THE PHILOSOPHY OF GASSENDI
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF
GASSENDI
BY
G. S. BRETT
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, GOVERNMENT COLLEGE, LAHORE
MACMILLAN AND CO. LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1908
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD
PREFACE
Up to the present little attention has been paid to Gassendi. The want
of a reliable account of his philosophy has caused him to be neglected,
for the nature of his own writings is such as would naturally obscure the
value of his message. Hallam, in his _Introduction to the Literature of
Europe_ (Part IV. chap. iii.), indicates the extent to which Gassendi has
been neglected and also the reasons. He refers to Gassendi’s “prolixity
of statement,” “prodigality of learning,” and “display of erudition,”
characteristics which have all militated against recognition of his real
merits. In consequence he is little more than a name, or is known as
the original of Bernier’s work, and is either misunderstood or pushed
aside as one who challenged Descartes from an antiquated and untenable
standpoint.
To remedy this error and supply what is undoubtedly a page in the
history of philosophy I have tried in this book to express briefly the
main lines of Gassendi’s thought. It has been necessary to condense
the matter ruthlessly, but this could be done with all the less danger
because so much of the contents of the volumes is historical. None the
less it is natural that there should arise the feeling that a process
which condenses chapters into phrases and whole sections into sentences,
is an injustice to an author. The atmosphere of comprehensive learning
which gives a peculiar charm to these volumes cannot be reproduced
elsewhere: it is the breath of an age which every day puts further from
us. In compensation for this loss I can only plead the advantages of
conciseness. Time works toward the setting forth of the skeleton with the
destruction of all else, and in the world of books we take an optimistic
view of this unavoidable process and trust that it leaves us what is most
enduring and most essential.
That Gassendi deserves honourable mention in the history of philosophy
will hardly be doubted. How far he is able to help in the solution of
its problems is a point that the reader will estimate for himself. Now
that we are recovering somewhat from that disturbance of equilibrium
which characterised the development of Cartesianism, such work as that of
Gassendi has an opportunity of asserting itself more effectively. If we
pause to ask what is the true and abiding characteristic of a philosophic
mind we shall see that it is comprehensiveness of view, breadth of
vision, combined with a power to see, and not merely look at, the vast
array of the knowable. This comprehensiveness makes greatness: through
it a man may be the spectator of all times and places. But he must not
hope to gain this comprehensive outlook by occupying one solitary peak:
he must not flatter himself that there is an essence of all essences,
that he can condense all life and thought into one magic drop. On the
contrary he must keep the original wealth of material undiminished if he
would have a world in which ‘life’s garden blows’; if he abstracts and
simplifies the product is an ‘essence,’ a drop of scent in place of the
living flower.
This fact is gaining more recognition now than it did some time ago. We
do not always remember that the necessity for emphasising the point was
not formerly so great as it has been recently. A reading of Gassendi
brings home to us the fact that philosophy has not always considered
concentration its prime duty, and a return to the atmosphere of naïve
pluralism is a refreshing reminder that thought was once childishly
unsophisticated. With no intention of denying the value of the progress
that has been made, and no attempt to ignore crudities and fallacies,
we can still go back with profit to a view of the world that is not
obsessed with the tendencies of extreme idealism: we can even go back
to the pre-Kantian days with profit so long as we remember that they
are pre-Kantian. In some respects it is peculiarly profitable to see
what could be done with the material of knowledge before Hume was
sceptical or Kant awakened: in the case of Gassendi the moderation and
liberality of his views makes him frequently strike the line to which
thought was destined to return, and thus appear in close touch with later
developments. In reference to this I may add that the quotations from
the original have been limited as much as possible. As the whole account
is a mere summary the original can be easily consulted, the chapters
and divisions of my account indicate the parts of the author which are
being considered. But I have felt compelled to insert quotations and
phrases wherever there seemed a possibility of confusion or grounds
for suspecting that the language used by me was not justified by the
original. In the parts of this book which profess to contain the thoughts
and ideas of Gassendi I have aimed only at exhibiting those thoughts
and ideas with no more additions than were required to bridge over gaps
caused by omission and no interpretation beyond what was demanded to make
clear the underlying connexions of the original work. All references to
previous philosophers and interpretations of their meaning within that
part (_i.e._ Parts I. to III.) are to be credited to Gassendi. My own
remarks are only intended to set the essential elements of Gassendi’s
philosophy in what I conceive to be their true historical light.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY
THE WORKS OF GASSENDI xi
BIBLIOGRAPHY xv
INTRODUCTION xvii
PART I. LOGIC 1
PART II. PHYSICS
_SECTION A_
CHAP.
I. INTRODUCTORY 19
II. TIME AND SPACE 34
III. FIRST PRINCIPLES
(_a_) THE MATERIAL PRINCIPLE 49
(_b_) PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CAUSES 55
(_c_) MOTION AND MUTATION 59
(_d_) ON QUALITIES 65
(_e_) ON THE ORIGIN AND DECAY OF THINGS 82
_SECTION B_
I. THE INANIMATE WORLD 89
II. THE ANIMATE WORLD
(_a_) INTRODUCTORY 98
(_b_) ON DESIGN IN NATURE 100
(_c_) THE THEORY OF THE SOUL 106
(_d_) THE ANIMA HUMANA 111
(_e_) THE BASIS OF PSYCHIC LIFE 115
III. PSYCHIC LIFE
(_a_) SENSE AND SENSATION 121
(_b_) IMAGINATION 129
(_c_) INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS 139
(_d_) THE HABITS OF INTELLECT 150
(_e_) THE PASSIONS 153
IV. THE NATURE OF LIFE
(_a_) THE VIS MOTRIX 161
(_b_) LIFE AND DEATH 168
(_c_) THE CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS 172
PART III. ETHICS
I. ON HAPPINESS 183
II. THE VIRTUES 196
III. ON LIBERTY, FATE, AND DIVINATION 218
IV. ON GOD 224
NOTE ON DECLINATION 230
PART IV. GENERAL REVIEW
I. GASSENDI 245
II. LATER VIEWS 270
INDEX 308
THE WORKS OF GASSENDI
The following is a complete list of the contents of the edition of 1658.
VOLUME I
Syntagma philosophicum.
Liber prooemialis.
Pars prima quae est logica.
I. De origine et varietate logica.
II. De logicae fine.
Institutio logica.
1. De simplice rerum imaginatione.
2. De propositione.
3. De syllogismo.
4. De methodo.
Pars secunda quae est physica.
Section 1.
Book 1. De universo et mundo.
” 2. De loco et tempore.
” 3. De materiali principio.
” 4. De principio efficiente.
” 5. De motu et mutatione rerum.
” 6. De qualitatibus rerum.
” 7. De ortu et interitu.
Section 2. De Rebus Caelestibus.
(End of Vol. I. pp. 752.)
VOLUME II
Syntagma philosophicum (_continued_).
Section 3. Part I. De rebus terrenis inanimis.
Book 1. De globo ipso telluris.
” 2. De vocatis vulgo meteoris (ventis, etc.).
” 3. De lapidibus ac metallis.
” 4. De plantis.
Section 3. Part II. De rebus terrenis viventibus.
Book 1. De varietate animalium.
” 2. De partibus animalium.
” 3. De anima.
” 4. De generatione animalium.
” 5. De nutritione.
” 6. De sensu universe.
” 7. De sensibus speciatim.
” 8. De phantasia.
” 9. De intellectu seu mente.
” 10. De appetitu et affectibus animae.
” 11. De vi motrice.
” 12. De temperie.
” 13. De vita et morte.
” 14. De animorum immortalitate.
Pars tertia quae est ethica.
Book 1. De felicitate.
” 2. De virtutibus.
” 3. De libertate, fortuna, etc.
(End of Vol. II. pp. 860.)
VOLUME III
1. Philosophiae Epicuri Syntagma.
2. Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos.
3. Fluddanae philosophiae examen.
4. Disquisitio metaphysica adversus Cartesium.
5-9. Epistulae.
(End of Vol. III. pp. 662.)
VOLUME IV
Astronomica. Parts I.-V. pp. 536.
VOLUME V
1. Diogenis Laertii Liber X, cum nova interpretatione et notis.
2. Vita Epicuri, Peireskii, Tychonis Brahei, Copernici, Peurbachii, et
Regiomontani.
3. Abacus sestertialis seu de valore antiquae monetae ad nostram redactae.
4. Romanum Calendarium compendiose expositum.
5. Manuductio ad theoriam musices.
6. Notitia ecclesiae Diniensis.
(End of Vol. V. pp. 740.)
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.
I.
Atomism and Epicureanism are very different things, but the beginnings
of the theory of Epicurus[1] 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.’[2]
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.’[3] 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.’[4]
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,’[5]
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.[6]
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.[7] ‘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.[8] 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.’[9]
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.[10]
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.
PART I. LOGIC
LOGIC
I.
Logic is defined by Gassendi as the science of intellect ‘qua veri
sequax.’[11] Its rules, being general, conduct to all knowledge, not
merely the knowledge of nature, but knowledge of every description.[12]
The term Logic Gassendi connects with Logos, which denotes the inner
conversation of the mind, of which Ratio is a species.
Logic, then, in the first instance is the science of all mental
operations that are in any sense organised. This science may be
Dialectic, Organic, or, thirdly, Logic in the narrower sense. Logic in
the widest sense is ars cogitandi; as Dialectic it is ars disserendi;
as Organic it is ars dirigendi actiones mentis: while the ars Logica in
the narrower sense is canonica or ars veri et falsi diiudicandi. This
second use of the term Logic is confined to the ars bene cogitandi, which
is held to be different from the ars cogitandi, and identical with the
ars ratiocinandi. This is the real Logic as usually understood, and the
branch that demands our serious attention. Bene cogitare comprises bene
imaginari, proponere, colligere et ordinare: and in accord with these our
Logic will comprise the subjects of Imagination, Proposition, Syllogism,
and Method.
The action denoted by the verb ‘imaginari’ is that of forming an idea,
also called species, notio, praenotio, anticipatio, or conceptus. The
ideas present themselves to the mind as soon as the object is named,
and we, as it were, see right into them.[13] This intuitive perception
we call simple imagination, because it is limited to the mere image of
the thing without affirmation or negation. The idea is identical with
the phantasma. The proposition is an enunciative judgment: colligere
denotes the illative judgment; while the correct treatment of a number of
judgments in related syllogisms constitutes the ars bene ordinandi.
II.
Logic is in the first instance Natural. Men had thoughts before they
evolved any method of thinking, and probably even in the earliest times
there was some method of thought even if there was no thought of method.
The serpent in the garden of Eden doubtless used subtle arguments;
but these primary forms of Logic are of no serious importance: we may
therefore pass them over, and confine our attention to Artificial Logic.
The earliest Logic in the proper sense is that of Epicurus. Zeno’s Logic
was purely eristic, and a non-syllogistic method. Epicurus has been
accused of despising Logic, but it was really only the Logic of the
Stoics which he rejected. When he dropped the term Logic for the name
‘canons’ it was only the name that he really changed: ‘nomen rejecit rem
retinuit’ [I. 52].
All questions, said Epicurus, are either about things or words. When the
question is about things a criterion of Judgment is required. Things
may be classified as (_a_) naturales and (_b_) morales. In the case of
res naturales, we require sense and mind: for res morales appetitus is
required. As there are three faculties, namely sense, mind, and feeling,
we have three criteria, namely sensation, anticipation, and passion.
The term sense denotes both the faculty and the function: as a criterion
it denotes the function primarily, for we judge by the perception of
the senses. The anticipatio is the image stored in the mind; the passio
is the pleasure or pain which controls choice. These will be better
understood if we quote the canons.
CANON i. Sensus nunquam fallitur: ac proinde est omnis sensio omnisque
Phantasiae seu apparentiae perceptio vera.
CANON ii. Opinio est consequens sensum sensionique superadjecta in quam
Veritas aut falsitas cadit.
CANON iii. Opinio illa vera est cui vel suffragatur vel non refragatur
sensus evidentia.
CANON iv. Opinio illa falsa est cui vel refragatur vel non suffragatur
sensus evidentia.
CANON v. Omnis quae in mente est anticipatio seu praenotio dependet a
sensibus: idque vel incursione, vel proportione, vel similitudine vel
compositione.
CANON vi. Anticipatio est ipsa rei notio sive definitio, sine qua
quidquam quaerere, dubitare, opinari, imo et nominari non licet.
CANON vii. Est anticipatio in omni Ratiocinatione principium, quasi nempe
id ad quod attendentes inferimus unum esse idem aut diversum, conjunctum
aut disjunctum.
CANON viii. Quod inevidens est ex rei evidentis anticipatione demonstrari
debet.
These eight canons are the basis of the theory of knowledge, in so far as
one is given us. We start with a blank mind capable of bare sensation:
the evidence of sense is one against which there is no appeal.[14] In the
fifth canon we have some new terms: ‘incursio’ denotes the entrance of an
idea as such: proportio is the creation of an idea, _e.g._ of a giant,
by extending the idea of a man; similitudo is construction of an object
not seen by analogy with one we know; lastly, compositio is the voluntary
union of ideas such as we perform in constructing the notion of the
centaur. In the sixth canon the phrase ‘notio sive definitio’ covers two
aspects of the anticipatio. As a mental image the anticipatio is that
visualizing of an object which we perform when we hear a name significant
to us. This not being the product of a present object, is producible
at will and is that which we recall and mentally survey in framing a
definition. A verbal definition is a secondary product and not necessary
except for one desiring to communicate his ideas. The essential thing is
a formal notion or a notion described and accurately delimited;[15] and
this is what Gassendi really wants.
III.
The remaining canons, ix. to xiv., are rules for practical choice and
clear speaking. Upon these there follow summaries of the works of Lully,
Ramus, and Bacon.
The second book opens with the question of the nature of that Truth which
is considered to be the end of Logic.
