Queen Sophie Charlotte (1668–1705) was the daughter of the Electress Sophie of Hanover, and the wife of Friedrich I, King of Prussia. Leibniz made frequent long visits to their palace of Charlottenburg, in Berlin, and he corresponded with her when he was in Hanover or elsewhere.

Sophie Charlotte was less of a philosopher than her mother; nevertheless, she and Leibniz quite often discussed philosophical issues in their correspondence. I have selected just one extract from one of Leibniz’s letters, which is important for the implication that humans might be reborn as humans more than once.

Leibniz starts the letter with a quotation from a popular pantomime, called Harlequin, Emperor of the Moon. The quotation is ‘Always and everywhere, everything is exactly the same as it is here;’ and he uses it as a sort of text for the exposition of his own principle of the uniformity of nature, according to which (among other things) the microscopic world is just like the macroscopic world.

I have translated from the French in Gerhardt’s Philosophischen Schriften, Vol. 3.

Go to the Index to Leibniz's correspondence with Sophie Charlotte