336 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



touches suggest the influence of Bruno's comprehensive 

 attempt to combine a philosophical pantheism with a 

 scientific atomism. It is unlikely that Descartes should 

 have been ignorant of a writer well known to Mersenne 

 and Huet. The former 1 would have excused Bruno 

 " had he been content to philosophise upon a point, 

 an atom, or on unity, but because he attacked the 

 Christian religion, it is reasonable to decry him as one 

 of the most wicked men the earth has ever produced ! " 

 Certainly the fact that Descartes nowhere mentions the 

 guilty philosopher is of no importance in deciding as to 

 the influence of the latter upon him. 2 



Gassendi j t was on }y natural that Gassendi's critics should 



1592-1655. * 



have placed him in a close relation to the Nolan. There 



is no improbability in the idea that Gassendi was 

 attracted to the latter as an opponent of the Aristotelian 

 philosophy, against which he himself had already written 

 in his youth although no part of the work was 

 published until 1624.* Both also approached the reform 

 of natural philosophy from the same standpoint, that of 

 sense-experience, and both arrived at an atomic theory 

 of the ultimate constitution of nature. Bruno, before 

 Gassendi, had attempted to place the ethical teaching of 

 Epicurus in a fairer light than popular prejudice allowed, 

 but while Gassendi followed Epicurus in his atomism 

 only too strictly, Bruno was much more independent, 

 and advanced much nearer to the modern view. So in 

 his general theory of the system of the world, Gassendi 

 stops half-way with the conception of a limited matter, 

 but in an endless space, of a beginning for the world, 



1 Contre I'impiete des desistes, athe'es et libertins de ce temps (1624, p. 229, 234, etc.). 



2 Vide Bartholmess, i. pp. 257, 259. Descartes, like Galilei, was careful not to 

 prejudice himself in the eyes of the Church. For Gassendi, i/. Gentzken, Hist. Phil., 

 p. 154. 



3 Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus jlristoteleos. 



