 Leibniz returned to the topics of fate, necessity, and contingency in the one philosophical book that he published during his lifetime, the Essais de théodicée of 1710. It has been suggested in the secondary literature that Leibniz’s treatment of necessity and contingency in this text is exoteric to a significant degree (Adams 1994:52). For example, Leibniz frequently uses terms such as “inclination without necessitating”, “moral necessity”, and “hypothetical necessity” without providing strict definitions of them. Some of Leibniz’s predecessors understood these terms in ways that implied a non-deterministic view of human action. According to most interpretations of Leibniz’s considered views on these issues (based on a number of texts other than the Essais de théodicée), he was committed to a strict determinism (but not necessitarianism) about human actions. However, by omitting definitions of terms like “moral necessity” in the Essais de théodicée Leibniz might have allowed readers that were committed to non-deterministic accounts of “moral necessity” to assume that he was using this concept in a way that was less deterministic than his considered view allowed. This is in keeping with Leibniz’s stated strategy of not presenting anything to the public that is too far removed from received opinions. One way of not presenting something to the public that is far removed from received opinions is to selectively omit it (his strategy in the Système nouveau). Another strategy is to present a view that is far removed from received opinions in a way that makes it seem less removed than it actually is. If Leibniz is utilizing this latter strategy in the discussions of necessity and contingency in the Essais de théodicée, it does not imply that he is trying to permanently mislead his readers. As we have seen, he has several general strategies for helping his reader progress to a more rigorous understanding of his views. One of the strategies is to provide subtle hints such that a “more profound” examination of the text would yield a deeper understanding. By omitting clear definitions of terms such as “moral necessity”, however, it is not clear whether there is enough material in the Essais de théodicée for even a discerning reader to grasp Leibniz’s views on necessity and contingency. But Leibniz did not claim that such inferences could always be made on the basis of an exoteric text alone. In a number of cases his exoteric treatments need to be supplemented by a more rigorous work. And we must keep in mind that Leibniz clearly did conceive of the Essais de théodicée in precisely this way (see Antognazza 2009: 481–2). He writes to Charles Hugony shortly after its publication: