37 



GASSENDI, PIERRE. 



GASSENDI, PIERRE. 



aid each other, no less by the difference of their talents than by the 

 similarity of their dispositions Luigi possessing greater fertility oi 

 ideas and readiness in design, while Stefano had more practical skill 

 and knowledge of construction. Thus, the works executed by Stefano 

 during the lifetime of Luigi, belong to both brothers in common ; and 

 Naples owes to them many of its best modern edifices. Among the 

 the more important of them are the Astronomical Observatory ; 

 the additions to the Villa Reale ; the Reale Edifizio di San Giacomo, 

 an immense pile of building, erected at the cost of 1,500,000 ducats, 

 and containing the bank, exchange, prefecture, and a great number of 

 other public offices ; and the Dojana, or new custom-house. Besides 

 these public works Stefano built not a few mansions for private 

 individuals : the Palazzo Montemiletto ; that of the Dnca di Terra- 

 nova, the Casino Cacace at Sorrento ; the Casino Dupont, and that 

 called ' di Sofia,' in the Strada Nuova di Posilipo. He also designed 

 the new streets Santa Lucia and Mergellina, and the entrance to the 

 new Campo Santo or public cemetery, but he did not live to complete 

 any of these last-mentioned improvements. After a short illness the 

 Cavaliere Stefano Gasse for he had been complimented with the 

 cross of the order of Francesco Primo died at Naples, February 2Ht, 

 1840. 



GASSENDI, PIERRE (properly GASSF.ND), one of the most 

 distinguished of the naturalists, mathematicians, and philosophers of 

 France, was born 22nd of January 1592, at Chantersier, a village near 

 Digne, in the department of the Lower Alps, of poor parents. 

 Richer in virtue than in worldly goods, they were content to sacrifice 

 their own enjoyments to the education of their child, who, before he 

 reached his fifth year, had already given many premature indications 

 of extraordinary powers. At a very early period he evinced a taste 

 for astronomy, which became so strong, that he is eaid to have often 

 deprived himself of sleep in order to enjoy the contemplation of the 

 heavens ; and the following anecdote betokens the precocious develop- 

 ment of that talent of observation and deduction for which he was 

 in after-life so eminently distinguished. A dispute having arisen one 

 evening between some children of his own age whether the moon or 

 clouds were movintr, and his companions maintaining that the apparent 

 motion was that of the moon, but that the clouds were stationary, 

 Gassendi proceeded to undeceive them by ocular proof: placing his 

 playfellows beneath a tree, he bade them notice that while the moon 

 was steadily visible between the same branches, different clouds were 

 constantly appearing in succession. 



Gassendi wag sent to school at Digne, where he made rapid progress 

 in the Latin language, and soon acquired a decided pre-eminence over 

 his schoolfellows. Upon completing the usual course, he returned to 

 Chantersier in order to prosecute his studies in retirement ; but he 

 had not been there long when he was invited, at the early age of 

 sixteen, to teach rhetoric at Digne. This office he shortly relinquished, 

 and proceeded to Aix to study divinity. In 1614 he was appointed 

 professor of theology at Digne, and two years afterwards he was 

 invited to Aix to fill the chairs of divinity and philosophy, vacant by 

 the death of Fesac, his master and teacher. 



The careful perusal of the works of Vives, Ramus, and Patricius, 

 had thoroughly convinced Gassendi of the faults and defects of the 

 "phy of the schoolmen, or the so-called followers of Aristotle, 

 but it required no ordinary boldness to call it in question. Animated 

 however by the spirit of truth and free inquiry, Qaesendi did not 

 hesitate to submit the principles of the schoolmen to a rigorous and 

 searching criticism, and considered it his duty, as a professor of 

 philosophy, to expose the errors of the prevailing theory. This he 

 did iudirectly in a work entitled ' Exercitationes paradoxical adversus 

 AristoteleoB.' The appearance of the first volume, which was pub- 

 lished at Grenoble in 1624, gained for ita author a well-established 

 and wide-spread reputation; and if on the one hand it gave great 

 offence to the blind partisans of established doctrines, it was on the 

 other highly esteemed by several learned and distinguished individuals, 

 and particularly by Nicholas Peiresc, president of the University of 

 Aix, by whose interest and influence, assisted by Joseph Walter, prior 

 of V alette, Gassendi was promoted to a canonry in the cathedral of 

 Digne, where he wag admitted to the degree of doctor in divinity, 

 and appointed prev&t of the church. This new situation, which 

 rnabl-fl him to vacate the chair .it Aix, allowed to Gassendi the 

 undisturbed disposition of his time, which he devoted to the diligent 

 prosecution and advancement of astronomy and anatomy, and to tho 

 study of clasnical literature, and of the works of the ancient philo- 

 sophers. As the result of his anatomical researches, he composed a 

 treatise to prove that man was intended to live upon vegetables, and 

 that animal food, as contrary to the human constitution, is baneful 

 and unwholesome. In 1 629 a second volume of his ' Exercitationes ' 

 appeared, the object of which was to expose the futility of the 

 Aristotelian scholastic logic. At the same time five more volumes, in 

 further consideration of the same subject, were announced ; but in 

 consequence of the bitter hostility which his attacks upon the favourite 

 system had awakened in ita advocates, Gassendi deemed it prudent to 

 abandon the design. 



