[1027] Des Trois Vérités contre les Athées, Idolatres, Juifs,

Mahumetans, Hérétiques, et Schismatiques. Bourdeaux, 1593. Charron

has not put his name to this book; and it does not appear that he

has taken anything from himself in his subsequent work, De la

Sagesse.

|Wierus, De Præstigiis.|

53. I hardly know how to insert, in any other chapter than the present,

the books that relate to sorcery and demoniacal possessions, though they

can only in a very lax sense be ranked with theological literature. The

greater part are contemptible in any other light than as evidences of

the state of human opinion. Those designed to rescue the innocent from

sanguinary prejudices, and chase the real demon of superstition from the

mind of man, deserve to be commemorated. Two such works belong to this

period. Wierus, a physician of the Netherlands, in a treatise, “De

Præstigiis,” Basle, 1564, combats the horrible prejudice by which those

accused of witchcraft were thrown into the flames. He shows a good deal

of credulity as to diabolical illusions, but takes these unfortunate

persons for the devil’s victims rather than his accomplices. Upon the

whole, Wierus destroys more superstition than he seriously intended to

leave behind.

|Scot on Witchcraft.|

54. A far superior writer is our countryman, Reginald Scot, whose object

is the same, but whose views are incomparably more extensive and

enlightened. He denies altogether to the devil any power of controlling

the course of nature. It may be easily supposed that this solid and

learned person, for such he was beyond almost all the English of that

age, did not escape in his own time, or long afterwards, the censure of

those who adhered to superstition. Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft was

published in 1584.[1028] Bodin, on the other hand, endeavoured to

sustain the vulgar notions of Witchcraft in his Demonomanie des

Sorciers. It is not easy to conceive a more wretched production; besides

his superstitious absurdities, he is guilty of exciting the magistrate

against Wierus, by representing him as a real confederate of Satan.

[1028] It appears by Scot’s book that not only the common, but the more

difficult tricks of conjurers were practised in his time; he shows

how to perform some of them.

|Authenticity of Vulgate.|

55. We may conclude this chapter, by mentioning the principal versions

and editions of Scripture. No edition of the Greek Testament, worthy to

be specified, appeared after that of Robert Stephens, whose text was

invariably followed. The council of Trent declared the Vulgate

translation of Scripture to be authentic, condemning all that should

deny its authority. It has been a commonplace with Protestants to

inveigh against this decree, even while they have virtually maintained

the principle upon which it is founded--one by no means peculiar to the

church of Rome--being no other than that it is dangerous to unsettle the

mind of the ignorant, or partially learned in religion; a proposition

not easily disputable by any man of sense, but, when acted upon, as

incompatible as any two contraries can be, with the free and general

investigation of truth.

|Latin versions and editions by Catholics.|

56. Notwithstanding this decision in favour of the Vulgate, there was

room left for partial uncertainty. The council of Trent, declaring the

translation itself to be authentic, pronounced nothing in favour of any

manuscript or edition; and as it would be easier to put down learning

altogether than absolutely to restrain the searching spirit of

criticism, it was soon held that the council’s decree went but to the

general fidelity of the version, without warranting every passage. Many

Catholic writers, accordingly, have put a very liberal interpretation on

this decree, suggesting such emendations of particular texts as the

original seemed to demand. They have even given new translations; one by

Arias Montanus is chiefly founded on that of Pagninus, and an edition of

the Vulgate, by Isidore Clarius, is said to resemble a new translation,

by his numerous corrections of the text from the Hebrew.[1029] Sixtus V.

determined to put a stop to a license which rendered the Tridentine

provisions almost nugatory. He fulfilled the intentions of the council

by causing to be published in 1590 the Sistine Bible; an authoritative

edition to be used in all churches. This was, however, superseded by

another, set forth only two years afterwards by Clement VIII., which is

said to differ more than any other from that which his predecessor had

published as authentic; a circumstance not forgotten by Protestant

polemics. The Sistine edition is now very scarce. The same pope had

published a standard edition of the Septuagint in 1587.[1030]

[1029] Andrès, xix. 40. Simon, 358.

[1030] Andrès, xix, 44. Schelhorn, Amœnit. Literar, vol. ii. 359,

and vol. iv. 439.

|By Protestants.|

57. The Latin translations made by Protestants in this period were that

by Sebastian Castalio, which, in search of more elegance of style,

deviates from the simplicity, as well as sense, of the original, and

fails therefore of obtaining that praise at the hands of men of taste

for which more essential requisites have been sacrificed;[1031] and that

by Tremellius and Junius, published at Frankfort in 1575, and subsequent

years. It was retouched some time afterwards by Junius, after the death

of his coadjutor. This translation was better esteemed in Protestant

countries, especially at first, than by the Catholic critics. Simon

speaks of it with little respect. It professedly adheres closely to the

Hebrew idiom. Beza gave a Latin version of the New Testament. It is

doubtful whether any of these translations have much improved upon the

Vulgate.

[1031] Andrès, xix. 166. Castalio, according to Simon (Hist. Critique

du V. T., p. 363), affects politeness to an inconceivable degree of

bad taste, especially in such phrases as these in his translation

of the Canticles:--Mea columbula, ostende mihi tuum vulticulum; fac

ut audiam tuam voculam, &c. He was, however, Simon says, tolerably

acquainted with Hebrew, and spoke modestly of his own translation.

|Versions into modern languages.|

58. The new translations of the Scriptures into modern languages were

naturally not so numerous as at an earlier period. Two in English are

well known; the Geneva Bible of 1560, published in that city by

Coverdale, Whittingham, and other refugees, and the Bishop’s Bible of

1568. Both of these, or at least the latter, were professedly founded

upon the prior versions, but certainly not without a close comparison

with the original text. The English Catholics published a translation of

the New Testament from the Vulgate at Rheims in 1582. The Polish

translation, commonly ascribed to the Socinians, was printed under the

patronage of Prince Radzivil in 1563, before that sect could be said to

exist, though Lismanin and Blandrata, both of heterodox tenets, were

concerned in it.[1032] This edition is of the greatest rarity. The

Spanish bible of Ferrara, 1553, and the Sclavonian of 1581, are also

very scarce. The curious in bibliography are conversant with other

versions and editions of the sixteenth century, chiefly of rare

occurrence.[1033]

[1032] Bayle, art. Radzivil.

[1033] Brunet, &c.

CHAPTER XII.

HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1550 TO 1600.

_Aristotelian Philosophers--Cesalpin--Opposite Schools of Philosophy--

Telesio--Jordano Bruno--Sanchez--Aconcio--Nizolius--Logic of Ramus._

|Predominance of Aristotelian philosophy.|

1. The authority of Aristotle, as the great master of dogmatic

philosophy, continued generally predominant through the sixteenth

century. It has been already observed that, besides the strenuous

support of the Catholic clergy, and especially of the Sorbonne, who

regarded all innovations with abhorrence, the Aristotelian philosophy

had been received, through the influence of Melanchthon, in the Lutheran

universities. The reader must be reminded that, under the name of

speculative philosophy we comprehend not only the logic and what was

called ontology of the schools, but those physical theories of ancient

or modern date, which, appealing less to experience than to assumed

hypotheses, cannot be mingled, in a literary classification, with the

researches of true science, such as we shall hereafter have to place

under the head of natural philosophy.

|Scholastic and genuine Aristotelians.|

2. Brucker has made a distinction between the scholastic and the genuine

Aristotelians; the former being chiefly conversant with the doctors of

the middle ages, adopting their terminology, their distinctions, their

dogmas, and relying with implicit deference on Scotus or Aquinas,

though, in the progress of learning, they might make some use of the

original master; while the latter, throwing off the yoke of the

schoolmen, prided themselves on an equally complete submission to

Aristotle himself. These were chiefly philosophers and physicians, as

the former were theologians; and the difference of their objects

suffices to account for the different lines in which they pursued them,

and the lights by which they were guided.[1034]

[1034] Brucker, Hist. Philos. iv. 117, et post.

|The former class little remembered.|

3. Of the former class, or successors and adherents of the old

schoolmen, it might be far from easy, were it worth while, to furnish

any distinct account. Their works are mostly of extreme scarcity; and

none of the historians of philosophy, except perhaps Morhof, profess

much acquaintance with them. It is sufficient to repeat that, among the

Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits, especially in Spain and Italy, the

scholastic mode of argumentation was retained in their seminaries, and

employed in prolix volumes, both upon theology and upon such parts of

metaphysics and natural law as are allied to it. The reader may find

some more information in Brucker, whom Buhle, saying the same things in

the same order, may be presumed to have silently copied.[1035]

[1035] Brucker, ibid. Buhle, ii. 448.

|The others not much better known.|

4. The second class of Aristotelian philosophers, devoting themselves to

physical science, though investigating it with a very unhappy deference

to mistaken dogmas, might seem to offer a better hope of materials for

history; and in fact we meet here with a very few names of men once

celebrated and of some influence over the opinions of their age. But

even here their writings prove to be not only forgotten, but incapable

as we may say, on account of their rare occurrence, and the

improbability of their republication, of being ever again known.

|Schools of Pisa and Padua.|

|Cesalpini.|

5. The Italian schools, and especially those of Pisa and Padua, had long

been celebrated for their adherence to Aristotelian principles, not

always such as could justly be deduced from the writings of the

Stagyrite himself, but opposing a bulwark against novel speculation, as

well as against the revival of the Platonic, or any other ancient

philosophy. Simon Porta of the former university, and Cæsar Cremonini of

the latter, stood at the head of the rigid Aristotelians; the one near

the commencement of this period, the other about its close. Both these

philosophers have been reproached with the tendency to atheism, so

common in the Italians of this period. A similar imputation has fallen

on another professor of the university of Pisa, Cesalpini, who is said

to have deviated from the strict system of Aristotle towards that of

Averroes, though he did not altogether coincide even with the latter.

The real merits of Cesalpin, in very different pursuits, it was reserved

for a later age to admire. His “Quæstiones Peripateticæ,” published in

1575, is a treatise on metaphysics, or the first philosophy, founded

professedly upon Aristotelian principles, but with considerable

deviation. This work is so scarce that Brucker had never seen it, but

Buhle has taken much pains to analyse its very obscure contents.

Paradoxical and unintelligible as they now appear, Cesalpin obtained a

high reputation in his own age, and was denominated by excellence, the

philosopher. Nicolas Taurellus, a professor at Altdorf, denounced the

“Quæstiones Peripateticæ” in a book to which, in allusion to his

adversary’s name, he gave the puerile title of Alpes Cæsæ.

|Sketch of his system.|

6. The system of Cesalpin is one modification of that ancient hypothesis

which, losing sight of all truth and experience in the love of

abstraction, substitutes the barren unity of pantheism for religion, and

a few incomprehensible paradoxes for the variety of science. Nothing,

according to him, was substance which was not animated; but the

particular souls which animate bodies are themselves only substances,

because they are parts of the first substance, a simple, speculative,

but not active intelligence, perfect and immovable, which is God. The

reasonable soul, however, in mankind is not numerically one; for matter

being the sole principle of plurality, and human intelligences being

combined with matter, they are plural in number. He differed also from

Averroes in maintaining the separate immortality of human souls; and

while the philosopher of Cordova distinguished the one soul he ascribed

to mankind from the Deity, Cesalpin considered the individual soul as a

portion, not of this common human intelligence, which he did not admit,

but of the first substance, or Deity. His system was therefore more

incompatible with theism, in any proper sense, than that of Averroes

himself, and anticipated in some measure that of Spinoza, who gave a

greater extension to his one substance, by comprehending all matter as

well as spirit within it. Cesalpin also denied, and in this he went far

from his Aristotelian creed, any other than a logical difference between

substances and accidents. I have no knowledge of the writings of

Cesalpin except through Buhle; for though I confess that the “Quæstiones

Peripateticæ” may be found in the British Museum,[1036] it would scarce

repay the labour to examine what is both erroneous and obscure.

[1036] Buhle, ii. 525. Brucker (iv. 222), laments that he had never

seen this book. It seems that there were few good libraries in

Germany in Brucker’s age, or at least that he had no access to

them, for it is surprising how often he makes the same complaint.

He had, however, seen a copy of the Alpes Cæsæ of Taurellus, and

gives rather a long account both of the man and of the book. Ibid.

and p. 300.

|Cremonini.|

7. The name of Cremonini, professor of philosophy for above forty years

at Padua, is better known than his writings. These have become of the

greatest scarcity. Brucker tells us he had not been able to see any of

them, and Buhle had met with but two or three.[1037] Those at which I

have looked are treatises on the Aristotelian physics; they contain

little of any interest; nor did I perceive that they countenance, though

they may not repel, the charge of atheism sometimes brought against

Cremonini, but which, if at all well-founded, seems rather to rest on

external evidence. Cremonini, according to Buhle, refutes the Averoistic

notion of an universal human intelligence. Gabriel Naudé, both in his

letters, and in the records of his conversation called Naudæana, speaks

with great admiration of Cremonini.[1038] He had himself passed some

years at Padua, and was at that time a disciple of the Aristotelian

school in physics, which he abandoned after his intimacy with Gassendi.

