Introduction.

...which I seem to recognize, and which, as if by a mechanical method, renders truth fixed, visible, and (so to speak) irresistible. Such a thing has been granted to us by Nature as an inexplicable benefit.

This Algebra, which we rightly value so highly, is but a part of that general artifice The "artifice" refers to Leibniz's "Universal Characteristic," a system of symbols he believed could represent all human thought.. Yet it ensures that we cannot err even if we wished to, and that Truth may be detected as if it were painted, or expressed on paper by the aid of a machine. But I acknowledge that whatever Algebra proves in general is nothing but a benefit of a superior science, which I am now accustomed to call the Characteristic Combinatory original Latin: "Combinatoriam Characteristicam." This is the core of Leibniz's logic, where complex ideas are broken down into simple symbols that can be combined and calculated., which is far different from that which might immediately come to someone's mind upon hearing these words. I hope at some time to explain its wonderful power and force through rules and examples, if health and leisure permit. I cannot encompass the nature of the matter in a few words.

Yet I would dare to say this: nothing can easily be conceived more effective for the perfection of the human mind than this; and that once this method of philosophizing is adopted, there will come a time—and it will be soon—when we shall have certainties about God and the Mind no less than about Figures and Numbers, and when the invention of machines will be no more difficult than the construction of geometric problems. Once these studies are exhausted (except that most elegant harmonies of infinite theorems will always remain, to be observed daily rather than extracted), men will return to the investigation of nature alone, which will never be fully in our power; for in experiments, Luck is mingled with Genius and Industry.

Men will therefore always philosophize in the manner of Boyle original Latin: "Boyliano... more," referring to Robert Boyle’s experimental method which relies on observation and laboratory work rather than pure deduction., and will eventually bring our work to an end, except insofar as the Nature of things itself, as far as it is known, can be subjected to calculations; and, once new qualities are detected and reduced to Mechanism, it will give new material for the Geometers In the 17th century, the term "Geometer" was often used to mean "mathematician." to apply themselves to. —

In his last letter from Paris, August 27, 1676, he states: