of learning in all the capitals of Europe in which scientists
and philosophers would be gathered together to exchange
ideas and help one another in their work. He even had a
scheme on which he worked at intervals all his life, for
what he called a Universal Characteristic. This was to be
a universal language in which the knowledge of the time
was to be embodied in such a form that anyone might read
off any of its parts and implications. If only monarchs
would gather together the men of learning and encourage
and support them, and if they were then able to communi-
cate directly their results to their fellows in other coun-
tries, there would be no limit to what human beings might
accomplish. Leibniz actually succeeded in getting an
Academy set up in Berlin, and worked to persuade rulers
to follow this example in the other capitals of Europe.

There is no doubt that Leibniz was genuinely eager that
men of learning in all countries should work together
and pool their knowledge. He was, then, very unfortunate
in getting himself involved in a controversy about the
authorship of his most important discovery, the infinite-
simal calculus. It was a controversy in which the principals
could not take a creditable part, and Newton was lucky
in that he had friends who were willing and able to speak
for him while he remained silent. No such friend spoke for
Leibniz, and he was forced into the ungrateful role of
someone who clamours for recognition for himself or
submits in silence to accusations of plagiarism. The best
that he could do was to become his own friend and defend
himself anonymously, speaking of himself in the third per-
son. In the Historia et Origo Calculi Differentialis, Leibniz
appears as 'our young friend', though it has been estab-
lished that he was himself the author. We can gain some
idea of the bitterness aroused by the controversy from
references in the Historia to 'certain upstarts, who, either
in ignorance of the literature of times gone by, or through

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