[1037] Buhle, ii. 519.

[1038] Some passages in the Naudæana tend to confirm the suspicion of

irreligion, both with respect to Cremonini and Naudé himself.

|Opponents of Aristotle.|

|Patrizzi.|

8. Meantime the authority of Aristotle, great in name and respected in

the schools, began to lose more and more of its influence over

speculative minds. Cesalpin, an Aristotelian by profession, had gone

wide in some points from his master. But others waged an open war as

philosophical reformers. Francis Patrizzi, in his “Discussiones

Peripateticæ” (1571 and 1581), appealed to prejudice with the arms of

calumny, raking up the most unwarranted aspersions against the private

life of Aristotle, to prepare the way for assailing his philosophy; a

warfare not the less unworthy, that it is often successful. In the case

of Patrizzi it was otherwise; his book was little read; and his own

notions of philosophy, borrowed from the later Platonists, and that

rabble of spurious writers who had misled Ficinus and Picus of

Mirandola, dressed up by Patrizzi with a fantastic terminology, had

little chance of subverting so well-established and acute a system as

that of Aristotle.[1039]

[1039] Buhle, ii. 548. Brucker, iv. 422.

|System of Telesio.|

9. Bernard Telesio, a native of Cosenza, had greater success, and

attained a more celebrated name. The first two books of his treatise,

“De Natura Rerum juxta Propria Principia,” appeared at Rome in 1565; the

rest was published in 1586. These contain an hypothesis more

intelligible than that of Patrizzi, and less destitute of a certain

apparent correspondence with the phenomena of nature. Two active

incorporeal principles, heat and cold, contend with perpetual opposition

for the dominion over a third, which is passive matter. Of these three

all nature consists. The region of pure heat is in the heavens, in the

sun and stars, where it is united with the most subtle matter; that of

cold in the centre of the earth, where matter is most condensed; all

between is their battle-field, in which they continually struggle, and

alternately conquer. These principles are not only active, but

intelligent, so far at least as to perceive their own acts and mutual

impressions. Heat is the cause of motion; cold is by nature immovable,

and tends to keep all things in repose.[1040]

[1040] Brucker, iv. 449. Buhle, ii. 563. Ginguéné, vii. 501.

10. Telesio has been generally supposed to have borrowed this theory

from that of Parmenides, in which the antagonist principles of heat and

cold had been employed in a similar manner. Buhle denies the identity of

the two systems, and considers that of Telesio as more nearly allied to

the Aristotelian, except in substituting heat and cold for the more

abstract notions of form and privation. Heat and cold, it might rather

perhaps be said, seem to be merely ill-chosen names for the hypothetical

causes of motion and rest; and the real laws of nature, with respect to

both of these, are as little discoverable in the Telesian as in the more

established theory. Yet its author perceived that the one possessed an

expansive, the other a condensing power; and his principles of heat and

cold bear a partial analogy to repulsion and attraction, the antagonist

forces which modern philosophy employs. Lord Bacon was sufficiently

struck with the system of Telesio to illustrate it in a separate

fragment of the Instauratio Magna, though sensible of its inadequacy to

solve the mysteries of nature; and a man of eccentric genius,

Campanella, to whom we shall come hereafter, adopted it as the basis of

his own wilder speculations. Telesio seems to have ascribed a sort of

intelligence to plants, which his last-mentioned disciple carried to a

strange excess of paradox.

|Jordano Bruno.|

|His Italian works. Cena de li Ceneri.|

11. The name of Telesio is perhaps hardly so well-known at present as

that of Jordano Bruno. It was far otherwise formerly; and we do not find

that the philosophy of this singular and unfortunate man attracted much

further notice than to cost him his life. It may be doubted, indeed,

whether the Inquisition at Rome did not rather attend to his former

profession of protestantism and invectives against the church, than to

the latent atheism it pretended to detect in his writings, which are at

least as innocent as those of Cesalpin. The self-conceit of Bruno, his

contemptuous language about Aristotle and his followers, the paradoxical

strain, the obscurity and confusion, in many places, of his writings, we

may add, his poverty and frequent change of place, had rendered him of

little estimation in the eyes of the world. But in the last century the

fate of Bruno excited some degree of interest about his opinions.

Whether his hypotheses were truly atheistical became the subject of

controversy; his works, by which it should have been decided, were so

scarce that few could speak with knowledge of their contents; and

Brucker, who inclines to think there was no sufficient ground for the

imputation, admits that he had only seen one of Bruno’s minor treatises.

The later German philosophers, however, have paid more attention to

these obscure books, from a similarity they sometimes found in Bruno’s

theories to their own. Buhle has devoted above a hundred pages to this

subject.[1041] The Italian treatises have within a few years been

reprinted in Germany, and it is not uncommon in modern books to find an

eulogy on the philosopher of Nola. I have not made myself acquainted

with his Latin writings, except through the means of Buhle, who has

taken a great deal of pains with the subject. The principal Italian

treatises are entitled, La Cena de li Ceneri, Della Causa, Principia ed

Uno, and Dell’Infinito Universo. Each of these is in five dialogues. The

Cena de li Ceneri contains a physical theory of the world, in which the

author makes some show of geometrical diagrams, but deviates so often

into rhapsodies of vanity and nonsense, that it is difficult to

pronounce whether he had much knowledge of the science. Copernicus, to

whose theory of the terrestrial motion Bruno entirely adheres, he

praises as superior to any former astronomer; but intimates that he did

not go far beyond vulgar prejudices, being more of a mathematician than

a philosopher. The gravity of bodies he treats as a most absurd

hypothesis, all natural motion, as he fancies, being circular. Yet he

seems to have had some dim glimpse of what is meant by the composition

of motions, asserting that the earth has four simple motions, out of

which one is compounded.[1042]

[1041] Vol. ii. p. 604-730.

[1042] Dial. v. p. 120 (1830). These dialogues were written, or purport

to have been written, in England. He extols Leicester, Walsingham,

and especially Sidney.

|Della Causa, Principio ed Uno.|

12. The second, and much more important treatise, Delia Causa, Principio

ed Uno, professes to reveal the metaphysical philosophy of Bruno, a

system which, at least in pretext, brought him to the stake at Rome, and

the purport of which has been the theme of much controversy. The extreme

scarcity of his writings has, no doubt, contributed to this variety of

judgment; but though his style, strictly speaking, is not obscure, and

he seems by no means inclined to conceal his meaning, I am not able to

resolve with certainty the problem that Brucker and those whom he quotes

have discussed.[1043] But the system of Bruno, so far as I understand it

from what I have read of his writings, and from Buhle’s analysis of

them, may be said to contain a sort of double pantheism. The world is

animated by an omnipresent intelligent soul, the first cause of every

form that matter can assume, but not of matter itself. The soul of the

universe is the only physical agent, the interior artist that works in

the vast whole, that calls out the plant from the seed and matures the

fruit, that lives in all things, though they may not seem to live, and

in fact do not, when unorganised, live separately considered, though

they all partake of the universal life, and in their component parts may

he rendered living. A table as a table, a coat as a coat, are not alive,

but inasmuch as they derive their substance from nature, they are

composed of living particles.[1044] There is nothing so small or so

unimportant, but that a portion of spirit dwells in it, and this

spiritual substance requires but a proper subject to become a plant or

an animal. Forms particular are in constant change; but the first form,

being the source of all others, as well as the first matter, are

eternal. The soul of the world is the constituent principle of the

universe and of all its parts. And thus we have an intrinsic, eternal,

self-subsistent principle of form, far better than that which the

sophists feigned, whose substances are compounded and corruptible, and,

therefore, nothing else than accidents.[1045] Forms in particular are

the accidents of matter, and we should make a divinity of matter like

some Arabian peripatetics, if we did not recur to the living fountain of

form--the eternal soul of the world. The first matter is neither

corporeal nor sensible, it is eternal and unchangeable, the fruitful

mother of forms and their grave. Form and matter, says Bruno, pursuing

this fanciful analogy, may be compared to male and female. Form never

errs, is never imperfect, but through its conjunction with matter; it

might adopt the words of the father of the human race: Mulier quam mihi

dedisti (la materia, la quale mi hai dato consorte), me decepit (lei è

cagione d’ogni mio peccato). The speculations of Bruno now become more

and more subtle, and he admits, that our understandings cannot grasp

what he pretends to demonstrate--the identity of a simply active and

simply passive principle: but the question really is, whether we can see

any meaning in his propositions.

[1043] Brucker, vol. v. 52.

[1044] Thus Buhle, or at least his French translator; but the original

words are different. Dico dunque che la tavola come tavola non è

animata, nè la veste, nè il cuojo come cuojo, nè il vetro come

vetro, ma _come cose naturali e composte hanno in se la materia e

la forma_. Sia pur cosa quanto piccola e minima si voglia, ha in se

parte di sustanza spirituale, la quale, se trova il soggetto

disposto, si stende ad esser pianta, ad esser animale, e riceve

membri de qual si voglia corpo, che comunemente si dice animato;

per chè spirto si trova in tutte le cose, e non è minimo

corpusculo, che non contegna cotal porzione in se, che non inanimi,

p. 241. Buhle seems not to have understood the words in italics,

which certainly are not remarkably plain, and to have substituted

what he thought might pass for meaning.

The recent theories of equivocal generation, held by some

philosophers, more on the continent than in England, according to

which all matter, or at least all matter susceptible of

organisation by its elements, may become organised and living under

peculiar circumstances, seem not very dissimilar to this system of

Bruno.

[1045] Or, quanto a la causa effectrice, dico l’efficiente fisico

universale esser l’intelletto universale, ch’è la prima e

principial facultà dell’anima del mondo, la qual è forma

universale di quello..... L’intelletto universale è l’intima più

reale e propria facultà, e parte potenziale dell’anima del mondo.

Questo è uno medesimo ch’empie il tutto, illumina l’universo, e

indrizza la natura à produrre le sue specie, come si conviene, e

cosi ha rispetto à la produzione di cose naturali, come il nostro

intelletto è la congrua produzione di specie razionali.... Questo è

nominato da Platonici fabbro del mondo, p. 235.

Dunque abbiamo un principio intrinseco formale eterno e sussistente

incomparabilmente migliore di quello, che han finto li sophisti,

che versano circa gl’accidenti, ignoranti de la sustanza de le

cose, e che vengono a ponere le sustanze corrottibili, per chè

quello chiamano massimamente, primamente e principalmente sustanza,

che risulta da la composizione; il che non è altro, ch’uno

accidente, che non contiene in se nulla stabilità e verità, e si

risolve in nulla, p. 242.

|Pantheism of Bruno.|

13. We have said that the system of Bruno seems to involve a double

pantheism. The first is of a simple kind, the hylozoism, which has been

exhibited in the preceding paragraph; it excludes a creative deity, in

the strict sense of creation, but leaving an active provident

intelligence, does not seem by any means chargeable with positive

atheism. But to this soul of the world Bruno appears not to have

ascribed the name of divinity.[1046] The first form, and the first

matter, and all the forms generated by the two, make, in his theory, but

one being, the infinite unchangeable universe, in which is everything,

both in power and in act, and which, being all things collectively, is

no one thing separately; it is form and not form, matter and not matter,

soul and not soul. He expands this mysterious language much further,

resolving the whole nature of the deity into an abstract, barren, all

embracing unity.[1047]

[1046] Son tre sorti d’intelletto; il divino, ch’è tutto; questo

mondano, che fà tutto; gli altri particulari, che si fanno

tutte.... È vera causa efficiente (l’intelletto mondano) non tanto

estrinseca, come anco intrinseca di tutte cose naturali.... Mi par,

che detrahano à la divina bontà e à l’eccellenza di questo grande

animale e simulacro del primo principio quelli, che non vogliano

intendere, nè affirmare, il mondo con li suoi membri essere

animato, p. 239.

