One of the most remarkable features of the last years of Sophie Charlotte’s short life was her intense friendship with the philosopher Leibniz. But in a society which had rigid barriers between the classes and the sexes, how was it possible for such a relationship to develop, and what form did it take? In order to answer these questions, we first need to consider the background.

Leibniz, and his early relationship with Sophie Charlotte [n.1]

Leibniz was born in Leipzig in 1646. His father was a professor of moral philosophy, but he died when Leibniz was only six. Leibniz had a brilliant academic career at school and university, becoming Doctor of Laws in 1666. He decided not to accept a professorship which was offered him, and instead found a job as a legal specialist at the court of the Elector of Mainz. He remained in the Elector’s employment until the latter’s death in 1673. He had spent the last two years in Paris, supposedly trying to persuade the French to adopt a plan to invade Egypt, thus drawing their attention away from Northern Europe. In fact, he spent most of his time establishing intellectual contacts, and deepening his understanding of philosophy and mathematics, in which he had shown a keen interest at university.

He remained in Paris until 1676, when he obtained the post of librarian to Johann Friedrich, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, at Hanover. However, his brief ran much wider, and he spent much of his time on other projects, such as research into the genealogy of the Guelph family (from which the Duke was descended), political negotiations, attempts to reunify the Catholics and the Protestants, and innovative systems for draining the silver mines in the Harz mountains. In addition to all this, he continued to develop himself as a philosopher and mathematician.

Although his origins were relatively humble, he soon developed courtly manners, so that the aristocracy treated him almost as an equal He was famous for his witty conversations, he dressed fashionably, he drove round in a carriage flamboyantly painted with pink roses, and as Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans, said of him:

After the death of Johann Friedrich in 1679, Leibniz’s services were retained by Johann Friedrich’s younger brother Ernst August, who succeeded him as Duke. Ernst August and his wife Sophie were Sophie Charlotte’s parents. Leibniz soon developed a close relationship with Sophie, who was somewhat distanced from her husband. Ernst August kept a mistress in the palace, and had little interest in intellectual and cultural pursuits. She, on the other hand, was devoted to the study of theology and philosophy, and she found in Leibniz what her husband lacked. They spent long hours in conversation, and corresponded at great length when one or other of them was away from Hanover.

Leibniz and Sophie Charlotte naturally knew each other during this Hanover period; but she was only a little girl. In 1684, when she was 16, she was married to Friedrich, Elector of Brandenburg, and she went away to Berlin. However, Leibniz never lost touch with her after her departure. Sophie Charlotte paid regular extended visits to Hanover (often at carnival time), and they occasionally exchanged letters. However, the main means of communication was at second hand, through the regular correspondence between mother and daughter. Letters were generally regarded as semi-public documents, and they were passed around or copied to a smaller or larger circle of relatives or acquaintances. Sophie often reported on her discussions and correspondence with Leibniz.

Ernst August died in January 1698, and he was succeeded as Elector of Hanover by his son Georg Ludwig, who was later to become King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. Leibniz’s relations with Georg Ludwig were less close than they had been with his father. For the remaining 18 years of his life, he spent as much of his time abroad as in Hanover (much to Georg Ludwig’s annoyance), and he was constantly angling for alternative employment elsewhere, including Berlin. Of these eighteen years, more than three were made up of visits to Berlin of varying lengths, and here Sophie Charlotte played a key role.

Just before Ernst August’s death, a major change had also taken place in Berlin, namely the dismissal of the Prime Minister, Eberhardt von Danckelmann. Danckelmann had always been hostile to Hanover, and he had gone to great pains to prevent Sophie Charlotte from having any political influence. With him out of the way, Sophie Charlotte became a much more significant figure, and she was able to pursue more pro-Hanoverian policies.

