 For Kant, philosophy is a stern discipline frequently calling for graceless prose. After publishing several floridly written popular works, and after acquiring his knowledge of physics through such accessible expositions as Bernard Fontenelle’s Dialogues on the Plurality of Worlds (1696), Emilie du Chatelet’s Institutions of Physics (1740), and Euler’s Letters to a German Princess (1768–72) (7:229–30), Kant traded literary charm for technicality, rigor, and repetition, especially in the first two Critiques. The enchanting views of the Monadology which Leibniz himself may have regarded as a jeu d’esprit were antithetical to philosophy’s true purpose. Yet Kant finally aestheticizes Leibniz, claiming that he meant only to express a view of the world that is true in its own way. The history of philosophy, Kant suggests, is not to be assessed in terms of right and wrong doctrines. To accuse Leibniz or Plato of errors is to take them as authorities, as one takes Cicero as the standard for Latin, and this is a confusion; for “there are no classical authors in Philosophy” (8: 218).