GASSENDI, PIERRE GEFLE
GASTEIN GEGENBAUR, CARL
GASTRIC ULCER GEGENSCHEIN
GASTRITIS GEIBEL, EMANUEL
GASTROPODA GEIGE
GASTROTRICHA GEIGER, ABRAHAM
GATAKER, THOMAS GEIJER, ERIK GUSTAF
GATCHINA GEIKIE, SIR ARCHIBALD
GATE GEIKIE, JAMES
GATEHOUSE GEIKIE, WALTER
GATES, HORATIO GEILER VON KAISERSBERG, JOHANN
GATESHEAD GEINITZ, HANS BRUNO
GATH GEISHA
GATLING, RICHARD JORDAN GEISLINGEN
GATTY, MARGARET GEISSLER, HEINRICH
GAU, JOHN GELA
GAUDEN, JOHN GELADA
GAUDICHAUD-BEAUPRÉ, CHARLES GELASIUS
GAUDRY, JEAN ALBERT GELATI
GAUDY GELATIN
GAUERMANN, FRIEDRICH GELDERLAND (duchy)
GAUGE GELDERLAND (province of Holland)
GAUHATI GELDERN
GAUL, GILBERT WILLIAM GELL, SIR WILLIAM
GAUL GELLERT, CHRISTIAN FÜRCHTEGOTT
GAULT GELLERT
GAUNTLET GELLIUS, AULUS
GAUR (ruined city of India) GELLIVARA
GAUR (wild ox) GELNHAUSEN
GAUSS, KARL FRIEDRICH GELO
GAUSSEN, FRANÇOIS SAMUEL LOUIS GELSEMIUM
GAUTIER, ÉMILE THÉODORE LÉON GELSENKIRCHEN
GAUTIER, THÉOPHILE GEM
GAUTIER D'ARRAS GEM, ARTIFICIAL
GAUZE GEMBLOUX
GAVARNI GEMINI
GAVAZZI, ALESSANDRO GEMINIANI, FRANCESCO
GAVELKIND GEMISTUS PLETHO, GEORGIUS
GAVESTON, PIERS GEMMI PASS
GAVOTTE GENDARMERIE
GAWAIN GENEALOGY
GAWLER GENELLI, GIOVANNI BUONAVENTURA
GAY, JOHN GENERAL
GAY, MARIE FRANÇOISE SOPHIE GENERATION
GAY, WALTER GENESIS
GAYA GENET
GAYAL GENEVA (New York, U.S.A.)
GAYANGOS Y ARCE, PASCUAL DE GENEVA (Switzerland)
GAYARRÉ, CHARLES ÉTIENNE ARTHUR GENEVA CONVENTION
GAY-LUSSAC, JOSEPH LOUIS GENEVA, LAKE OF
GAZA, THEODORUS GENEVIÈVE, ST
GAZA GENEVIÈVE, OF BRABANT
GAZALAND GENGA, GIROLAMO
GAZEBO GENISTA
GAZETTE GENIUS
GEAR GENUS, STÉPHANIE DE SAINT-AUBIN
GEBER GENNA
GEBHARD TRUCHSESS VON WALDBURG GENNADIUS II.
