THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 159 



ence of this conception; Goethe rejected it with 

 vehemence, and the same repugnance to accepting it is 

 manifest in Carlyle.* 



The analytic and synthetic tendencies of the human 

 mind are traceable throughout history, great writers 

 ranging themselves sometimes on the one side, some- 

 times on the other. Men of warm feelings, and minds 

 open to the elevating impressions produced by nature 

 as a whole, whose satisfaction, therefore, is rather ethi- 

 cal than logical, lean to the synthetic side; while the 

 analytic harmonises best with the more precise and 

 more mechanical bias which seeks the satisfaction of 

 the understanding. Some form of pantheism was 

 .usually adopted by the one, while a detached Creator, 

 working more or less after the manner of men, was 

 often assumed by the other. Gassendi, as sketched by 

 Lange, is hardly to be ranked with either. Having 

 formally acknowledged God as the great first cause, he 

 immediately dropped the idea, applied the known laws 

 of mechanics to the atoms, and deduced from them all 

 vital phenomena. He defended Epicurus, and dwelt 

 upon his purity, both of doctrine and of life. True he 

 was a heathen, but so was Aristotle. Epicurus assailed 

 superstition and religion, and rightly, because he did 

 not know the true religion. He thought that the gods 

 neither rewarded nor punished, and he adored them 

 purely in consequence of their completeness: here we 

 see, says Gassendi, the reverence of the child, instead 

 of the fear of the slave. The errors of Epicurus' shall 

 be corrected, and the body of his truth retained. Gas- 



* Boyle's model of the universe was the Strasburg clock with 

 an outside Artificer. Goethe, on the other hand, sang 

 ' Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Innern zu bcwegen, 

 Natur in sich, sich in Nntur zu hegcn.' 



See also Carlyle, ' Past and Present,' chap. v. 



