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 to the Baron von Boineburg, and was patronized and employed by the Elector of Mentz. During his residence in the Electorate, he was much engaged in public, legal, and diplomatic labours, as well as in literary pursuits. Yet his mind was all the time pervaded by the great idea of his life. He found time to edit the Antibarbarus of the Italian Nizolius, and, besides, was active in theological controversy. The Baron, who was born in the Lutheran Church, had joined the communion of Rome, and was much interested in a scheme for the union of the Romish and Lutheran Churches. This eclectic movement was not forgotten by Leibnitz at a later period in his life.

His speculations about this time are marked by the vagueness naturally characteristic of one who had cast off the authority of others, and had not resolved a system for himself. It was the transition-period in his life, during which his recorded thoughts teem with the germs of those ideas that are found in a matured form, and in profuse variety, in the Nouveaux Essais and the Théodicée.

These years are still more marked as the period of the commencement of that literary intercourse which afterwards accumulated so enormously, and in which Leibnitz always appears in the centre of the thinking spirits of his age. It commenced, and was maintained, among others, with kindred minds in the Cartesian school—with Malebranche, the recluse author of the Recherche de la Vérité, of whom we have the interesting records that his genius lay dormant, till it was kindled