monads, the correspondence for which so violent an hypothesis was
embraced by the Cartesians.

We have left ourselves no room to speak as we would of Leibnitz as
theosopher. It was in this character that he obtained, in the last
century, his widest fame. The work by which he is most commonly known,
by which alone he is known to many, is the "Theodicee,"--an attempt
to vindicate the goodness of God against the cavils of unbelievers.
He was one of the first to apply to this end the cardinal principle
of the Lutheran Reformation,--the liberty of reason. He was one of
the first to treat unbelief, from the side of religion, as an error
of judgment, not as rebellion against rightful authority. The latter
was and is the Romanist view. The former is the Protestant theory,
but was not then, and is not always now, the Protestant practice.
Theology then was not concerned to vindicate the reason or the
goodness of God. It gloried in his physical strength by which he
would finally crush dissenters from orthodoxy. Leibnitz knew no
authority independent of Reason, and no God but the Supreme Reason
directing Almighty Good-will. The philosophic conclusion justly
deducible from this view of God, let cavillers say what they will,
is Optimism. Accordingly, Optimism, or the doctrine of the best
possible world, is the theory of the "Theodicee." Our limits will
not permit us to analyze the argument of this remarkable work. Bunsen
says, "It necessarily failed because it was a not quite honest
compound of speculation and divinity." [31]

[Footnote 31: _Outlines of the Philos. of Univ. Hist_. Vol. I. Chap. 6.]

Few at the present day will pretend to be entirely satisfied with
its reasoning, but all who are familiar with it know it to be a