Ever since his employment by the Elector of Mainz, Leibniz had had a keen interest in politics. His special concern was the weakness of the divided Protestant states in face of the far more powerful Catholic power blocks of Austria, France, and Spain. His youthful plan to divert France’s attention by a conquest of Egypt had failed. In the 1690s, the situation seemed even more precarious, especially after Augustus, Elector of Saxony, had converted to Catholicism in order to become King of Poland in 1697. For Leibniz, it was essential that the two most powerful remaining Protestant states, Prussia and Hanover, should overcome their traditional hostility, and form a solid alliance.[n.3]

However, political issues could not be disentangled from religious ones. Leibniz had always striven to promote the cause of the reunification of the whole of Christendom, and until the very end of his life, he tried to overcome the philosophical differences between Protestantism and Catholicism through his wide range of Catholic friends and correspondents. A more immediate problem was the entrenched differences between Lutheranism and Calvinism. The fact that Hanover was Lutheran and Prussia was Calvinist was an extra obstacle to their political co-operation. Over a long period, Leibniz had lengthy discussions about re-unification with influential figures such as Daniel Ernst Jablonski, the Court Chaplain at Berlin.

On the occasion of Danckelmann’s dismissal, Leibniz wrote a secret memorandum for Sophie and Sophie Charlotte. Since there was a danger of letters being intercepted, he proposed that he should act as a confidential go-between, working for improved relationships between the two courts. In order to fulfil this function, he would need to be invited to visit Berlin.[n.4] In fact, a large proportion of his surviving correspondence with both electresses is to do with political issues.

In addition to these political and religious ambitions, Leibniz had from his earliest years shared the Baconian vision that science and technology would make significant advances only through the establishment of well-funded, national scientific academies. The Royal Society in London and the French Academy of Sciences were steps in the right direction; but they were poorly funded, and they emphasised theoretical understanding at the expense of practical applications. The German states could steal a march on the rest of the world in terms of both intellectual and technological power by founding more ambitious academies with an explicitly technological mission.[n.5]

In his youth, Leibniz could only dream about these futuristic institutions, and the many plans he sketched were hardly more realistic than Bacon’s New Atlantis. Now in his fifties, he was a mature philosopher-scientist with an international reputation, and with a friendly ear at the centre of power in up-and-coming Berlin. Earlier in the decade he had written a number of memoranda and letters about the establishment of a scientific society in Berlin, and Sophie Charlotte played a major role in persuading her husband to support the venture. In 1697 Sophie Charlotte herself had suggested the building of an astronomical observatory at Lützenburg,[n.6] and Leibniz used this as basis for pushing forward his proposals for a full-scale scientific society. His proposals were eventually accepted by Friedrich, who signed the charter of the Society on 11th July 1700, and Leibniz was installed as President of the Society on the following day. For the next ten years, until he was dismissed by Friedrich, his presidency of the Society gave him an excuse for extended visits to Berlin, in addition to his negotiations for church union between Lutheran Saxony and Calvinist Prussia.

Leibniz’s personal motto was theoria cum praxi (‘theory with practice’). He applied it, not only to the mission of the Society, which was to use theoretical knowledge for technological innovation, but also to the everyday practicalities of fulfilling its mission. Above all, it needed to have a steady flow of income, which was independent of the whims of the head of state. He made a number of proposals for raising revenue for the society, which included a monopoly on the printing of calendars (on the occasion of the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1700), a state silk industry, a publishing house, a tax on spirits, a lottery, and a standards institute to oversee the introduction of a metric system of weights and measures. Only the first two proposals were accepted, and the idea of silk production never came to fruition. Sophie Charlotte personally set aside some land for growing mulberry trees from seeds which Leibniz supplied from his own experimental orchard in his garden at Hanover, but she died before they were planted.

It is difficult to say precisely when the relationship between Leibniz and Sophie Charlotte became close enough for her to describe herself as one of his disciples,[n.7] and as his friend.[n.8] The relationship probably developed gradually over many years. However, a key date seems to have been August 1698, when Leibniz spent a whole week with Sophie and Sophie Charlotte, while they were on holiday at a hunting lodge in Linsburg, about 40km NW of Hanover. Sophie Charlotte formally invited Leibniz to visit her in Berlin, and for the rest of her life she repeatedly pestered Leibniz to spend more time with her. Like her mother, she suffered from a husband who ostentatiously kept a mistress at Court, and who was less interested than herself in intellectual matters. She was often lonely, and one of her deepest pleasures was discussing philosophy and theology with Leibniz and others. For example, her lady-in-waiting, Miss Pöllnitz, wrote to Leibniz on 2nd May 1702:

Georg Ludwig disapproved of the relationship, and (apart from a flying visit in November 1698, to discuss religious reunification with Jablonski), he refused Leibniz permission to go to Berlin until 1700, when he spent the whole summer there, overseeing the foundation of the scientific society. He spent considerable time in Sophie Charlotte’s company, as on subsequent visits to Berlin. Their deep affection was mutual, and it became common knowledge in Court circles. The next five years were to be the happiest in Leibniz’s life.