GEBWEILER GENOA
GECKO GENOVESI, ANTONIO
GED, WILLIAM GENSONNÉ, ARMAND
GEDDES, ALEXANDER GENTIAN
GEDDES, ANDREW GENTIANACEAE
GEDDES, JAMES LORRAINE GENTILE
GEDDES, SIR WILLIAM DUGUID GENTILE DA FABRIANO
GEDYMIN GENTILESCHI, ARTEMISIA and ORAZIO DE'
GEE, THOMAS GENTILI, ALBERICO
GEEL, JACOB GENTLE
GEELONG GENTLEMAN
GEESTEMÜNDE GENTZ, FRIEDRICH VON
GEFFCKEN, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH GEOCENTRIC
GEFFROY, MATHIEU AUGUSTE
GASSENDI[1] [GASSEND], PIERRE (1592-1655), French philosopher, scientist
and mathematician, was born of poor parents at Champtercier, near Digne,
in Provence, on the 22nd of January 1592. At a very early age he gave
indications of remarkable mental powers and was sent to the college at
Digne. He showed particular aptitude for languages and mathematics, and
it is said that at the age of sixteen he was invited to lecture on
rhetoric at the college. Soon afterwards he entered the university of
Aix, to study philosophy under P. Fesaye. In 1612 he was called to the
college of Digne to lecture on theology. Four years later he received
the degree of doctor of theology at Avignon, and in 1617 he took holy
orders. In the same year he was called to the chair of philosophy at
Aix, and seems gradually to have withdrawn from theology. He lectured
principally on the Aristotelian philosophy, conforming as far as
possible to the orthodox methods. At the same time, however, he followed
with interest the discoveries of Galileo and Kepler, and became more and
more dissatisfied with the Peripatetic system. It was the period of
revolt against the Aristotelianism of the schools, and Gassendi shared
to the full the empirical tendencies of the age. He, too, began to draw
up objections to the Aristotelian philosophy, but did not at first
venture to publish them. In 1624, however, after he had left Aix for a
canonry at Grenoble, he printed the first part of his _Exercitationes
paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos_. A fragment of the second book was
published later at La Haye (1659), but the remaining five were never
composed, Gassendi apparently thinking that after the _Discussiones
Peripateticae_ of Francesco Patrizzi little field was left for his
labours.
After 1628 Gassendi travelled in Flanders and Holland. During this time
he wrote, at the instance of Mersenne, his examination of the mystical
philosophy of Robert Fludd (_Epistolica dissertatio in qua praecipua
principia philosophiae Ro. Fluddi deteguntur_, 1631), an essay on
parhelia (_Epistola de parheliis_), and some valuable observations on
the transit of Mercury which had been foretold by Kepler. He returned to
France in 1631, and two years later became provost of the cathedral
church at Digne. Some years were then spent in travelling through
Provence with the duke of Angoulême, governor of the department. The
only literary work of this period is the _Life of Peiresc_, which has
been frequently reprinted, and was translated into English. In 1642 he
was engaged by Mersenne in controversy with Descartes. His objections to
the fundamental propositions of Descartes were published in 1642; they
appear as the fifth in the series contained in the works of Descartes.
In these objections Gassendi's tendency towards the empirical school of
speculation appears more pronounced than in any of his other writings.
In 1645 he accepted the chair of mathematics in the Collège Royal at
Paris, and lectured for many years with great success. In addition to
controversial writings on physical questions, there appeared during this
period the first of the works by which he is known in the history of
philosophy. In 1647 he published the treatise _De vita, moribus, et
doctrina Epicuri libri octo_. The work was well received, and two years
later appeared his commentary on the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius,
_De vita, moribus, et placitis Epicuri, seu Animadversiones in X. librum
Diog. Laër_. (Lyons, 1649; last edition, 1675). In the same year the
more important _Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri_ (Lyons, 1649; Amsterdam,
1684) was published.
In 1648 ill-health compelled him to give up his lectures at the Collège
Royal. He travelled in the south of France, spending nearly two years at
Toulon, the climate of which suited him. In 1653 he returned to Paris
and resumed his literary work, publishing in that year lives of
Copernicus and Tycho Brahe. The disease from which he suffered, lung
complaint, had, however, established a firm hold on him. His strength
gradually failed, and he died at Paris on the 24th of October 1655. A
bronze statue of him was erected by subscription at Digne in 1852.
