenburg finally gets the picture, too.

There the surviving correspondence ends. It reads, with hindsight, as something of an inversion of Spinoza's ideals concerning friendship among men of reason. For it is clear that the two men developed an intimate bond; but this bond was an emotional and imaginative one, based on a radical misperception of each other's character and motives rather than on a shared philosophy of reason. And yet the glue of friendship had still not come unstuck. One more letter was to issue from Oldenburg's plume. But he would make the mistake of entrusting it to Leibniz for personal delivery.

While Spinoza's bond with Oldenburg approached its poignant denouement, the ever loyal Tschirnhaus was packing his bags to leave London for Paris, the next stop on his voyage of discovery. He had apparently created a highly favorable impression with Oldenburg and friends at the Royal Society. As the promising mathematician was getting ready to depart, Oldenburg approached him and told him of another young German now residing in Paris, an able geometer and a fellow member of the Royal Society, with whom perhaps Tschirnhaus would have much to discuss. So Tschirnhaus sailed across the Channel, bearing Spinoza's secret ma.n.u.scripts in one hand and a letter of introduction to Leibniz in the other.

9.

Leibniz in Love At about the same age in which Spinoza entered the darkest part of his dark period, Leibniz arrived in the City of Light. After a b.u.mpy, twelve-day ride across the French countryside, he stepped out of his carriage and fell in love at first sight-with Paris. The four years he resided on the banks of the Seine were his glory years, the time in which he made his most lasting mathematical and philosophical discoveries. In the gilded salons of the French capital he found his fashion sense and developed his signature personal style, to which he would cling long after it had fallen out of favor. The story of Leibniz in Paris offers the vicarious thrill of seeing one dazzled by life and desperately in love with the future; but it strikes a melancholy note, too, as it inevitably comes to an end, leaving the jilted lover always wanting more.

Paris came of age in the seventeenth century. After stagnating through the Middle Ages, the city tripled in land area and doubled in population to half a million during the course of the Grand Siecle. Most of the growth took place in the second half of the century, after Louis XIV ascended the throne. Paris under the Sun King had the spirit of a boomtown: "Everything here is going from good to better, regardless of where one turns; Paris was never so fine or stately as today," gushed one of Leibniz's correspondents, the famous theater critic Samuel Chappuzeau. Dr. Martin Lister, an English traveler, said in 1698 that Paris was "a new City within this forty years." Voltaire later remarked "there is little that was not either re-established or created in [Louis XIV's] time."

"Vanity," "opulence," and "elegance" are the words that recur most frequently in seventeenth-century travelers' descriptions of the French capital. Dr. Lister-his awe overwhelming any moral reservations-called Paris a "whirlpool of luxury." Aside from the new mansions, palaces, gardens, and plazas, visitors could feast their eyes on a flock of white swans, imported at considerable expense by Louis himself in order to bring grace and beauty to the slimy banks of the Seine.

Among the most visible (and audible) signs of the new wealth were the carriages. In 1594, there were eight carriages in all Paris, according to one count. By the end of the seventeenth century, there were as many as twenty thousand. The new vehicles were icons of progress not just in number but in quality. Voltaire enthused that the gla.s.s windows and new suspension systems of modern carriages rendered the earlier models obsolete. Among "people of quality," the right kind of carriage became a coveted status symbol. The new test of eligibility for a marriageable male was: What kind of carriage does he drive?

While the King thought of improving the city by means of swans, monuments, and other gestures redolent of the Middle Ages, his more forward-thinking deputies, led by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, began to look at the challenges of urban planning in a modern way. They doubled the number of public water fountains and refurbished the ailing sewers. To improve circulation on the city's congested streets, they invested heavily in pavement, and on the newly hardened thoroughfares they inaugurated a novel form of public transport: the public carriage, or omnibus. In the year before Leibniz's arrival, the munic.i.p.al authorities also began installing street lamps, bringing light and security into the night. For perhaps the first time in the modern era, a cadre of professionals took a comprehensive approach to the matters of sanitation, water supply, transportation, security, health, education, and aesthetics. The historian Pierre Lavedan dates the start of the urban sciences from seventeenth-century Paris.

Despite the signs of progress, there was no tidy escape from the Middle Ages. Henri Sauval, a chronicler of the times, said that, although no city was better paved than Paris, none was muddier. This was no ordinary mud: it was "black, stinking, of an intolerable odor to strangers," and easily detectible at a distance of ten miles. After every rain-and often, inexplicably, without any aid from the heavens at all-the malodorous mire would ooze up from the gutters and claim the city streets, paralyzing carriages and pedestrians alike. "It clings like the mud of Paris," was the common way of describing anything that frustrated all efforts at eradication.

Paris stank, too, and not just on account of the high sulfur content of its inescapable mud. The pig farms, slaughterhouses, starch factories, and even ill-tended graveyards in the city center all contributed to the fumes. It cannot have helped that many Parisians were in the habit of emptying their chamber pots out the window-a practice as illegal as it was universal, for, as one police source complained, it occurred mainly at night "at a time when one cannot readily see from whence came the contravention."

In the tumultuous streets of Paris in 1672, an omniscient historical observer might well have detected the silent forces at work that were setting the stage for a tremendous clash between the medieval world and the modern world, a conflict that would radically transform the context within which human experience would take place. Such forces, however, were not always in the forefront of consciousness at the time, not even among the new breed of itinerant diplomat-philosophers, who nonetheless must be numbered among the most important agents of change.

Leibniz settled on the Left Bank, in the Faubourg St. Germain, home to the hard core of Paris's new cla.s.s of theatergoers. During his four years in Paris, he lived in guesthouses of the sort patronized mainly by young men from abroad-businessmen, diplomats, students, and other people of quality in search of favor and fortune. The Hotel des Romains on the rue Ste. Margarite, the philosopher's residence for about two years, had a reputation as a German colony.