When Sophie Charlotte suddenly died on 1st February 1705, she was in Hanover to attend the carnival, and Leibniz was in Berlin. When he heard the news, Leibniz was absolutely devastated. For some time he could think of nothing else, and he feared he would become seriously ill. He couldn’t even bring himself to write to Sophie about the tragedy. He himself received condolences from many quarters, including foreign ambassadors at Berlin. In the process of coming to terms with his grief, Leibniz wrote an account of her life up to the time when she got married,[n.10] and a German poem, which began with praise of her character, and moved through an exposition of his philosophical system, to his account of the afterlife.[n.11]

Her grandson, Friedrich the Great, told the story (probably apocryphal) that her dying words to the Hanover court preacher were:

Nevertheless, it is quite in character that she would look forward to discovering the answers to philosophical questions which had occupied so much of her attention during her later years. In a short Latin poem about her, Leibniz himself expressed much the same sentiment:

However, in a letter to Princess Caroline of Ansbach, who had been brought up in the Prussian court, Leibniz wrote that her last words to her husband were that she was ‘dying a gentle death,’[n.14] and that she died with the serenity of a soul resigned to the orders of the supreme providence. After reminding Caroline of the essence of Christian piety, which consisted in the three virtues of faith, hope, and love, he continued:

Apart from occasional references such as the above, we have little direct evidence as to what Leibniz and Sophie Charlotte discussed when they were alone together. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that their conversations covered roughly the same ground as their correspondence. Most of their surviving letters are about political matters and gossip; but a few (mostly on Leibniz’s side) are devoted to philosophy and religion.

Clearly the three Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love were a persistent theme, since as early as 1697, Leibniz had sent Sophie Charlotte his translation into French of a German dialogue on these virtues by the recently deceased Jesuit, Friedrich Spee.[n.16] On 9th May of the same year, Leibniz sent her some books, at her mother’s request. These included a German translation of The Consolation of Philosophy, by the Roman senator and philosopher, Boethius (d. 524 AD). It was especially recommended by the philosopher F.M. Van Helmont, for whom both electresses had a great friendship and admiration. As Leibniz explained, Van Helmont saw the work as expressing his own Pythagorean philosophy (perhaps including the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which both mother and daughter found appealing). Leibniz himself praised the work for showing how evils in the world can be reconciled with its being governed by a supreme and benevolent intelligence.[n.17]

On 28th November 1699, Leibniz wrote to Sophie Charlotte about the theological and philosophical opinions of the British ambassador, George Stepney. Stepney was planning to write a book about Moses, arguing that he was as much a secular statesman as a servant of God. Stepney had also written to Berlin about a philosophical conversation he had had with Leibniz (it is not clear who else was present). Leibniz protested that Stepney had misinterpreted him as saying that everything happened necessarily. In fact he held that everything was contingent, but determined and interconnected. Nor did he deny the distinction between good and evil, but he held that what seems evil to us contributes to the greater good of God’s purposes, and that knowledge of this gives us serenity of mind.[n.18]

On 14th June 1700, Leibniz wrote to Miss Pöllnitz, enclosing a two-part response to a question Sophie Charlotte had asked him about the nature of the soul and its relationship with the body.[n.19] The first part is written in a very simple manner, and without any references to Leibniz’s own philosophical system. The second part is concerned with the more technical question of how the soul, as a simple substance, can perceive or represent matter, which is infinitely complex. Leibniz solves the problem by means of a geometrical analogy, according to which a point, such as the centre of a circle, contains all the infinitely many angles radiating from it.

Interestingly, Leibniz asked Miss Pöllnitz to show Sophie Charlotte only the first part, on the grounds that, although she had ‘an amazingly penetrating intellect’ when she put her mind to things, it would be inappropriate to expose her to difficult matters involving numbers or diagrams. This is consistent with what Sophie Charlotte later wrote to Leibniz in a letter of March 1702:[n.20]

On the other hand, Sophie Charlotte sometimes felt patronised by Leibniz. As she had written to Miss Pöllnitz on 7th August 1701:

In later letters, Leibniz did go more deeply into the details of his philosophical system, sometimes illustrating his points with mathematical examples.

