This work, originally written in the form of a letter (see n. 1) became fairly well known in the early eighteenth century because Barbeyrac translated most of it and appended it to his translation of Pufendorf's De Officio Hominis; he also provided an able defense of Pufendorf, and castigated Leibniz for not writing the definitive book on natural law which he (Leibniz) criticized Pufendorf for not writing. Though the argument in this piece is similar to that found in the Meditation on the Common Concept of Justice, pt. IV, particularly, is more rigorous than anything that Leibniz wrote on natural law, and the references to Descartes are of particular interest. Throughout the Opinion it is evident that Leibniz is really attacking Hobbes, or rather all legal positivists, as much as he is criticizing Pufendorf. (The original Latin text is to be found in vol. IV of Dutens' edition; the Barbeyrac translation is appended to the French version of Pufendorf published at Amsterdam in 1718.)

You have asked me on behalf of a friend, most eminent man, whether in my opinion the book entitled De Officio Hominis et Civis, [written] by a man long renowned for his merit, Samuel Pufendorf, is suitable as a topic of instruction for the young. I have re-examined this work, which I had not consulted for a long time, and I have ascertained that its principles suffer from no small weaknesses.

Leibniz' lecture on the Greeks as the founders of rational theology – which was delivered by Leibniz himself at an ‘Academy’ in Vienna on July 1, 1714, and which is published here through the generous permission of the Leibniz-Archiv at the Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek in Hanover – is of course interesting as evidence of the breadth of his knowledge of the history of religious ideas. But from a philosophical point of view its main interest lies (1) in elaborating Leibniz' debt to Platonism – a debt which Leibniz made clear in his published letters to the French Platonist Remond but which receives reinforcement from this 1714 lecture; (2) in showing, more particularly, that Leibniz relied on Plato (and Aristotle) in developing a concept of ‘substance’ which would remedy the defects of ‘materialism’ and ‘mechanism’ and explain the immortality of the soul ‘naturally’, without recourse to ‘miracles’ or to ‘faith’ – a soul which could be a subject of divine justice in Leibniz' ‘universal jurisprudence’, and (3) in showing what Leibniz meant when he spoke of the ‘eternal verities’ being ‘in’ the mind of God but not caused by the mind of God.

This short piece shows, perhaps more clearly than any other, how much some of Leibniz' political views remained medieval, how much force the ideas of hierarchy and natural subordination still had for him. It relates Leibniz to some of his German predecessors – particularly Althusius – and makes clear the gap which separates him from, e.g. the great English theorists of the seventeenth century. (The present translation follows the German text to be found in Guhrauer's Deutsche Schriften.)

Justice is a social duty [Tugend], or a duty which preserves society.

A society [Gemeinschaft] is a union of different men for a common purpose.

A natural society is one which is demanded by nature [so die Natur haben will].

The signs by which one can conclude that nature demands something, are that nature has given us a desire and the powers or force to fulfill it: for nature does nothing in vain.

Above all, when the matter involves a necessity or a permanent [beständigen] utility: for nature everywhere achieves the best.

The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the general and supreme happiness [Glückseligkeit].

Natural law is that which preserves or promotes natural societies.

The first natural society is between man and wife, for it is necessary to preserve the human race.

Leibniz' main purpose in writing this extremely long work, of which only a few excerpts are reproduced here, was the redefinition of the concept of sovereignty in a way which would allow the minor German princes to be treated as sovereigns in international negotiations. In his effort to weaken the idea of sovereignty, and to make it consistent with, e.g., the allegiance which a ‘sovereign’ might owe to a ‘universal’ power such as the Holy Roman Empire or (perhaps) the Papacy, Leibniz mounted an interesting attack on Hobbes – this passage is translated in full – and defended at length the value of the medieval ‘Republic of Christendom’. In the Caesarinus Fürstenerius he was attempting to maintain a delicate balance between medieval and more modern ideas. (The original Latin text is to be found in the Academy, Dutens, and Klopp editions of Leibniz' works.)

PREFACE TO THE READER (EXCERPT)

The position of the [Holy Roman] Emperor is a little more elevated than one commonly thinks; Caesar is the defender, or rather the chief, or if one prefers the secular arm of the universal Church. All Christendom forms a species of republic, in which Caesar has some authority – from which comes the name, Holy Empire, which should somehow extend as far as the Catholic Church.

This is a somewhat reduced version of the scholarly edition originally published in 1960 with a second edition in 1967, latest printing 1988. Much of the scholarly apparatus has been dropped here: the lists of books Locke had in his possession at times relevant to the composition of Two Treatises, the List of Printings, the Collation, the successive Forewords to successive printings. All these have been retained in the 1988 printing of the scholarly edition, to which those to whom final detail is important are referred.

Advantage has been taken of the appearance of the book in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series to make some alterations not yet present in the scholarly edition. The extremely small number of errors in Locke's own text have been amended, though none of them alters the sense in any respect. The Introduction, its footnotes and the footnotes to Locke's text have been quite extensively corrected, but mainly so as to take account of work done after the second edition of 1971 until the later 1970s. As far as possible, moreover, all contributions made since then which touch on the facts about the writing and publication of Locke's political work have been taken into account. The book cannot, however, claim to cover the whole body of extant scholarship on Locke's Two Treatises, and for that reason a list of suggested reading has been added before the Bibliography.

