Volume Vi

Epistulae et responsa. pp. 545.

The whole of Gassendi’s writings is thus contained in six Volumes folio, with a total of 4095 double-columned pages.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(I.) The edition of the works to which reference is always made in this book is the edition of 1658 (Lyon). This contains all Gassendi’s works (some slightly abridged), except some letters. On this point see Thomas, p. 28: ‘Celles qui ont été recueillies par M. de Montmor forment le sixième volume du Syntagma: mais leur nombre a été considerablement augmenté depuis, bien que beaucoup restent encore à publier. (Voy. “Documents inédits sur Gassendi,” par Tamizey de Larroque: Revue des questions historiques, 1877, t. xxii. “Oraison funèbre de P. Gassendi,” par Nicolas Taxil, publiée par le même, 1882. “Impressions de voyage de Pierre Gassendi,” dans le Bulletin de la Société scientifique et littéraire des Basses-Alpes, 1887.)’ I have no personal knowledge of these documents.

(II.) Bernier, the traveller, a friend of Gassendi, compiled an Abrégé de la Philosophie de Gassendi, 8 vols., 1678; 2nd ed., 7 vols., 1684. This work is naturally far less cumbersome than Gassendi’s own volumes. It is difficult to say quite what is wrong with it, but it is certainly wholly misleading, and, having been read to avoid the trouble of studying the original, has done much harm. I began with this work myself, but, after once looking into Gassendi, abandoned it. There is a wholly different atmosphere about Gassendi’s writing, and perhaps the kindest criticism is to say that Bernier had more zeal as a friend than ability as a philosopher.

(III.) The only book on Gassendi which I have read is La Philosophie de Gassendi, par P.-Félix Thomas, Paris, 1889. I have read this since completing my own account of Gassendi, and owe to it some useful hints and references. Had it been other than it is, I should not have been justified in publishing a second study on the same subject. But the author seems to me to have done less than justice to Gassendi: he does not seem to have considered him an integral part of philosophy as a moving body of thought. Perhaps he is right, but to me Gassendi appears to have done more than patch up Epicurus: he has tried to unite the results, not only of philosophy in the narrower sense, but of all previous and contemporary thought into one whole, as consistent as he thought it could be. Hence we differ; but the student of Gassendi will get more insight into Gassendi from Thomas than he will from Bernier, and find this the conscientious work of one who has gone for his information to the fountain-head.

(IV.) For the rest, I know of no other ‘literature of the subject.’ For the Life, Sorbière’s Sketch (vol. I.) is the chief authority. There is also a Vie de Gassendi by Bugerel (1737), and by Damiror (Mémoire sur Gassendi, 1839). The best short account of Gassendi’s philosophy is that of Ritter, to which I have referred elsewhere (p. 17).

(V.) The manuscripts of Gassendi have been preserved, the majority at Tours, some in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and some in Provence (Thomas, p. 28). The edition of 1658, though published after the author’s death, represents his final corrections, and is acknowledged to be substantially accurate.

INTRODUCTION

The line of thought which terminates in Gassendi began in Leucippus. The principal names in the history of its exposition are unfortunately little more than names, and in the case of both the main periods we are dependent on what may be called the second strings for the majority of our information. Thus of Leucippus we know but little, and he is usually taken in conjunction with Democritus, in order that together they may fill out a paragraph in the history of thought: similarly, while we are better off in the case of Epicurus, we none the less find it most convenient not to speak of Epicurus but of Epicureanism, and so give ourselves the latitude of using all the matter that can be collected from the whole school, in which the name of Lucretius stands forth prominently. As we desire to show the development of the subject we shall here try to keep the main points of the different epochs distinct: it will then be apparent how the theory grew and changed in face of new problems and changing conditions.

Atomism and Epicureanism are very different things, but the beginnings of the theory of Epicurus are to be found in the atomic school, and the differences will be best understood if the growth of that doctrine is followed. The founder was Leucippus of Elea or Miletus. His standpoint does not seem to have been properly understood by historians of philosophy, but recent investigation has cleared our views on the significance of his language. He was in the first instance an Eleatic, and though the main principle of the Eleatic school, the unity and immovability of the One, seems so entirely opposed to the atomistic trend of thought that they could have nothing to do with each other, we find that in fact the opposition is not so great as appears at first sight, and the atomistic view is generated out of the Eleatic. In this interpretation we are guided by Aristotle, who says, ‘Leucippus however thought he had a theory which was in harmony with sense-perception and did not do away with coming into being and passing away, nor motion nor the multiplicity of things. He made this concession to experience, while he conceded on the other hand to those who invented the One, that motion was impossible without the void, that the void was not real, and that nothing of what was real was not real! For,’ said he, ‘that which is strictly speaking real is an absolute plenum; but the plenum is not one. On the contrary, there are an infinite number of them, and they are invisible owing to the smallness of their bulk. They move in the void (for there is a void), and by their coming together they effect coming into being: by their separation, passing away.’

