Basson. good to philosophy, except by contributing, so far as they might be said to have had any influence, to shake the authority of Aristotle. settled into a mysterious indefinite theopathy, when it did not even evaporate in pantheism. tice we have taken of him, if it were only as the last of the mere dogmatists in philosophy. He is doubtless much superior to Jordano Bruno, and I should presume, except in mathematics, to Cardan.* 17. This authority, which at least re15. A less important adversary of the quired but the deference of mod- Paracelsists established theory in physics was est reason to one of the greatest Sabastian Basson, in his "Philo- of mankind, was ill exchanged, in any sophiæ Naturalis adversus Aristotelem li- part of science, for the unintelligible bri XII., in quibus abstrusa veterum phys- dreams of the school of Paracelsus, which iologia restauratur, et Aristotelis errores had many disciples in Germany, and a solidis rationibus refelluntur. Geneva, very few in England. Germany, indeed, 1621." This book shows great animosity has been the native soil of mysticism in against Aristotle, to whom, as Lord Bacon Europe. The tendency to reflex observahas himself insinuated, he allows only the tion of the mind, characteristic of that credit of having preserved fragments of people, has exempted them from much the older philosophers, like pearls in mud. gross error, and given them insight into It is difficult to give an account of this many depths of truth, but at the expense long work. In some places we perceive of some confusion, some liability to selfsigns of a just philosophy; but, in general, deceit, and to some want of strictness in his explanations of physical phænomena metaphysical reasoning. It was accomseem as bad as those of his opponents, panied by a profound sense of the presand he displays no acquaintance with the ence of Deity; yet one which, acting on writings and the discoveries of his great their thoughtful spirits, became rather an contemporaries. We find also some geo-impression than an intellectual act, and metrical paradoxes; and, in treating of astronomy, he writes as if he had never heard of the Copernican system. 16. Claude Berigard, born at Moulins, 18. The founder, perhaps, of this sect became professor of natural philos- was Tauler of Strasburg, in the and TheosBerigard. ophy at Pisa and Padua. In his fourteenth century, whose ser- ophists. Circuli Pisani, published in 1643, he at- mons in the native language, which, howtempted to revive, as it is commonly said, ever, are supposed to have been translathe Ionic or corpuscular philosophy of ted from Latin, are full of what many Anaxagoras, in opposition to the Aristo- have called by the vague word mysticism, telian. The book is rare; but Brucker, an intense aspiration for the union of the who had seen it, seems to have satisfac-soul with God. An anonymous work torily repelled the charge of atheism brought by some against Berigard.† Another Frenchman domiciled in Italy, Magnen, trod nearly the same path as Magnen. Berigard, professing, however, to follow the modification of the corpuscular theory introduced by Democritus. It seems to be observable as to these writers, Basson and the others, that, coming with no sufficient knowledge of what had recently been discovered in mathematical and experimental science, and following the bad methods of the universities, even when they deviated from their usual doctrines, dogmatizing and asserting when they should have proved, arguing synthetically from axioms, and never ascending from particular facts, they could do little generally entitled The German Theology, dwell on a subject scarcely falling Fludd. Brucker (vol. v., p. 106-144) has given a laborious analysis of the philosophy of Campanella. + Brucker, iv., 460. Niceron, xxxi., where he is inserted by the name of Beauregard, which is prob-ry, but two writers within this period have ably more correct, but against usage. been sufficiently distinguished to deserve Brucker (p. 504) thinks that Magnen misunderstood the atomic theory of Democritus, and substituted one quite different in his Democritus reviviscens, published in 1646. Episcopius places the author of the Theologia Germanica, with Henry Nicolas and David George among mere enthusiasts. mention. One of these was Robert Fludd, | Behmen is his Aurora, written about 1612, an English physician, who died in 1637; and containing a record of the visions a man of indefatigable diligence in collect- wherein the mysteries of nature were reing the dreams and follies of past ages, vealed to him. It was not published till blending