[1047] È dunque l’universo uno, infinito, immobile. Uno dico è la

possibilità assoluta, uno l’atto, una la forma o anima, una la

materia o corpo, una la cosa, uno lo ente, uno il massimo e ottimo,

il quale non deve posser essere compreso, e però infinibile e

interminabile, e per tanto infinito e interminato, e per

conseguenza immobile. Questo non si muove localmente; per chè non

ha cosa fuor di sè, ove si trasporte, atteso chè sia il tutto. Non

si genera; per ché non è altro essere, che lui possa desiderare o

aspettare, atteso che abbia tutto lo essere. Non si corrompe; per

chè non è altra cosa, in cui si cangi, atteso che lui sia ogni

cosa. Non può sminuire o crescere, otteso ch’è infinito, a cui come

non si può aggiungere, cosi è da cui non si può sottrarre, per ciò

che lo infinito non ha parti proporzionali. Non è alterabile in

altra disposizione, per chè non ha esterno, da cui patisca, e per

cui venga in qualche affezione. Oltre chè per comprender tutte

contrarietadi nell’esser suo, in unità e convenienza, e nessuna

inclinazione posser avere ad altro e novo essere, o pur ad altro e

altro modo d’essere, non può esser soggetto di mutazione secundo

qualità alcuna, nè può aver contrario o diverso, che l’alteri, per

chè in lui è ogni cosa concorde. Non è materia, per chè non è

figurato, ne figurabile, non è terminato, ne terminabile. Non è

forma, per chè non informa, ne figura altro, atteso che è tutto, è

massimo, è uno, è universo. Non è misurabile, ne misura. Non si

comprende; per chè non è maggior di sè. Non si è compreso; per chè

non è minor di se. Non si agguaglia; per chè non è altro e altro,

ma uno e medesimo. Essendo medesimo ed uno, non ha essere ed

essere; et per chè non ha essere ed essere, non ha parti e parti; e

per ciò che non ha parte e parte, non è composto. Questo è termine

di sorte, chè non è termine; è talmente forma, chè non è forma; è

talmente materia, chè non è materia; è talmente anima, chè non è

anima; per chè è il tutto indifferentemente, e però è uno,

l’universo è uno, p. 280.

Ecco, come non è possibile, ma necessario, che l’ottimo, massimo

incomprensibile è tutto, è par tutto, è in tutto, per chè come

simplice ed indivisibile può esser tutto, esser per tutto, essere

in tutto. E così non è stato vanamente detto, che Giove empie tutte

le cose, inabita tutte le parti dell’universo, è centro di ciò, che

ha l’essere uno in tutto, e per cui uno è tutto. Il quale, essendo

tutte le cose, e comprendendo tutto l’essere in se, viene a far,

che ogni cosa sia in ogni cosa. Ma mi direste, per chè dunque le

cose si cangiano, la materia particolare si forza ad altre forme?

vi rispondo, che non è mutazione, che cerca altro essere, ma altro

modo di essere. E questa è la differenza tra l’universo e le cose

dell’universo; per chè nullo comprende tutto l’essere e tutti modi

di essere; di queste ciascuna ha tutto l’essere, ma non tutti i

modi di essere, p. 282.

The following sonnet by Bruno is characteristic of his mystical

imagination; but we must not confound the personification of an

abstract idea with theism:--

Causa, Principio, ed Uno sempiterno,

Onde l’esser, la vita, il moto pende,

E a lungo, a largo, e profondo si stende

Quanto si dice in ciel, terra ed inferno;

Con senso, con ragion, con mente scerno

Ch’atto, misura e conto non comprende,

Quel vigor, mole e numero, che tende

Oltre ogni inferior, mezzo e superno.

Cieco error, tempo avaro, ria fortuna,

Sorda invidia, vil rabbia, iniquo zelo,

Crudo cor, empio ingegno, strano ardire,

Non basteranno a farmi l’aria bruna,

Non mi porrann’avanti gl’occhi il velo,

Non faran mai, ch’il mio bel Sol non mire.

If I have quoted too much from Jordano Bruno it may be excused by

the great rarity of his works, which has been the cause that some

late writers have not fully seen the character of his

speculations.

|Bruno’s other writings.|

14. These bold theories of Jordano Bruno are chiefly contained in the

treatise Della Causa, Principio ed Uno. In another entitled

Dell’Infinito Universo e Mondi, which, like the former, is written in

dialogue, he asserts the infinity of the universe, and the plurality of

worlds. That the stars are suns, shining by their own light, that each

has its revolving planets, now become the familiar creed of children,

were then among the enormous paradoxes and capital offences of Bruno.

His strong assertion of the Copernican theory was, doubtless, not quite

so singular, yet this had but few proselytes in the sixteenth century.

His other writings, of all which Buhle has furnished us with an account,

are numerous; some of them relate to the art of Raymond Lully, which

Bruno professed to esteem very highly; and in these mnemonical treatises

he introduced much of his own theoretical philosophy. Others are more

exclusively metaphysical, and designed to make his leading principles,

as to unity, number, and form, more intelligible to the common reader.

They are full, according to what we find in Brucker and Buhle, of

strange and nonsensical propositions, such as men, unable to master

their own crude fancies on subjects above their reach, are wont to put

forth. None, however, of his productions, has been more often mentioned

than the Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante, alleged by some to be full of

his atheistical impieties, while others have taken it for a mere satire

on the Roman church. This diversity was very natural in those who wrote

of a book they had never seen. It now appears that this famous work is a

general moral satire in an allegorical form, with little that could

excite attention, and less that could give such offence as to

provoke the author’s death.[1048]

[1048] Ginguéné, vol. vii., has given an analysis of the Spaccio della

Bestia.

|General character of his philosophy.|

15. Upon the whole, we may probably place Bruno in this province of

speculative philosophy, though not high, yet above Cesalpin, or any of

the school of Averroes. He has fallen into great errors, but they seem

to have perceived no truth. His doctrine was not original; it came from

the Eleatic philosophers, from Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists,[1049]

and in some measure from Plato himself; and it is ultimately, beyond

doubt, of oriental origin. What seems most his own, and I must speak

very doubtfully as to this, is the syncretism of the tenet of a

pervading spirit, an Anima Mundi, which in itself is an imperfect

theism, with the more pernicious hypothesis of an universal Monad, to

which every distinct attribute, except unity, was to be denied. Yet it

is just to observe that, in one passage already quoted in a note, Bruno

expressly says, “there are three kinds of intelligence, the divine,

which is everything; the mundane, which does everything; and the

particular intelligences which are all made by the second.” The

inconceivableness of ascribing intelligence to Bruno’s universe, and yet

thus distinguishing it as he does from the mundane intelligence, may not

perhaps be a sufficient reason for denying him a place among theistic

philosophers. But it must be confessed, that the general tone of these

dialogues conveys no other impression than that of a pantheism, in which

every vestige of a supreme intelligence, beyond his soul of the world,

is effaced.[1050]

[1049] See a valuable analysis of the philosophy of Plotinus in

Degerando’s Histoire Comparée des Systèmes, iii. 357 (edit. 1823).

It will be found that his language with respect to the mystic

supremacy of unity, is that of Bruno himself. Plotin, however, was

not only theistic, but intensely religious, and if he had come a

century later would, instead of a heathen philosopher, have been

one of the first names among the saints of the church. It is

probable that his influence, as it is, has not been small in

modelling the mystic theology. Scotus Erigena was of the same

school, and his language about the first Monad is similar to that

of Bruno. Degerando, vol. iv. p. 372.

[1050] I can hardly agree with Mr. Whewell in supposing that Jordano

Bruno “probably had a considerable share in introducing the new

opinions (of Copernicus) into England.” Hist. of Inductive

Sciences, i. 385. Very few in England seem to have embraced these

opinions; and those who did so, like Wright and Gilbert, were men

who had somewhat better reasons than the ipse dixit of a wandering

Italian.

|Sceptical theory of Sanchez.|

16. The system, if so it may be called, of Bruno, was essentially

dogmatic, reducing the most subtle and incomprehensible mysteries into

positive aphorisms of science. Sanchez, a Portuguese physician, settled

as a public instructor at Toulouse, took a different course; the preface

of his treatise, Quod Nihil Scitur, is dated from that city in 1576; but

no edition is known to have existed before 1581.[1051] This work is a

mere tissue of sceptical fallacies, propounded, however, with a

confident tone not unusual in that class of sophists. He begins abruptly

with these words: Nec unum hoc scio, me nihil scire, conjector tamen nec

me nec alios. Hæc mihi vexillum propositio sit, hæc sequenda venit,

Nihil Scitur. Hanc si probare scivero, merito concludam nihil sciri; si

nescivero, hoc ipso melius; id enim asserebam. A good deal more follows

in the same sophistical style of cavillation. Hoc unum semper maxime ab

aliquo expetivi, quod modo facio, ut vere diceret an aliquid perfecte

sciret; nusquam tamen inveni, præterquam in sapiente illo proboque viro

Socrate (licet et Pyrrhonii, Academici et Sceptici vocati, cum Favorino

id etiam assererent) quod hoc unum sciebat quod nihil sciret. Quo solo

dicto mihi doctissimus indicatur; quanquam nec adhuc omnino mihi

explêrit mentem; cum et illud unum, sicut alia, ignoraret.[1052]

[1051] Brucker, iv. 541, with this fact before his eyes, strangely

asserts Sanchez to have been born in 1562. Buhle and Cousin copy

him without hesitation. Antonio is ignorant of any edition of “Quod

Nihil Scitur,” except that of Rotterdam in 1649; and ignorant also

that the book contains anything remarkable.

[1052] P. 10.

17. Sanchez puts a few things well; but his scepticism, as we perceive,

is extravagant. After descanting on Montaigne’s favourite topic, the

various manners and opinions of mankind, he says, Non finem faceremus si

omnes omnium mores recensere vellemus. An tu his eandem rationem, quam

nobis, omnino putes? Mihi non verisimile videtur. Nihil tamen ambo

scimus. Negabis forsan tales aliquos esse homines. Non contendam; sic ab

aliis accepi.[1053] Yet, notwithstanding his sweeping denunciation of

all science in the boldest tone of Pyrrhonism, Sanchez comes at length

to admit the possibility of a limited or probable knowledge of truth;

and, as might perhaps be expected, conceives that he had himself

attained it. “There are two modes,” he observes, “of discovering truth,

by neither of which do men learn the real nature of things, but yet

obtain some kind of insight into them. These are experiment and reason,

neither being sufficient alone; but experiments, however well conducted,

do not show us the nature of things, and reason can only conjecture

them. Hence there can be no such thing as perfect science; and books

have been employed to eke out the deficiencies of our own experience;

but their confusion, prolixity, multitude, and want of trust-worthiness

prevents this resource from being of much value, nor is life long enough

for so much study. Besides, this perfect knowledge requires a perfect

recipient of it, and a right disposition of the subject of knowledge,

which two I have never seen. Reader, if you have met with them, write me

word.” He concludes this treatise by promising another, “in which we

shall explain the method of knowing truth, as far as human weakness will

permit;” and, as his self-complacency rises above his affected

scepticism, adds, mihi in animo est firmam et facilem quantum possim

scientiam fundare.

[1053] P. 39.

18. This treatise of Sanchez bears witness to a deep sense of the

imperfections of the received systems in science and reasoning, and to a

restless longing for truth, which strikes us in other writers of this

latter period of the sixteenth century. Lord Bacon, I believe, has never

alluded to Sanchez, and such paradoxical scepticism was likely to

disgust his strong mind; yet we may sometimes discern signs of a

Baconian spirit in the attacks of our Spanish philosopher on the

syllogistic logic, as being built on abstract, and not significant

terms, and in his clear perception of the difference between a knowledge

of words and one of things.

|Logic of Aconcio.|

19. What Sanchez promised and Bacon gave, a new method of reasoning, by

which truth might be better determined than through the common

dialectics, had been partially attempted already by Aconcio, mentioned

in the last chapter as one of those highly-gifted Italians who fled for

religion to a Protestant country. Without openly assailing the authority

of Aristotle, he endeavoured to frame a new discipline of the faculties

for the discovery of truth. His treatise, De Methodo, sive Recta

Investigandarum Tradendarumque Scientiarum Ratione, was published at

Basle in 1558, and was several times reprinted, till later works, those

especially of Bacon and Des Cartes, caused it to be forgotten. Aconcio

defines logic, the right method of thinking and teaching, recta

contemplandi docendique ratio. Of the importance of method, or right

order in prosecuting our inquiries, he thinks so highly, that if thirty

years were to be destined to intellectual labour, he would allot

two-thirds of the time to acquiring dexterity in this art, which seems

to imply that he did not consider it very easy. To know anything, he

tells us, is to know what it is, or what are its causes and effects. All

men have the germs of knowledge latent in them, as to matters cognizable

by human faculties; it is the business of logic to excite and develop

them: Notiones illas seu scintillas sub cinere latentes detegere aptèque

ad res obscuras illustrandas applicare.[1054]

[1054] P. 30.

20. Aconcio next gives rules at length for constructing definitions, by

attending to the genus and differentia. These rules are good, and might

very properly find a place in a book of logic; but whether they contain

much that would vainly be sought in other writers, we do not determine.