Atomism is thus at its birth the opposite which Eleaticism generates: the principles of Parmenides are retained, but the One to which they are applied is no longer the only One, not the Whole, but a whole: ‘to each of the atoms which he thus arrived at, he ascribed all the predicates of the Eleatic One’ (Burnet, op. cit. 355). The result was a pluralism which avoided the dialectic of Zeno of Elea: the attempts which had been made to combine the two notions of a continuum and divisibility had failed because they inevitably led to the abyss of endless division: it was obvious that if the continuum could be divided anywhere it could be divided everywhere and finally elude us altogether, and there was no way out of the difficulty but to stand by common sense and declare the ultimate indivisible. Two points are interesting in this connexion: the first is the fact that the earliest form of Atomism is grounded in the opposition of a common-sense view to its contemporary idealism, a heritage of strife to be handed on from generation to generation: the second is the very partial nature of the severance from idealistic modes of thought. At this stage of thought no one blushes to make reality a predicate, but the limitations of language bring us to a dilemma: the void is declared real and not real, and the difficulty lies in the substantive use of ‘is’: for the void is, but is not what is called real: it must therefore belong to a class of existents which we shall call the not-real: with all the sturdy common-sense of a reformer Leucippus says the categories must be made for the things and not things for the category. Henceforth the old reality was to be absorbed into a new Reality which included both the real and the not-real of the former category. The gist of all this argumentation can be expressed in the phrase ‘the non-corporeal is as real as the corporeal.’ This was first proclaimed by those who are usually regarded as materialists! For the rest we know that creation was explained through the collision of the atoms, in which atoms of like shape and form became entangled, and from these entanglements of atoms arose the heavenly bodies. Thus much we may safely attribute to Leucippus, and if any one doubts the reality of Leucippus, it is enough for our purpose that he should stand for Atomism before Democritus. This stage must certainly be distinguished, else we lose the significance of that form of the doctrine in which we have as yet no subjective elements and no attempt to think of the atom as in any sense analysable.

II.

With Democritus we find atomism has undergone a very important change, it has developed from a mere sketch of a cosmogony to at least the rudiments of a philosophy. By this we mean that it recognises a far wider range of topics, and at least attempts to give explanations of phenomena not touched by the theory in its original form. The two main influences to be noticed in this connection are those denoted by the names of Protagoras and Anaxagoras. From Protagoras comes the subjective tendency of the doctrine, while the work of Anaxagoras has brought into prominence the question of causality and its incidence. The idea of ‘homoiomerae’ has also expressed a possible theory of the nature of the ultimate parts of the material world which is sufficiently near to atomism to compel the true atomist to define his position more exactly.

In opposition to Anaxagoras, Democritus expressly makes things themselves the cause of motion: whatever else it may have meant, the ‘nous’ of Anaxagoras implied a cause outside of the material thing. This dualism is now rejected, and we get the explicit statement that the world is to be regarded as a product of matter in motion. The atoms are now said to differ in shape, order, and position: they have no cause, being eternal: they possess motion from the beginning by virtue of their nature, and this motion is in the abstract straight; but in fact, owing to collision, it becomes rotatory. It is difficult to say whether Democritus ascribed weight to the atoms or not: this was the sort of detail which was only specifically settled when an opponent made it necessary to give a deliverance ex cathedra. Wallace remarks on this point: ‘There are passages from which it seems that Democritus regarded weight as not an attribute of the atoms, but only of the aggregations which they compose. But probably these statements are to be taken in a different sense. They may mean that the atom in all cases, however it may vary in size (and such variations are incalculably great), never reaches a size which can be seen by the bodily eye, and therefore, inasmuch as the weight varies directly with the size in the case of the atoms, the atom is never ponderable except when it combines with other atoms to form a body.’ It follows from this that the atom has weight but is not ponderable, and this is, I think, correct for two reasons. In the first place, it would be much more difficult to conceive the atoms as falling (which is the first conception of their motion) if they had no weight in theory; and secondly, it is always a principle of this school to work analogically and infer from the presence of a quality in the compound its analogical counterpart in the primary parts which enter into that compound.