In her letter of March 1702, Sophie Charlotte had said that she had no fear of death, since sufferings affected only the body, and she didn’t believe in the Devil. In his reply of 22nd April 1702, Leibniz expressed his contrary opinion that the soul is never without a body,[n.23] and much of the subsequent correspondence is about how this is to be reconciled with immortality.

On 13th September 1702, Leibniz wrote to Sophie, saying that the Irish freethinker John Toland had read a paper to the Queen, arguing that the soul consisted only of the motions of material corpuscles, in the manner of the Roman materialist philosopher, Lucretius.[n.24] Around the same time, Leibniz wrote a long, open letter to Sophie Charlotte, with the title Letter on what is independent of the senses and of matter.[n.25] In this letter, he argued that, although we would have no thoughts if we had no sensations, our knowledge of the self, God, and necessary truths could not be derived from sensation. Again, although no immaterial substance (apart from God) can exist separate from matter, there must be immaterial substances, and they are everywhere in Nature. Sophie Charlotte showed Leibniz’s letter to Toland, and Toland wrote a detailed reply.[n.26] This elicited a further reply from Leibniz, who accused Toland of perversely misunderstanding his position.[n.27] Sophie Charlotte also showed the correspondence to the Saxon ambassador, Count Jakob Heinrich von Fleming, whose comments were more favourable to Leibniz than to Toland. Nevertheless, Leibniz still saw fit to write to Sophie Charlotte about some details on which he still disagreed with Fleming.[n.28]

Also in 1702, Leibniz wrote Sophie Charlotte a long letter, warning her against a book he had seen in her bookcase.[n.29] The book was How to think well in creative writing,[n.30] by the Jesuit literary critic, Dominique Bouhours. The letter ended with a typical Leibnizian homily:

In the same year, Leibniz wrote an essay for Sophie Charlotte with the title Considerations on the doctrine of a single universal spirit.[n.32] Here he is more explicit than in his other writings as to his reasons for rejecting the view of Spinoza and others, that finite minds are merely transient ‘modes’ of the universal divine mind, like drops of water in the ocean. He insists that each finite mind is an immaterial substance in its own right, and that it exists from eternity and to eternity, together with the organic body which it animates.

On 4th December 1703, Sophie Charlotte wrote to Leibniz to say that she had started reading John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and that she was impressed by his arguments against innate ideas.[n.33] On 7th December, Leibniz replied that Locke was not mathematician enough to see that necessary truths must depend on innate ideas.[n.34] In a letter of 25th April 1704, he discussed the sceptic La Motte la Vayer, and Toland’s plan to write a refutation of Spinoza. He concluded by noting that he had nearly finished writing his New Essays, a lengthy refutation of Locke in dialogue form. He said he had written it to fill in time while waiting for audiences at Herrenhausen, and while travelling.[n.35] In her reply of 29th April, Sophie Charlotte said it would be a great pleasure if Leibniz would read the New Essays to her out loud on his next visit to Lützenburg.[n.36]

In the meantime, Leibniz had entered into correspondence with Lady Damaris Masham. Lady Masham was the daughter of the philosopher Ralph Cudworth, and she had sent him a copy of his masterpiece, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678). More importantly, she was a close friend of John Locke, who spent his last years in her household until his death in October 1704. Leibniz had always wanted to correspond directly with Locke, but Locke had refused, and a correspondence with Lady Masham would be the next-best thing. On 29th March 1704, Lady Masham wrote to Leibniz to say that she had read Leibniz’s New System for explaining the nature of substances and their interaction, as well as the union of the soul and the body, which was published in the Journal des savants of 1695; and also Pierre Bayle’s criticisms of his philosophy in the article on Rorarius in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (Amsterdam, 1696–7). In particular, she wanted to know what he meant by ‘forms’, and how he answered Bayle’s objections.[n.37] In early May, Leibniz used the opportunity to send her a general summary of his philosophical system.[n.38]

He was obviously pleased with what he had written, and on 8th May he wrote at greater length to Sophie Charlotte.[n.39] This was to be his last (surviving) philosophical letter to her, and it is perhaps the most comprehensible summary of his philosophy he ever produced. At the same time, it is very personal. Leibniz structures his exposition round a quotation from Harlequin, Emperor of the Moon (which they must have read or seen performed together), namely that ‘everything is the same as here: always, everywhere, and in all things.’ He cleverly uses this as a text, round which he weaves his central idea that there is no such thing as absolute size, and that there are worlds within worlds, which are exactly similar to the one we currently inhabit.