He comes afterwards to the methods of distributing a subject. The

analytic method is by all means to be preferred for the investigation of

truth, and, contrary to what Galen and others have advised, even for

communicating it to others; since a man can learn that of which he is

ignorant, only by means of what is better known, whether he does this

himself, or with help of a teacher; the only process being, a notioribus

ad minus nota. In this little treatise of Aconcio, there seem to be the

elements of a sounder philosophy, and a more steady direction of the

mind to discover the reality of things than belonged to the logic of the

age, whether as taught by the Aristotelians or by Ramus. It has not

however been quoted by Lord Bacon, nor are we sure that he has profited

by it.

|Nizolius on the principles of philosophy.|

21. A more celebrated work than this by Aconcio is one by the

distinguished scholar, Marius Nizolius, “De Veris Principiis et Vera

Ratione Philosophandi contra Pseudo-Philosophos.” (Parma, 1553.) It

owes, however, what reputation it possesses to Leibnitz, who reprinted

it in 1670, with a very able preface, one of his first contributions to

philosophy. The treatise itself, he says, was almost strangled in the

birth; and certainly the invectives of Nizolius against the logic and

metaphysics of Aristotle could have had little chance of success

in a country like Italy, where that authority was more undoubted and

durable than in any other. The aim of Nizolius was to set up the best

authors of Greece and Rome and the study of philology against the

scholastic terminology. But certainly this polite literature was not

sufficient for the discovery of truth: nor does the book keep up to the

promise of its title, though, by endeavouring to eradicate barbarous

sophistry, he may be said to have laboured in the interests of real

philosophy. The preface of Leibnitz animadverts on what appeared to him

some metaphysical errors of Nizolius, especially an excess of

nominalism, which tended to undermine the foundations of certainty, and

his presumptuous scorn of Aristotle.[1055] His own object was rather to

recommend the treatise as a model of philosophical language without

barbarism, than to bestow much praise on its philosophy. Brucker has

spoken of it rather slightingly, and Buhle with much contempt. I am not

prepared by a sufficient study of its contents to pass any judgment; but

Buhle’s censure has appeared to me somewhat unfair. Dugald Stewart, who

was not acquainted with what the latter has said, thinks Nizolius

deserving of more commendation than Brucker has assigned to him.[1056]

He argues against all dialectics, and therefore differs from Ramus;

concluding with two propositions as the result of his whole book:--That

as many logicians and metaphysicians as are anywhere found, so many

capital enemies of truth will then and there exist; and that so long as

Aristotle shall be supreme in the logic and metaphysics of the schools,

so long will error and barbarism reign over the mind. There is nothing

very deep or pointed in this summary of his reasoning.

[1055] Nizolius maintained that universal terms were only

particulars--collectivè sumpta. Leibnitz replies, that they are

particulars--distributive sumpta; as, omnis homo est animal means,

that every one man is an animal; not that the genus man, taken

collectively, is an animal. Nec vero Nizolii error his levis est;

habet enim magnum aliquid in recessu. Nam si universalia nihil

aliud sunt quam singularium collectiones, sequitur, scientiam

nullam haberi per demonstrationem, quod et infra colligit Nizolius,

sed collectionem singularium seu inductionem. Sed ea ratione

prorsus evertuntur scientiæ, ac Sceptici vicere. Nam nunquam

constitui possunt ea ratione propositiones perfecte universales,

quia inductione nunquam certus es, omnia individue a te tentata

esse; sed semper intra hanc propositionem subsistes; omnia illa quæ

expertus sum sunt talia; cum vero non possit esse ulla ratio

universalis, semper manebit possibile innumera quæ tu non sis

expertus esse diversa. Hinc jam patet inductionem per se nihil

producere, ne certitudinem quidem moralem, sine adminiculo

propositionum non ab inductione, sed ratione universali prudentium;

nam si essent et adminicula ab inductione, indigerent novis

adminiculis, nec haberetur certitudo moralis in infinitum. Sed

certitudo moralis ab inductione sperari plane non potest, additis

quibuscunque adminiculis, et propositionem hanc, totum magis esse

sua parte, sola inductione nunquam perfectè sciemus. Mox enim

prodibit, qui negabit ob peculiarem quondam rationem in aliis

nondum tentatis veram esse, quemadmodum ex facto scimus Gregorium a

Sancto Vincentio negasse totum esse majus sua parte, in angulis

saltem contactûs, alios in infinito; et Thomam Hobbes (at quem

virum!) cœpisse dubitare de propositione illa geometrica a

Pythagora demonstrata, et hecatombæ sacrificio digna habita; quod

ego non sine stupore legi. This extract is not very much to the

purpose of the text, but it may please some of those who take an

interest in such speculations.

[1056] Dissertation on Progress of Philosophy, p. 38.

|Margarita Antoniana of Pereira.|

22. The Margarita Antoniana, by Gomez Pereira, published at Medina del

Campo in 1554, has been chiefly remembered as the ground of one of the

many charges against Des Cartes, for appropriating unacknowledged

opinions of his predecessors. The book is exceedingly scarce, which has

been strangely ascribed to the efforts of Des Cartes to suppress

it.[1057] There is however a copy of the original edition in the British

Museum, and it has been reprinted in Spain. It was an unhappy theft, if

theft it were; for what Pereira maintained was precisely the most

untenable proposition of the great French philosopher--the absence of

sensation in brutes. Pereira argues against this with an extraordinary

disregard of common phenomena, on the assumption of certain maxims which

cannot be true, if they contradict inferences from our observation far

more convincing than themselves. We find him give a curious reason for

denying that we can infer the sensibility of brutes from their outward

actions; namely, that this would prove too much, and lead us to believe

them rational beings; instancing among other stories, true or false, of

apparent sagacity, the dog in pursuit of a hare, who, coming where two

roads meet, if he traces no scent on the first, takes the other without

trial.[1058] Pereira is a rejecter of Aristotelian despotism; and

observes that in matters of speculation and not of faith, no authority

is to be respected.[1059] Notwithstanding this assertion of freedom, he

seems to be wholly enchained by the metaphysics of the schools; nor

should I have thought the book worthy of notice, but for its scarcity

and the circumstance above-mentioned about Des Cartes.

[1057] Biogr. Univ. Brunet, Manuel du Libraire. Bayle has a long

article on Pereira, but though he says the book had been shown to

him, he wanted probably the opportunity to read much of it.

According to Brunet, several copies have been sold in France, some

of them at no great price. The later edition, of 1749, is of course

cheaper.

[1058] Fol. 18. This is continually told of dogs; but does any sensible

sportsman confirm it by his own experience? I ask for information

only.

[1059] Fol. 4.

23. These are, as far as I know, the only works deserving of

commemoration in the history of speculative philosophy. A few might

easily be inserted from the catalogues of libraries, or from

biographical collections, as well as from the learned labours of Morhof,

Brucker, Tennemann, and Buhle. It is also not to be doubted, that in

treatises of a different character, theological, moral, or medical, very

many passages, worthy of remembrance for their truth, their ingenuity,

or originality, might be discovered, that bear upon the best methods of

reasoning, the philosophy of the human mind, the theory of natural

religion, or the general system of the material world.

|Logic of Ramus; its success.|

24. We should not however conclude this chapter without adverting to the

dialectical method of Ramus, whom we left at the middle of the century,

struggling against all the arms of orthodox logic in the university of

Paris. The reign of Henry II. was more propitious to him than that of

Francis. In 1551, through the patronage of the Cardinal of Lorraine,

Ramus became royal professor of rhetoric and philosophy; and his new

system which, as has been mentioned, comprehended much that was

important in the art of rhetoric, began to make numerous proselytes.

Omer Talon, known for a treatise on eloquence, was among the most ardent

of these; and to him we owe our most authentic account of the contest of

Ramus with the Sorbonne. The latter were not conciliated, of course, by

the success of their adversary; and Ramus having adhered to the Huguenot

party in the civil feuds of France, it has been ascribed to the

malignity of one of his philosophical opponents, that he perished in the

massacre of St. Bartholomew. He had however already, by personally

travelling and teaching in Germany, spread the knowledge of his system

over that country. It was received in some of the German universities

with great favour, notwithstanding the influence which Melanchthon’s

name retained, and which had been entirely thrown into the scale of

Aristotle. The Ramists and Anti-Ramists battled it in books of logic

through the rest of this century, as well as afterwards; but this was

the principal period of Ramus’s glory. In Italy he had few disciples;

but France, England, and still more Scotland and Germany were full of

them. Andrew Melville introduced the logic of Ramus at Glasgow. It was

resisted for some time at St. Andrew’s, but ultimately became popular in

all the Scottish universities.[1060] Scarce any eminent public school,

says Brucker, can be named, in which the Ramists were not teachers. They

encountered an equally zealous militia under the Aristotelian standard;

while some, with the spirit of compromise, which always takes possession

of a few minds, though it is rarely very successful, endeavoured to

unite the two methods, which in fact do not seem essentially exclusive

of each other. It cannot be required of me to give an account of books

so totally forgotten, and so uninteresting in their subjects as these

dialectical treatises on either side. The importance of Ramus in

philosophical history is not so much founded on his own deserts, as on

the effect he produced in loosening the fetters of inveterate prejudice,

and thus preparing the way, like many others of his generation, for

those who were to be the restorers of genuine philosophy.[1061]

[1060] M’Crie’s Life of Melville, ii. 306.

[1061] Brucker, v. 576. Buhle, ii. 601.

CHAPTER XIII.

HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE, FROM

1550 TO 1600.

SECT. I.--ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Soto--Hooker--Essays of Montaigne--Their Influence on the

Public--Italian and English Moralists._

1. It must naturally be supposed that by far the greater part of what

was written on moral obligations in the sixteenth century will be found

in the theological quarter of ancient libraries. The practice of

auricular confession brought with it an entire science of casuistry,

which had gradually been wrought into a complicated system. Many, once

conspicuous writers in this province, belong to the present period; but

we shall defer the subject till we arrive at the next, when it had

acquired a more prominent importance.

|Soto, De Justitia.|

2. The first original work of any reputation in ethical philosophy since

the revival of letters, and which, being apparently designed in great

measure for the chair of the confessional, serves as a sort of link

between the class of mere casuistry and the philosophical systems of

morals which were to follow, is by Dominic Soto, a Spanish Dominican,

who played an eminent part in the deliberations of the council of Trent,

in opposition both to the papal court and to the theologians of the

Scotist, or, as it was then reckoned by its adversaries, the

Semi-Pelagian school. This folio volume, entitled De Justitia et Jure,

was first published, according to the Biographie Universelle at Antwerp,

in 1568. It appears to be founded on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, the

polar star of every true Dominican. Every question is discussed with

that remarkable observation of distinctions, and that unremitting

desire, both to comprehend and to distribute a subject, which is

displayed in many of these forgotten folios, and ought to inspire us

with reverence for the zealous energy of their authors, even when we

find it impossible, as must generally be the case, to read so much as a

few pages consecutively, or when we light upon trifling and insufficient

arguments in the course of our casual glances over the volume.

|Hooker.|

3. Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity might seem more properly to fall under

the head of theology; but the first book of this work being by much the

best, Hooker ought rather to be reckoned among those who have weighed

the principles, and delineated the boundaries of moral and political

science. I have on another occasion,[1062] done full justice to the

wisdom and eloquence of this earliest among the great writers of

England, who, having drunk at the streams of ancient philosophy, has

acquired from Plato and Tully somewhat of their redundancy and want of

precision, with their comprehensiveness of observation and their dignity

of soul. The reasonings of Hooker, though he bore in the ensuing century

the surname of judicious, are not always safe or satisfactory, nor,

perhaps, can they be reckoned wholly clear or consistent; his learning,

though beyond that of most English writers in that age, is necessarily

uncritical; and his fundamental theory, the mutability of ecclesiastical

government, has as little pleased those for whom he wrote as those whom

he repelled by its means. But he stood out at a vast height above his

predecessors and contemporaries in the English church, and was, perhaps,

the first of our writers who had any considerable acquaintance with the

philosophers of Greece, not merely displayed in quotation, of which

others may have sometimes set an example, but in a spirit of reflection

and comprehensiveness which the study of antiquity alone could have

infused. The absence of minute ramifications of argument, in which the

schoolmen loved to spread out, distinguishes Hooker from the writers who

had been trained in those arid dialectics, such as Soto or Suarez: but,

as I have hinted, considering the depth and difficulty of several

questions that he deals with in the first book of the Polity, we might

wish for a little less of the expanded palm of rhetoric, and somewhat of

more dialectical precision in the reasoning.[1063]

[1062] Constitut. Hist. Engl. chap. iv.