The compounds are formed by the natural union of similar particles. This was a point on which considerable stress was laid because it was in direct opposition to the mythical tendencies of the Love and Hate theories of affinity: it was a part of the polemic against all mysticism which was to become characteristic of the spirit of this school.

With regard to the universe Democritus held that the Earth had now come to rest: from the Earth there had arisen by natural processes organised beings. The soul was composed of atoms of the nature of fire. The individual is conceived as having specific organs each with its appointed functions; but these are very crudely differentiated: the soul is in the head, and its function is thought: eagerness is in the heart and desire in the liver. Perception is caused by the effluxes ‘sloughed off’ from things: it is not wholly veracious and requires to be corrected. Sense perception is indeed explicitly opposed to the understanding, and the latter is said to give us truth while the former deceives. But this is not to be taken as implying any very exact theory of knowledge: it is very much the same to Democritus whether the deception of the senses is due to physical conditions, such as the distance of the object, or to what we should call subjective conditions. In the same elementary fashion we are told that we know nothing, though we can go beyond our senses, as we obviously do in arriving at a knowledge of the atom; a going beyond which is probably most safely taken to mean reaching quantitatively further, that is to say reaching to subtler forms of matter than are given to the gross sense.

In his ethics Democritus is credited with having uttered or quoted much that is sound; but it is too disjointed to be regarded as either system or part of a system. We may note for further use that he considered the soul the noblest part of man and knowledge the source of true happiness: he also laid stress on the will as the test of true morality, and struck the keynote of later cosmopolitanism in the saying that the country of the wise man is the world.

III.

With Epicurus we come to a much more developed phase of the original doctrine. At first we had only a slender vein of cosmological reasoning: then the theory was extended to psychology of a sort, with an appendix on ethics to give it the appearance of a full-grown theory: now ethics is made the prime end and object of the philosophical treatment of the world in which we live, and atomism is taken as the guiding principle. There is considerable difference between a theory of atoms and an atomic theory of the universe: we shall be concerned chiefly with the philosophical aspects as opposed to what might be called the scientific elements, and therefore for us it is especially important to notice this phase and realise how the original aims and scope of atomism were changed with time, so that it became an instrument for general use rather than a mere statement of what was believed to be physical fact.

In order to understand the scope of a writer’s views we have to take some account of the atmosphere in which he lived. In the case of the earliest writers this is generally only possible in the sense that we can detect some definite influence against which he works: thus Leucippus founds himself on and opposes himself to Parmenides: Democritus takes up the very problem Anaxagoras has striven to solve and finds in that opposite his own definition. When we come to Epicurus, the same principle holds good, but the stream of thought has widened, and it bears along with it the sand of many shores, and therefore the influences we have to consider are greater both in number and range.

The first influence to be considered is that of the political conditions under which the doctrine arose and to which we trace the temper that made its appeal so successful. At the time when Epicurus came to Athens (307 B.C.), the prevailing characteristic of life was its uncertainty. The city was a hotbed of intrigue, and no one could predict which party would be in power next. Athens had lost her empire but still retained enough vitality to struggle periodically into a semblance of independent existence under such a leader as Demetrius Poliorcetes. At other times the Macedonian power regained its supremacy and Athens lapsed into vassalage. In either case the situation of the individual was much the same, and from this point of view the days of Epicurus and of Seneca are identical. In both the individual, finding no objective point of attachment, falls back upon himself, and the attitude of the Epicurean in Athens is that of the Stoic in Rome four hundred years later. With the upbreak of a concentrated national life, the individual felt that he belonged to nobody in the sense that he belonged to himself, and nothing belonged to him in the sense that his self belonged to him. Hence the thinker keeps aloof from politics: he says with Democritus, that the world is the wise man’s home; but only in the negative sense, which means abstraction from that immediate world of interests in which alone is there a possibility of activity. The first phase of cosmopolitanism is negative: it renounces the living unity for a One which is no more than a concept, which, having nothing that can satisfy the heart, is for all practical purposes nothing but a shroud for the burial of hopes that have been sacrificed. Ignoring the Whole, man turns to the parts, and the individual occupies the first place in his thoughts.

Philosophically we can trace the same development on different lines. Plato had been concerned primarily with the scheme of the Whole as a rational connected system. With Aristotle the material of the system had emerged into prominence, and his successors had gone still further, and ‘the speculative, transcendental element was eliminated, and nothing left but “positive” science.’ This trend became more and more pronounced, and to it we may trace the revival of materialistic types of thought which are exemplified in both Stoicism and Epicureanism. A third element is the consequence of these influences, namely the importance attached to ethics, ‘if by ethics we mean an attempt to discover what is the chief end of man, and how it can be attained.’