Leibniz was well aware that Sophie Charlotte had a somewhat frivolous attitude towards philosophical technicalities,[n.40] and that her main interest was in the afterlife. In this letter, he presented an account which was closer to Van Helmont’s transmigration of souls than any other of his writings. Leibniz’s standard formula was that souls are neither created nor destroyed, and that they always have a body. Before elevation to the full status of a human being, a human soul is the soul of a spermatozoon. On death, the soul retreats into a similar microscopic animal, and it loses its distinctively human faculties of reason and consciousness. He is generally vague as to what happens subsequently. In the Monadology, he implies that there are one or more general resurrections, in which human souls are restored to their human status:

In his letter to Sophie Charlotte, he suggests that, before the holocaust, souls might be attached to bodies of varying status, or perhaps escape the cycle of rebirth entirely:

Nevertheless, Leibniz remains absolutely adamant as to the distinction between his own theory, and that of the transmigration of souls. For Leibniz, the soul is the principle of unity of an organic body. As such, it cannot simply move from one body to another, since it is unique to its body, and could not be the organic principle of any other body. Rather, its body is transformed, just as a chrysalis turns into a butterfly; sometimes these transformations lead to a higher status, as on conception, and sometimes to a lower one, as on death; but in the long term, the changes are for the better overall.

Among the great modern philosophers, Leibniz is notorious for not having written a magnum opus providing a systematic exposition of his philosophy. His reputation rested mainly on his personal contacts, his amazingly wide-ranging correspondence, and short journal articles. There were periods in his life when he wrote short pieces drawing together the main themes of his system. The first was the Discourse on Metaphysics of 1686, written when he was 40 — but he never published it. His next, much briefer summary, the New System, was published nearly a decade later in the Journal des savants (1695). By the time he was developing his relationship with Sophie Charlotte, he was in his 50s, and, apart from the New system, there was still no publicly available account of his philosophy.

There are many possible explanations for this, such as the intrinsic complexity of his system, lack of time, and so on. But I believe that the main reason is the psychological one, that he couldn’t decide what audience to address, or in what language. For most of his time in Hanover, Leibniz was an isolated figure, with no entourage of philosophical disciples to encourage him. After he established his connections with Berlin in 1700, the situation changed completely. He was at the centre of lively philosophical debate (conducted in French), and his disciples were aristocrats rather than academics. Sophie Charlotte pressurised Leibniz into writing innumerable letters and papers on a range of philosophical issues, and in a style which would be intelligible to the lay reader. It is unlikely that she was selfish enough to want them to be written for her benefit alone, and she must have intended Leibniz to put them together into a major publication.

During the remainder of his life, Leibniz wrote two lengthy philosophical works, both in French. Neither of them can be described as a systematic exposition of his philosophical system, since they were both written in reaction to the works of others. The first was his New Essays, a commentary in dialogue form on Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding. Leibniz used Pierre Coste’s French translation, which was published in 1700; but he didn’t start serious work on the project until 1703. This was just when he entered into correspondence with Lady Masham, and it is likely that his motive was to enter into dialogue with Locke himself. Nevertheless, we know that Sophie Charlotte was reading the Coste translation at the same time, and it is hardly credible that she would not have asked Leibniz to put down his comments in writing. Although Leibniz had virtually completed the work, he decided not to publish it when he heard of Locke’s death in 1704.