them in a portentous combina- 1641. He is said to have been a man of tion with new fancies of his own. The great goodness of heart, which his wriRabbinical and Cabalistic authors, as well tings display; but in literature, this canas the Paracelsists, the writers on magic, not give a sanction to the incoherences and whatever was most worthy to be re- of madness. His language, as far as I jected and forgotten, form the basis of his have seen any extracts from his works, is ereed. Among his numerous works, the coloured with the phraseology of the almost known was his "Mosaic Philoso- chymists and astrologers; as for his phiphy," in which, like many before his time losophy, so to style it, we find, according to as well as since, he endeavoured to build Brucker, who has taken some pains with a scheme of physical philosophy on the the subject, manifest traces of the system first chapters in Genesis. I do not know of emanation, so ancient and so attractwhether he found there his two grand ive; and from this and several other reaprinciples or forces of nature; a northern sons, he is inclined to think the unlearned force of condensation, and a southern force shoemaker of Gorlitz must have had asof dilatation. These seem to be the Par- sistance from men of more education in menidian cold and heat, expressed in a developing his visions. But the emanajargon affected in order to make dupes. tive theory is one into which a mind abIn peopling the universe with dæmons, sorbed in contemplation may very natuand in ascribing all phænomena to their rally fall. Behmen had his disciples, invisible agency, he pursued the steps of which such enthusiasts rarely want; and Agrippa and Paracelsus, or, rather, of the his name is sufficiently known to justify whole school of fanatics and impostors the mention of it even in philosophical called magical. He took also from older history. writers the doctrine of a constant analogy between universal nature, or the macrocosm, and that of man, or the microcosm; so that what was known in one might lead us to what was unknown in the other.* Fludd possessed, however, some acquaintance with science, especially in chymistry and mechanics; and his rhapsodies were so far from being universally contemned in his own age, that Gassendi thought it not unworthy of him to enter into a prolix confutation of the Fluddian philosophy.t 20. Jacob Behmen, or, rather, Boehm, Jacob Beh- a shoemaker of Gorlitz, is far mnen. more generally familiar to our ears than his contemporary Fludd. He was, however, much inferior to him in reading, and, in fact, seems to have read little but the Bible and the writings of Paracelsus. He recounts the visions and ecstasies during which a supernatural illumination had been conveyed to him. It came, indeed, without the gift of transferring the light to others; for scarce any have been able to pierce the clouds in which his meaning has been charitably presumed to lie hid. The chief work of This was a favourite doctrine of Paracelsus. Campanella was much too fanciful not to embrace it. Mundus, he says, habet spiritum quid est cœlum, crassum corpus quod est terra, sanguinem qui est mare. Homo igitur compendium epilogusque mundi est.-De Sensu Rerum, l. ii., c. 32. † Brucker, iv., 691. Buhle, iii., 157. VOL. II.-I 21. We come now to an English writer of a different class, little known Lord Herbert as such at present, but who, De Veritate, without doing much good for the advance. ment of metaphysical philosophy, had at least the merit of devoting to it, with a sincere and independent spirit, the leisure of high rank, and of a life not obscure in the world-Lord Herbert of Cherbury. The principal work of this remarkable man is his Latin treatise, published in 1624, "On Truth as it is distinguished from Revelation, from Probability, from Possibility, and from Falsehood." Its ob ject is to inquire what are the sure means of discerning and discovering truth. This, as, like other authors, he sets out by proclaiming, had been hitherto done by no one, and he treats both ancient and modern philosophers rather haughtily, as being men tied to particular opinions, from which they dare not depart. "It is not from a hypocritical or mercenary writer that we are to look for perfect truth. Their interest is not to lay aside their mask, or think for themselves. A liberal and independent author alone will do this." general an invective after Lord Bacon, and, indeed, after others, like Campanella, * Brucker, iv., 698. So † Non est igitur a larvato aliquo vel stipendioso scriptore ut verum consummatum opperiaris: Illorum apprime interest ne personam deponant, vel aliter quidem sentiant. Ingenuus et sui arbitrii ista solummodo præstabit auctor.