These three points, then, ‘their individualism in morals, their subordination of all science to an ethical end, and their materialistic realism,’ are the common characteristics of the great schools of this period. We shall confine ourselves now to sketching the main points of Epicureanism. The sources of information are scattered, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to say in many cases what was actually taught by Epicurus and what was incorporated into the body of the doctrine by his disciples. For our purpose it is sufficient to give a summary of the teaching ascribed to Epicurus, merely noting those details which we know were added later. The chief source of information, apart from reports of Epicurus’ own teaching, is, of course, Lucretius: Gassendi’s version is not taken into consideration directly because of the obvious danger of mixing his account of Epicurus with the views he proposed to graft on the old stem. Epicurus divides the sphere of thought into the three parts—Logic, Physics, and Ethics: these headings we may as well preserve, though examination of the details will show that some of the subject-matter would hardly be so classified now.

(a) The subjective sceptical element in the philosophy of the period is reflected by the Logic of Epicurus in the demand for a doctrine of criteria of truth. The criteria enumerated are perceptions and representations in the theoretical sphere, and pleasure and pain in the practical. These form the subject of the Canonica or doctrine of norms. The idea in the mind of Epicurus is that we must build entirely on the senses: these are in themselves true and final in the sense that nothing can be found to give us certainty when they fail. But he also recognises that the mental life of the individual goes beyond the exact moment during which the sensation lasts; and the persistent residue of the sensation has also its function in the life of thought. Hence he adds to the immediate sense-perception the representations which are also called anticipations. As criteria these must be regarded as bringing in the elements of time and plurality. Epicurus does not say in so many words that this is so, but a moment’s reflection on the use of these representations proves it. They are stored in the mind and emerge into consciousness when the name of the thing is uttered: moreover they function in the strict capacity of norms in as much as they regulate perceptions. ‘To enable us to affirm that what we see at a distance is a horse or an ox, we must have some preconception in our minds which makes us acquainted with the form of a horse and an ox’; from which it is clear that the preconception or secondary mental activity forms a standard of reference to which we may return for a judgment (criterium) on the presentation. This does not upset the dogma that the perception as an affair of the senses is always true: it merely tells us how we may find out what the senses are, as it were, trying to tell us.

From this stage we go a step further in the formation of Opinion which results from the presence of the permanent residues in our minds. These opinions may be true or false, and the natural test is a return to experience. The opinion may refer to the future or to the occult: in the former case the test of direct experience is merely held in abeyance. In the latter we have a problem, for the opinion may be true but there is no way of getting any collateral support: for this Epicurus provides a negative justification in so far as we are allowed to hold the opinion as true if no contradictory evidence is forthcoming.

This constitutes the gist of the pure canonic of Epicurus, but we may add to this some notes on the method employed by the Epicureans and the theory of knowledge implied in them. In the first place the criticism which Ueberweg makes upon the idea that the immediate sensation is reality, should be noticed. ‘The hallucinations of the insane, even, and dreams are true: for they produce an impression, which the non-existing could not do. It is obvious in connection with this latter argument, that in Epicurus’ conception of truth, the latter, in the sense of agreement of the psychical image with a real object, is confounded with psychical reality.’ This is undoubtedly true as pointing out that the Epicurean doctrine did not properly distinguish logical and psychological certainty. The entire emphasis is thrown on the psychological groundwork of knowledge, and in consequence the explanation of the attainment of any knowledge beyond the sense-given is neglected to an extent which is wholly unjustifiable in view of the fact that the atom itself is not a sense-datum. This deficiency was apparently felt by such disciples as Zeno and Philodemus, who attempted to give some theory of induction. But, whether they could justify it or not, the Epicureans did get from the known to the unknown: moreover they made no secret of it, but declared that the true process of knowledge was from known to unknown. In addition to induction they also made great use of analogy and, surreptitiously, of deduction. We now have from the Herculanean manuscripts clear proof that analogy was not only used by the Epicurean but itself a direct object of analysis: Lucretius made use of it in a manner that has been described as ‘violent’; and it remained in the school as one of the prime instruments in the advancement of knowledge. In addition to this there were one or two first principles which occasionally come into active service and justify a deductive procedure. The most notable is the dogma ‘ex nihilo nihil,’ to which must be added the regulative principle that nothing happens by chance. The former of these rules is most frequently used to justify a regress from a compound to its parts: for, it is said, if the whole has such and such qualities the parts must have these qualities though they may not be directly observable in the parts themselves. The most striking use of this principle is the passage where Lucretius asserts that the atoms must have the power of free action,’ since we find that power in that complex of atoms called the soul. The use of analogy is best exhibited in the construction of the concept of the gods and their mode of life.

