that Leibniz ever gave it, but was invented by the work’s first editor, Heinrich Kohler, who published it in a German translation under that title in 1720.

Although systematic presentation of his thought was not set down by Leibniz until two years before his death, many of its main ideas guide the course of two major pieces of writing that occupied the later period of his philosophical endeavours. The first of these was the Essays on Theodicy: Of God’s Goodness, Man’s Freedom and the Origin of Evil, which, as the work’s subtitle intimates, is concerned largely to show how the existence of a perfect God is compatible with the evil that we find in his creation and how the pre-ordained course of events that he chose to create is compatible with human freedom. This work was the only book-length work by Leibniz that was published during his lifetime (in 1710) and it arose in part out of conversations he had at the court at Hanover with the Electress Sophia (grand-daughter of James I and wife of Ernst-August of Brunswick) and her daughter Sophie Charlotte, who later became Queen of Prussia. It is a work that is in large part polemical in nature, seeking to correct theologico-philosophical errors that Leibniz found in Bayle’s influential Dictionary and in much contemporary theology and Cartesian-inspired philosophy. At the end of sections in the manuscript of the Monadology, Leibniz makes frequent reference to passages of his Theodicy so that readers should have ready access to the fuller treatment of material presented so succinctly in the later work. When one follows up these references one cannot but be astonished by the breadth and depth of Leibniz’s learning as much by the way in which argument with his theological adversaries is conducted on carefully thought through principles.

The other extensive work of Leibniz’s maturity was a commentary on Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), which had been translated into French by Pierre Coste in 1701 and had found an early and enthusiastic welcome on the continent of Europe. Leibniz presents his commentary as a dialogue between a Lockean, Philalethes, and his own spokesman, Theophilus, often setting out Philalethes’ position in Locke’s own words and commenting extensively on aspects of it that particularly interested him. Here too we find Leibniz’s rejection of much of Locke’s empiricism stemming

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