[1063] It has been shown with irresistible proof by the last editor of

Hooker, that the sixth book of the Ecclesiastical Polity has been

lost; that which we read as such being, with the exception of a few

paragraphs at the beginning, altogether a different production,

though bearing marks of the same author. This is proved, not only

by its want of relation to the general object of the work, and to

the subject announced in the title of this very book, but by the

remarkable fact, that a series of remarks by two friends of Hooker

on the sixth book are extant, and published in the last edition,

which were obviously designed for a totally different treatise from

that which has always passed for the sixth book of the

Ecclesiastical Polity. This can only be explained by the confusion

in which Hooker’s manuscripts were left at his death, and upon

which suspicions of interpolation have been founded. Such

suspicions are not reasonable; and notwithstanding the exaggerated

language which has sometimes been used, I think it very

questionable whether any more perfect manuscript was ever in

existence. The reasoning in the seventh and eighth books appears as

elaborate, the proofs as full, the grammatical structure as perfect

as in the earlier books; and the absence of those passages of

eloquence, which we occasionally find in the former, cannot afford

even a presumption that the latter were designed to be written over

again. The eighth book is manifestly incomplete, wanting some

discussions which the author had announced; but this seems rather

adverse to the hypothesis of a more elaborate copy. The more

probable inference is, that Hooker was interrupted by death before

he had completed his plan. It is possible also that the conclusion

of the eighth book has been lost like the sixth. All the stories on

this subject in Walton’s Life of Hooker, who seems to have been a

man always too credulous of anecdote, are unsatisfactory to any one

who exacts real proof.

|His theory of natural law.|

4. Hooker, like most great moral writers both of antiquity and of modern

ages, rests his positions on one solid basis, the eternal obligation of

natural law. A small number had been inclined to maintain an arbitrary

power of the Deity, even over the fundamental principles of right and

wrong; but the sounder theologians seem to have held that, however the

will of God may be the proper source of moral obligation in mankind,

concerning which they were not more agreed then than they have been

since, it was impossible for him to deviate from his immutable rectitude

and holiness. They were unanimous also in asserting the capacity of the

human faculties to discern right from wrong, little regarding what they

deemed the prejudices or errors that had misled many nations, and more

or less influenced the majority of mankind.

|Doubts felt by others.|

5. But there had never been wanting those who, struck by the diversity

of moral judgments and behaviour among men, and especially under

circumstances of climate, manners, or religion, different from our own,

had found it hard to perceive how reason could be an unerring arbiter,

when there was so much discrepancy in what she professed to have

determined. The relations of travellers, continually pressing upon the

notice of Europe in the sixteenth century, and perhaps rather more

exaggerated than at present, in describing barbarous tribes, afforded

continual aliment to the suspicion. It was at least evident, without

anything that could be called unreasonable scepticism, that these

diversities ought to be well explained and sifted before we acquiesced

in the pleasant conviction that we alone could be in the right.

|Essays of Montaigne.|

6. The Essays of Montaigne, the first edition of which appeared at

Bordeaux in 1580,[1064] make in several respects an epoch in literature,

less on account of their real importance, or the novel truths they

contain, than of their influence upon the taste and the opinions of

Europe. They are the first _provocatio ad populum_, the first

appeal from the porch and the academy to the haunts of busy and of idle

men, the first book that taught the unlearned reader to observe and

reflect for himself on questions of moral philosophy. In an age when

every topic of this nature was treated systematically and in a didactic

form, he broke out without connection of chapters, with all the

digressions that levity and garrulous egotism could suggest, with a very

delightful, but at that time, most unusual rapidity of transition from

seriousness to gaiety. It would be to anticipate much of what will

demand attention in the ensuing century, were we to mention here the

conspicuous writers who, more or less directly, and with more or less of

close imitation, may be classed in the school of Montaigne; it embraces,

in fact, a large proportion of French and English literature, and

especially of that which has borrowed his title of Essays. No prose

writer of the sixteenth century has been so generally read, nor probably

given so much delight. Whatever may be our estimate of Montaigne as a

philosopher, a name which he was far from arrogating, there will be but

one opinion of the felicity and brightness of his genius.

[1064] This edition contains only the first and second books of the

Essays; the third was published in that of Paris, 1588.

|Their characteristics.|

7. It is a striking proof of these qualities, that we cannot help

believing him to have struck out all his thoughts by a spontaneous

effort of his mind, and to have fallen afterwards upon his quotations

and examples by happy accident. I have little doubt but that the process

was different; and that, either by dint of memory, though he absolutely

disclaims the possessing a good one, or by the usual method of

common-placing, he had made his reading instrumental to excite

his own ingenious and fearless understanding. His extent of learning was

by no means great for that age, but the whole of it was brought to bear

on his object; and it is a proof of Montaigne’s independence of mind

that, while a vast mass of erudition was the only regular passport to

fame, he read no authors but such as were most fitted to his own habits

of thinking. Hence he displays an unity, a self-existence, which we

seldom find so complete in other writers. His quotations, though they

perhaps make more than one half of his Essays, seem parts of himself,

and are like limbs of his own mind, which could not be separated without

laceration. But over all is spread a charm of a fascinating simplicity,

and an apparent abandonment of the whole man to the easy inspiration of

genius, combined with a good-nature, though rather too epicurean and

destitute of moral energy, which, for that very reason, made him a

favourite with men of similar dispositions, for whom courts, and camps,

and country mansions were the proper soil.

8. Montaigne is superior to any of the ancients in liveliness, in that

careless and rapid style, where one thought springs naturally, but not

consecutively, from another, by analogical rather than deductive

connection; so that, while the reader seems to be following a train of

arguments, he is imperceptibly hurried to a distance by some contingent

association. This may be observed in half his essays, the titles of

which often give us little insight into their general scope. Thus the

apology for Raimond de Sebonde is soon forgotten in the long defence of

moral Pyrrhonism, which occupies the twelfth chapter of the second book.

He sometimes makes a show of coming back from his excursions; but he has

generally exhausted himself before he does so. This is what men love to

practise (not advantageously for their severer studies) in their own

thoughts; they love to follow the casual associations that lead them

through pleasant labyrinths--as one riding along the high road is glad

to deviate a little into the woods, though it may sometimes happen that

he will lose his way, and find himself far remote from his inn. And such

is the conversational style of lively and eloquent old men. We converse

with Montaigne, or rather hear him talk; it is almost impossible to read

his essays without thinking that he speaks to us; we see his cheerful

brow, his sparkling eye, his negligent, but gentlemanly demeanour; we

picture him in his armchair, with his few books round the room, and

Plutarch on the table.

9. The independence of his mind produces great part of the charm of his

writing; it redeems his vanity, without which it could not have been so

fully displayed, or perhaps, so powerfully felt. In an age of literary

servitude, when every province into which reflection could wander was

occupied by some despot; when, to say nothing of theology, men found

Aristotle, or Ulpian, or Hippocrates, at every turning to dictate their

road, it was gratifying to fall in company with a simple gentleman who,

with much more reading than generally belonged to his class, had the

spirit to ask a reason for every rule.

10. Montaigne has borrowed much, besides his quotations, from the few

ancient authors he loved to study. In one passage he even says that his

book is wholly compiled from Plutarch and Seneca; but this is evidently

intended to throw the critics off their scent. “I purposely conceal the

authors from whom I borrow,” he says in another place, “to check the

presumption of those who are apt to censure what they find in a modern.

I am content that they should lash Seneca and Plutarch through my

sides.”[1065] These were his two favourite authors; and in order to

judge of the originality of Montaigne in any passage, it may often be

necessary to have a considerable acquaintance with their works. “When I

write,” he says, “I care not to have books about me; but I can hardly be

without a Plutarch.”[1066] He knew little Greek, but most editions at

that time had a Latin translation: he needed not for Plutarch to go

beyond his own language. Cicero he did not much admire, except the

epistles to Atticus. He esteemed the moderns very slightly in comparison

with antiquity, though praising Guicciardini and Philip de Comines.

Dugald Stewart observes, that Montaigne cannot be suspected of

affectation, and therefore must himself have believed what he says of

the badness of his memory, forgetting, as he tells us, the names of the

commonest things, and even of those he constantly saw. But his vanity

led him to talk perpetually of himself; and, as often happens to vain

men, he would rather talk of his own failings than of any foreign

subject. He could not have had a very defective memory so far as it had

been exercised, though he might fall into the common mistake of

confounding his inattention to ordinary objects with weakness of

the faculty.

[1065] l. ii. c. 32.

[1066] l. ii. c. 10.

11. Montaigne seldom defines or discriminates; his mind had great

quickness, but little subtlety; his carelessness and impatience of

labour rendered his views practically one-sided; for though he was

sufficiently free from prejudice to place the objects of consideration

in different lights, he wanted the power, or did not use the diligence,

to make that comparative appreciation of facts which is necessary to

distinguish the truth. He appears to most advantage in matters requiring

good sense and calm observation, as in the education of children. The

twenty-fourth and twenty-eighth chapters of the first book, which relate

to this subject, are among the best in the collection. His excellent

temper made him an enemy to the harshness and tyranny so frequent at

that time in the management of children, as his clear understanding did

to the pedantic methods of overloading and misdirecting their faculties.

It required some courage to argue against the grammarians who had almost

monopolised the admiration of the world. Of these men Montaigne

observes, that though they have strong memories, their judgment is

usually very shallow, making only an exception for Turnebus, who, though

in his opinion, the greatest scholar that had existed for a thousand

years, had nothing of the pedant about him but his dress. In all the

remarks of Montaigne on human character and manners, we find a

liveliness, simplicity, and truth. They are such as his ordinary

opportunities of observation, or his reading suggested; and though

several writers have given proofs of deeper reflection or more watchful

discernment, few are so well calculated to fall in with the apprehension

of the general reader.

12. The scepticism of Montaigne, concerning which so much has been said,

is not displayed in religion, for he was a steady Catholic, though his

faith seems to have been rather that of acquiescence than conviction,

nor in such subtleties of metaphysical Pyrrhonism as we find in Sanchez,

which had no attraction for his careless nature. But he had read much of

Sextus Empiricus, and might perhaps have derived something from his

favourite Plutarch. He had also been forcibly struck by the recent

narratives of travellers, which he sometimes received with a credulity

as to evidence, not rarely combined with theoretical scepticism, and

which is too much the fault of his age to bring censure on an

individual. It was then assumed that all travellers were trustworthy,

and still more that none of the Greek and Roman authors have recorded

falsehoods. Hence he was at a loss to discover a general rule of moral

law, as an implanted instinct, or necessary deduction of common reason,

in the varying usages and opinions of mankind. But his scepticism was

less extravagant and unreasonable at that time than it would be now.

Things then really doubtful have been proved, and positions, entrenched

by authority which he dared not to scruple, have been overthrown;[1067]

truth, in retiring from her outposts, has become more unassailable in

her citadel.

[1067] Montaigne’s scepticism was rightly exercised on witchcraft and

other supernatural stories; and he had probably some weight in

discrediting those superstitions. See l. iii. c. 11.

13. It may be deemed a symptom of wanting a thorough love of truth when

a man overrates, as much as when he overlooks, the difficulties he deals

with. Montaigne is perhaps not exempt from this failing. Though sincere

and candid in his general temper, he is sometimes more ambitious of

setting forth his own ingenuity than desirous to come to the bottom of

his subject. Hence he is apt to run into the fallacy common to this

class of writers, and which La Mothe le Vayer employed much more--that

of confounding the variations of the customs of mankind in things

morally indifferent with those which affect the principles of duty; and

hence the serious writers on philosophy in the next age, Pascal,

Arnauld, Malebranche, animadvert with much severity on Montaigne. They

considered him, not perhaps unjustly, as an enemy to the candid and

honest investigation of truth, both by his bias towards Pyrrhonism, and

by the great indifference of his temperament; scarcely acknowledging so

much as was due the service he had done by chasing the servile pedantry

of the schools, and preparing the way for closer reasoners than himself.

But the very tone of their censures is sufficient to prove the vast

influence he had exerted over the world.

14. Montaigne is the earliest classical writer in the French language,

the first whom a gentleman is ashamed not to have read. So long as an

unaffected style and an appearance of the utmost simplicity and good

nature shall charm, so long as the lovers of desultory and cheerful

conversation shall be more numerous than those who prefer a lecture or a

sermon, so long as reading is sought by the many as an amusement

in idleness, or a resource in pain, so long will Montaigne be among the

favourite authors of mankind. I know not whether the greatest blemish of

his Essays has much impeded their popularity; they led the way to the

indecency so characteristic of French literature, but in no writer on

serious topics, except Bayle, more habitual than in Montaigne. It may be

observed, that a larger portion of this quality distinguishes the third

book, published after he had attained a reputation, than the two former.

It is also more overspread by egotism; and it is not agreeable to

perceive that the two leading faults of his disposition became more

unrestrained and absorbing as he advanced in life.

|Writers on Morals in Italy.|

15. The Italians have a few moral treatises of this period, but chiefly

scarce and little read. The Instituzioni Morali of Alexander

Piccolomini, the Instituzioni di Tutta la Vita dell’Uomo Nato Nobile e

in città Libera, by the same author, the Latin treatise of Mazzoni de

Triplici Vita, which, though we mention it here as partly ethical, seems

to be rather an attempt to give a general survey of all science, are

among the least obscure, though they have never been of much reputation

in Europe.[1068] But a more celebrated work, relating indeed to a minor

department of ethics, the rules of polite and decorous behaviour, is the

Galateo of Casa, bishop of Benevento, and an elegant writer of

considerable reputation. This little treatise is not only accounted

superior in style to most Italian prose, but serves to illustrate the

manners of society in the middle of the sixteenth century. Some of the

improprieties which he censures are such as we should hardly have

expected to find in Italy, and almost remind us of a strange but graphic

poem of one Dedekind, on the manners of Germany in the sixteenth

century, called Grobianus. But his own precepts in other places, though

hardly striking us as novel, are more refined, and relate to the

essential principles of social intercourse, rather than to its

conventional forms.[1069] Casa wrote also a little book on the duties to

be observed between friends of equal ranks. The inferior, he advises,

should never permit himself to jest upon his patron; but, if he is

himself stung by any unpleasing wit or sharp word, ought to receive it

with a smiling countenance, and to answer so as to conceal his

resentment. It is probable that this art was understood in an Italian

palace without the help of books.