(b) In dealing with the physics it will be convenient to divide it into physics proper and psychology. The Epicurean would doubtless have denied that psychology was not physics ‘proper,’ but the mixture is rather confusing to the modern mind. First then, as to physics proper. We have, the mise en scène of Democritus, a vast place boundless in every direction, full of atoms too small to be visible, from whose conjunctions will arise all the manifold life of this and other worlds. While agreeing in the main with Democritus, Epicurus diverges from his teaching in some details. With regard to the motion of the atoms he attributes the abandonment of the original line of movement which was conceived as in a straight line downward, to the voluntary swerving of the atoms. This is the most striking example of the subordination of physics to ethics, for the difference between Democritus and Epicurus consists in just this, that Democritus tried to settle the question of the nature of the atomic movements from what he knew of the mechanical laws: Epicurus directly opposes himself to the mechanical laws of motion in order to get a basis for the admission of free-agency. It is, in all probability, a mistake to say that Epicurus gave his atoms anything like free-will or spontaneity as we should understand it now: we have to keep in view the fact that the mind to which that free-will has to be referred would be formulated in terms of matter, and therefore all that is required is that the motion of matter should not be regarded as fixed from all eternity: if it is so fixed, my motion counts for nothing: if not, my motion is itself a real factor; and if I am conscious that I move, I may also be sure that my movement is the factor which produces the result that follows. This is an extremely interesting phase of what was later to be the ‘free-will’ controversy: the difficulty of understanding it and the temptation to misunderstand it, lies in the ideas of choice which we introduce: we ask, ‘Am I free to choose, am I free to be what I am?’ but before ideas of God and the last judgment came in to produce these subjective problems, the question of freedom was naturally limited to the simple problem, ‘Am I in my activity a real agent?’ and it is for this real agency that Epicurus makes room.

A second point of difference is also of great interest. So far our atom has been the ultimate: it is itself beyond the senses and reached by thought, yet it is conceived as sensuous inasmuch as it might be presented to a sense acute enough to detect it. Latent in the fact that the atom is reached by an intellectual process, lies the possibility of that development of the concept of the atom as a concept, which we get in Leibnitz; and in Epicurus we do get so far as the acknowledgment that the atom is logically divisible, this being considered necessary for the explanation of variety in shape. It is significant of the character of thought at this period that it could employ a principle that carried it beyond its own ultimate unit, and yet never enquire whether the process was a mere dividing of matter or a revelation of the nature of thought and its categories.

In the construction of the world out of the atoms Epicurus does more to tell us how it was not done than how it was: his whole object is to show that design has no share in the work, there is no awful Power guiding and controlling things: nature manages its own affairs in perfect contentment, and this spectre of a Providence is nothing but the creation of the human imagination. Out of dead matter comes life, and out of life when it is sufficiently advanced comes consciousness. Lucretius thinks that the phenomena of deep sleep and swooning prove that life is motion, and it must be allowed that he does not compromise his orthodoxy by any truck with the subconscious; but regarding the motion of matter as the substratum of conscious life, he consented when he lost hold on consciousness to drop back into the region of moving matter. The soul and the body form a unity, so that the dissolution of death is annihilation of the Self. This dreary prospect seems to have been a comfort on the whole, both to the Greek and the Roman philosopher, which seems to be a sufficiently severe expression of their views on the charms of the life they led on earth!

(c) On the border line, none too clearly defined, of the physics and the psychology, comes the question of the constitution of the soul, which we ascribe to the psychology because the chief interest centres on the question of the thinking part. ‘According to the statements given both by Diogenes Laertius and Lucretius, the soul is a complex of elements from air, fire, and wind, and a fourth unnamed element. The last, which is the differentiating constituent of the mind, suggests that it is postulated by the feeling that there is more in the psychical than physical analogies altogether explain. And further, the introduction of air, fire, and wind suggests that Epicurus supplements the stricter atomic theory of Democritus by additions from the early physicists who identify the soul with air, or fire, or wind; and from Aristotle, in whose system the combination of the four principles of cold, hot, wet, and dry played a main part, as explaining the processes of nature.’ The first elements are to be taken as composing the anima, the fourth constitutes the animus. This animus is the seat of will and thought in Lucretius. The will we know, on the evidence of direct experience, is free; but it should be noticed in connection with what is said above, that its action begins in the heart. Epicurus seems to have regarded the breast as the seat of the rational soul, a distinctly retrograde movement after Democritus had placed it in the head.