III. Among the effects of the work, such as it was, was a sort of concussion, produced by it in the sort of world it belonged to: in the world of politics, but more particularly in the world of law. More particularly still, in the higher regions; the inhabitants of which, in this as in other professions, form a sort of celestial conclave, of the secrets of which, whatsoever observation is endeavoured to be made from the subjacent low grounds, is made through a medium impregnated with awe, admiration, and conjecture.

The peep here given into its mysteries will, perhaps, be found neither uninteresting nor uninstructive: it may be assistant to the grand purposes which the work itself has for its objects: objects, which may be seen containing the germ of every thing which, on the same field, has been sown by the same hand, since. A more particular object is—the throwing light into the den of the long-robed Cacus. Cacus felt the light, and trembled.

The more extensive, and indeed all-comprehensive object is—the pointing attention to the imperfections which even at that time of day were seen swarming in the frame of the government, and to the ricketiness of the only foundations, in which, on the ground of argument, it had ever found support. No such imperfection having place but what brought profit, in some shape or other, to those among whom the power was shared,—their interest of course was, that those same imperfections should, in their whole mass, remain for ever unremoved, and therefore be, at all times, as little as possible in view.

The Meditation, together with the Opinion on the Principles of Pufendorf, is the most important large-scale writing about justice which Leibniz produced. Though it is unfinished, and though the argument somehow never becomes quite as strong as it threatens to do from time to time, it still contains a good statement of his conviction that principles of right must be of the same kind as the ‘eternal truths’ of mathematics and logic, that there is a continuum between abstaining from evil and doing good, that divine justice must be of the same kind as human justice (differing only in the degree of its perfection), that communal property is desirable but unattainable etc. There are, in addition, passages commenting on Aristotle, Filmer, Hobbes, and others, which are of some interest; and the rejection of arguments in defense of slavery was liberal for its day. The Meditation must have been written, to judge from internal evidence, in c. 1703. (The original text is to be found in Mollat's Rechtsphilosophisches aus Leibnizens ungedruckten Schriften; this version omits the word ‘I’ [je] which comes at the end of the ms. in the Hanover library, and which would have led into a longer conclusion which, for some reason, Leibniz did not write.)

To purge the science of the poison introduced into it by him and those who write as he does, I know but of one remedy; and that is by Definition, perpetual and regular definition, the grand prescription of those great physicians of the mind, Helvetius and before him Locke. Useful and legitimate definition which (not like his) explains terms less familiar by terms more familiar, terms more abstract by terms less abstract, terms with a larger assemblage of simple ideas belonging to them, by terms with an assemblage less extensive.

The reader is not to expect to see these Definitions supported by authorities. The writers we have seen hitherto, Coke, Hale, Hawkins, Wood, the list ending with our Author, very good Lawyers as Lawyers went, have been very poor philosophers. Locke (the Father of intellectual science) had not yet spoken to them, or had spoken to them in vain. It is not much wonder if he should have spoken to them in vain. Few works show greater marks of the want of these precautions than his own on Government. They were content as most men are content to ring the changes upon the words they have been used to, without knowing what they meant by them. Nothing has been, nothing will be, nothing ever can be done on the subject of Law that deserves the name of Science, till that universal precept of Locke, enforced, exemplified and particularly applied to the moral branch of science by Helvetius, be steadily pursued, ‘Define your words’.

Leibniz wrote the Manifesto during the War of the Spanish Succession to defend the rights of the House of Hapsburg to the throne of Spain, after the grandson of Louis XIV had brought Spain into the Bourbon orbit by being named King of Spain in the will of the last Hapsburg king, Charles II. In the Manifesto, Leibniz demonstrated his legal ability in a long proof of the illegality of the will of Charles II, to which he added an extremely effective, if somewhat exaggerated, account of French manners and morals, designed to prove that Spain would be ruined by the atheism and libertinism of France. This last section shows that Leibniz was a rather able (if early) sociologist, and that he perceived in 1703 some of the flaws in French society which much later writers (such as de Tocqueville) saw as the cause of the Revolution. And he anticipated Montesquieu in his dislike of the over-centralization of France since the time of Richelieu, and in his fear that the nobility had been made useless. (The present translation follows the version printed in vol. III of Foucher de Careil's edition of Leibniz; since the work is somewhat repetitious some passages, merely reenforcing arguments which are already clear, have been cut.)

Leibniz' critical remarks on the Abbé Bucquoi's Pensées sur l'Existence de Dieu – written in November 1711, between the publication of his Essais de Theodicée (1710) and his departure for the final visit to Vienna (1712) that yielded the Monadology and the Principles of Nature and Grace – are published here by generous permission of the Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Hanover.

They do not change our view of Leibniz' philosophy; but they do throw a little additional light on his doubts about Descartes' version of the ontological proof of the existence of God. They also provide an opportunity to recall some of the facts about the existence of the Abbé Bucquoi – one of the liveliest philosophical adventurers of Leibniz' day. But above all they show that Leibniz tried to discover a ‘universal’ idea of sovereignty that would work equally well in describing the sovereign perfection of God, the ‘sovereign’ perfection of geometrical figures and the (imperfect) sovereignty of mere earthly rulers. That demi-Platonic linking up of theology, geometry and politics – reminiscent of Meno, Euthyphro and Republic – constitutes half of Leibniz' practical thought; the other half is a ‘charity’ descended directly from St Paul.

Jean-Albert d'Archambaud, Comte de Bucquoi, ‘a fait du bruit’ – as the Biographie Universelle (1812) radically understates the matter – ‘par la singularité des ses aventures’.