[1068] For these books see Tiraboschi, Corniani, and Ginguéné. Niceron,

vol. xxiii., observes of Piccolomini, that he was the first who

employed the Italian language in moral philosophy. This must,

however, be taken very strictly, for in a general sense of the

word, we have seen earlier instances than his Instituzioni Morali

in 1575.

[1069] Casa inveighs against the punctilious and troublesome ceremonies,

introduced, as he supposes, from Spain, making distinctions in the

mode of addressing different ranks of nobility. One of these

innovations was the use of the third person for the second in

letters.

|In England.|

16. There was never a generation in England which, for worldly prudence

and wise observation of mankind, stood higher than the subjects of

Elizabeth. Rich in men of strong mind, that age had given them a

discipline unknown to ourselves; the strictness of the Tudor government,

the suspicious temper of the queen, the spirit not only of intolerance,

but of inquisitiveness as to religious dissent, the uncertainties of the

future, produced a caution rather foreign to the English character,

accompanied by a closer attention to the workings of other men’s minds,

and their exterior signs. This, for similar reasons, had long

distinguished the Italians; but it is chiefly displayed, perhaps, in

their political writings. We find it, in a larger and more philosophical

sense, near the end of Elizabeth’s reign, when our literature made its

first strong shoot, prompting the short condensed reflections of

Burleigh and Raleigh, or saturating with moral observation the mighty

soul of Shakspeare.

|Bacon’s Essays.|

17. The first in time, and we may justly say, the first in excellence of

English writings on moral prudence are the Essays of Bacon. But these,

as we now read them, though not very bulky, are greatly enlarged since

their first publication in 1597. They then were but ten in

number:--entitled, 1. Of Studies; 2. Of Discourse; 3. Of Ceremonies and

Respects; 4. Of Followers and Friends; 5. Of Suitors; 6. Of Expense; 7.

Of Regimen of Health; 8. Of Honour and Reputation; 9. Of Faction; 10. Of

Negotiating. And even these few have been expanded in later editions to

nearly double their extent. The rest were added chiefly in 1612, and the

whole were enlarged in 1625. The pith indeed of these ten essays will be

found in the edition of 1597; the editions being merely to explain,

correct, or illustrate. But, as a much greater number were incorporated

with them in the next century, we shall say no more of Bacon’s Essays

for the present.

SECT. II.--ON POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Freedom of Writing on Government at this Time--Its Causes--Hottoman--

Languet--La Boetie--Buchanan--Rose--Mariana--The Jesuits--Botero and

Paruta--Bodin--Analysis of his Republic._

|Number of political writers.|

18. The present period, especially after 1570, is far more fruitful than

the preceding in the annals of political science. It produced several

works both of temporary and permanent importance. Before we come to

Bodin, who is its most conspicuous ornament, it may be fit to mention

some less considerable books, which, though belonging partly to the

temporary class, have in several instances survived the occasion which

drew them forth, and indicate a state of public opinion not unworthy of

notice.

|Oppression of Governments.|

|And spirit generated by it.|

19. A constant progress towards absolute monarchy, sometimes silent, at

other times attended with violence, had been observable in the principal

kingdoms of Europe for the last hundred years. This had been brought

about by various circumstances which belong to civil history; but among

others, by a more skilful management, and a more systematic attention to

the maxims of state-craft, which had sometimes assumed a sort of

scientific form, as in the Prince of Machiavel, but were more frequently

inculcated in current rules familiar to the counsellors of kings. The

consequence had been, not only many flagrant instances of violated

public right, but in some countries, especially France, an habitual

contempt for every moral as well as political restraint on the ruler’s

will. But oppression is always felt to be such, and the breach of known

laws cannot be borne without resentment, though it may without

resistance; and there were several causes that tended to generate a

spirit of indignation against the predominant despotism. Independent of

those of a political nature, which varied according to the circumstances

of kingdoms, there were three that belonged to the sixteenth century as

a learned and reflecting age, which, if they did not all exercise a

great influence over the multitude, were sufficient to affect the

complexion of literature, and to indicate a somewhat novel state of

opinion in the public mind.

|Derived from classic history.|

20. I. From the Greek and Roman poets, orators, or historians, the

scholar derived the principles, not only of equal justice, but of equal

privileges; he learned to reverence free republics, to abhor tyranny, to

sympathise with a Timoleon or a Brutus. A late English historian, who

carried to a morbid excess his jealousy of democratic prejudices,

fancied that these are perceptible in the versions of Greek authors by

the learned of the sixteenth century, and that Xylander or Rhodomann

gratified their spite against the sovereigns of their own time, by

mistranslating their text in order to throw odium on Philip or

Alexander. This is probably unfounded; but it may still be true that

men, who had imbibed notions, perhaps as indefinite as exaggerated, of

the blessings of freedom in ancient Rome and Greece, would draw no

advantageous contrast with the palpable outrages of arbitrary power

before their eyes. We have seen, fifty years before, a striking proof of

almost mutinous indignation in the Adages of Erasmus; and I have little

doubt that further evidence of it might be gleaned from the letters and

writings of the learned.

|From their own and the Jewish.|

21. II. In proportion as the antiquities of the existing European

monarchies came to be studied, it could not but appear that the royal

authority had outgrown many limitations that primitive usage or

established law had imposed upon it; and the farther back these

researches extended, the more they seemed, according to some inquirers,

to favour a popular theory of constitutional polity. III. Neither of

these considerations, which affected only the patient scholar, struck so

powerfully on the public mind as the free spirit engendered by the

Reformation, and especially the Judaizing turn of the early Protestants,

those at least of the Calvinistic school, which sought for precedents

and models in the Old Testament, and delighted to recount how the tribes

of Israel had fallen away from Rehoboam, how the Maccabees had repelled

the Syrian, how Eglon had been smitten by the dagger of Ehud. For many

years the Protestants of France had made choice of the sword, when their

alternative was the stake; and amidst, defeat, treachery, and massacre,

sustained an unequal combat with extraordinary heroism, and a constancy

that only a persuasion of acting according to conscience could impart.

That persuasion it was the business of their ministers and scholars to

encourage by argument. Each of these three principles of liberty was

asserted by means of the press in the short period between 1570 and

1580.

|Franco-Gallia of Hottoman.|

22. First in order of publication is the Franco-Gallia of Francis

Hottoman, one of the most eminent lawyers of that age. This is chiefly a

collection of passages from the early French historians, to prove the

share of the people in government, and especially their right of

electing the kings of the first two races. No one, in such inquiries,

would now have recourse to the Franco-Gallia, which has certainly the

defect of great partiality, and an unwarrantable extension of the

author’s hypothesis. But it is also true that Hottoman revealed some

facts as to the ancient monarchy of France, which neither the later

historians, flatterers of the court, nor the lawyers of the parliament

of Paris, against whom he is prone to inveigh, had suffered to

transpire.

|Vindiciæ of Languet.|

23. An anonymous treatise, Vindiciæ contra Tyrannos, Auctore Stephano

Junio Bruto Celta, 1579, commonly ascribed to Hubert Languet, the friend

of Sir Philip Sydney, breathes the stern spirit of Judaical Huguenotism.

Kings, that lay waste the church of God, and support idolatry, kings,

that trample upon their subjects’ privileges, may be deposed by the

states of their kingdom, who indeed are bound in duty to do so, though

it is not lawful for private men to take up arms without authority. As

kings derive their pre-eminence from the will of the people, they may be

considered as feudally vassals of their subjects, so far that they may

forfeit their crown by felony against them. Though Languet speaks

honourably of ancient tyrannicides, it seems as if he could not mean to

justify assassination, since he refuses the right of resistance to

private men.

|Contr’Un of Boetie.|

24. Hottoman and Languet were both Protestants; and the latter

especially may have been greatly influenced by the perilous fortunes of

their religion. A short treatise, however, came out in 1578, written

probably near thirty years before, by Stephen de la Boetie, best known

to posterity by the ardent praises of his friend Montaigne, and an

adherent to the church. This is called Le Contr’Un, ou Discours de la

Servitude Volontaire. It well deserves its title. Roused by the

flagitious tyranny of many contemporary rulers, and none were worse than

Henry II., under whose reign it was probably written, La Boetie pours

forth the vehement indignation of a youthful heart, full of the love of

virtue and of the brilliant illusions which a superficial knowledge of

ancient history creates, against the voluntary abjectness of mankind,

who submit as slaves to one no wiser, no braver, no stronger than any of

themselves. “He who so plays the master over you has but two eyes, has

but two hands, has but one body, has nothing more than the least among

the vast number who dwell in our cities; nothing has he better than you,

save the advantage that you give him, that he may ruin you. Whence has

he so many eyes to watch you, but that you give them to him? How has he

so many hands to strike you, but that he employs your own? How does he

come by the feet which trample on your cities, but by your means? How

can he have any power over you, but what you give him? How could he

venture to persecute you, if he had not an understanding with

yourselves? What harm could he do you, if you were not receivers of the

robber that plunders you, accomplices of the murderer who kills you, and

traitors to your own selves? You, you sow the fruits of the earth, that

he may waste them; you furnish your houses, that he may pillage them;

you rear your daughters, that they may glut his wantonness, and your

sons, that he may lead them at the best to his wars, or that he may send

them to execution, or make them the instruments of his concupiscence,

the ministers of his revenge. You exhaust your bodies with labour, that

he may revel in luxury, or wallow in base and vile pleasures; you weaken

yourselves, that he may become more strong, and better able to hold you

in check. And yet from so many indignities, that the beasts themselves,

could they be conscious of them, would not endure, you may deliver

yourselves, if you but make an effort, not to deliver yourselves, but to

show the will to do it. Once resolve to be no longer slaves, and you are

already free. I do not say that you should assail him, or shake his

seat; merely support him no longer, and you will see that, like a great

Colossus, whose basis has been removed from beneath him, he will fall by

his own weight, and break to pieces.”[1070]

[1070] Le Contr’Un of La Boetie is published at the end of some

editions of Montaigne.

25. These bursts of a noble patriotism, which no one who is in the least

familiar with the history of that period will think inexcusable, are

much unlike what we generally expect from the French writers. La Boetie,

in fact, is almost a single instance of a thoroughly republican

character till nearly the period of the Revolution. Montaigne, the

staunchest supporter of church and state, excuses his friend, “le plus

grand homme, a mon avis, de notre siècle,” assuring us that he was

always a loyal subject, though if he had been permitted his own choice,

“he would rather have been born at Venice than at Sarlat.” La Boetie

died young in 1561; and his Discourse was written some years before; he

might have lived to perceive how much more easy it is to inveigh against

the abuses of government, than to bring about anything better by

rebellion.

|Buchanan, De Jure Regni.|

26. The three great sources of a free spirit in politics, admiration of

antiquity, zeal for religion, and persuasion of positive right, which

separately had animated La Boetie, Languet, and Hottoman, united their

streams to produce, in another country, the treatise of George Buchanan

(De Jure Regni apud Scotos), a scholar, a protestant, and the subject of

a very limited monarchy. This is a dialogue elegantly written, and

designed first, to show the origin of royal government from popular

election; then, the right of putting tyrannical kings to death,

according to Scripture, and the conditional allegiance due to the crown

of Scotland, as proved by the coronation oath, which implies, that it is

received in trust from the people. The following is a specimen of

Buchanan’s reasoning, which goes very materially farther than Languet

had presumed to do:--“Is there then,” says one of the interlocutors, “a

mutual compact between the king and the people? M. Thus it seems.--B.

Does not he, who first violates the compact, and does anything against

his own stipulations, break his agreement? M. He does.--B. If then, the

bond which attached the king to the people is broken, all rights he

derived from the agreement are forfeited. M. They are forfeited.--B. And

he who was mutually bound becomes as free as before the agreement? M. He

has the same rights and the same freedom as he had before.--B. But if a

king should do things tending to the dissolution of human society, for

the preservation of which he has been made, what name should we give

him? M. We should call him a tyrant.--B. But a tyrant not only possesses

no just authority over his people, but is their enemy? M. He is surely

their enemy.--B. Is there not a just cause of war against an enemy who

has inflicted heavy and intolerable injuries upon us? M. There is.--B.