With regard to the psychological activities, these must be interpreted in a materialistic sense. The secondary qualities have a material counterpart in the existence of the finer particles which are the cause of their perception: even the gods are known by effluxes. ‘This doctrine of sense-perception is in a way only part of a larger doctrine which has important and direct bearings on the moral theory. In the first place, not merely do the skins shed by the objects around us meet the eye now; but even long after the objects to which they may have belonged have ceased to exist, these phantom husks float about the world. Thus it happens that the forms of the departed may visit us long after their decease.’ Thus Epicurus combined with his denial of spiritualism as a theory of the existence of disembodied personalities a materialistic spiritism to account for ghosts. This is another instance of the way that physical theories may be dictated by extraneous ideas, and is really an example of the practical application of the view that ethical considerations come first. For the advantage of the view is that it permits those visions of gods and divine beings which come to us in the night seasons, and brighten our world with pictures of a blessedness above and beyond our present attainments. How such ideas could be of use to us as moral incentives if we realised that the beings so revealed were not personal, is a question we naturally ask now, but get no answer from Epicureanism.

On the whole we may characterise this as a theory of imagination. In it the intellect gets little attention: even the ‘imaginative impressions of the intellect’ are to be taken as literally impressions. If they are real they are effects, and all effects have a cause which expresses itself in motion and must therefore be in some sense material. The only concession allowed to the intellectual impressions is that they point to agents more subtle than those which appeal to the senses. In one respect we have traces of a less materialistic view of mental processes. A certain degree of mental activity is implied in the concession that we can form for ourselves fresh ideas by ‘new syntheses of sensations’; but the suggestion is worth very little so long as we are not expressly told whether this is or is not more than a secondary movement of the particles of the mind and purely mechanical. It avails nothing to say that they are voluntary, for we have already seen that any talk about the will carries us away from Epicureanism if we venture to think of it as other than materialistic in its nature.

I will close this summary of the main features of Epicureanism with a passage from the work to which I have already referred again and again: it expresses what I take to be the truth about Epicurus in words that cannot be bettered. ‘If we have rightly understood Epicurus, he has simply ignored the ego and consciousness and turned solely to externality. He has adopted the attitude of science and not of philosophy. He has fairly enough employed the ordinary conceptions of matter to explain the processes of growth, nutrition, and sensation. If not an adequate mode of conceiving these processes, it has, at least for most minds, the merit of affording an easy and simple rationale of them. But as a philosopher he should have gone further. His only answer, however, to the question, “What are we?” is, that we are what we see, and, if our vision were expanded, might see. Each of us is an object of sensitive and intellectual vision: of the other fact that each is a subject, he says nothing. And by a subject is not meant merely that each of us is active as well as passive. For that matter the same may be said of every piece of corporeal substance in the universe: activity and passivity are the very characteristics of existence in its every shape. But in each of us there is the further element of consciousness, sentiment, feeling, will, and knowledge. Of this Epicurus has no other explanation than to say that it is nothing separable from certain combinations of molecules, and may even be treated as a mere aggregation of ethereal atoms.’

IV.