His collected works, of which the most important is the _Syntagma
philosophicum_ (_Opera_, i. and ii.), were published in 1658 by Montmort
(6 vols., Lyons). Another edition, also in 6 folio volumes, was
published by N. Averanius in 1727. The first two are occupied entirely
with his _Syntagma philosophicum_; the third contains his critical
writings on Epicurus, Aristotle, Descartes, Fludd and Lord Herbert, with
some occasional pieces on certain problems of physics; the fourth, his
_Institutio astronomica_, and his _Commentarii de rebus celestibus_; the
fifth, his commentary on the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, the
biographies of Epicurus, N.C.F. de Peiresc, Tycho Brahe, Copernicus,
Georg von Peuerbach, and Regiomontanus, with some tracts on the value of
ancient money, on the Roman calendar, and on the theory of music, to all
which is appended a large and prolix piece entitled _Notitia ecclesiae
Diniensis_; the sixth volume contains his correspondence. The _Lives_,
especially those of Copernicus, Tycho and Peiresc, have been justly
admired. That of Peiresc has been repeatedly printed; it has also been
translated into English. Gassendi was one of the first after the revival
of letters who treated the _literature_ of philosophy in a lively way.
His writings of this kind, though too laudatory and somewhat diffuse,
have great merit; they abound in those anecdotal details, natural yet
not obvious reflections, and vivacious turns of thought, which made
Gibbon style him, with some extravagance certainly, though it was true
enough up to Gassendi's time--"le meilleur philosophe des littérateurs,
et le meilleur littérateur des philosophes."
Gassendi holds an honourable place in the history of physical science.
He certainly added little to the stock of human knowledge, but the
clearness of his exposition and the manner in which he, like Bacon,
urged the importance of experimental research, were of inestimable
service to the cause of science. To what extent any place can be
assigned him in the history of philosophy is more doubtful. The
_Exercitationes_ on the whole seem to have excited more attention than
they deserved. They contain little or nothing beyond what had been
already advanced against Aristotle. The first book expounds clearly,
and with much vigour, the evil effects of the blind acceptance of the
Aristotelian dicta on physical and philosophical study; but, as is the
case with so many of the anti-Aristotelian works of this period, the
objections show the usual ignorance of Aristotle's own writings. The
second book, which contains the review of Aristotle's dialectic or
logic, is throughout Ramist in tone and method. The objections to
Descartes--one of which at least, through Descartes's statement of it
in the appendix of objections in the _Meditationes_ has become
famous--have no speculative value, and in general are the outcome of
the crudest empiricism. His labours on Epicurus have a certain
historical value, but the want of consistency inherent in the
philosophical system raised on Epicureanism is such as to deprive it
of genuine worth. Along with strong expressions of empiricism we find
him holding doctrines absolutely irreconcilable with empiricism in any
form. For while he maintains constantly his favourite maxim "that
there is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses"
(_nihil in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu_), while he
contends that the imaginative faculty (_phantasia_) is the counterpart
of sense--that, as it has to do with material images, it is itself,
like sense, material, and essentially the same both in men and brutes;
he at the same time admits that the intellect, which he affirms to be
immaterial and immortal--the most characteristic distinction of
humanity--attains notions and truths of which no effort of sensation
or imagination can give us the slightest apprehension (Op. ii. 383).
He instances the capacity of forming "general notions"; the very
conception of universality itself (_ib._ 384), to which he says
brutes, who partake as truly as men in the faculty called _phantasia_,
never attain; the notion of God, whom he says we may imagine to be
corporeal, but understand to be incorporeal; and lastly, the reflex
action by which the mind makes its own phenomena and operations the
objects of attention.
The _Syntagma philosophicum_, in fact, is one of those eclectic
systems which unite, or rather place in juxtaposition, irreconcilable
dogmas from various schools of thought. It is divided, according to
the usual fashion of the Epicureans, into logic (which, with Gassendi
as with Epicurus, is truly _canonic_), physics and ethics. The logic,
which contains at least one praiseworthy portion, a sketch of the
history of the science, is divided into theory of right apprehension
(_bene imaginari_), theory of right judgment (_bene proponere_),
theory of right inference (_bene colligere_), theory of right method
(_bene ordinare_). The first part contains the specially empirical
positions which Gassendi afterwards neglects or leaves out of account.
The senses, the sole source of knowledge, are supposed to yield us
immediately cognition of individual things; phantasy (which Gassendi
takes to be material in nature) reproduces these ideas; understanding
compares these ideas, which are particular, and frames general ideas.
