Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher whose writings were an oblique yet important influence on the New England Transcendentalists. His most significant philosophical work was
Monadology, in which he argued that all existing substances—as well as the human soul—are examples of monads acting in “pre-established harmony.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and
W. T. Harris all appreciated Leibniz and adopted his concepts in one way or another.