 One important clue for approaching the labyrinth of Leibniz’s texts is a distinction that he draws between esoteric (acroamaticus/acroamatique) and exoteric (exotericus/exoterique) presentations of his philosophy. Roughly speaking an esoteric presentation is one that is fully rigorous while an exoteric or “popular” presentation is less rigorous but easier to understand, which is more appropriate for a general audience. Leibniz distinguishes between these two modes of presentation early in his career and explicitly classifies many of his (later) published works such as the Essais de théodicée as exoteric. This distinction is clearly relevant to the questions raised in the previous paragraph. If it is possible to distinguish between esoteric and exoteric texts, then the most precise statements of Leibniz’s considered views are likely to be found in the esoteric texts. Similarly, if Leibniz’s treatments of an issue in different works seem to be in tension with one another, one potential explanation of the discrepancy is that one treatment is esoteric and the other is exoteric.