Truth is for Logic an end which is external to it. The internal end
for Logic is right thinking; but right thoughts are higher and better
than this: Logic prepares the mind, and the end of this preparation
is attained in applied thought. The common distinction made between
‘logica docens’ and ‘logica utens’ expresses this point. The former is
abjuncta a rebus, the latter conjuncta cum rebus. It is only the latter,
the concrete applied logic, that concerns us at present. The Truth
whose nature we are pursuing is truth of judgment. There is a truth of
existence expressed in the formula ‘everything is what it is’; Gassendi
recognises that reality must always be real, and a picture is not
primarily ‘falsus homo’ but ‘vera effigies’;[16] on the other hand, he
clearly does not suspect that the existence of which he predicates truth
is always a being for mind. To Being as it is for thought belongs another
kind of truth, truth of judgment, which is the agreement of judgment with
fact.
Gassendi is now grappling with a difficult subject, and allowance must
be made for the crudeness of the position on account of its novelty.
Gassendi’s aim is to reach a common-sense position. It appears to him
that everything is what it is in itself: like all other defenders of
this point he goes upon the tacit assumption that the phrase ‘a thing is
what it is’ means a thing is for itself what it is for consciousness.
As yet the animistic vein is not quite explicitly eliminated from the
world of nature as we know it: the object is not properly conceived as
always relative to mind; still less is the object as related to mind
expressly distinguished from the thing as a further ultimate reality.
But with all its crudity the theory of Gassendi commands respect as a
straightforward treatment of the world of daily life. The primary dogma
that ‘everything is what it is’ is supplemented by the notion that sense
shows us everything as it is. There is therefore no thought of the
bodily medium being itself the destroyer of all knowledge: the immediate
relation is the psychic atom out of which the fabric of knowledge is
built, and is itself irresolvable and wholly real. Immediate relations
are, however, not always possible. Things are not all of the same kind.
Some are ‘manifestae,’ and with them we have no trouble; others are
‘occultae,’ either ‘penitus,’ ‘natura,’ or ‘ad tempus.’[17] The first
are hopeless: the last may be left for Time to reveal: the second form
the sphere which it pays us to further examine. It follows from this
division that there is an unknowable; but that which is unknown is so by
reason of its own nature, not by reason of any defect in us. The example
given is the knowledge that the stars are even in number: the unknown is
in this case the answer to a problem, and the knowledge that there is
an answer depends on a disjunctive judgment, ‘stars are either odd or
even.’ It would seem as though, if this is the type of the unknowable,
the unknowable ‘penitus’ is always a case of the ‘unknown ad tempus.’ The
‘res occultae natura’ are those which can be reached by inference: as,
for example, the existence of pores in an apparently continuous surface
deduced from the excretion of sweat. To reach these truths which lie
below the surface we require a criterion, or instrument.
Properly a criterion is a standard of judgment, as Gassendi recognises,
but it is also employed in the sense of instrument. He divides criteria
into (1) those by which we live, and (2) those by which we learn. The
former are standards, such as ‘lex patriae,’ ‘consuetudo,’ and the like,
together with the moral tests of Epicurus, pain and pleasure. These do
not really belong to Logic, which is concerned with the second class.
This is subdivided into (_a_) mechanical, and (_b_) natural criteria.
The former subdivision includes the foot-rule and instruments of that
kind; the latter contains ‘id per quod’ and ‘id secundum quod,’ namely
the faculty and the function of the faculty. Some add to these a third,
‘a quo,’ and define it as the mind. But while for ascertaining the weight
of a thing we require the scales, the poising of the scales, and the man
to record the result, and also for knowledge we require the sense, the
function of the sense, and the mind that knows the result, the third is
in both cases not a criterion, but a judge.[18]
IV.
Now that we have determined the nature of the world we confront and the
criteria available for its discovery, we must explore the question of the
possibility of knowledge, for that has been more than once denied.
The Sceptics assert that man knows nothing in the sense that he cannot
penetrate into the inner beings of things. The Dogmatists, on the other
hand, declare the criteria of sense and intellect to be absolute:
everything can be known through them. Both the schools err from excess,
and the truth lies in the golden mean: some things are known, and
truly known, while others are obscure and do not admit of more than
probability. Truth must be regarded as always possible, but not always
actual: what we do know is truth, but at the same time we cannot be said
to know all truth.
A difficulty arises here which Gassendi does not seem to suspect. If
we do not know all that might be known, how does the ignorance arise,
and how is the present knowledge affected by the absence of further
knowledge? Moreover, what do we require to make our knowledge more
complete? Is it more system or more senses? Clearly if the whole is
regarded as a growing system, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that no one stage is in itself finally true. On the other hand, if we
imagine that the world around us contains forces which appeal to us
in vain because we have no senses that can respond to them, knowledge
is bound to remain cramped and imperfect for all time. The atomism of
Gassendi’s standpoint now becomes obvious. He thinks that a piece of the
truth is at least truth. The system of truths, then, only differs from
the individual truths in respect of quantity. This point can be made
clearer when we have further considered the nature of knowledge.
In opposition to Gorgias, Gassendi asserts that there must be something
and some truth. Appearances are admitted to be true: it is the occult
truths which give rise to doubt. To penetrate into the occult truth we
must advance by means of the known to the unknown. A fact which is known
and used as the key to further knowledge is called ‘signum, medium,
seu argumentum.’ For example, in the sentence ‘if the sun shines it
is day,’ the signum is ‘if the sun shines.’ Following Aristotle and
Quintilian,[19] we divide the signa into (1) necessary and (2) probable.
The necessary signa are either (_a_) indicativa or (_b_) commonefactiva.
When the signa are indicativa they prove the existence of the occult
reality, as, for example, when sweat is taken as a proof that pores exist
in the skin. The commonefactiva belong to the class of ‘res ad tempus
occultae.’ In this case both the objects concerned are possible objects
of experience. When a man sees smoke he infers the presence of fire,
and can proceed to verify this by actual experience. It is not this but
the former case that the sceptics attack. The formula for this is, ‘If
_A_ is not, then _B_ is not’: hence given _B_, _A_ must be posited. The
question therefore amounts to this: can we have a perception that is
not a sense-perception, and none the less true? Gassendi thinks that
we can. The signum is a sense-datum, and must be given first; but it
has value only for a mind that perceives and grasps it, so much so that
the mind is justified in revising and correcting its sense-impressions.
The position of the Sceptics that experiences differ and there is no
universal truth is refuted by the facts. For the experiences may differ,
but in recognising the differences we practically admit that there are
two fixed points, namely, the cause and the disposition of the organism
which is affected. As knowledge is a relation the nature of the relation
may vary, and this may lead to partial and confusing statements. We say
‘the sun melts the wax’: we cannot say that the sun is in its own nature
‘melting,’ any more than that it is ‘hardening’ when it hardens the mud.
The underlying fact is that it radiates heat, which softens some bodies
and hardens others according to their dispositions. Our limits are given
at one end by the immediate certainty of sense, and at the other by the
‘indubitata principia’ of mind. It follows that single facts and true
propositions are alike self-evident. If the intellect makes errors it
also corrects them, and knows the pure truth of axioms.
The critical point of this logic is the determination of the relation of
reason to sense. At first it looks as though this was a theory purely
sensualistic, but the modifications introduced finally reverse that
judgment. Gassendi’s real meaning appears to be that experience gives us
all we know; we may get out of experience much that is not apparent to
the senses, but we must never suppose that we can by ourselves _make_
experience: knowledge is a relation, and therefore a pure creative
activity of mind is a sheer impossibility. Gassendi does not say that the
mind cannot know much that the senses never reveal, or that we cannot
confront experience with concepts derived from reflection: all he says
is that however far we travel from the sources, there can be no truth
or reality in thoughts that cannot be brought back to their contact
with experience. Psychologically this is expressed by saying that the
intellect is a supersensuous agent, which is in fact always allied to a
sensuous organism.[20]
Gassendi thought Bacon and Descartes were both extremists. Bacon confined
himself too much to the ars bene colligendi; his condemnation of the
syllogism was wrong, ‘cum in syllogismo sit re ipsa robur nervusque omnis
ratiocinii’: the syllogism is only a failure because our universal is
generally formed ‘ex propositionibus non satis perspectis.’ Descartes,
on the other hand, inclined to weave experience out of his inner
consciousness, to cultivate the ars bene imaginandi without due regard to
the material (auxilia ad habendum veram germanamque rerum notitiam, non
tam ab ipsismet per se ac in se explorandis rebus, quam a solo, ipsoque
a suis dumtaxat cogitatis pendente Intellectu procedendum existimat, I.
90). This definite expression of opinion makes it clear that Gassendi was
steering a middle course between contemporary forms of empiricism and
rationalism (_v._ p. 134).
Gassendi has now finished defining his position with regard to the
relation of the mind to its world. The position is obviously modelled
on Aristotle, and as was noticed above, is in a sense atomistic. A very
significant remark is to be found in the answer to the Sceptics, who
argued that, if a thing appears differently to different people, no one
appearance can be called the truth. Gassendi says that the truth lies not
in the appearance but in the appearing.
Suppose an object appears to me to be of a certain colour, I cannot
say that this is ‘ipsissima qualitas quae sit in objecto,’[21] but I
can say that this is the affection due to this object, or this is the
relation which this object realises with me. The statement that the
object is not red to you cannot make it cease to be red to me, while, on
the other hand, the fact that it is not to you what it is to me, proves
that it is what it is, for if there were no objective reality the fact
of difference could not be explained at all. This view logically implies
that the object is essentially what it does, or in other words, it is a
‘possibility of action.’
Atomism necessitates the recognition of the ‘thing’ as a solid unchanging
occupant of space. Whether it naturally leads to the rejection of
the category of substance for that of function, to the change of the
formula of the thing from what it is to what it does, is a question that
confronts us vaguely, but with promise of growing clearness.
V.
The Logic proper of Gassendi is divided into four parts, and exhibited in
the form of canons. The parts deal with the idea, the proposition, the
syllogism, and method respectively.
The primary activity of the conscious being is Imagination, or the
reception of an image also called idea. The idea is defined as the
object of the mind when it thinks (quae nobis rem quampiam cogitantibus
menti obversatur). All ideas come to us from the senses, and we must
endorse the saying: nihil in Intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu
(Canon iv.).[22] These ideas are supplemented by those which the mind
constructs by its own activities.[23] From the activity of the mind we
derive general ideas. Both singular and general ideas are ‘perfect’
in proportion as they accurately represent the object, and accuracy is
obtained by discriminating all the parts of the object, singular or
general. So Gassendi praises Anatomy, Chemistry, and all analytical
sciences as leading to accurate knowledge of particular objects. In the
case of the general idea, he says it is more perfect according as it
contains more distinct classes. The general idea of man, for example, is
more perfect if it contains not only Europeans, Africans, and Asiatics,
but also Americans. It is difficult, he says, to get the idea free from
particular distinctions, but it can be done. The reader of Canon viii.
will find it difficult to say whether Gassendi’s universal is to contain
all particular distinctions or be formed by neglecting them. Man, as a
general idea, must be ‘omnibus discriminibus absolutum,’ but at the same
time the universal concept cannot be gained by abstraction based on one
individual, but results from that process of explicating the essential,
which is grounded in the interaction of many particular ideas.
The Proposition is a union of ideas, and forms the second stage of
logical process. It is true when the union it affirms is in agreement
with objective reality. The objective relation is that of substance and
attributes, and the Proposition unites substance and attributes. As
the union objectively considered is sometimes necessary and sometimes
contingent, so the judgment contained in the proposition is sometimes
necessary (the opposite term being “impossible”), sometimes probable.
The syllogism is a nexus of propositions, and is treated by Gassendi
in the ordinary formal way. Method is three-fold: of invention, of
judgment, and of doctrine. The method of discovery is either analytic
or synthetic. It consists essentially in tracking down a middle term
or connecting link. Suppose one is required to prove that man is a
substance. Taking the subject man we may analyse it and show that it
contains the notion of substance: or taking substance we may qualify it
(synthetically) until we get that qualification which is identical with
man. The process is obviously a resolution of the equation, ‘Man = a
substance,’ in the form:
Man = rational living thing.
Some substance = rational living thing.
Man = some substance.
Gassendi’s preference for mathematical methods would have been quite
obvious without his particular reference to geometry.
The method of judgment is likened to proof in arithmetic when we
combine addition with subtraction, and use them alternately to prove a
result.[24] The final verification is found in the criteria of sense and
judgment in which we must finally fix our faith.
The method of doctrine or teaching ‘begins with resolution, and proceeds
by composition’ (Canon v.). This is the method of all sciences, physical,
mental, and moral. In addition to this simple rule Gassendi preaches
clearness of language, clearness of division, avoidance of useless
digressions, and the necessity of proceeding from the most common and
essential elements to the more obscure.
PART II. PHYSICS
_SECTION A_
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
By far the longest part of the _Syntagma_ of Gassendi is comprised
under the title ‘Physics.’ Of the general nature of this work and its
significance we must speak later; for the present we shall be content
to follow Gassendi’s order of treatment and reproduce his views on the
various topics.
The Introduction is intended to clear our minds as to the character and
range of the subject. The term nature is frequently used for two very
distinct things. If used with an active significance it denotes a ‘vis
agendi,’ a ‘natura divina’ which sustains and supports everything; if
used passively it denotes simply the ‘universitas rerum,’ the totality
of existing things. This distinction invites the use of two terms made
famous by Spinoza, naturans and naturata. But terms live by their
associations, and as Gassendi does not use either of these verbal forms,
it is better to avoid them. Natura naturans would indeed distort the
meaning of ‘vis agendi’ beyond recognition. In spite of the alternative
phrase, natura divina, this active aspect of nature is in no sense
God: the activity may be from God and in its nature divine, but nature
and God remain distinct realities without fusion of their being. The
manifestations of this activity are the ordinary processes of life,
including all that belongs neither to art nor chance, which are the
complementary categories.
