PHILOSOPHIZING in the grand style is out of fashion
nowadays, and anyone attempting to present one of the
great metaphysical systems of the past must make a
choice. He must either, without apology, present it in its
author's own sense, disregarding the shock which his
terms will give to sensitive modern ears and speaking un-
ashamedly of proofs of the existence of God and of the un-
reality of space and time, or he must translate sentences
about substances and their attributes into sentences about
subjects and their predicates, professedly factual state-
ments about the universe into statements about the logical
status of 'thing' words and 'property' words. Philoso-
phers choosing the latter course believe that everything of
importance that thinkers of the past wished to say will be
said, even though an author so interpreted may not have
known that this was what he 'really' meant. Latta, in the
Introduction to his translation of the Monadology of Leibniz
, follows the first course, and Bertrand Russell, in his
Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, largely
follows the second. In taking this course, Bertrand
Russell believes himself to be justified by a general view
about the nature and possibility, or rather the impossi-
bility, of metaphysical speculation, a view which is ex-
pressed in many modern writings. C. W. Morris in his

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