What is the nature of a war against the enemy of all mankind, that is,

against a tyrant? M. None can be more just.--B. Is it not lawful in a

war justly commenced, not only for the whole people, but for any single

person to kill an enemy? M. It must be confessed.--B. What, then, shall

we say of a tyrant, a public enemy, with whom all good men are in

eternal warfare? may not any one of all mankind inflict on him every

penalty of war? M. I observe that all nations have been of that opinion,

for Theba is extolled for having killed her husband, and Timoleon for

his brother’s, and Cassius for his son’s, death.”[1071]

[1071] P. 96.

|Poynet, on Politique Power.|

27. We may include among political treatises of this class some

published by the English and Scottish exiles during the persecution of

their religion by the two Maries. They are, indeed, prompted by

circumstances, and in some instances have too much of a temporary

character to deserve a place in literary history. I will, however, give

an account of one, more theoretical than the rest, and characteristic of

the bold spirit of these early Protestants, especially as it is almost

wholly unknown except by name. This is in the title-page, “A Short

Treatise of Politique Power, and of the true obedience which subjects

owe to kings and other civil governors, being an answer to seven

questions:--‘1. Whereof politique power groweth, wherefore it was

ordained, and the right use and duty of the same? 3. Whether kings,

princes, and other governors have an absolute power and authority over

their subjects? 3. Whether kings, princes, and other politique governors

be subject to God’s laws, or the positive laws of their countries? 4. In

what things and how far subjects are bound to obey their princes and

governors? 5. Whether all the subject’s goods be the emperor’s or king’s

own, and that they may lawfully take them for their own? 6. Whether it

be lawful to depose an evil governor and kill a tyrant? 7. What

confidence is to be given to princes and potentates?’”

|Its liberal theory.|

28. The author of this treatise was John Poynet, or Ponnet, as it is

spelled in the last edition, bishop of Winchester under Edward VI., and

who is said to have had a considerable share in the reformation.[1072]

It was first published in 1558, and reprinted in 1642, “to serve,” says

Strype, “the turn of those times.” “This book,” observes truly the same

industrious person, “was not over favourable to princes.” Poynet died

very soon afterwards, so that we cannot determine whether he would have

thought it expedient to speak as fiercely under the reign that was to

come. The place of publication of the first edition I do not know, but I

presume it was at Geneva or Frankfort. It is closely and vigorously

written, deserving, in many parts, a high place among the English prose

of that age, though not entirely free from the usual fault--vulgar and

ribaldrous invective. He determines all the questions stated in the

title-page on principles adverse to royal power, contending, in the

sixth chapter, that “the manifold and continual examples that have been,

from time to time, of the deposing of kings and killing of tyrants, do

most certainly confirm it to be most true, just, and consonant to God’s

judgment. The history of kings in the Old Testament is full of it; and,

as Cardinal Pole truly citeth, England lacketh not the practice and

experience of the same; for they deprived King Edward II., because,

without law, he killed the subjects, spoiled them of their goods, and

wasted the treasures of the realm. And upon what just causes Richard II.

was thrust out, and Henry IV. put in his place, I refer it to their own

judgment. Denmark also now, in our days, did nobly the like act, when

they deprived Christiern the tyrant, and committed him to perpetual

prison.

[1072] Chalmers. Strype’s Memorials.

|Argues for tyrannicide.|

29. “The reasons, arguments, and laws, that serve for the deposing and

displacing of an evil governor will do as much for the proof that it is

lawful to kill a tyrant, if they may be indifferently heard. As God hath

ordained magistrates to hear and determine private men’s matters, and to

punish their vices, so also willeth he that the magistrates’ doings be

called to account and reckoning, and their vices corrected and punished

by the body of the whole congregation or commonwealth; as it is manifest

by the memory of the ancient office of the High Constable of England,

unto whose authority it pertained, not only to summon the king

personally before the parliament, or other courts of judgment, to answer

and receive according to justice, but also upon just occasion to commit

him unto ward.[1073] Kings, princes, and governors have their authority

of the people, as all laws, usages, and policies, do declare and

testify. For in some places and countries they have more and greater

authority; in some places, less; and in some the people have not given

this authority to any other, but retain and exercise it themselves. And

is any man so unreasonable to deny that the whole may do as much as they

have permitted one member to do, or those that have appointed an office

upon trust have not authority upon just occasion (as the abuse of it) to

take away what they gave? All laws do agree, that men may revoke their

proxies and letters of attorney when it pleaseth them, much more when

they see their proctors and attorneys abuse it.

[1073] It is scarcely necessary to observe that this is an impudent

falsehood.

30. “But now, to prove the latter part of this question affirmatively,

that it is lawful to kill a tyrant, there is no man can deny, but that

the Ethnics, albeit they had not the right and perfect true knowledge of

God, were endued with the knowledge of the law of nature--for it is no

private law to a few or certain people, but common to all--not written

in books, but grafted in the hearts of men, not made by men, but

ordained of God, which we have not learned, received, or read, but have

taken, sucked, and drawn it out of nature, whereunto we are not taught,

but made, not instructed, but seasoned;[1074] and, as St. Paul saith,

‘Man’s conscience bearing witness of it,’” &c. He proceeds in a strain of

some eloquence (and this last passage is not ill-translated from

Cicero), to extol the ancient tyrannicides, accounting the first

nobility to have been “those who had revenged, and delivered the

oppressed people out of the hands of their governors. Of this land of

nobility was Hercules, Theseus, and such like.”[1075] It must be owned,

the worthy bishop is a bold man in assertions of fact. Instances from

the Old Testament, of course, follow, wherein Jezebel and Athalia are

not forgotten, for the sake of our bloody queen.

[1074] Sic. The Latin in Cic. pro Mil. is _imbuti_.

[1075] P. 49.

|The tenets of parties swayed by circumstances.|

31. If too much space has been allowed to so obscure a production, it

must be excused on account of the illustration it gives to our civil and

ecclesiastical history, though of little importance in literature. It is

also well to exhibit an additional proof that the tenets of all parties,

however general and speculative they may appear, are espoused on account

of the position of those who hold them, and the momentary consequences

that they may produce. In a few years time the Church of England, strong

in the protection of that royalty which Poynet thus assailed in his own

exile, enacted the celebrated homily against rebellion, which denounces

every pretext of resistance to governors. Churches, even the best, are

but factions in the strife to retain or recover their ascendency; and,

like other factions, will never weaken themselves by a scrupulous

examination of the reasoning or the testimony which is to serve their

purpose. Those have lived and read to little advantage who have not

discovered this.

|Similar tenets among the Leaguers.|

32. It might appear that there was some peculiar association between

these popular theories of resistance and the Protestant faith. Perhaps,

in truth, they had a degree of natural connection; but circumstances,

more than general principles, affect the opinions of mankind. The

rebellion of the League against Henry III., their determination not to

acknowledge Henry IV., reversed the state of parties, and displayed, in

an opposite quarter, the republican notions of Languet and Buchanan as

fierce and as unlimited as any Protestants had maintained them. Henry of

Bourbon could only rely upon his legitimate descent, upon the

indefeasible rights of inheritance. If France was to choose for herself,

France demanded a Catholic king; all the topics of democracy were thrown

into that scale; and, in fact, it is well known that Henry had no

prospect whatever of success but by means of a conversion, which, though

not bearing much semblance of sincerity, the nation thought fit to

accept. But during that struggle of a few years we find, among other

writings of less moment, one ascribed by some to Rose, bishop of Senlis,

a strenuous partisan of the League, which may perhaps deserve to arrest

our attention.[1076]

[1076] The author calls himself Rossæus, and not, as has been asserted,

bishop of Senlis. But Pitts attributes this book to Rainolds

(brother of the more celebrated Dr. John Rainolds), who is said to

have called himself Rossæus. The Biographie Universelle (art. Rose)

says this opinion has not gained ground; but it is certainly

favoured by M. Barbier in the Dictionnaire des Anonymes, and some

grounds for it are alleged. From internal evidence it seems rather

the work of a Frenchman than a foreigner; but I have not paid much

attention to so unimportant a question. Jugler, in his Historia

Literaria, c. 9, does not even name Rose. By a passage in

Schelhorn, viii. 465, the book seems to have been sometimes

ascribed to Genebrard.

|Rose, on the Authority of Christian States over Kings.|

33. This book, De Justa Reipublicæ Christianæ in Reges Potestate,

published in 1590, must have been partly written before the death of

Henry III. in the preceding year. He begins with the origin of human

society, which he treats with some eloquence, and on the principle of an

election of magistrates by the community, that they might live

peaceably, and in enjoyment of their possessions. The different forms

and limitations of government have sprung from the choice of the people,

except where they have been imposed by conquest. He exhibits many

instances of this variety: but there are two dangers, one of limiting

too much the power of kings, and letting the populace change the dynasty

at their pleasure; the other, that of ascribing a sort of divinity to

kings, and taking from the nation all the power of restraining them in

whatever crimes they may commit. The Scottish Calvinists are an instance

of the first error; the modern advocates of the house of Valois of the

other. The servile language of those who preach passive obedience has

encouraged not only the worst Roman emperors, but such tyrants as

Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth of England.

34. The author goes, in the second chapter, more fully into a refutation

of this doctrine, as contrary to the practice of ancient nations, who

always deposed tyrants, to the principles of Christianity, and to the

constitution of European communities, whose kings are admitted under an

oath to keep the laws and to reign justly. The subject’s oath of

allegiance does not bind him, unless the king observe what is stipulated

from him; and this right of withdrawing obedience from wicked kings is

at the bottom of all the public law of Europe. It is also sanctioned by

the church. Still more has the nation a right to impose laws and

limitations on kings, who have certainly no superiority to the law, so

that they can transgress it at pleasure.

35. In the third chapter he inquires who is a tyrant; and, after a long

discussion comes to this result, that a tyrant is one who despoils his

subjects of their possessions, or offends public decency by immoral

life, but above all, who assails the Christian faith, and uses his

authority to render his subjects heretical. All these characters are

found in Henry of Valois. He then urges, in the two following chapters,

that all Protestantism is worse than Paganism, inasmuch as it holds out

less inducement to a virtuous life, but that Calvinism is much the worst

form of the Protestant heresy. The Huguenots, he proceeds to prove, are

neither parts of the French church nor commonwealth. He infers, in the

seventh chapter, that the king of Navarre, being a heretic of this

description, is not fit to rule over Christians. The remainder of the

book is designed to show that every king, being schismatic or heretical,

may be deposed by the pope, of which he brings many examples; nor has

any one deserved this sentence more than Henry of Navarre. It has always

been held lawful that an heretical king should be warred upon by his own

subjects and by all Christian sovereigns; and he maintains that a real

tyrant, who, after being deposed by the wiser part of his subjects,

attempts to preserve his power by force, may be put to death by any

private person. He adds that Julian was probably killed by a Christian

soldier, and quotes several fathers and ecclesiastical historians who

justify and commend the act. He concludes by exhorting the nobility and

other orders of France, since Henry is a relapsed heretic, who is not to

be believed for any oaths he may make, to rally round their Catholic

king, Charles of Bourbon.

|Treatise of Boucher in the same spirit.|

|Answered by Barclay.|

36. The principles of Rose, if he were truly the author, both as to

rebellion and tyrannicide, belonged naturally to those who took up arms

against Henry III., and who applauded his assassin. They were adopted,

and perhaps extended, by Boucher, a leaguer still more furious, if

possible, than Rose himself, in a book published in 1589, De Justa

Henrici III. Abdicatione a Francorum Regno. This book is written in the

spirit of Languet, asserting the general right of the people to depose

tyrants, rather than confining it to the case of heresy. The deposing

power of the pope, consequently, does not come much into question. He

was answered, as well as other writers of the same tenets, by a Scottish

Catholic residing at Paris, William Barclay, father of the more

celebrated author of the Argenis, in a treatise “De Regno et Regali

Potestate adversus Buchananum, Brutum, Boucherum et Reliquos

Monarchomachos,” 1600. Barclay argues on the principles current in

France, that the king has no superior in temporals; that the people are

bound in all cases to obey him; that the laws owe their validity to his

will. The settlement of France by the submission of the League on the

one hand, and by the edict of Nantes on the other, naturally put a stop

to the discussion of questions which, theoretical and universal as they

might seem, would never have been brought forward but through the

stimulating influence of immediate circumstances.

|The Jesuits adopt these tenets.|

|Mariana, De Rege.|

37. But while the war was yet raging, and the fate of the Catholic

religion seemed to hang upon its success, many of the Jesuits had been

strenuous advocates of the tyrannicidal doctrine; and the strong spirit

of party attachment in that order renders it hardly uncandid to reckon

among its general tenets whatever was taught by its most conspicuous

members. The boldest and most celebrated assertion of these maxims was

by Mariana, in a book, De Rege et Regis Institutione. The first edition

of this remarkable book, and which is of considerable scarcity, was

published at Toledo in 1599, dedicated to Philip III., and sanctioned

with more than an approbation, with a warm eulogy by the censor (one of

the same order, it may be observed), who by the king’s authority had

perused the manuscript. It is, however, not such as in an absolute

monarchy we should expect to find countenance. Mariana, after inquiring

what is the best form of government, and deciding for hereditary

monarchy, but only on condition that the prince shall call the best

citizens to his councils, and administer all affairs according to the

advice of a senate, comes to show the difference between a king and a

tyrant. His invectives against the latter prepare us for the sixth

chapter, which is entitled, Whether it be lawful to overthrow a tyrant?

