Selected philosophical essays Book

The most intelligent biped who ever lived was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. His philosophy was impenetrable to me for years and years, but I stuck with it, considering that the guy knew no math and then, in a few short years in Paris, arrived at the calculus independent of Newton. Who else could get work done in Paris? Leibniz's philosophy of the monadology, the specimen dynamicum, the program for a metaphysical foundation for physics, the characteristica universalis, geometric algebra, the analysis situs, the Leibniz-Clarke controversy, all of these things were premonitions of the course science and philosophy actually took (and has still to take). The foresight is humbling and awe inspiring to me.