Between the days of Lucretius and the age of Gassendi lie seventeen hundred years filled with the strife of minds and marked by much real progress. The historians of philosophy have linked together its different epochs, and he who would comprehend how much was done in that time to solve our human problems must turn to the pages of the professed historian. He will find there two main influences controlling the whole advance: on the one hand, the theological and speculative thinking of the patristic and scholastic periods: on the other, the scientific trend of thought which is most marked where Arabian influences predominate. These lines tend to converge, but there are certain well-defined conditions which make Faith and Science at present incapable of harmony. Under these conditions, equally predominant in modern times, the two parties present themselves as rival claimants for the different areas within the Kingdom of Thought: tract after tract was claimed and lost or won by the alien forces of reason, experience, or science. The real difficulty for Dogma arose from the fact that it had assumed control over regions of thought in which its forces could never hold their own: its losses were rarely such as could endanger its final stronghold; but every proof of decaying power was regarded as hastening the final catastrophe. In the mean time the two claimants establish a right to two kinds of subjects: science claims to rule on all that can be presented to the senses, dogma on all the hyperphysical realities. With the main classes thus determined, the discussion turns on the question as to what is to be included under either head. Slowly but surely the content of dogmatic philosophy is drained away until a daring spirit like Bruno openly declares that the Bible is meant to teach morals only—not physics. The growth of a non-dogmatic philosophy is followed by a growth of the spirit of enquiry itself. At first the opposition to dogmatism takes the form of confronting theory with fact; this especially affected the authority which grounded itself on Aristotle as one who is above criticism, and proved most damaging wherever the investigation of nature came into collision with dogmatic deliverances on what ought to be or happen in the physical world. As typical of this collision between observation and groundless theorising Galileo may be cited. But while we speak of this as an awakening and as the triumph of physics over metaphysics, it is necessary to remember that the spirit of critical enquiry was not yet freed from the matter to which it most naturally allied itself: it was universally regarded as applicable to all matter alike. A vigorous mind like that of Valla might carry critical principles from the sphere of the sciences into history: a Montaigne might arise to suggest that even Christianity was not beyond criticism; but it was still possible, or rather natural, for men to feel that the hidden mysteries were a thing apart, that the realities of faith must remain behind the veil of the temple. For this reason it is incorrect to suppose that those who still acknowledge the rights of Faith are necessarily insincere, merely compromising their beliefs to avoid public censure. Much that is commonplace now was boldly original in the sixteenth century; and the boldness of originality is not to be measured only by the extent to which physical safety is jeopardised: it must be measured also by the mental strain which it involves and the feeling which comes to every sincere mind that the opinion of the many may have more truth than the individual perceives. The foolish can have the courage of their convictions and rush in where the angels have feared to tread: the wise find their courage more severely taxed in the attainment of convictions. Where the struggle ends in some grand renunciation it gains our applause: where it ends in the belief that neither extreme is right we feel that it is less noble, less brilliant, and too often do injustice to the temperate soul not knowing that its refinement is of fire.

Such was the age in which Gassendi appeared, tinged already with a deeper scepticism, but on the whole not yet grappling with the final questions. If we may judge from the face portrayed in the Frontispiece of the edition of 1658, he was a genial kindly soul, not given to brawling but yet filled with the temper that resists wrong. In the controversy with Descartes he showed his qualities explicitly: at first he shuns the arena: once engaged, he stiffens against the onset of the enemy; his temper rises with the progress of the battle, yet never so as to confuse hand or eye: the opponent grows impatient, speaks hastily and rashly, but he sharpens the pen again and pursues without swerving the relentless analysis. Such was the man when pitted against a worthy foe, yet it was peace he loved, not war. His Epicureanism was of the lofty type: ease and pleasure have their rights, but they exist only as parts in a life that is unified by a great purpose: they are the condimentum vitae; not the things on which we live, but the temper that leavens the whole. Such a frame of mind is only distinguished from Stoicism by great liberality in the interpretation of life and a greater ability to compromise. Some spirits break rather than bend: his could bend in season, and when after the strife Descartes came to him in days of sickness as a friend, he thought it no shame to forgive and to forget.

The facts of Gassendi’s life are well known. Born on Jan. 22nd, 1592, at Champtercier, near Digne, in Provence, he went to the College of Digne at an early age, and, like many of the great thinkers of his day, combined linguistic with mathematical studies, and was equally successful in both. He must have been something of an infant prodigy, for in his sixteenth year he was invited to lecture. From Digne he went to Aix and studied philosophy under Fesaye, returning in 1612 to Digne as lecturer in Theology. Four years later (1616) he became Doctor of Theology and was ordained the following year.