Nature as the sum of existing things may be regarded in an abstract or
a concrete way. The true sphere of our Physics lies in this system of
things, and the true keynote of our method is concreteness. Thales was
the founder of the true method, because he first sought the explanation
of natural phenomena in natural causes. To be scientific we must be
immanent; our results will probably not be final, but none the less
our end will be attained. That end is, according to Gassendi, ethical:
he is never tired of pointing out that if we desire finality we labour
in vain. The greatest lesson of past ages is that we too are doomed to
be superseded. None the less we are not aimless or without an end: it
is meritorious to do what we may, and as it is a duty so it is also
a happiness to attain a knowledge of the world in which we live, and
through Nature come to God. Of the limitations of our powers Gassendi has
no doubt; with Bacon he finds in nature a subtlety we cannot compass. But
he has no scepticism by which hope is numbed or enterprise chilled. It is
the quantity not the quality of knowledge that suffers: what we can know
is in its way true and final, and if we pass beyond it, the lower stage
had its own reality in its own day.
To revert to detail, a scheme is given us in this introduction of the
whole work.[25] It is to deal with (_a_) nature in general, (_b_) things
celestial, (_c_) things earthly. The subdivisions of the programme run
thus:
(_a_) De rebus naturae universe:
(1) The world—its number, parts, disposition.
(2) Time and place.
(3) Matter, causal principles, qualities, origin and end.
(_b_) De rebus celestibus:
(1) The heavenly bodies, their motions and the like.
(2) Predictions based on these.
(_c_) De rebus terrenis:
(1) Plants.
(2) Animals.
(3) Man and especially the soul.
This programme we shall follow as Gassendi has followed it.
I.
The discussions of the first section are prolix and contain chiefly
refutations of views which are generally of theological import and belong
to an age of thought so entirely superseded that they are no longer
of any interest. We can therefore pass it over with a mere summary of
conclusions.
The first question of the plurality of worlds was generally treated in an
a priori and speculative manner for which it was peculiarly unfitted. One
prominent argument of the scholastic divines asserted that an infinite
God could not express himself in a finite world. The word here used is
mundus, and must be taken to mean a habited or habitable globe, as
there is no question of the plurality of the heavenly bodies. The answer
to such a ‘trifling proposition’ is easy but instructive. In the first
place, the infinity of worlds might be successive, which is the more
probable if we grant that the given world must perish. Again, it does not
follow that an effect must be identical with its cause, and therefore,
an infinite cause need not produce an infinite effect. Finally, the
whole argument suggests that we can judge the Divine Agent by human
standards, which Gassendi denies. Gassendi refuses to say that ‘Deus
propter excellentiam non immerito nihil vocatur’; the concept of God
has to be formed through our concepts of all that is highest on earth,
but the sublimation is carried far enough to justify the position that
when regarded as active and real, God cannot be brought under ordinary
categories of judgment.
Current opinion was divided between two views. Some upheld that each
star was a world and these worlds were related to each other:[26]
others maintained that there was a plurality of worlds, but each one
dwelt apart, dissociated from the rest. In the second case it follows
that we cannot know the others; while the former statement is a mere
assumption, since we do not in fact know those relations. The assumption
of relations was a pure deduction from the assumed unity of the whole,
and was made valueless by the fact that the relations asserted to be
actual were never revealed in experience. An entirely different proof
was based on the assumption that the number of atoms was infinite and
could only be exhausted by an infinity of worlds. These so-called proofs
Gassendi rejects: his attitude is one of provisional scepticism based on
common-sense. There is no proof either for or against, since the worlds
if existent are certainly unknown.[27] He pours scorn on Lucretius for
praising Epicurus as though a proclamation of endless worlds had broken
down the barriers of human knowledge. Lucretius exclaimed in vain
‘moenia mundi
discedunt: video totum per inane geri res.’
The one word ‘video’ reduced the whole sentiment to bathos: it expressed
exactly what could not be done; and there is no gain in widening the
realm of the unknown: it is not the number of possible objects that must
be increased, but the powers of sense and constructive imagination as
based on sense. To indulge an empty fancy in the ecstasy that the word
‘infinite’ too often inspires is harmful rather than advantageous: we
must confine ourselves to what we know, and curb the imagination within
the limits dictated by experience. In this reference at least Gassendi
seems to have been clear on the distinction of unknown from unknowable,
and to have felt the futility of asserting existences to which we have no
relation.
II.
The fifth chapter takes up the question of the World Soul, a subject
which has been discussed from time immemorable, and still retains
something more than a merely historical interest. Gassendi’s treatment
of it is systematic and much more interesting than some of his other
discussions.
The root of the question is the opinion that the world is an organised
whole; not a ‘totum inordinatum’ like a pile of stones, but ‘ordinatum’
or constituted of organised parts.[28] This position is definitely
though perhaps unconsciously advanced by the addition of the idea that
these parts stand to each other in some relation other than that of mere
co-existence in space: it is universally admitted that Earth, Sun, and
Moon are interrelated (inter se affectae relatione aliqua sint). This
advance in the doctrine really carries us over the crucial step from the
view of the world as organised to the declaration that it is organic,
from which an easy analogy brings us to the all-pervading soul.[29] It
is this step that we must defend or repudiate. In spite of the example
of the pile of stones, it may be possible to have an ordered Universe
without all the implications of a universal soul.
The greatest advocates of the world soul are Pythagoras and Plato,
supported by Aristotle to a certain extent, and the more recent
‘chymici.’ The outline of the doctrine shows that the Soul of the
world was conceived as a very subtle substance pervading the Universe.
Its nature is not simple but twofold, being composed of a purer and a
grosser part, the latter being however ‘purissima’ as compared with
the grossness of corporeal entities. This forms a spiritual body which
mediates the entrance of the higher part into the natural body.[30] These
parts are called respectively Mens and Anima (νοῦς, ψυχή). The term anima
then denotes νοῦς taken as conjoined to some material existent, and can
be used in this discussion without further reference to νοῦς or mens per
se.
The anima was defined by Pythagoras as a harmony, not of course in
a material sense as we speak of vocal harmony, but in the sense of
proportion of parts. We naturally ask what are the parts and what are
the proportions, and we look to Plato’s _Timaeus_ for the answer. That
exposition is taken by Gassendi to be the true statement of what the
Anima Mundi meant to the original authors of the doctrine. Are we to
accept this Anima or not? Such expositions as we have clearly indicate
that it is an entity whose being is not exhausted in these analogical
descriptions. To say it is a harmony is only to say that its nature can
be thus analogically described. What is it in reality? If we take it to
mean God there is no objection so long as we speak of him as assistens,
not pars, just as the pilot is in but not part of the ship. Similarly it
may be a fiery substance (calor) if taken as immanent, not like the sun’s
heat, irradiated. This interpretation requires a further modification,
inasmuch as the position is radically altered by using the term soul
for a substance like calor. To use the term soul in any intelligible
way is to imply certain functions such as generation and nutrition.
These are essential to life as we know it, either in animals or plants,
and without these the term becomes meaningless. But one world does not
beget another, and therefore has no claim to be recognised as an animal.
Neither has the world any functions of nutrition: Plato and the Stoics
have indeed spoken of the stars as being nourished by exhalations from
the earth, and the earth from the water of the moon, but these are idle
fables: a commutation of parts there may be, but that is not properly
speaking nutrition. Finally, the earth has no functions such as sight and
hearing; and if we speak of the ‘heart’ of the world, or make it like a
Cyclops with the Sun for an eye, these are pure metaphors! Why, then,
is the world said to have a soul at all? The reason is, that without
it we cannot explain how there should be individual souls. The only
argument for it is a regress from particular to universal. Lactantius
expresses this tersely: ‘sic enim argumentatur: fieri non posse ut sensu
careat quod sensibilia ex se generat. Mundus autem generat hominem,
qui est sensu praeditus. Ergo et ipsum sensibilem esse.’ This argument
breaks down by generating its own contradiction: for many things in
the world have no soul, and it is equally possible to argue from them
that the world has no soul. That which has soul derives its soul from
the particular antecedent to which it owes its production and not to a
universal entity. (Animam nimirum habet animal non ex totali anima mundi
sed ex speciali anima quae aut in parentibus praeest. This applies not to
anima as such only, but to any specific nature, _e.g._ of stone, I. 160.)
A second main argument is derived from the belief that the soul is the
architect of its own body. Granted then that the world is an animal, it
must have a Soul. As this argument assumes the World to be an animal, and
deduces from that the presence of a soul, we must attack the assumption.
This animal called the world must either be eternal or have had a
beginning. If it is eternal, in what sense did the soul make it?—and if
it was created, this must have been done by some agent other than itself.
If it began, but not by creation, it was born either spontaneously or of
parents, which means it was due either to chance or to definite purpose.
In any case its cause is outside itself, and therefore cannot be its own
anima. It appears then, that the theory has no support so long as we take
the term soul exactly. If we take it to mean either God or a substance
such as fire, we either go beyond the world for its soul, or we apply the
term soul to material forms of existence in a way that will make havoc of
our psychology.
III.
Some additional questions remain to be settled, but they are of minor
importance. They comprise a discussion on the leading theories of the
universe and their relative values, an enquiry into the beginning and end
of the world, and a description of the known parts of the world. Of these
the last requires no notice, being a mere description of the apparent
place of things, _e.g._ the place of the air, of the water, of the earth,
and of the heavenly bodies. This essay on physical geography applied to
the universe belongs, with its complementary disquisition on the figure
of the earth, to an age still near the times when the earth was thought
to be flat, and may be consigned to the limbo of forgotten problems.
The three main theories of the world were those evolved by Ptolemy,
Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe respectively. Of these Gassendi considers
that of Tycho Brahe to be the best for reasons worth noting. Ptolemy’s
system is dismissed for not explaining the movement of the heavenly
bodies in a satisfactory way: the Copernican system is most in accord
with facts, but the sacred texts attribute rest to the earth and movement
to the sun. Moreover, there is a decree bidding us take this to mean not
apparent but real rest. Those, therefore, who respect the decree must
approve and defend Tycho Brahe’s modifications of the Copernican system.
Here, as elsewhere, Gassendi’s language implies reluctant acquiescence.
He writes: ‘Ideo superest ut tale Decretum reverentibus Tychonicum potius
systema et probetur et defendetur’; and we can see through the veil of
orthodoxy that the author’s heart is with Copernicus and the system which
can so truthfully be called ‘planius et concinnius.’
In dealing with the question of the world’s beginning Gassendi is
supported by Epicurus and the Bible. The doctrine of atoms implies a
theory of creation, and therefore puts its adherents in opposition to
Aristotle and the supporters of an infinite and unproduced world. But
while support is thus gained for the theory of creation, the alleged
method cannot be accepted. A blind concursus of atoms is not a method
of creation that a good Churchman can advocate. Fortunately it can be
rejected on rational no less than religious grounds. The world gives us
obvious proof that it was made by design: this implies a cause, which
must be outside it; and therefore production in time, for the cause
existed before it produced the world, and the relation of before and
after constitutes Time. Again, every part of the world is corruptible
and perishing, and the whole must therefore be of the nature of the
corruptible and have its own creation and decease.
To understand this second argument, we must take it as an argument on
categories.[31] The assumed question is, ‘Does the world belong to the
category of the infinite or the finite?’ If any reason can be shown for
including it under one category rather than another, the consequences
follow without further argument. Gassendi’s argument against the eternity
of the world is based on cruder views than might be expected. He notes
that the sea and the rivers continually reduce the land and even wear
down the mountains:[32] none of this matter is carried up again, and
therefore, if an eternity of time had really elapsed, the whole earth
must by now have disappeared beneath the waters. This is a shamelessly
eristic procedure for one who has just defended the spherical form of the
world.
There arises from this proof of a finite world one problem which touches
so nearly our views on motion that it must not be left unsolved.
Aristotle had argued from the eternity of movement and the necessity of
God’s continual action. Gassendi’s argument is also based on movement,
for corruption and decay may be regarded as primarily movements and
only apparent changes. It must also be borne in mind that there are
three indestructibles, namely atoms, the void, and the universe. If
the world is composed of atoms, and atoms never perish, it follows
that the destruction of the world is neither more nor less than the
dissipation of its material. Movement, then, would be eternal, and if
the old material forms a new world with never a break in the history of
its parts, why should this second world be said to be created rather
than evolved, and why should not our present world be viewed as evolved
from a former world or even a former condition of its own elements? It
may finally be necessary to say that Gassendi never properly faced this
problem, but he seems to have been conscious that such a problem was
possible, and to have in some degree anticipated it. His first defence
is the denial that time is dependent on motion. If time and motion are
inseparable, they must be coeval, and motion is infinite, since it
occupies all time: to deny the dependence is to assert a time prior to
all motion, and thereby make motion a product in time. The second is
contained in the assertion that the first cause need not be physical;
in other words, a regress from motion to motion is not infinite, but
terminates in a First Cause, by whose creative action motion itself
first came into being. The fact that all motion is, as motion, one, and
the term ‘different motions’ must be taken to mean motions of different
aggregates of matter, does not compel us to regard the creation of motion
as the imparting of one impulse to the whole: it is possible, and even
more probable, that in the beginning many mobile bodies were created with
internal force of movement. As God’s relation to the world is purely
external, and its movement is for him a ‘pure relation,’ his essence is
not affected by either its becoming or its dissolution.
As we progress more and more with the Physics it will become more and
more apparent how empty and vain are these arguments. They perhaps
weighed heavily against those who taught that the world could never be
destroyed, but would be purified and adorned with flowers ‘ad puerulorum
non initiatorum neque in caelum translatorum oblectationem.’ But as
serious philosophy they cannot stand examination, because Gassendi never
makes it clear whether he is talking as a practical man of science or
a theorist. His position is in fact metaphysical, and relies on pure
reasoning. His real theorem, therefore, is whether the human mind can
think its world and its series of causes as truly infinite. He would
probably have decided that the infinite can only be thought by an
infinite mind. Speculation of this kind is however quite out of place,
for Gassendi never thinks of dividing mind and object in this way. The
consequence is that, in spite of the logical and metaphysical character
of the argument, the conclusions are purely physical. For Gassendi
there are no antinomies of pure reason, and the problems of infinity
never suggest a reconsideration of experience itself. So, in spite of
the encouraging way in which Gassendi takes up time and causation as
the fundamental points in the problem of infinitude, he gets no further
than a dogmatic assertion that what is logically possible is physically
actual. If we may say of any theory of reality that it regards the
actual as necessarily thinkable, it would still be false to regard the
thinkable as necessarily actual; and from Gassendi’s point of view
neither proposition is defensible.[33] The whole argument is therefore
irrelevant and useless: our world as a subject for scientific discussion
is not affected by the conclusion; and the reader finds himself, after
traversing a circle of argument, for all practical purposes exactly where
he was before. It is impossible to suppose that Gassendi was not aware of
this, or that these forensic disputes were left in such solemn isolation
by mere accident. The practical part of the treatise looks forward: the
theoretical serves a different purpose.
