Leibniz goes on to add that he has put these reflections in the form of a dialogue that they may be more attractive; has written them in the popular language, rather than in Latin, that they may reach as wide a circle as the work of Locke; and that he hopes to publish them soon, as Locke is already an old man, and he wishes to get them before the public while Locke may still reply.
But unfortunately this last hope was destined to remain unrealized. Before the work of revision was accomplished, Locke died. Leibniz, in a letter written in 1714, alludes to his controversy with Locke as follows: "I do not like the thought of publishing refutations of authors who are dead. These should appear during their life, and be communicated to them." Then, referring to his earlier comments, he says: "A few remarks escaped me, I hardly know how, and were taken to England. Mr. Locke, having seen them, spoke of them slightingly in a letter to Molineux. I am not astonished at it. We were somewhat too far apart in principle, and that which I suggested seemed paradoxical to him." Leibniz, according to his conviction here expressed, never published his "Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain." Schaarschmidt remarks that another reason may have restrained him, in that he did not wish to carry on too many controversies at once with the English people. He had two on his hands then,--one with the Newtonians regarding the infinitesimal calculus; the other with Bishop Clarke regarding the nature of God, of time and space, of freedom, and cognate subjects. However, in 1765, almost fifty years after the death of Leibniz, his critique upon Locke finally appeared.
It is somewhat significant that one whose tendency was conciliatory, who was eminently what the Germans delight to call him, a "mediator," attempting to unite the varied truths which he found scattered in opposed systems, should have had so much of his work called forth by controversy. Aside from the cases just mentioned, his other chief work, the Theodicy, is, in form, a reply to Bayle. Many of his minor pieces are replies to criticism or are developments of his own thought with critical reference to Descartes, Malebranche, and others. But Leibniz has a somewhat different attitude towards his British and towards his Continental opponents. With the latter he was always in sympathy, while they in turn gave whatever he uttered a respectful hearing. Their mutual critiques begin and end in compliments. But the Englishmen found the thought of Leibniz "paradoxical" and forced. It seemed to them wildly speculative, and indeed arbitrary guess-work, without any special reason for its production, and wholly unverifiable in its results. Such has been the fate of much of the best German thought since that time in the land of the descendants of Newton and Locke. But Leibniz, on the other hand, felt as if he were dealing, in philosophical matters at least, with foemen hardly worthy of his steel. Locke, he says, had subtlety and address, and a sort of _superficial_ metaphysics; but he was ignorant of the method of mathematics,--that is to say, from the standpoint of Leibniz, of the method of all science. We have already seen that he thought the examination of a work which had been the result of the continued labor of Locke was a matter for the leisure hours of his courtly visits. Indeed, he would undoubtedly have felt about it what he actually expressed regarding his controversy with Clarke,--that he engaged in it