Written in 1686 by the celebrated German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics is a short, early work in which Leibniz explains how the Earth, which was created by God (an undeniably perfect being), is therefore blessed with the same purity and perfection as its creator. Leibniz was one of the most important philosophers of the Enlightenment era and was a contemporary of Isaac Newton. But today, Leibniz's best remembered...