CHAPTER II
TIME AND SPACE
I.
The second book of the Physics on time and place is so involved and
subtle that its contents must be stated in Gassendi’s own way before any
attempt is made to formulate his views.
The title is peculiar and should be noticed. It runs ‘de loco et tempore
seu spatio et duratione’; and this duplication of terms persists
throughout, adding to the difficulty of interpretation. Gassendi seems
to have regarded the second pair as the universals corresponding to the
particular or specific terms locus and tempus. He considers these two
identical in nature, so that anything we say about space applies to time:
we can therefore confine ourselves to the more intelligible subject of
space.
The traditional philosophy divides all being into substance and accident,
and declares that what is neither of these is nothing. Space however is a
reality, and yet comes under neither of these heads. In face of the facts
authority must be disregarded and a new classification be evolved. We
must recognise as distinct classes
(1) Substances—quae per se sunt.
(2) Accidents—quae per aliud sunt.
(3) Time and Space.
This third class shares with the first the quality of being per se:
they are therefore properly called substances, but the term substance
always conveys the idea of corporeal existence, and is therefore
objectionable unless a qualification is added. It is not incorrect to
speak of an incorporeal substance, and this would meet the requirements
of the case: as Aristotle used it of the mind and Epicurus of the void,
it is not wholly without authority. Having settled this first step of
classification, Gassendi attacks the categories. Quantity is the category
that concerns us at present. Space falls under the category of continuous
quantity. The tyranny of matter gave rise to the opinion that quantity
was an ‘accidens corporeum,’ and as space came under the category of
quantity it was also asserted to be corporeal. Corporeal, when applied
to accidents, means ‘dependent on a body.’ Length, breadth, and weight
clearly require a material something to which they can be referred.
Space, according to Gassendi, does not: it is therefore more than a mere
quantity, more than so much room: it is not only the place of things, it
is a place for things, a difference that must be more fully discussed
later. Space, then, may be defined as a quantitative reality independent
of matter. The consequences and difficulties of this definition have now
to be considered.
(1) The most obvious objection is that a quantity of nothing is nothing;
but Gassendi replies that in this case the quantity is a quantity of
Space, and space is something. If a body be removed from a given place,
the space of that place remains. This argument is greatly assisted by the
traditional habit of obtaining a concept of matter per se by abstracting
all form: if this is possible why cannot form be abstracted from all
matter? It follows that the concept of the void is possible.
(2) As we may think of matter as reduced to nothing, we may also think of
it as infinitely great: worlds may be infinite, and therefore space must
be.
(3) As space has no faculties or actions, its adjectives must be purely
negative. It is infinite because it is not finite, and incorporeal
because it is not corporeal. It cannot be a substance in the sense that
God is, else there are three equal substances, and the being of God is
not superior to the being of space and time.
(4) The origin of space and time is an insoluble problem. Gassendi does
not say this in so many words, but leaves it to be inferred. He merely
remarks that to say some essences are not properly created by God is
worse than admitting time and space to be uncreated—a tortuous method of
escaping the dilemma.
(5) Space is imaginary, not in the sense of unreal or fictitious, but as
requiring to be constructed by analogy.
The discussion thus summarised is followed by a division of space
according as it is (1) outside the world, (2) dispersed among things, (3)
collective. The first is space left for new worlds, and is required in
order that God may not be limited in creating new worlds; the second is
space as it occurs among bodies which do not change; the third is space
as it is produced by loss of volume or contraction. This is technically
called ‘spatium coacervatum.’ These three kinds of space seem to be
really three kinds of vacua: they are rather asserted than proved, and
their assertion raises more problems than it solves.
II.
As Gassendi’s doctrine of time is a mere appendix to that of space, it
is necessary to form some idea of his views of space before venturing to
consider those of time.
Following the hint given by Bernier in the Abrégé, we may take space and
the universe to be complementary concepts. Space is infinite in three
dimensions, and is the place of all things, whether already produced or
existing only in the mind of God. The confusing element in Gassendi’s
treatment is its complexity. It is never quite clear whether we are
treating space as a given reality which can be directly known or a
reality which must be deduced. The statement that space is imaginary
is extremely obscure. By imagination Gassendi always means a power of
compounding elements given through the senses in such a way as to produce
a new representation of some object not actually presented. If space is
a pure quantity, its construction in imagination has no principle of
limitation, and it will be the subject of an infinite process. Here there
appear to be two errors which can only be explained through the tendency
of Gassendi’s philosophy to develope rationalistic features. The first
error is committed when from the ancient argument that if a vessel is
absolutely empty its sides must either collapse or preserve a distance
between them in which there is pure space, he infers that a pure space
can be given. Here there is a wholly indefensible transition from the
distinction of the concepts of space and matter to a distinction of their
actual existence. As with the infinity of motion, so here in the cognate
subject of space the logical conclusion is converted into a predicate of
reality in a way that implies a metaphysic unfortunately not supplied by
Gassendi.
The second error consists in supposing that we have any right to regard
as valid of reality a process which is subjectively possible.[34]
Gassendi undoubtedly commits this error because he uses the property
of numbers or mere quantity to enable him to assert that our concept
of space cannot stop at any given point but must advance indefinitely.
This, however, is true of everything if taken abstractly in relation
to quantity, and has no special application to space. The traditional
problems gave a wrong turn to this line of thought by putting it into a
form half concrete and half abstract. If a man going to the end of all
things hurls a spear before him, what are we to think? Common sense
replies that he was probably not at the end, but tradition says that it
follows that an end of space is unthinkable, and the concrete reality of
the spear gives the space, imagined as its place, a fictitious reality.
We have here, then, a complete confusion between the reality of our
thoughts about space and the reality of the space about which we think.
Gassendi does not know either how space originated in nature or how it
has become known. When he describes it as form he speaks metaphorically;
it is not a form either of sense or matter, but an independent reality;
it is an immovable whole, otherwise a thing might move and take its space
with it, and so not change its place even when moved. In a sense it must
be nothing, otherwise two things are in one place, namely the thing and
its space; on the other hand, it is a substance in relation to occupants
of space. In some cases, _e.g._ God and the angels, the occupant is
incorporeal. If a place is space occupied by a body, can an incorporeal
being have a space, and if not, can it be and yet not be anywhere? To
answer these questions Gassendi says space is ‘quod res locata occupat’;
hence the angels have their place where they are, and God is properly ‘in
se,’ which appears to mean that He is but does not exist, has being but
not spatial being.
This intricate maze of thought becomes entirely unintelligible unless we
accept it as the expression of two views in one. In one part we are being
told what Space is in itself, in the other what it is in experience. In
the former aspect it is real, and that is all we know; definition, if
any, must be negative, and its nature must be assumed to be all that
it is not irrational to suppose it.[35] Ultimate space is thus really a
hypothesis which is proved to be actual, because without it we cannot
understand the world of experience. The latter aspect concerns us when we
deal with reality as known in the senses. Space, having no activities,
cannot be known through the senses except ‘ex parte rei locatae.’ It is
combination with the thing that makes space an object of perception and
gives the required ground upon which imagination may work.[36]
III.
If Gassendi feels that space is an ultimate that defies exact analysis
and almost baffles description, he is still more diffident about time.
None the less he feels that his position ought to redeem him from blank
despair. The words of St. Augustine sum up the views of one class of
thinker;[37] to Gassendi they seem justified only as the conclusion of
a false method. For if the corporeal is regarded as primary, and our
category of substance is practically confined to the tangible, space and
time alike become displaced from reality and drift away through the pages
of speculation like homeless phantoms refusing burial. The rock on which
Gassendi builds is good foundation: come what may, these two are real,
and it is futile to try and explain away what we cannot escape.
The majority of what has been said about space can be transferred to
time. The main conception being the same, only one chapter is devoted to
a special discussion of time. Like space, it is a substance in its way,
incorporeal in its nature and not in itself dependent on its content.
The relation of space to time is to be understood by the analogy of
corporeal entities; for as the corporeal has a permanent aspect, its
extension, and also a successive aspect, its movement, so we have in
the incorporeal sphere a permanent and a successive entity, which are
respectively the place of all extensions and the place of all movements.
As Space is really the Place of all places, so Time is the Duration of
all durations; and as space has some unoccupied or potential places,
so Time overlaps the known durations and has its ‘void.’ In opposition
to the Epicurean view, which makes out that time would not be if there
were no minds or things,[38] Gassendi holds to a lapse of time before
the beginning of the world and between creations. He is really nearer
the modern view than at first appears; for the Epicurean view did not
make time a form of perception, but merely regarded it as dependent on
its contents. Gassendi, on the other hand, considers that events derive
their order from time, and considers that time must therefore precede
change. In the case of space it seemed an easy matter to say that the
annihilation of the thing placed was not identical with annihilation
of the part of space which formed the place. If we are to preserve the
analogy we must say that annihilation of change would not annihilate
time. This Gassendi is prepared to say, but it is a hard saying. It
would seem as though the assertion of time without change necessitated
our regarding time as a permanent entity, which would sacrifice its
essential distinction from space. Time moves without any doubt: it is
however hardly like a stream: a better simile is that of the flame of a
candle, which as it burns changes indeed, but in such a way as not to
lose its identity, and so gives us a better idea of continuity and the
retention of identity in difference.[39] The point which Gassendi wishes
to emphasise is that, if time and change are identical, there is no
background to define the movement. If a thing, when it moves, takes its
place with it, it moves without change of place, which is nothing at all:
similarly, if an event takes its time with it, the time-series is reduced
to nothing, a reduction to absurdity which makes it necessary to say
that the time is not the change, but the change is in the time. To this
point Gassendi clings, but if we seek further for some explanation of
the permanence implied in this we can find no answer that satisfies. It
is to be feared that, following the analogy of space, Gassendi thought of
time as ultimately the sum of all times, and so the time of the universe.
This comprehensive term substance was the shibboleth that reigned before
the absolute, and it swayed men’s minds to create concepts beyond
their grasp. If my life falls within the life of the world, and that
again within the life of the universe, it is not unnatural to picture
successively widening areas of time corresponding to the span of each
existence up to that last time of the Universe, and if we remember that
the Universe is indestructible, it will follow that ultimate time and
space are infinite indestructible realities. But what is the difference
between ultimate time and any other time, and do we get nearer reality by
getting further away from our experience? Gassendi seems to have omitted
to think over the relation of time to our experience, and that in spite
of the excellent hint in a passage quoted from Diogenes Laertius, where
we are exhorted to notice not only days and nights, but also ‘passionibus
et vacuitate ab ipsis.’ In the absence of definite information it
must be assumed that Gassendi did with time what he did with space:
he constructed a rational background to the data of sense, and thus
furnished himself with a double theory, one part concerned with time as
it is, the other with ultimate time as it might be if it were at all.
Gassendi proves puzzling to the thoughtful reader by his trick of
abandoning one method for another. It is natural to expect that a
rationalistic position will be developed by deduction. Gassendi on the
contrary makes no attempt to develope his theories at all, but simply
returns to experience for a fresh start. For all practical purposes he
has reduced time to a standstill, and the natural deduction is that
the present is illusion. Far from accepting this consequence, Gassendi
argues that as the present is real time cannot be nothing, and those who
consider it to be nothing do so because they erroneously seek in the
successive for that which is natural only to the permanent. This can only
have one meaning: in the permanent the given points co-exist, and are
capable of recurring in experience: in the successive there is no return.
Man lives _in_ Space, but he lives _through_ time, and if reason compels
us to think of both as wholes, that difference of our experience persists
and makes it necessary to form a different conception of each whole.
The analysis of different kinds of time gives us the so-called real
and imaginary times. This was the ancient distinction between the time
given in actual experience (real) and that which was before the world
(imaginary). This distinction Gassendi repudiates. His time is imaginary
in the sense that his space was, and the real time is only one section
of that. This shows the weakness of Gassendi’s position: for however
good his intentions he cannot avoid the conclusion that the time we
experience and the time we represent in constructive imagination are
identical: which amounts to saying that time is either not experienced at
all or is experienced as a whole; but this would most likely be beyond
Gassendi, though he would be quite capable of regarding All Time as one
object,[40] especially as he must have regarded the experience of time
as essentially a reflective consciousness of what a merely sensitive
organism could never comprehend.
A few more notes must close this summary. Gassendi praises Posidonius for
not taking the present as a mere point. He argues against Aristotle that
time is not the measure of movement existing only for the calculator,
time does not depend on movement, for plurality of movement does not
involve plurality of times, nor does a plurality of worlds. In a
subordinate sense movement may be said to be the measure of time, as the
movement of the sun marks out periods of time. All points of space have
one time, _i.e._ every moment is the same everywhere. On the other hand
every point of space has all the points of time, _i.e._ persists through
the whole series of moments.[41]
These remarks cannot be put in any connexion, for Gassendi gives none.
He does not properly distinguish the different views of time which they
imply. The most noticeable feature is his omission of any distinction
of the psychological aspect, an omission which compels us to take his
‘moment of time’ as an absolute quantity. While he is clear about
the artificial measurements of time, he does not oppose them to the
subjective measurement of time, as modern psychology does, but to real
parts: a proceeding which is certainly consistent with his view of time
as a whole in some sense substantive.[42]
The discussion of eternity which closes this chapter is really
concerned with the meaning of timeless, though somewhat indirectly and
perfunctorily treated. Eternity might be defined as the time of God,
which is to say that it was popularly conceived as the duration of God’s
life. The notion had passed into philosophical treatises with all its
crudities unanalysed. Gassendi furnishes an analysis which dissipates the
common notions. He has however a further interest which must be pointed
out. The popular idea dissolves into nothing if we examine the phrase,
‘duration of the life of God’: it at once becomes clear that the foremost
idea is that of life, and the understanding of the problem as it concerns
time is obscured by the other notions introduced. But over and above
this trifling proposition we find a real difficulty in reconciling the
concept of God with our concept of time. We must perforce think of God
as one to whom past, present, and future are always present: for whom
therefore All Time exists at all times, so that ultimately time must be
again reduced to a standstill and our distinctions of times to illusion.
