This is a collection of new, specially written essays on the flowering of modern philosophy on the continent of Europe. The eight leading contributors focus on the work of Descartes, later Cartesians, Leibniz, and Bayle, reassessing the influence of Augustine on Descartes and of the Reformed tradition on Leibniz, and tracing anticipations of Leibniz's monadology in the cabbalistic notions of van Helmont, the preformationist theories of Malebranche, and the experimental work of Dutch microscopists.