In 1828 Gassendi visited Holland with a view to cultivate 

 an acquaintance with the philosophers of that country. During 

 hii residence there he composed, at the instance of bis friend 

 Meitenne, the work entitled ' Examen pbilosophicum Rob"- Fludd,' 



in answer to the dissertation of our countryman on the subject of tho 

 Mosaic philosophy. Upon his return to Digne, Gassendi applied 

 himself with great diligence to astronomical studies, for which his 

 fondness had grown with his years, and he had the good fortune, on 

 the 7th of November 1631, to be the first to observe a transit of the 

 planet Mercury over the sun's disc which had been previously calculated 

 by Kepler. 



In the year 1641, being called to Paris by a law-suit arising out of 

 the affairs of the chapter, his amiable disposition and brilliant talents 

 obtained for Gassendi the regard and esteem of the most distinguished 

 persons of the metropolis of France, and the friendship of the Cardinal 

 Richelieu and of his brother the Cardinal du Plessis, archbishop of 

 Lyon. At this period Des Cartes, with whom Gassendi had long 

 maintained a close and friendly intercoms, was working a reform in 

 philosophy, and by the publication of his ' Meditationes ' had opened 

 for it a new and more useful career. In this work however Gassendi 

 discovered much that was objectionable, and forthwith attacked the 

 philosophical system of his friend in a work entitled ' Disquisitio 

 Metapbysica, seu Dubitationes ad Meditationes Cartesii,' which was 

 put into the hands of Des Cartes by their mutual friend Mersenne. 

 Des Cartes wrote an answer, which he published together with the 

 ' Doubts,' under the head, ' Sixth Objection to the Meditations.' In 

 1643 Gassendi composed the 'Instantise' in reply, and circulated 

 them in manuscript in Paris before he sent them to M. Sorbiere to 

 be printed at Amsterdam. The latter circumstance tended to confirm 

 and widen the difference which, in the course of the controversy, had 

 grown up between the two friends, who however entertained a sincere 

 respect for each other, and were eventually reconciled by the kindly 

 offices of a common friend, the Abbe" d'Estre'es. B;iillet, the bio- 

 grapher of Des Cartes, ascribes the publication of the ' Doubts ' to 

 secret jealousy of the growing fame of the author of the ' Medita- 

 tions,' and to chagrin on the part of Gassendi at the omission iu 

 Des Cartes's Treatise of Meteors of his Dissertation upon the singular 

 phenomenon of two parhelia which had been observed at Rome. But 

 the mind of Gassendi seems to have been superior to the influence of 

 such paltry motives, and the origin of the work in question may more 

 justly be referred to the love of truth, which to Gasseudi was dearer 

 than friendship itself. Moreover, there was much in their respective 

 characters that was calculated to lead to difference of opinion upon 

 speculative matters. Carried away by a lively imagination, Des Cartes 

 tbought it sufficient to draw from his own mind and his individual 

 consciousness the materials for constructing a new system of philo- 

 sophy ; whereas Gassendi, a man of immense learning, and the 

 declared enemy of whatever had the appearance of novelty, was 

 strongly biassed in favour of antiquity. Chimaora for chimaera, he 

 preferred that which had at least the prescription of 2000 years in 

 its favour. From Democritus and Epicurus, whose opinions were 

 above all others most easily reconcileable with his own scientific 

 information, Gassendi drew whatever was well-founded and rational 

 in their system to form the basis of his own physiology. Having 

 restored the doctrine of Atoms and a Void with such slight modifica- 

 tion, that at most perhaps he did but lend to it a modern style and 

 language, his philosophy had the glory of dividing with Des Cartes 

 the empire of the French philosophical world. 



In 1645 Gassendi was appointed professor of mathematics in the 

 College Royal of Paris, upon the nomination and by the influence of 

 Cardinal du Plessis. As this institution was intended principally for 

 the advancement of astronomy, he read lectures upon that science to 

 a crowded and distinguished audience, by which he increased the 

 reputation he had previously acquired, and quickly became the focus 

 of the literary activity of France, so far as it was directed to his 

 favourite sciences of mathematics and astronomy. 



But the intensity of his studies had undermined the constitution of 

 Gassendi, and a severe cold having occasioned inflammation of the 

 lungs, he was forced to retire to Digne for the restoration of his 

 health. In this retirement however he was far from idle. In 1647 

 he published his principal work, ' De Vita, et Moribus Epicuri,' in 

 which he clears the character of this philosopher from the mist of 

 prejudice with which it had been invested and unfairly handed down 

 to posterity. The ' Syntagma Philosophic Epicureae,' which followed 

 in 1649, is an attempt to reconstruct the system of Epicurus out of 

 the extant fragments, and to give a complete and connected exposition 

 of his theory. Notwithstanding the express refutation, which Uassendi 

 subjoined, of the errors, both physical and moral, of this philosopher, 

 and despite the purity of his own moral character and the exactitude 

 of his religious observances, the sincerity of his religious belief was 

 doubted by those who were constrained to admit tho learning and 

 critical acuteness which the work displayed ; eventually however the 

 injustice of the calumny redounded to the disgrace of his envious 

 traducers. 



His native air having produced a considerable amelioration in his 

 strength, Gassendi was able to return to Paris in 1653, and the next 

 year he published ' Tychonia Brahaei, Copernici, Peurbachii, &c. Vite,' 

 work which was not confined to the biography of these great men, 

 but also contained a brief sketch of ancient and modern astronomy 

 :lown to his own day. The resumption of his literary labours quickly 

 wrought on a return of his former disorder, and he died on the 14th 

 of October 1655, in tho sixty-third year of his age. His valuable 