This attack touches Gassendi very nearly because of the way in which he
is compelled to maintain that time is a totality: the nature of God seems
to turn the scale finally in favour of a static totality. His reply is
subtle, but not futile or perfunctory. He says, in brief, that God’s
being is purely qualitative, not quantitative, and he is only related to
time extrinsically, which practically means not at all. God’s being is in
fact not an experience at all in our sense of the term. It may therefore
be a timeless experience, but it is not an experience of the timeless.
The latter phrase would imply that the timeless was a possible object of
any experience: the former is one of those negative determinations which,
like inhuman, insensible, Gassendi delights to regard as positive. The
way in which this can be understood will be best explained if we recall
an example by which Gassendi explains how the nature of God is related
to space. After remarking as to the place of God, that ‘Deus in se est’
(I. 191), he quotes the statement ‘deum esse habendum prout est in se,’
and criticises it by saying God is unlimited, ‘sed haec illimitatio seu
infinitudo non est quam nomine proprio appellamus immensitatem.’ The
perfection of God, in short, must be conceived qualitatively: ‘ut in
lacte aliud est summe candidum esse, aliud esse valde copiosum’; and what
is thus explained in relation to space must be analogously applied to
time. The idea of substituting intensity for extensity was excellent: it
opens up wide possibilities for speculative minds. Gassendi, having made
it, leaves it alone, thereby showing much wisdom. It is much easier to
understand an intensity which does not involve quantity of space than to
comprehend an intensity which avoids quantity of time. It is true there
is not more whiteness in the milk when there is more of the milk: and
similarly we may say that God is not more wise because He is wise for a
greater time. This evades the real problem, which lies in the assertion
that if God were God for less time, He would be less a God. So long as
time pertains to the nature of God at all, it must pertain as a whole: to
answer that it pertains not wholly, but none the less completely by being
intensively perfect, is either to talk nonsense or to confuse time and
thought.[43]
CHAPTER III
FIRST PRINCIPLES
(_a_) THE MATERIAL PRINCIPLE
Leaving time and space we now descend the scale of Being, and come to
pure corporeal reality, the subject to which the term ‘physical science’
is usually restricted. A speculative element still remains in so far as
the nature of ultimate matter is reached by inference, and not given in
direct experience.
The science of ultimate matter carries us beyond the limits of our
sensible world; it takes us therefore deeper than the elements, which
are mutable compounds, to some thing which even the imagination cannot
further analyse. It is essential to the nature of ‘principia’ that they
should not be produced either from one another or from any foreign
bodies. Not only must our first matter be itself irreducible to any
lower terms, it must also be capable of explaining the solidity of
compounded bodies. Its limits are thus theoretically fixable: unity
and indivisibility form the maximum; the mathematical point and the
numerical zero form the minimum. These limits must be fixed else our
hypothetical material will be incapable of serving the ends for which it
was designed. As to the maximum, if it be divisible it is not ultimate.
As regards the minimum, if it be nothing its multiples remain nothing,
and the actual world cannot be generated from it. The danger in this
direction is exemplified by two current theories: some reduced the unit
of matter to a point which if taken mathematically amounts to nothing;
others arrived at the same practical result by going beyond the simplest
form of matter to pure form, which is equally destructive of all return
to the world of common things. With characteristic ingenuity, some
acknowledging the force of argument, compromised by giving matter the
‘forma corporeitatis’!
Our ultimate then preserves its physical reality and its ‘corpus.’ The
criterion of this is activity, which we further define as tangibility,
for the incorporeal beings act, but only matter is an object of touch.
By ‘touch’ Gassendi really means solidity or impenetrability, for this
may be a relation between two inanimate bodies; he thinks with his
contemporaries that matter may be taken as real apart from our thought,
and as maintaining in that absolute objectivity some of the qualities by
which we know it.
We may infer, from the multitude of forms, that matter in itself must be
indifferent to form. Its quantity must be regarded as constant, change
being change of form. The dogma ‘ex nihilo nihil’ is a category valid
for science, but it does not limit God. This assertion is interesting
as an example of the way in which Gassendi is capable of keeping to
one point at a time. He has no intention of regarding the doctrine ‘ex
nihilo nihil’ as anything but absolute; at the same time it is only a
law of thought for the sphere of material production: if we go beyond
that sphere to the nature of God or the human soul, its jurisdiction will
cease.[44]
So far we have dealt with a priori necessary determinations of matter:
we have now to define its nature somewhat more accurately. The history
of the subject presents several theories from which to choose. There are
(_a_) those who think matter has qualities and (_b_) those who regard it
as in itself unqualified. Under (_a_) we have (1) those who speak only
of primary qualities and (2) those who add secondary qualities. To begin
with (_a_) (1): this class includes the physiologists who took earth,
air, fire, water, these being the typical embodiments of the primary
qualities heat, cold, etc. Gassendi considers that the choice of one
element was really the choice of matter with one primary quality as the
unit and the ultimate unit. Under (_a_) (2) come those who take actual
complex substances as the ultimates. Among the ancients Anaxagoras is the
example: while the contemporary chymici revived his principles. The class
(_b_) also divides into (1) rationalist and (2) materialist thinkers.
Possibly ‘spiritualist and materialist’ would have been better terms.
Here the atomists are classed as materialist for want of a better term,
but the limits to the significance of the word must be remembered. For
Gassendi Plato and the Atomists are simply two species of one genus,
namely of those who make the matter (ὕλη) ἄποιον. Gassendi’s history
of the emergence of atomism is arranged so that the first solutions
of the problem of an ultimate seem most complex: refinement brings us
to an ultimate that is as simple as possible, and we have our choice
between making it ‘spiritual’ (Plato, Pythagoras, and the Stoics) or
non-spiritual (atomism). In _both_ cases the ultimate is supersensuous,
and therefore ‘metaphysical.’
It is unnecessary to recall all the details which Gassendi laboriously
records; but as it was certainly part of the scheme of his work to
furnish a history of human thought before his time, it would be an
omission not to allow some praise to the excellent way in which
these chapters are arranged, or the clever and, I believe, original
classification which enables the author to refine the doctrine down in
such a way that the mere history of the case seems an unanswerable proof
that the atomistic theory is simplest and best.
The principal characteristics of the atom as a material ultimate are
too well known to need mention here. The doctrine of the Atom does not
occupy so much space as might perhaps be expected: it is not the atom
but atomism that interests Gassendi. He notes that Democritus gave the
atom only Magnitude and Figure, while Epicurus added weight (I. 266, _v._
p. 3). Gassendi keeps the three. Resistance, he says, is not so much a
property as ‘ipsammet corporis tribus reliquis [proprietatibus] subjectam
naturam (τὸ ὑποκείμενον).’ It is, in fact, solidity. The atom has parts
(as with Epicurus), but is indivisible: it is not conjunct in the sense
that it might ever be disjunct; in other words, there is no Void in the
body of the Atom. The Atom is said to have parts, inasmuch as these are
required to account for differences of Figure: there is no mention of
motion within the atom, though there is nothing in the world of compound
bodies that is not full of motion. ‘Considera metallum v.c. plumbum in
carino fusum: cum ad speciem nihil quietius, immotiusque videri possit,
putasne intra ipsum motus, sive itus atque reditus brevissimis spatiis,
celeritate incomprehensibili non fiunt.’
In following Epicurus and Lucretius on this point, Gassendi does not seem
to have noticed that a perfectly hard body is not elastic, and therefore
would finally come to rest: which means the destruction of matter.
The chief point of dispute has always been how far the atom can be
conceived purely in terms of reason. The mediaeval thinker was familiar
with a ‘punctum physicum,’ a ‘punctum metaphysicum,’ and a ‘punctum
mathematicum.’ These are not infrequently confused, and Gassendi shapes
his arguments against writers who were already moving toward the view of
an atom as an immaterial point, a centre of force or some cognate form
of the doctrine. He resists this tendency because it appears to him to
be an excess of analysis, going so far as to preclude all possibility of
return.[45] He attributes to his atoms magnitude, figure, and weight.
They are ultimate so far as we are concerned with the world of things and
the category of quantity. In opposition to the average atomist, Gassendi
does not consider that our knowledge stops where the quantitative
analysis ends. He denies that the atom is eternal or unproduced or
infinite. God as creator is above and beyond the physical world. With
dependence in the way of creation there is combined independence of
action: atoms have not ‘a seipsis vim motricem,’ but they are self-moving
‘Dei gratia’: a distinction which leaves the man of science unhampered
and does not despoil the theologian. The theory of creation can be
sketched briefly. At first God created as many atoms as were necessary
to form this world: the atoms were not necessarily created separately,
but the created mass of matter was such as could be resolved into
‘corpuscula’: each of these minute bodies has its own affinities, and the
command that the earth and water should produce plants and animals, was
the act of uniting in one place those atoms suited to become one seed:
this process can be repeated wherever and whenever such atoms co-exist
as are fitted to cohere; from this we can elaborate the whole scheme of
generation and corruption, coherence and dissolution, which makes up the
history of the natural world.
This view clearly involves a possibility of free movement, and therefore
raises the question whether the Void is not a principle as much as atoms.
Gassendi acknowledges that both are primary parts of the universe; but
he considers that they differ inasmuch as the Void is of the nature
of a condition rather than a cause,[46] and only atoms are capable of
constituting ‘res generabiles.’ As matter is itself not a primary but a
secondary cause, the validity of this distinction might be disputed: as
Gassendi’s intentions are clear the point need not be raised.
(_b_) PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CAUSES
A doctrine of causes naturally begins in some way or other with
Aristotle. In this case it begins with criticism and selection. The word
causa is not quite identical with Aristotle’s αἰτία, the former implying
activity, the latter having a somewhat wider denotation and meaning
origin rather than producing force. Thus of the four causes Gassendi
says that Form is properly an effect, matter is not a cause at all, end
a wholly different subject, and only the efficient cause a cause in the
proper sense. Gassendi is certainly right in pointing out that ‘cause’
was a term generally used to denote ‘power,’ and therefore not identical
with the Greek idea expressed in αἰτία.
Confining the word cause to efficient causes, we find that these can
be divided into external and internal. An external cause is an object
capable of acting on another object, as the sun on wax. This is the field
of common observation, and requires no further comment. The question of
internal causality carries us beyond this threshold into the secret heart
of nature. We have to discover not merely the fact that an object can
produce an effect, but also the inner constitution which enables it to
act thus. This constitution is the temperament and the source of motion:
it might be called the form, since it is the essential part that is the
cause of motion. We can say, for example, ‘the man moves the stick’; and
the man is the external cause, but if we wish to speak accurately we
must assign the activity to the soul, which is the moving principle of
the body. There is also a sense in which the end is a cause, in so far
as the cause may act for an end, not only blindly, as in instinct, but
also consciously, with a knowledge imparted by God, making the agent
more than a mere instrument. Gassendi does well to distinguish this from
Aristotle’s meaning.
The classification of causes as external and internal is a superficial
separation of the popular from the philosophical aspect of causality. The
further distinction into primary and secondary is of a different nature
and affects the causes themselves.
We may dispose of the primary causes with the statement that God,
as creator and ruler, is the one first cause. The secondary causes
constitute the world of nature: their causality is derived from God, but
we have much to learn about them, and the acknowledgment of God’s power
in the world is not to be made an excuse for avoiding the labours of
research.
We must first enquire into the nature of the active principle in things.
Some have thought it incorporeal: the Stoics supported the claim of
spirits and Epicurus that of atoms. If we make it incorporeal or
spiritual, cause becomes separated from matter, and our difficulties
increase rather than diminish. It is better therefore to take atoms as
the principle and make our cause concrete, that is, call materia actuosa
the cause. If the cause be regarded as something immaterial, it becomes
unintelligible: it requires to be united to matter in order to be actual,
and has in short all the failings of an unjustifiable abstraction. If
matter is declared causal its activity must be its nature: it cannot be
said to be active by virtue of containing particles of the anima mundi,
for that again is the separation of the activity from the active body. As
the cause is matter, matter is active: the particles of heat appear to be
most active, so we may fix on corporeal heat (_i.e._ heat as a substance)
as the principle of motion, activity, and causation in things.
The causality at which we arrive is substantive in every sense of the
term. Specific causality may be a relation, but all the relations in
which one object can stand to another presuppose a state or condition of
the things related, and this state gives the relation its significance.
As Gassendi says, this treatment of causality is really an enquiry
into temperaments. Given an object _A_ which acts on another object
_B_ (external causality), we may call _A_ the cause of _B_ becoming
_b_. But this manifestation is as it were a form of the causality of
_A_, just as _A_ itself is a form of primary matter; and as from the
multiplicity of material forms we argue one indifferent matter, so from
the multiplicity of forms of causality we infer one general, indifferent
causality. The universality of this causal state is shown in its formula.
The composition of any one body is never purely homogeneous: there is
consequently ceaseless internal unrest, some atoms freeing themselves,
others struggling vainly in the toils, some striving upward, and others
sinking in dull inertia:[47] take any apparently inanimate object, and
see how it lives in every part of its complex substance: you will then
realise that causality is more than a relation, it is a reality in (and
perhaps for) every organic and inorganic body.