Nevertheless, he at the same time admits that the senses yield
knowledge--not of things--but of qualities only, and holds that we
arrive at the idea of thing or substance by induction. He holds that
the true method of research is the analytic, rising from lower to
higher notions; yet he sees clearly, and admits, that inductive
reasoning, as conceived by Bacon, rests on a general proposition not
itself proved by induction. He ought to hold, and in disputing with
Descartes he did apparently hold, that the evidence of the senses is
the only convincing evidence; yet he maintains, and from his special
mathematical training it was natural he should maintain, that the
evidence of reason is absolutely satisfactory. The whole doctrine of
judgment, syllogism and method is a mixture of Aristotelian and Ramist
notions.
In the second part of the _Syntagma_, the physics, there is more that
deserves attention; but here, too, appears in the most glaring manner
the inner contradiction between Gassendi's fundamental principles.
While approving of the Epicurean physics, he rejects altogether the
Epicurean negation of God and particular providence. He states the
various proofs for the existence of an immaterial, infinite, supreme
Being, asserts that this Being is the author of the visible universe,
and strongly defends the doctrine of the foreknowledge and particular
providence of God. At the same time he holds, in opposition to
Epicureanism, the doctrine of an immaterial rational soul, endowed
with immortality and capable of free determination. It is altogether
impossible to assent to the supposition of Lange (_Gesch. des
Materialismus_, 3rd ed., i. 233), that all this portion of Gassendi's
system contains nothing of his own opinions, but is introduced solely
from motives of self-defence. The positive exposition of atomism has
much that is attractive, but the hypothesis of the _calor vitalis_
(vital heat), a species of _anima mundi_ (world-soul) which is
introduced as physical explanation of physical phenomena, does not
seem to throw much light on the special problems which it is invoked
to solve. Nor is his theory of the weight essential to atoms as being
due to an inner force impelling them to motion in any way reconcilable
with his general doctrine of mechanical causes.
In the third part, the ethics, over and above the discussion on
freedom, which on the whole is indefinite, there is little beyond a
milder statement of the Epicurean moral code. The final end of life is
happiness, and happiness is harmony of soul and body (_tranquillitas
animi et indolentia corporis_). Probably, Gassendi thinks, perfect
happiness is not attainable in this life, but it may be in the life to
come.
The _Syntagma_ is thus an essentially unsystematic work, and clearly
exhibits the main characteristics of Gassendi's genius. He was
critical rather than constructive, widely read and trained thoroughly
both in languages and in science, but deficient in speculative power
and original force. Even in the department of natural science he shows
the same inability steadfastly to retain principles and to work from
them; he wavers between the systems of Brahe and Copernicus. That his
revival of Epicureanism had an important influence on the general
thinking of the 17th century may be admitted; that it has any real
importance in the history of philosophy cannot be granted.
AUTHORITIES.--Gassendi's life is given by Sorbière in the first
collected edition of the works, by Bugerel, _Vie de Gassendi_ (1737;
2nd ed., 1770), and by Damiron, _Mémoire sur Gassendi_ (1839). An
abridgment of his philosophy was given by his friend, the celebrated
traveller, Bernier (_Abrégé de la philosophie de Gassendi_, 8 vols.,
1678; 2nd ed., 7 vols., 1684). The most complete surveys of his work
are those of G.S. Brett (_Philosophy of Gassendi_, London, 1908),
Buhle (_Geschichte der neuern Philosophie_, iii. 1, 87-222), Damiron
(_Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de philosophie au XVII^e siècle_),
and P.F. Thomas (_La Philosophie de Gassendi_, Paris, 1889). See also
Ritter, _Geschichte der Philosophie_, x. 543-571; Feuerbach, _Gesch.
d. neu. Phil. von Bacon bis Spinoza_, 127-150; F.X. Kiefl, _P.
Gassendis Erkenntnistheorie und seine Stellung zum Materialismus_
(1893) and "Gassendi's Skepticismus" in _Philos. Jahrb._ vi. (1893);
C. Güttler, "Gassend oder Gassendi?" in _Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philos._
x. (1897), pp. 238-242. (R. Ad.; X.)