Gassendi had now definitely entered the Church; but from this time his interest in Theology seems to have waned. He returned to Aix for a short time to lecture on philosophy, and though appointed to a canonry at Grenoble, continued to devote himself to the reform of Philosophy. In 1624 he was persuaded to publish his criticisms of Aristotelianism, a work which had its origin in the criticisms which he was in the habit of appending to his formal expositions when lecturing at Aix. The Exercitationes Paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos were never finished. In this year (1624) Book I. was published, and a fragment of Book II. was afterwards added in the collected works. A note appended to this Fragment tells us that the author abandoned the work after reading the Peripatetica of Franciscus Patricius. The part that was published aroused considerable animosity, and drew public attention at once to the author’s abilities and mental attitude. Originality was not Gassendi’s strong point, and he showed in this work that his strength lay in combining the ideas of others so as to make them more effective. In one respect the work marks an epoch in his life: henceforth his attitude toward Aristotle is defined by the declaration that the Stagirite is to be taken as guide but not worshipped as master and lord. In this, as in other respects, his aim is not to be ‘aut nimium credulus aut parum pius’ (VI. 172). While the work of Patricius relieved him from the necessity of pursuing these critical essays, he was also enlightened by their effect. He now saw that a merely destructive criticism did little but raise the dust. The true answer to existing systems could only be made in another system which should include in itself the whole range of human activity and compel the thoughts of men to look at the Universe as a whole. Thus began the scheme of the Syntagma, on which at least twenty years of labour were expended. With a training in mathematics supplemented by considerable knowledge of the cognate sciences, of medicine also and such biology as there was, Gassendi was naturally attracted to the idea of developing the content of the universe as subject of thought. He was struck with the difference in value between an abstract and an applied science; and theory abstracted from the living world seemed to him to have all the inutility of numbers that are multiplied for the value of multiplying, without application or objective reference. Such a science as anatomy elicits his fervent admiration, demanding as it does the highest development of method with a perpetual relation to the actual thing.

The year 1624 then was one of great moment, but no results were to be seen for many years. In 1628 Gassendi was travelling in Flanders and Holland with his friend Luillier. In 1631, at the request of Mersenne, he undertook the criticism of the mystical doctrine of Fludd. In 1633 he became Provost of the Cathedral of Digne, and shortly after began his travels in Provence with the Duke of Angoulême. In 1645 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the Collège Royal, Paris, but had to resign in 1648 through ill-health. The disease of the lungs from which he had long suffered soon became acute, and he died at Paris in 1655. The treatment of the disease seems to have been peculiarly perverse, and Sorbière speaks with much bitterness of the persistent way in which the medici continued to bleed the exhausted patient.

Between the years 1624 and the date of his death, Gassendi published writings of three distinct types. First, the critical writings include the examination of Fludd’s philosophy already noted (1631), and the attack on the Cartesian doctrine in 1642. As a critic, Gassendi has a keen eye for weak points, and a convincing style of attack: his natural faults are less in evidence here than anywhere. ‘Il est difficile de traiter les discussions philosophiques avec plus de clarté, d’agrément et de naturel: la polemique de Gassendi, sauf peut-être un peu de rhétorique, mérite encore aujourd’hui d’être proposée comme un modèle.’

The second class is that of the Lives, which were famous in their day: the Vita Peireskii was translated in English, and had a considerable vogue. The peculiar characteristic of Gassendi’s work in this direction is the easy way in which the whole is seasoned with genial humanity.

In the third class may be reckoned the strictly philosophical works. Though the work De Vita moribus et doctrina Epicuri is a Life, and the notes to the tenth book of Diogenes Laertius are critical, they may both be reckoned as part of the working out of an Epicurean Philosophy. They stand in close relation to the Syntagma, which is the final and all-embracing statement of his philosophy. As this is to be the subject of the following pages, only a remark or two need be made here. The recorded judgments of the value of Gassendi’s work vary largely. Some think he has practically no place in the history of philosophy: others regard him as the forerunner of such modern philosophy as concerns itself with the empirical rather than the idealistic line of development. In my opinion there is no fairer estimate of Gassendi than that which Ritter gives in his Geschichte der Philosophie (vol. X. p. 544). He says: ‘Durch bedeutende Erfindungen glänzte er nicht: dem neuem Entwicklungsgange der Wissenschaften hatte er sich doch nicht mit Entschiedenheit angeschlossen; gegen das Copernikanische System hatte er noch seine Zweifel: die theologischen Fragen will er zwar nicht der Philosophie beimischen, weil wir in dieser nur dem Lichte der Natur zu folgen haben’ (544). For some things the authority of the Church is final: in the rest there is freedom: in philosophy as such there is no one that must be taken as a final authority; his method of exposition belongs to the earlier style in which all the authorities are reviewed before a decision is made: he seeks a middle course between scepticism and dogmatism. He might indeed be reckoned among those who had revived ancient systems in the earlier period (this refers to Ritter’s ‘periods,’ of which the last brings the reader down to the reform of philosophy by Bacon) but for the fact that his work is grounded on the reformed methods of Bacon and ‘ein bedeutendes Glied für die systematische Entwicklung der neuen Philosophie abgegeben hat’ (545). This is an accurate definition of Gassendi’s position, and shows that Ritter knew the actual contents of the Syntagma at least. Its truth will be more apparent when the summary of the Syntagma has been read and the question of Gassendi’s materialism can be discussed in the light of his own statements.