Gassendi is often clearer in his thought than in his language. His terms
are usually defined with scholastic accuracy; but the terms themselves
are not as yet properly differentiated: they had still to grow and add
to slight differences an accretion of argument and reference. It will
have become apparent long ago that causality in Gassendi means simply
activity. We cannot now speak of one thing being causal, having now
recognised that causality is a relation; but we do still speak as though
activity was the property of an isolated object, though usually with
an apology to nature and a confession of ignorance. The tendency of
Gassendi’s period is to take the object as a self-subsisting entity and
call it causal. If the analysis is pushed further a curious reaction
ensues. Deserting the standpoint of the object, we penetrate to that of
the atom: causality is left behind, for in the realm of the immutable
it can have no place: atom cannot change atom, and so no atom can be
causal: the universe viewed as a complex of atoms must equally be
void of causality, though replete with activity. In this way even a
thorough-going physical realism finds its universal and particular
points of view at least superficially contradictory. Gassendi is only
dimly aware of this possibility: he never dreams of opposing one part
of knowledge to another and dividing himself into the factions of
appearance and reality; but none the less he finds that secondary causes
ultimately slip through his fingers: the world of change becomes a
seething cauldron of endless changes coincident rather than correlated;
and causality driven to the boundaries of the universe is safe only among
the attributes of God.
(_c_) MOTION AND MUTATION
The subject of Causality led us finally to the question of internal
movement or activity in bodies.[48] It is now necessary to discuss the
possibility and nature of movement in general. Seeing that the action of
secondary causes is as Gassendi here admits, identical with this motion,
this book does not deal so much with another subject as with another
aspect of the same subject.
The motion to be discussed is neither the activity referred to before,
nor that called mutation: it is merely local motion, which is best
defined as ‘migratio de loco in locum,’ in spite of many objections, such
as his who said the axle of a wheel revolved without changing its place.
Gassendi finds it necessary to repel many such objections. These can be
passed over in favour of the really important question whether motion is
possible at all.
(1) A single body is always a priori capable of motion, because it is
never an abstract (mathematical) point. As motion is only attributed to
physical bodies, it is irrelevant to reduce a body to merely imaginary
unity and still discuss the possibility of motion. As every physical body
has parts, a change in the relations of these parts implies transference
from one place to another, and the whole body may be said to move, though
the place of the whole is not changed. The revolving globe is the example
intended.
(2) The more comprehensive question concerning motion in general carries
us back to the dialectic of Zeno. Zeno however was really concerned
to prove that motion was impossible if motion, time, and space were
all continua (ex insectilibus constarent):[49] as the atomist does not
support that position Zeno’s dilemmas may be dismissed. A problem arises
as to degree of motion. Suppose a body _A_ moves through a space _x_ in
half the time that _B_ takes, can we say the movement of _A_ differs from
that of _B_? Gassendi thinks not: movement as such he clearly takes in an
absolute sense; the minima of space and time are indivisible and cannot
be reduced: as the body, if it moves at all, must traverse a minimum of
space in a minimum of time, a given space as a multiple of such minima
must always be traversed in the same time. For example, a body _A_ which
passes through _y_, a minimum of space, in the minimum of time _x_, will
pass through any space _ny_ in any time _nx_.
It follows from this that there are really no degrees of motion: we must
therefore explain differences in rates of motion (tarditas et velocitas)
by supposing that the slower body has intervals of rest. This is in
harmony with the mixture of opposites observable in other directions:
for ‘hac ratione ex nivis lactisve candore ad corvi, carbonis pervenitur
nigritudinem.’
A final problem arises from the ancient declaration, ‘si quid movetur
aut ubi est movetur aut ubi non est.’ This is dismissed by pointing
out that ‘est’ is here used absolutely: the object ‘movetur ubi est
transeunter, movetur ubi non est permanenter’; and with this argument the
last obstacle to the recognition of local motion is removed. The proof,
in fact, consists in defending against time-worn problems the doctrine
of self-moving atoms and a void: the position as such depends on these
fundamental views which are to be taken as already proved.
The next four chapters are a fairly elementary treatise on motion,
including the subjects of acceleration, projection, and reflex motion.
Gassendi upholds the distinction of natural and violent motion which
Bacon condemns so scornfully. The natural motion is that which atoms
have by their own nature: the violent is secondary and due to some
application of force. If we take nature universally, nothing can be other
than natural: we have the right however to distinguish natura specialis
from universalis; and it is a correct scientific procedure to distinguish
motions according as they are inherent or impressed.
There are two main principles of motion—impulse and attraction.
Gravitation is a form of attraction, but not as some have thought
attraction to a place: place as such has no fitness to attract: it is
the earth that attracts. This attraction is not to be understood in
any vague or spiritual sense: there must be some real, which means
material, communication between the earth and the attracted object. How
is a stone, wandering in the void, to know where the earth is that it
may return to her? There can only be one answer: ‘Praeter id quod in
lapide est, transmissio sit quaedam ex terra in illum, unde ad ipsum
pelliciatur.’[50] The earth may best be likened to a huge magnet. This
position, it should be remembered, is evolved in opposition to the
view that a thing had a tendency to move to its ‘own place,’ or else a
tendency to ‘seek the earth.’ Gassendi rejects the idea of a _place_
having any attraction, and proposes to mend the second theory by making
both the terms participate in the attraction. Previously the attraction
was a ‘vis insita,’ a tendency inherent in the thing and wholly
independent of that to which the tendency related. By demanding that the
earth should attract the stone Gassendi converts the attraction from a
‘vis ab intrinseco pellens’ to a ‘vis ab extrinseco trahens,’ which is a
change for the better, even though it falls short of the best.
It will be apparent from this that action from a distance is not accepted
by Gassendi. In dealing with mutation he expressly denies it. Mutatio
he treats purely as a kind of motion, and the subject would be of no
interest were it not for its connection with the question, ‘qua ratione
per mutationem seu alterationem creari rerum concretarum qualitates
possint.’ After a long and arid tract of discussion on the simplest
problems of dynamics, we return to a question that revives our flagging
interest. Put briefly, it amounts to this: how can a collection of atoms,
having only magnitude, figure, and weight, combine so as to produce other
qualities, such as taste, heat, and colour? This is clearly a crucial
point for a thinker who is undertaking to build up a highly complex
system from simple substances and their movements.
There is a technical distinction between ‘conjuncta,’ or properties,
and ‘eventa.’ Magnitude, figure, and weight are conjuncta; the rest
are eventa.[51] The primary eventa are concretio, which subserves
generation; and secretio, which subserves corruption, with ordo and
situs, which are the foundation of alteratio. Generatio and corruptio
can however be viewed as alteratio, and we are left with five necessary
assumptions—magnitude, weight, figure, order, and position. The first
three belong to the atom as such; the last two are relations between
atoms. We are to conceive the variations of composite bodies of atoms as
analogous to the various possible combinations of letters (_e.g._ et, te,
roma, armo, etc.). As letters may be worked up into words, sentences, and
books; so endless atoms, in endless combinations, form the great book of
nature.
The starting point is given in the natural differences of atoms which
make some fit to enter one organ of sense, as the eye, and adapt others
to other organs, as the ear or the nose. The relation of sensible
qualities to the atoms is exemplified in the whiteness of sea-foam or the
yellowness of the decaying leaf: in both cases a colour results from a
colourless substratum by mere alteration in the disposition of the atoms.
The mere fact of change is taken to be a proof that the elements must be
neutral. If the atoms had any colour of their own, a complex of atoms
would always have the same colour; but natural changes, such as decay,
produce changes of quality; so the quality must be referred not to the
atoms but to their relations.
This position must be taken in conjunction with Gassendi’s views on the
senses. At present he leaves the vital question of the relation between
mind and object untouched. It cannot be said that he wholly ignores the
mind: his reference to words is meaningless unless the mind to which
they are presented is assumed as a factor. The letters _A_ and _B_,
he says, differ not only in shape but in sound; but in themselves they
have no sound, and only ‘sensui diversum sonum exhibent.’ He quotes
as his own opinion a passage from Galen containing the words ‘omnes
qualitates sensibiles ex atomorum concursu gigni, quatenus se habens ad
nos qui ipsarum sensum habemus.’ Here is the first transition from a
quantitative to a qualitative treatment of the world in which we live:
the task of producing complexity from simplicity is solved by introducing
a new factor and correlating a composition of simple elements with
qualitative experiences which are not, in that sense, composite at all.
The remark already referred to, that _A_ and _O_ differ in _sound_ as
well as _shape_, is itself a comment on this point not to be outdone in
significance!
(_d_) ON QUALITIES
To an empirical philosopher the doctrine of qualities is one of supreme
importance. As Gassendi puts it, all reason depends on the senses and on
sense-perception: only qualities are perceived, and they are therefore
the foundation of our objective world. Substance we only know through
induction: all direct knowledge is knowledge of qualities.
The impression which such a statement leaves on one’s mind is that
knowledge fails to penetrate into the inner reality of things and remains
conversant only with the outer, and possibly deceptive, surface. Gassendi
however does something to mitigate this superficiality of knowledge.
The quality, as he points out, is properly that which answers to the
question ‘qualis est?’ Practically qualities are accidents, or rather a
given state or condition attributed to a substance is an accident, but
taken by itself is a quality. It follows that quality in this sense goes
deeper than quality in the sense in which we oppose it to quantity: for
quantity will be a species of quality in some cases (_e.g._ tall man);
and quality will sometimes include relation (_e.g._ slave). In these
cases the determinations pass from the usual category of quantity or
relation into that of quality by virtue of being essential. The question
then arises whether the absolutely essential qualities of a thing are
really qualities or are the thing itself. From the point of view of
physics taken in the sense of natural science, the primary qualities must
clearly be the inner nucleus beyond which nothing is required: primary
qualities will then be only the plural aspect of what we call substance
when regarded as a unity. The same point can be looked at in another way.
The form of a thing must be a quality in every case in which it is not
identical with the spiritus: if the being of a Being is a quality, it
would seem that quality ultimately merges into essence and absorbs all
that is denoted by substance; but it must be remembered that we are here
speaking of things which are always composite and plural, and so may have
an existential form realised in the disposition of parts. Prior to such
‘things’ is the single unitary substance which they presuppose and which
may be regarded as lying deeper than the outward natures at present under
discussion.
The liberality of Gassendi’s interpretation of the term quality can be
seen from his inclusion of ‘animal esse, sentire, vegetari, vivere’
in the list of qualities. A quality must have an objective reality, it
must be a reality apart from mind. Hence a relation as such cannot be a
quality, and quantity will only be a quality when it is essential. If we
say ‘John is five feet in height’ the quantity indicated is a quality:
if we say ‘John is taller than James’ the quantity is relative and no
quality is indicated.[52] Gassendi very truly remarks that relations are
dialectical and not physical categories. Motion is denied a place among
qualities on the ground that it is properly a process to a quality.
Coming now to the nature of qualities in our world of things, it is
obvious that they must all be more or less simple ways of grouping the
primary non-qualitative elements of things: in short, the qualities
are deducible from the possible modes of combining atoms. For example,
density and rarity depend on the proportions of void and matter, or
the number of ‘vacua spatiola intercepta.’ Figure we may pass over in
silence, but weight calls for some comment. Upon weight depends all vis
motrix, for the atoms in one body struggle together, and motion follows
the striving of the majority, modified by mutual implications. The atoms
of spiritual natures are the freest and most mobile: hence they are
thought to be the seat of voluntary motion.
By nature all motion is straight. Divergence from the straight must
therefore be explained by percussion and repercussion. In order to
acquire as it were a fulcrum, one of the moving bodies must be regarded
as an immobile. The law is laid down that an immovable part in a whole
is essential to mobility. The objection at once arises that, when an
animal runs, no part of it is immovable. In reply to this Gassendi
apparently practises a double evasion. He first qualifies the law by
admitting that the immovable part only requires to be comparatively
such, and then makes it impossible to say what is a ‘whole’ in respect
of motion. In the case of the animal, for example, the modification of
‘immovable’ to ‘comparatively’ immovable makes it possible to regard
the body as giving the required ‘immovable’ for the motion of the legs.
If this did not satisfy the opponent, Gassendi would doubtless include
the earth in the ‘whole’ for purposes of motion. At present, however,
Gassendi’s purpose is purely analytical. He desires to say that motion is
innate[53] to atoms. This innate motion is the original element of all
motions: it is circular, the atoms whirling among themselves aimlessly.
By collision new directions are imparted to these atoms, but however much
appearances may seem to be against it the circular motion remains at the
root of everything. For the present, then, our interest in animal motions
may be summed up and left with one conclusion: they have no ‘motus rectus
qui non sit ex circularibus compositis.’
This view of motion as fundamentally one has the advantage of reducing to
one the various kinds of motion. Impulsive motion is now clearly only an
aspect of self-motion: it is self-motion in relation to some other body:
similarly ‘vis attractrix’ is self-motion in relation to some other body.
In opposition to many of his contemporaries, Gassendi requires actual
contact in attraction; whether immediate or mediate does not matter, but
it must be a literal laying hold of the object.
Faculty is vis motrix, for a faculty is just as much as it can do: it
is nothing if not active. To this the faculty of Resistance seems ipso
facto a contradiction. But, says Gassendi, resistance is not passivity;
immobility is self-centred force: in the case of the earth we have an
example of complete rest produced by complete tension of all the parts.
(This perfect equilibrium was called motus tonicus.) Having removed this
difficulty we may define faculty as ‘in unaquaque re ipsummet movendi seu
agendi principium, nisi primarium quod formam vocant, saltem Secundarium,
seu ex forma profluens eiusque velut instrumentum.’
The Faculties are not ‘a tota substantia’: they are dependent on the
spiritus, for it is the decay or destruction of these principles that
involves the loss of the faculties. Gassendi goes further, and says that
the faculties and the spiritus are one: for though the spirits might
appear to be a primary organ of the faculties running through the body
from the central faculty, yet this is a distinction that involves no
difference, just as the waters that run in the streams are distinct but
not different from the waters that run at the fountain. This simile does
not throw much light on the subject, but is apparently intended to convey
the idea that the faculty is only nominally centralised; in function
it is all-pervading. It also follows that all faculties are species of
faculty, since they are all reducible to motions of the spirits. As
faculty is the same as spirit, all faculties are innate. A faculty may
be acquired, but only in the sense of actually absorbing the matter to
which the power is innate. Iron, for example, only attains the faculty
of heat by acquiring the matter of fire, in which the faculty of heat
is inborn. We now see that a faculty is in some sense the nature of a
thing. It is, in fact, the nature of a thing looked at from the point of
view of active relations. It follows that there are as many faculties as
there are possible combinations of atoms and possible relations of these
combinations. Speaking of the great varieties of faculties, Gassendi
says: ‘id facit varietas tum multiformium corpusculorum, ex quibus
una tota res constat: tum specialium contexturarum quae varias partes
attinent: tum externarum facultatum quibus misceri ipsas contingit.’ In
the apple, for example, different combinations produce smell and taste.