The other work was the Theodicy, which was intended mainly as a refutation of Pierre Bayle’s contention that there was a conflict between faith and reason. This time he eventually did publish (in 1710), even though Bayle had died in 1706. Leibniz is absolutely clear that the Theodicy was published as a memorial to Sophie Charlotte. As he wrote to Thomas Burnett on 30th October 1710:[n.43]

Even if Leibniz exaggerated the extent to which the Theodicy was a compilation of papers written for Sophie Charlotte, the amount he wrote for her must have been very large, and generally quite technical. Without her encouragement, the Theodicy would never have been written, and Leibniz’s international reputation and influence as a philosopher would have been much diminished. The Theodicy was published in a Latin translation in 1716, and in a German translation in 1720. Sophie Charlotte’s former protegée, Caroline, who was now Princess of Wales, wanted it to be translated into English; but the plan came to nothing.

Although the Theodicy includes most aspects of Leibniz’s philosophical system, it does so in a very unsystematic fashion, since they are incidental to the main themes of the work. Leibniz never fulfilled his stated ambition of writing a systematic treatise in Latin. However, he was under constant pressure to produce at least a summary of his mature position. In particular, Prince Eugene of Savoy, who had been introduced to Leibniz’s philosophy by Sophie Charlotte, begged him to give him a summary of the metaphysical aspects of the Theodicy. This Leibniz did in 1714, two years before his death. The outcome was the so-called Monadology,[n.44] the last and most famous of Leibniz’s expositions of his system. It is written in French, and consists of only 90 short paragraphs; but it covers most of the essentials, and is supplied with copious references to sections of the Theodicy. According to Leibniz’s friend Count Bonneval, Prince Eugene was so pleased with it that he kept it locked up as one of his most treasured possessions:

In many places the wording is extremely close to passages in Leibniz’s writings for Sophie Charlotte and her mother, ten or more years earlier. The Monadology is indeed a fitting legacy of Leibniz’s philosophical discussions with Sophie Charlotte.

Leibniz’s approach to female philosophers[n.46]

It is a striking fact that so many of Leibniz’s philosophical correspondents were aristocratic women: Sophie, Sophie Charlotte, Miss Pöllnitz, Elizabeth Charlotte (Duchess of Orleans), Caroline (Princes of Wales), and Lady Masham. It is also striking how differently he wrote for these women, than for his male correspondents. This raises the question of whether Leibniz was affected by sexist prejudices, or whether there were other reasons for the differences.

The main differences are of style and of content. As far as style is concerned, when writing for women, Leibniz writes more simply, with fewer technical terms, and with more examples and analogies. As for content, he tends to avoid topics relating to logic, mathematics, and physical science, and concentrate instead on topics of more human interest, such as the soul, immortality, freedom, ethics, and God. However, there is no evidence that Leibniz wrote to them this way because they were women. A far more likely explanation is that they lacked a university education, and had only an amateur interest in philosophy. They knew little or nothing about logic, mathematics, or science, and were interested in a popular philosophy which would serve as a guide to life.

It is a pity that Leibniz never corresponded with any women who had managed to raise themselves to a university level of education, since we could then compare the style. For example, he never managed to establish a correspondence with Lady Anne Conway, who had written a book on philosophy, with interesting similarities to some of Leibniz’s doctrines. On the other hand, he did have a certain amount of philosophical interaction with male aristocrats who had never been to university, and from the few examples that survive, he doesn’t seem to have treated them any differently from the women. For example, as mentioned above, the Monadology was written for a prince, and is almost identical in content to some of Leibniz’s letters to Sophie Charlotte and her mother.

Indeed, Leibniz told Sophie Charlotte, in the context of the scientific society, that women have certain advantages over men. As he wrote to her in November 1697:

Leibniz himself often drew attention to the distinction between a popular, exoteric philosophy, which anyone should be able to understand, and a more difficult, esoteric philosophy, comprehensible only to an inner circle of followers. It is tempting to see the philosophy he presented to the aristocratic ladies as the popular version, as contrasted with the more difficult arguments of his letters to academics. Indeed, he ended his longest letter to Sophie Charlotte (8th May 1704) as follows:

But Leibniz’s contrast is not between a popular version of his own philosophy, and a deeper version which he is witholding from her. Rather he is, as so often, being ironic. If there is a more sublime philosophy, he hasn’t discovered it. There were many aspects of his system which he tended to conceal from his academic correspondents, probably because he felt (with some justice) that they would consider them paradoxical and absurd. The people he was most honest with were his circle of royal disciples at the courts of Herrenhausen and Lützenburg; and it was they, not the academics, who were privileged to receive his esoteric philosophy.

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