He begins by a short sketch of the oppression of France under Henry

III., which had provoked his assassination. Whether the act of James

Clement, “the eternal glory of France, as most reckon him,”[1077] were

in itself warrantable, he admits to be a controverted question, stating

the arguments on both sides, but placing last those in favour of the

murder, to which he evidently leans. All philosophers and theologians,

he says, agree that an usurper may be put to death by any one. But in

the case of a lawful king, governing to the great injury of the

commonwealth or of religion (for we ought to endure his vices so long as

they do not reach an intolerable height), he thinks that the states of

the realm should admonish him, and on his neglect to reform his life,

may take up arms, and put to death a prince whom they have declared to

be a public enemy; and any private man may do the same. He concludes,

therefore, that it is only a question of fact who is a tyrant, but not

one of right, whether a tyrant may be killed. Nor does this maxim give a

license to attempts on the lives of good princes; since it can never be

applied till wise and experienced men have conspired with the public

voice in declaring the prince’s tyranny. “It is a wholesome thing,” he

proceeds, “that sovereigns should be convinced that, if they oppress the

state, and become intolerable by their wickedness, their assassination

will not only be lawful but glorious to the perpetrator.”[1078] This

language, whatever indignation it might excite against Mariana and his

order, is merely what we have seen in Buchanan.

[1077] These words, æternum Gallilæ decus, are omitted in the subsequent

editions, but as far as I have compared them there is very little

other alteration; yet the first alone is in request.

[1078] Est salutaris cognitio, ut sit principibus persuasum, si

rempublicam oppresserint, si vitiis et fœditate intolerandi erunt,

ea conditione vivere, ut non jure tantum sed cum laude et gloria

perire possint, p. 77.

38. Mariana discusses afterwards the question, whether the power of the

king or of the commonwealth be the greater; and after intimating the

danger of giving offence, and the difficulty of removing the blemishes

which have become inveterate by time (with allusion, doubtless, to the

change of the Spanish constitution under Charles and Philip), declares

in strong terms for limiting the royal power by laws. In Spain, he

asserts, the king cannot impose taxes against the will of the people.

“He may use his influence, he may offer rewards, sometimes he may

threaten, he may solicit with promises and bribes (we will not say

whether he may do this rightly), but if they refuse he must give way;

and it is the same with new laws, which require the sanction of the

people. Nor could they preserve their right of deposing and putting to

death a tyrant, if they had not retained the superior power to

themselves when they delegated a part to the king. It may be the case in

some nations, who have no public assemblies of the states, that of

necessity the royal prerogative must compel obedience--a power too

great, and approaching to tyranny--but we speak (says Mariana) not of

barbarians, but of the monarchy which exists, and ought to exist among

us, and of that form of polity which of itself is the best.” Whether any

nation has a right to surrender its liberties to a king, he declines to

inquire, observing only that it would act rashly in making such a

surrender, and the king almost as much so in accepting it.

39. In the second book Mariana treats of the proper education of a

prince; and in the third on the due administration of his government,

inveighing vehemently against excessive taxation, and against debasement

of the coin, which he thinks ought to be the last remedy in a public

crisis. The whole work, even in its reprehensible exaggerations,

breathes a spirit of liberty and regard to the common good. Nor does

Mariana, though a Jesuit, lay any stress on the papal power to depose

princes, which, I believe, he has never once intimated through the whole

volume. It is absolutely on political principles that he reasons, unless

we except that he considers impiety as one of the vices which constitute

a tyrant.[1079]

[1079] Bayle, art. Mariana, notes G, H, and I, has expatiated upon this

notable treatise, which did the Jesuits infinite mischief, though

they took pains to disclaim any participation in the doctrine.

|Popular theories in England.|

|Hooker.|

40. Neither of the conflicting parties in Great Britain had neglected

the weapons of their contemporaries; the English Protestants under Mary,

the Scots under her unfortunate namesake, the Jesuits and Catholic

priests under Elizabeth, appealed to the natural rights of men, or to

those of British citizens. Poynet, Goodman, Knox are of the first

description; Allen and Persons of the second. Yet this was not done, by

the latter at least, so boldly and so much on broad principles as it was

on the continent; and Persons in his celebrated Conference, under the

name of Doleman, tried the different and rather inconsistent path of

hereditary right. The throne of Elizabeth seemed to stand in need of a

strongly monarchical sentiment in the nation. Yet we find that the

popular origin of government, and the necessity of popular consent to

its due exercise, are laid down by Hooker in the first and eighth books

of the Ecclesiastical Polity, with a boldness not very usual in her

reign, and, it must be owned, with a latitude of expression that leads

us forward to the most unalloyed democracy. This theory of Hooker, which

he endeavoured in some places to qualify with little success or

consistency, though it excited not much attention at the time, became

the basis of Locke’s more celebrated Essay on Government, and, through

other stages, of the political creed which actuates at present, as a

possessing spirit, the great mass of the civilised world.[1080]

[1080] Bilson, afterwards bishop of Winchester, in his “Difference

between Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion,” published

in 1585, argues against the Jesuits, that Christian subjects may

not bear arms against their princes for any religious quarrel, but

admits, “if a prince should go about to subject his kingdom to a

foreign realm, or change the form of the commonwealth from impery

to tyranny, or neglect the laws established by common consent of

prince and people to execute his own pleasure, in these and other

cases which might be named, if the nobles and commons join together

to defend their ancient and accustomed liberty, regiment, and laws,

they may not well be counted rebels,” p. 520.

|Political memoirs.|

|La Noue.|

41. The bold and sometimes passionate writers, who perhaps will be

thought to have detained us too long, may be contrasted with another

class more cool and prudent, who sought rather to make the most of what

they found established in civil polity, than to amend or subvert it. The

condition of France was such as to force men into thinking, where nature

had given them the capacity of it. In some of the memoirs of the age,

such as those of Castelnau or Tavannes, we find an habitual tendency to

reflect, to observe the chain of causes, and to bring history to bear on

the passing time. De Comines had set a precedent; and the fashion of

studying his writings and those of Machiavel conspired with the force of

circumstances to make a thoughtful generation. The political and

military discourses of La Noue, being thrown into the form of

dissertation, come more closely to our purpose than merely historical

works. They are full of good sense, in a high moral tone, without

pedantry or pretension, and throw much light on the first period of the

civil wars. The earliest edition is referred by the Biographie

Universelle to 1587, which I believe should be 1588; but the book seems

to have been finished long before.

|Lipsius.|

|Botero.|

42. It would carry us beyond the due proportions of this chapter were I

to seek out every book belonging to the class of political philosophy,

and we are yet far from its termination. The Politica of Justus Lipsius

deserve little regard; they are chiefly a digest of Aristotle, Tacitus,

and other ancient writers. Charron has incorporated or abridged the

greater part of this work in his own. In one passage Lipsius gave great

and just offence to the best of the Protestant party, whom he was about

to desert, by recommending the extirpation of heresy by fire and sword.

A political writer of the Jesuit school was Giovanni Botero, whose long

treatise, Ragione di Stato, 1589, while deserving of considerable praise

for acuteness, has been extolled by Ginguéné, who had never read it, for

some merits it is far from possessing.[1081] The tolerant spirit, the

maxims of good faith, the enlarged philosophy, which on the credit of a

Piedmontese panegyrist, he ascribes to Botero will be sought in vain.

This Jesuit justifies the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and all other

atrocities of that age; observing that the duke of Alba made a mistake

in the public execution of Horn and Egmont, instead of getting rid of

them privately.[1082] Conservation is with him, as with Machiavel, the

great end of government, which is to act so as neither to deserve nor

permit opposition. The immediate punishment of the leaders of sedition,

with as much silence and secrecy as possible, is the best remedy where

the sovereign is sufficiently powerful. In cases of danger, it is

necessary to conquer by giving way, and to wait for the cooling of men’s

tempers, and the disunion that will infallibly impair their force; least

of all should he absent himself, like Henry III., from the scene of

tumult, and thus give courage to the seditious, while he diminishes

their respect for himself.

[1081] Vol. viii. p. 210.

[1082] Poteva contentarsi di sbrigarsene con dar morte quanto si può

segretamente fosse possibile. This is in another treatise by

Botero, Relazioni Universali dè Capitani Illustri.

|His remarks on population.|

43. Botero had thought and observed much; he is, in extent of reading,

second only to Bodin, and his views are sometimes luminous. The most

remarkable passage that has occurred to me is on the subject of

population. No encouragement to matrimony, he observes, will increase

the numbers of the people without providing also the means of

subsistence, and without due care for breeding children up. If this be

wanting, they either die prematurely, or grow up of little service to

their country.[1083] Why else, he asks, did the human race reach, three

thousand years ago, as great a population as exists at present? Cities

begin with a few inhabitants, increase to a certain point, but do not

pass it, as we see at Rome, at Naples, and in other places. Even if all

the monks and nuns were to marry, there would not, he thinks, be

more people in the world than there are; two things being requisite for

their increase--generation and education (or what we should perhaps

rather call rearing), and if the multiplication of marriages may promote

the one, it certainly hinders the other.[1084] Botero must here have

meant, though he does not fully express it, that the poverty attending

upon improvident marriages is the great impediment to rearing their

progeny.

[1083] Concio sia cosa chè se bene senza il congiungimento dell’uomo

e della donna non si può il genere umano moltiplicarsi, non dimeno

la moltitudine di congiungimenti non è sola causa della

moltiplicazione; si ricerca oltre di ciò, la cura d’Allevarli, e la

commodità di sustentarli; senza la quale o muojono innanzi tempo, o

riescono inutili, e di poco giovimento alla patria lib. viii. p.

284.

[1084] Ibid. Ricercandosi due cose per la propagazione de popoli, la

generazione et l’educazione, se bene la moltitudine de matrimonj

ajuta forte l’una, impedisce però del sicuro l’altro.

|Paruta.|

44. Paolo Paruta, in his Discorsi Politici, Venice, 1599, is perhaps

less vigorous and acute than Botero; yet he may be reckoned among

judicious writers on general politics. The first book of these

discourses relates to Roman, the second chiefly to modern history. His

turn of thinking is independent and unprejudiced by the current tide of

opinion, as when he declares against the conduct of Hannibal in invading

Italy. Paruta generally states both sides of a political problem very

fairly, as in one of the most remarkable of his discourses, where he

puts the famous question on the usefulness of fortified towns. His final

conclusion is favourable to them. He was a subject of Venice, and after

holding considerable offices, was one of those historians employed by

the Senate, whose writings form the series entitled Istorici Veneziani.

|Bodin.|

45. John Bodin, author of several other less valuable works, acquired so

distinguished a reputation by his Republic, published in French in 1577,

and by himself in Latin, with many additions in 1586,[1085] and has in

fact so far outstripped the political writers of his own period, that I

shall endeavour to do justice to his memory by something like an

analysis of this treatise, which is far more known by name than

generally read. Many have borne testimony to his extraordinary reach of

learning and reflection. “I know of no political writer of the same

period,” says Stewart, “whose extensive, and various, and discriminating

reading appear to me to have contributed more to facilitate and

guide the researches of his successors, or whose references to

ancient learning have been more frequently transcribed without

acknowledgment.”[1086]

[1085] This treatise, in its first edition, made so great an impression,

that when Bodin came to England in the service of the Duke of

Alençon, he found it explained by lecturers both in London and

Cambridge, but not, as has sometimes been said, in the public

schools of the university. This put him upon translating it into

Latin himself, to render its fame more European. See Bayle, who has

a good article on Bodin. I am much inclined to believe that the

perusal of Bodin had a great effect in England. He is not perhaps

very often quoted, and yet he is named with honour by the chief

writers of the next age; but he furnished a store, both of

arguments and of examples, which were not lost on the thoughtful

minds of our countrymen.

Grotius, who is not very favourable to Bodin, though of necessity

he often quotes the Republic, imputes to him incorrectness as to

facts, which in some cases raises a suspicion of ill-faith. Epist.

cccliii. It would require a more close study of Bodin than I have

made, to judge of the weight of this charge.

[1086] Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy, p. 40. Stewart,

however, thinks Bodin became so obscure that he makes an apology

for the space he has allotted to the Republic, though not exceeding

four pages. He was better known in the seventeenth century than at

present.

|Analysis of his treatise called The Republic.|

|Authority of heads of families.|