If we take into consideration the organ of the sentient being we find
still more variations, _e.g._ pleasant smell, sweet taste, etc. This
gives us a division of absolute and relative: for smell is in the object
one (absolute), but to the sentient beings manifold (respective).
The classification of faculties is carried out thus: first, according as
the subjects are living or not living. In the case of living things they
are
(_a_) general (nutrition, procreation);
(_b_) special.
This method of classification applies to each class. If we take from
among animals, Quadrupeds, we may have general and special faculties
within these limits.
The second method of classification is quite different. Here we divide
into principal and subservient, the division being decided by the mutual
subordination of motions.
Though a faculty cannot be acquired it can be improved both ‘ut fortius
operetur et ut expeditius.’ For the attainment of greater strength
nutrition is required, which means in this connexion the attainment of
more spirits. The quantitative growth may be accompanied by increase
of efficiency attained by use. Habit is the name given to facility of
action: this facility may pertain to the spirits or to the organ which
they employ, and it is, if anything, more important that it should be
realised in the organ. The organ is a crass and rigid thing, against
whose unyielding disposition the volatile spirits exert themselves in
vain.
Matter is thus a hindrance to mind, and habit gives freedom in the
sense that when the organ is properly trained the spirits are no longer
baulked of their purposes. If, on the other hand, there is no use for
the organ it relapses into its original crude condition: for nutrition,
continually renewing the substance of the organ, removes by degrees all
the parts that had learned the law, and puts in their place an untrained
rabble.[54] This is a rather novel and poetical interpretation of what
is generally supposed to result in ‘atrophy.’ The principles of habit,
Gassendi adds, are applicable to all except inanimata, whose changes are
purely ab extra.
One more form of the vis motrix remains to be noticed—that which is
called Gravity or Levity. Levity is to be taken as in se nihil, so that
we are left with degrees of Gravity. As might be expected, the gradation
is due to admixture of vacua: the inane is a principle not as acting, but
as reducing the ratio of bulk to weight. It is important to notice that
Gassendi regards all the action of gravity as extrinsic, thus shaking
off once for all, any influences that his predecessors may have exerted
toward the acceptance of Love or Hate or any other mystic principles.
The next qualities may be passed over summarily. They are Heat, Cold,
Fluiditas, Mollities, Taste, Smell, Sound. A few points are of interest.
Heat may be used as a special term to denote felt heat, or generally
(objectively) to denote a condition of body. Calor is a word which
denotes, not a quality, but atoms of a certain kind. The atomi caloris
are not ex se calidi, but are called so ex effectu. That body is called
hot which sends out these atoms: the atoms themselves are not called hot:
their power of producing heat is ‘objective,’ dependent on special forms
and activities. We must distinguish then between that Heat which is a
real kind and that which is hot either (_a_) potestate or (_b_) actu. A
thing is hot ‘potestate’[55] when the atoms of heat are retained in it,
and hot ‘actu’ when the atoms are sent out. Retention of atomi caloris
explains the heat of pepper and similar bodies. If a substance contains
atoms of heat, motion increases that heat: motion however is not the
cause of heat, because substances such as water, which do not contain
atoms of heat, are not heated by motion. Gassendi distinguishes between
calescere, an internal increase of heat, which applies only to fats the
atoms of which are ‘hamatiores,’ and calefieri or the attainment of heat
from without.
Cold is the opposite or complementary of heat: it is not privation of
heat. This conclusion is based on the differences of the effects: the
effect of heat is ‘discutere et disgregare,’ that of cold ‘congregare
et compingere.’ Further, the atoms of cold differ from atoms of heat in
figure: what figure is to be assigned to atoms of cold is a point that
the ancients discussed elaborately. Gassendi accepts Lucretius’ view that
they are ‘dentata’: our senses can judge how _biting_ is the cold. It
should be noted that though Fire is an element, Cold is not: Earth, Air,
and Water are not bodies cold by nature, and therefore cannot be summed
up as the Primum Frigidum in opposition to Fire, the Primum Calidum.
In the case of Fluiditas and Mollities, with its two species Ductilitas
(as in gold) and Tractilitas (as in our muscles, contraction), we have
qualities whose opposites are privations. This will be evident if
we consider that mollities, _e.g._ depends on the degree of ‘inane’
contained in a body: the inane is not soft, but the real, which is hard,
can only give the appearance of softness by including void spaces.
The next set of qualities are ‘ad organum,’ or relative to the senses.
They all depend ultimately on Touch. In Taste we have particles that act
on the palate. Sound has been held incorporeal,[56] but its corporeality
is proved by the reflex motion required for echoes and the necessity of
different configurations to produce different sounds.
In Light we have a subject which, for many reasons, has been a
time-honoured field of strife. Gassendi begins with definitions: the
object of sight is colour; the organ of sight the retina; light is
the essence of colour, but is not itself visible. Lux is defined as
‘corpuscula tenuissima in corpore lucido’; a body is lucidum when it
is a fount and source of light; bodies that depend on others for light
are not lucida, but illustrata. To produce the required effect on the
organ of vision, Light must be a substantial effluence. Aristotle indeed
thought otherwise, but if we give up the substantiality of Light it will
be necessary to employ one of the acknowledged substances as vehicle
of light: this vehicle will however be unknown to the organ, for that
is only concerned with the visible, so that Light is either itself a
substance or involves the inference of a substance. The diaphanous or
‘perspicuum’ is the name given to the substance which is the substratum
to light. Aristotle conceived its activity as the vibration of a chord
and considered the activity was the light (ἐνέργειαν τοῦ διαφανοῦς).
Descartes adopted a very similar idea, but defined his ‘perspicuum’ as
a texture of the spherical corpuscles which fill up the interstices of
air, water, glass, etc.—a sort of atmosphere of the second degree of
refinement.
Whatever the origin of light may be, it is itself a corporeal substance
somewhat like a bundle of corpuscles or rays formed of corpuscles. This
physical reality is merely ‘existens’ without relation to the eye: it
is ‘completa’ when in relation with the eye it produces light as an
experience.
It is necessary to prove definitely that Light is a substance, because
this view is rarely accepted. The proof consists in pointing out that
Light has certain powers which only a substance can have. These are,
first, local motion by which the rays travel from the ‘lucidum’ to the
‘illustratum.’ Action at a distance is a fallacy, so that if the luminous
body acts on a distant object, there must be a transmission of the agent
or agents through the intervening space. The second and clearest proof is
that of Reflexion:[57] for if light were incorporeal it would not rebound
from but pass through the opposing body. A similar argument applies to
refraction, where the body does not entirely oppose the passage of light
but is in some degree ‘transpicuum.’ The similes which Gassendi uses in
this connexion are worth noting: speaking of reflexion he compares the
light to arrows or javelins striking on a shield and rebounding: with
reference to action at a distance he says, if a fountain wets your hand
from afar it is because it projects a stream of water on you: similarly a
fire warms by sending out a ray of heat, or as one might say a spray of
heat atoms, and light illuminates by showering on the object ‘streams of
light.’
The objection which naturally arose against this substantive view was
that the motion of light was too rapid to admit of any such corporeality.
Gassendi replies that if light is mere form it is everywhere at once and
has no motion: if it moves some vehicle is required, and it follows that
the vehicle does as a matter of fact move just as fast as light, in spite
of a priori objections. Gassendi here seems to be applying a doctrine
that was greatly needed—namely that notions of substance must conform to
experience, and our experience must not be distorted or even rejected to
preserve traditional views.
Colour is either light itself or something in things to which light is
the perfecting form. Light itself is white or that which appears white
(nihil esse aliud quam candor candicansve color videatur). This is the
fundamental colour, if it be a colour, of which all others are varieties,
according to degrees of mixture of darkness.
The last of the sensible qualities is the imago, or visible species.
This subject naturally follows the discussion of Light and Colour, and
is properly a question of the perception of forms. As a question of
perception it comes under Vision; but objectively considered the species
are qualities, and must therefore be considered in this place. The
simplest course is to say that the vision[58] of an object is the light
radiated from it and determined by its form and colour. Gassendi declines
to leave the matter there, but as the question of the nature of these
‘visions’ has attracted so much attention he reviews the whole history of
the subject.
As nothing is absolutely smooth, but has on closer inspection numerous
‘faces,’ the species can be projected in a straight line in any and every
direction. It follows that a thing can be viewed from any side, and no
two views will be exactly alike, though generically alike. The objects
in the field of vision can be accommodated in the eye, in spite of their
great number, because the area surveyed is hemispherical in shape, and
the species are propelled along lines which converge into a point.
The nature of the species has been differently conceived by different
schools of writers. The ‘nominaleis’ say they are accidents: if so, they
must be dependent for transmission on the air; but an accident is not
a reality unless it can be separated from the vehicle which it uses:
in this case no separation is possible, and therefore species are not
truly accidents. Again, from the analogy of sounds the idea arose that
the object as a whole produced movements in the surrounding atmosphere,
and so, as it were, sent forth pictures of itself. Against this Gassendi
argues that the theory involves a movement of the object which sends
forth the picture, whereas seen objects are frequently motionless.
These two phases of the doctrine that species are insubstantial are
rejected, as might be expected from what has been already said about
Light. Epicurus thought the species were corporeal and of two kinds,
namely (_a_) ‘coagmentationes’ or spontaneous groupings of atoms, such
as occurs in a mirage, and (_b_) ‘effluxiones.’ It is with the second of
these that we are really concerned. Any given body as an object of sight
is supposed to be continually giving off atoms. These form a picture
of the thing by purely natural means. As all atoms move in straight
lines unless deflected, and all have the same rate of speed, these
‘exhalations,’ as they may be called, retain the original disposition
of their parts and so produce an effect symbolic of their origin and of
nothing else. It is necessary to notice the difference between this and
the other view, that the object as a whole produces a picture of itself.
Upon that view Gassendi pours scorn: the rock we see would, he says, be
in that case a consummate painter, obviously meaning that the theory has
a mystical element. The second theory is mechanical: the motion required
is not of the whole as such: there is only the innate motion of the
atoms: the retention of the original form is due to the _mechanical_
properties of atoms moving in a medium too subtle to disturb them
normally: and, finally, the effect is not a picture in the sense of being
itself a representation of the thing: it is an effect upon the organ of
sight which by these means attains a picture of the object. In the former
case apparently a ‘picture’ was supposed to float in the air: in this
case the atoms are not the picture but the cause of the picture: just as
light was a reality but not a complete reality apart from the eye, so the
picture is only realised for a beholder, and apart from any eye is only
an agglomeration of atoms.
Gassendi defends the view that ‘effluxiones’ are substantial, not because
it is right but because it is less wrong than the other view. The real
difficulty is to explain how things can go on giving off matter and yet
never be exhausted. The usual plan of explaining that the ‘effluxiones’
are subtle beyond all comprehension (omnem modum excedentes) is, to say
the least of it, feeble. But Gassendi attempts no other, and appears to
satisfy himself that it is possible to have a substantial loss, which
being infinitely small only becomes perceptible in infinite time. The
real difference between an infinitely subtle ‘imago’ and an imago that
is an accident, is a question of terms and technicality rather than
common-sense. Gassendi apparently means us to understand that what we see
is the light from a thing as that light is affected by the thing: beyond
this there is nothing but tradition.
There remain now the so-called occult qualities. These constitute a
special class; for certain qualities are popularly regarded as peculiarly
‘occult’: in reality all qualities are occult in some degree, and the
difference between ‘occult’ and ‘manifest’ is one of degree only. What we
look for is some explanation of an effect: an occult cause is merely an
imperceptible quality which we attribute to an object in order to explain
the effects we believe to be derived from it. The most typical of all
these qualities are the two known as Sympathy and Antipathy. Now all the
effects produced exhibit the common forms of activity: we are therefore
led to assume that the cause can be interpreted in terms of motion,
though that motion may be too subtle for our senses to perceive.
The assumption that all relations of cause and effect are reducible
to motion and communicated motion, prepares us for a rationalistic
explanation of these miraculous qualities. When the chameleon puts forth
its tongue to catch the fly, we see the agent of attraction: when the
electrical body attracts other bodies, how can it draw them to itself if
not by ‘innumerable rays darted out like tongues’? Beyond the world of
our senses lies another, identical in kind but too minute for ordinary
perception: if our senses were magnified these invisible agents would
start into life: we should see the tiny thorns wherewith the nettle
stings us, and perceive the corpuscles whose unsuitable shape makes
the object painful to our sight. All sympathy and antipathy then is a
question of physical causation, of ‘corporea organula’: love and hate are
ultimately physical, and friend is literally like friend, for the essence
of affection is congruence of atoms! The ancient philosophy of Hate and
Love is now completely inverted: physical relations take the first place
and repulsion or attraction explains all: repulsion need not be hate, but
hate is always repulsion.
The general theory of occult causes is now disposed of: the discussion
of particular instances has only a secondary interest. The cases classed
as ‘general’ are (_a_) conspiratio partium universi and (_b_) influxus
coelestis. The former is identical with the dread of a vacuum attributed
to nature: the latter is a subject about which we know little so far as
astrology is concerned: the movement of the tides is not really a case of
‘influxus lunae.’
The special cases also need not detain the reader: why the sponge
attracts (sic) the water is a question hardly more scientific in form
and suggestion than the later query, Why does a cock frighten a lion?
Both these cases seem explicable in ways not particularly ‘occult.’
In dealing with the occult qualities of plants Gassendi shows a very
interesting phase of the development of thought: the love of the vine
for the elm might be pure poetry, but there were relations between
plants which were thought to be of real importance: the female palm, for
example, was said to be fertile only when sown near the male: the truth
which might underlie this observation was obscured by the notion of
subtle ‘effluviae’ transmitted from one to the other.[59]
Gassendi discusses very gravely the occult quality of hate as existing
between the sheep and the wolf: he says, ‘ovis quidem odit lupum, nec
immerito: ab illo enim dilaniatur’: the wolf however does not hate the
sheep, for he is good to eat: the apple may hate us, but we who eat it
say we like it. There is a subtle vein of animism in all these popular
fancies which the philosopher still finds himself compelled to treat
seriously. The evil eye, the power of incantations, the virtue some
plants possess of healing the wounded by being applied to the sword that
struck the blow: these and many others mark the flights of undisciplined
imagination. In the last case Gassendi makes an interesting remark: the
power of the drug applied to the sword was supposed to reach the wounded
man, however far away, because the soul of the world is one, and so what
affects one part must affect the whole and all parts: thus Unity received
an apotheosis almost before it was born!
(_e_) ON THE ORIGIN AND DECAY OF THINGS
Whatever our ultimate views may be on creation and annihilation, there
remains untouched by these the whole sphere of becoming. Becoming can be
regarded from two points of view, according as we consider that which
becomes or that which ceases in order that something may become. The
negative aspect of the becoming of any one thing is the ceasing of its
antecedent, so long as we allow that the antecedent is really and truly
such: if however we prefer to deny the antecedence and declare the whole
movement of Becoming illusory, change may be refined away to nothing more
than variation of qualities. In order to be clear as to the scope of this
discussion, the terms employed must be carefully distinguished. The first
is creation, which means the production of something out of nothing: the
second is mutation, which denotes a change from one state to another. Now
this change may affect only the quality of a thing or the thing itself:
in the former case it is called Alteratio, in the latter Generatio.
These extreme points of view are represented on the one hand by
Parmenides and all who deny motion, on the other by those who regard all
new forms as creations. The standpoint exemplified in Parmenides is that
of the monistic schools for which substance means the Whole rather than
the Thing. From this interpretation it naturally follows that all change
is change of the Whole, and since the Whole cannot become something other
than itself, the change is ultimately an illusion. If, on the other hand,
substance means Thing, change will mean that one thing becomes another
thing, at least in the sense that one thing gives place to another
thing. But even those who take substance in the pluralistic sense do
not agree in their explanation of change: to many the idea of one thing
becoming another thing is repugnant: the tendency then is to return to
the position of Parmenides, but apply his doctrine not to Substance but
to substances. To do this successfully we must establish our ultimate
substances. Common experiences can be appealed to as a proof that we
know what we mean by change. Every day there is some new thing under the
sun about which we feel that to-day it is and yesterday it was not.[60]
But if our ultimate substances are things each with a character of its
own, the alterations it can undergo must be limited by the necessity of
retaining the character. An acorn may become an oak, but the oak does not
become an elm, says the opponent: when pressed further he will explain
that the acorn is potentially an oak, and therefore its development is
determined. But either the acorn is or is not an oak: if it is an oak
the Becoming is pure illusion: if it is not, what is the principle of
becoming? The answer is combination of parts. As these parts precede
the whole, they are themselves neutral, _i.e._ fit to enter into any
combination.[61] Generation is now definable as mixture of parts: the
matter is given in plants and animals as much as in houses: the mixture
makes the thing!
It is clear that our neutral elements are the atoms. Creation is the act
that produces these primary elements: the atoms are created, not the
world: the world is the product of atoms endowed with a motion of their
own. One difficulty, however, remains. If the matter is always the same,
and the thing is a combination of parts differing from other things not
in the nature of the ultimate elements but in their combination, is it
not really the Form, and the Form only, that is generated? Gassendi
attacks this position with skilful dialectic. It is said that when a
combination is effected a form is educed: this form was not present
before actu but potentia: then how can it be educed any more than gold
can be educed from an empty purse?[62] If the form does not arise out
of the matter, we have not eductio but generatio: a form, that is, is
realised which did not exist before, and that is just what we mean by
generation. If the form is asserted to be something distinct from matter,
and yet no matter is lost in producing Form, the Form must be especially
created and we are committed to a constant miracle.
The result of our review of all previous doctrines is then the survival
as fittest of the common-sense standpoint: and the achievement is perhaps
greater than it appears at first sight. At one point Gassendi’s position
seems very much exposed, but the opponent is silenced in anticipation.
If mind is not matter, have we not here a case in which a combination of
elements of one kind produces or conditions the generation of a reality
of a different order? The point may be dealt with in two ways; the first
is to stolidly assert that mind is a form of matter generated by the
particular combinations of matter which it is found to accompany; the
second is to attribute it to the act of God, and so leave it. Gassendi
chooses the second course, perhaps wisely.
_SECTION B_
CHAPTER I
THE INANIMATE WORLD
The second part of the _Syntagma_ begins with a treatise de rebus
terrenis inanimis. The majority of its contents are not worth
reproduction in full or with any degree of exactness. The connexion of
these chapters with the scheme of the whole work may be gathered from the
summary of the subject matter already given (_v._ p. xii). A few points
of particular interest may be selected for special comment.
After dealing with the land and the water, including seas, rivers, and
the tides, we advance to the bodies that are found in the earth. These
are classified as ‘mista perfecta’ in order to distinguish them from
the ‘meteora’ (winds, clouds, rains), which are imperfecta: they are
also called compositiora, because they are compounded of more than one
element. This class includes Fossils, Plants, and Animals. The term
‘fossil’ is used in the bare sense of things which have to be dug up:
as a rule this is limited to stones, metals, and minerals; but there
are other treasures in the bosom of the earth which are omitted by this
limitation, and Gassendi proposes to include under this heading the
primary forms of matter which are ‘liquidiora.’ We are now dealing with
the very lowest forms of existence. Gassendi’s intention is to begin at
the bottom of the scale of existence and rise in orderly procession to
the highest. He is not content with starting from even such elementary
stages as are given in metals, but desires to get deeper still, to the
most formless conditions of matter, and begin with what he calls the
‘mean forms’ out of which nature constructs the comparatively developed
things called metals. These ‘mean forms’ or first conditions of matter
are the various kinds of earth, the ‘succi concreti’ and the ‘mista
mineralia.’ The kinds of earth are first enumerated and their relative
fertility is commented on; then the succi concreti are catalogued in the
two main classes macri et pingues (among the macri salt comes first,
among the pingues sulphur and bitumen are the most important), and
finally the mista mineralia are given in their order. Beyond being an
integral part of Gassendi’s universe these have no interest for us now,
but as part of that conception they demand attention. As we are now in
the realm of things inorganic the question of becoming is important.
Each class of things has its own semina and each thing is formed by the
cohesion of semina of one kind: that is to say, generation is a simple
process of cohesion of homogeneous parts, and as there is no question
of voluntary unions, the production of any specimen of this class is
dependent on the chance which collocates in one place the kindred
elements. Whatever we may have to say later on about alimentation and the
purposive union of parts, this is the sphere in which we can subscribe
unreservedly to the action of chance as it was primarily conceived by the
earlier atomists.
Passing over the intermediary discussion of volcanoes and earthquakes we
can take up at once the question of the formation of inorganic bodies
as it is described by Gassendi, with special reference to ‘lapides’
or stones in the sense in which we use that term when we speak of
precious stones. It is absurd to suppose that all these were created
at the beginning of things once and for all. Apart from the inherent
improbability of the idea, we can see for ourselves that the process is
going on around us every day. The matter is in this as in every case
given. The point which calls for explanation is the regularity with
which similar forms are constantly produced. For this we must postulate
a formative power, a vis interna, in this case a vis lapidifica: there
is no less reason for asserting the existence of this formative power
in the case of stones than there is in the case of the plant or the
chicken.[63] If any doubt remained it would be dispersed by the instance
of crystallisation in which the presence of such a causa constans is
indubitable. This vis lapidifica is a form of vis seminalis, that being
the more general term: in the case of some animals and in plants the
vis seminalis is obscurior; and in the case of stones it is still more
obscure, but not on that account to be denied altogether. We must not
however deduce from this too much: although gems and all other stones
are formed by the action of this vis seminalis they are not on that
account to be called living things: they have not life in the sense that
the plants have: they are solid compact bodies in which there is no
circulation and no alimentation, not even through that which they call
‘insensilem transpirationem’: they do not grow in the proper sense of the
term, and we certainly cannot infer from the fact that one gem is bigger
than another that it is therefore older, or ‘grown up’! The coral does
indeed grow, but then it is a plant!
The most important topic in this book is that of the magnet. Gassendi
has used the magnet frequently in the later parts of his work by way of
example, and, as it is one of those marginal topics which seem to have
a mystical affinity with higher forms of existence, it will be as well
to examine carefully what Gassendi has to say here, where he treats
the subject directly and in its proper connexion. The point about the
magnet is that it exercises attraction. When the iron comes within its
range it is drawn toward it by some invisible power, and the data thus
given to the ordinary senses of man are exactly fitted to encourage
idle speculation. In the first place Gassendi asserts that the action
of the magnet is purely physical: it must therefore be mediated action,
not action at a distance, and the mediation must be achieved by a
substantialis corporeusve effluxus: there is to be no shirking of the
question by introducing emanations of a doubtful order: if we had the
required keenness of sight we should see the hooks by which the magnet
lays hold of the iron. That is one question, and so far we seem on safe
ground; but a more critical point is raised by the two statements that
the magnet has something analogous to plants and to sense. The analogy
to plants turns out to be a similarity of habits such that, as a cutting
can only be grafted on to a tree in one way, so the magnet can only be
joined to another magnet or a part of itself according to the way the
fibres run. As regards the analogy of the magnet to that of the sensible
agent, the analogy consists in the following points of resemblance. (1)
As the animal is attracted by the object, so the iron is attracted by
the magnet. (2) The action is in both cases per immissas species that
is, a definite something is emitted by the one which passes over to the
other. (3) The species thus emitted enter into the soul of the object in
both cases and produce the disturbance which results in the consequent
movement. (4) The activity of motion in both cases begins from the soul.
This language looks on the face of it extremely animistic: none the less
Gassendi does not mean to imply that the magnet has a soul in the proper
sense of the term at all.[64] He carefully adds every time he mentions
the word anima the qualifying quasi: he distinguishes the other anima
to which this is analogous as anima sentiens, and assures us that the
magnet has only ‘something analogous to a soul.’ What we have in fact is
a type of motion; what we might call responsive motion; and Gassendi is
well aware that when he comes to sensibility he will not be able to tell
us much more about it than can be summed up in some such phrase as this
of responsive motion. The significance of this will be pointed out later
(p. 262): for the present it is enough to show that we cannot assert on
the basis of what Gassendi has to say for himself either that matter is
always endowed with soul, or that soul is always material: similarity
does not exclude difference, nor does difference destroy the possibility
of co-existing similarity: the eagle and the oyster are far enough apart,
and yet we find reason to put them on the same scale: can we not then
put the magnet and the animal in some relation of similarity, though the
magnet is no more an animal than the eagle is an oyster?
The subject of Plants, which occupies the second part of this section on
things inanimate, is important in one respect. We shall pass over all
that is said on the kinds and classification of plants, and confine
our attention to the consideration of their nature, and the place which
they are to occupy in our scheme of the universe. Gassendi begins with
the most important point, namely the question, have the plants a soul?
Many writers had held this theory: as a rule it was a deduction from
the doctrine of the world-soul, and there were great differences in the
extent to which the doctrine was pushed: the Manichaeans, for example,
‘sic dederunt plantis animam rationalem ut florem aut fructum decerpere
foret homocidium patrare’:[65] while Aristotle represents the other
extreme of moderation in attributing to them only a nutritive soul.
Epicurus is in direct opposition to these ideas, and declares that plants
have no soul at all, an opinion with which Gassendi finds himself in
perfect accord. He reviews the meanings attached to the word animatus:
its Greek counterpart ψυχή is from ψυχεἲν, which is to say, ‘flando
refrigerare,’ and this we all know is peculiar to animals; plants are
not even animals in the strict sense of ζῶα, much less animata corpora;
and finally, if we think of the derivation from ἄνεμος, _i.e._ spiritus,
this too excludes plants from the class of animata. But while he is thus
clear that a plant is not an animal Gassendi obviously feels that there
is some excuse for the general tendency to give plants a place in the
scale of nature much nearer to the animal than to the stone: he therefore
enumerates all the ‘wonders of plant life’ which were known in his day
and seem to have been as fruitful a source of credulous wonder then as
now. There is doubtless much that is to us extremely wonderful in the
apparently purposeful activities of plants, but, says Gassendi, however
wonderful they may be, the original question, are there any proofs of a
soul?, remains unanswered: anima is often used loosely, and we speak of
things as animated[66] to which we should not give a soul if required to
do so explicitly; in other words, there is much we call animate that we
should never call animal. We are in fact caught between the animal sphere
and the too comprehensive sphere of nature in general. Finally, Gassendi
defines the plant as corpus vegetabile sensu carens, admitting that it
would be more natural, if less exact, to say corpus animatum, _i.e._
‘vivens quod nutriri, crescere, sibi simile generare possit.’
This last point directs our attention to the question of the origin and
perpetuation of plant life. The first plant in the world’s history must
have arisen from a conjunction of like atoms, and this was in the usual
way fortuitous. But the tendency which united the first group of atoms
in the first plant works on a smaller scale in keeping together those
atoms which are the specific semen: hence the process of reproduction
is made easier, and the reason why plants are localised is apparent. In
this connection Gassendi returns to the question of the soul: the marvel
of the structure of the plant with all its adaptations and contrivances
rouses him to further comment on that formative power which is thus
shown to be innate to the plant. We must, in fact, allow that there is a
central principle, and we may even call it a soul if it be remembered
that by this term we denote only a definite principle, a substance most
like to a flame, which is indeed spread through all the plant, but is
especially concentrated in the parts which form the seed (II. 172).