-Epist. ad Lectorem, His axioms. who could not be charged with following | things may exist which the sense cannot any conceits rather than their own, be- discover. The three chief conditions of speaks either ignorance of philosophical this condition seem to be: 1. That it literature, or a supercilious neglect of it. 22. Lord Herbert lays down seven pri- mense, nor too small; 2. That it should should be of a proper size, neither immary axiomis. 1. Truth exists : have its determining difference, or princi2. It is coeval with the things to ple of individuation, to distinguish it from which it relates: 3. It exists everywhere: other things; 3. That it should be accom4. It is self-evident:* 5. There are as modated to some sense or perceptive faculmany truths as there are differences in ty. These are the universally necessary things: 6. These differences are made | conditions of truth (that is, of knowledge) known to us by our natural faculties: 7. as it regards the object. The truth of There is a truth belonging to these truths: appearance depends on others, which are "Est veritas quædam harum veritatum." more particular; as that the object should This axiom he explains as obscurely as it be perceived for a sufficient time, through is strangely expressed. All truth he then a proper medium, at a due distance, in a distinguishes into the truth of the thing or proper situation." object, the truth of the appearance, the conditional also, and its conditions are, Truth of perception is truth of the perception, and the truth of that the sense should be sound, and the the understanding. The truth of the ob- attention directed towards it. Truth of ject is the inherent conformity of the ob- understanding depends on the Kovai evvoiai, ject with itself, or that which makes eve- the common notions possessed by every rything what it is. The truth of appear-man of sane mind, and implanted by naance is the conditional conformity of the ture. The understanding teaches us, by appearance with the object. The truth of means of these, that infinity and eternity perception is the conditional conformity exist, though our senses cannot perceive of our senses (facultates nostras prodro- them. The understanding deals also with mas) with the appearances of things. The universals, and truth is known as to unitruth of understanding is the due conform-versals when the particulars are rightly ity between the aforesaid conformities. apprehended. All truth, therefore, is conformity, all conformity relation. Three things are to be observed in every inquiry after truth : the thing or object, the sense or faculty, and the laws or conditions by which its conformity or relation is determined. Herbert is so obscure, partly by not thorLord oughly grasping his subject, partly by writing in Latin, partly perhaps by the “ sphalmata et errata in typographo, quadam fortasse in seipso," of which he complains at the end, that it has been necessary to omit several sentences as unintelligible, though what I have just given is far enough from being too clear. | the differences of things; and Instinctive 24. Our faculties are as numerous as thus it is that the world corre- truths. sponds by perfect analogy to the human soul, degrees of perception being as much modes of it. All our powers may, howevdistinct from one another as different er, be reduced to four heads : natural instinct, internal perception, external sensation, and reason. one of these four means cannot be known What is not known by at all. Instinctive truths are proved by universal consent. Here he comes to his general basis of religion, maintaining the 23. Truth, he goes on to say, exists as tions of mankind on that subject, princiexistence of Kolvat evvolat, or common noConditions to the object or outward thing it-ples against which no one can dispute of truth. self, when our faculties are capable of determining everything concerning it; but, though this definition is exact, it is doubtful whether any such truth exists in nature. The first condition of discerning truth in things is that they should have a relation to ourselves (ut intra nostram stet analogiam); since multitudes of Hæc veritas est in se manifesta. He observes that what are called false appearances are true as such, though not true according to the reality of the object: sua veritas apparentiæ falsæ inest, verè enim ita apparebit, vera tamen ex veritate rei non erit. Inhærens illa conformitas rei cum seipsa, sive illa ratio, ex qua res unaquæque sibi constat. without violating the laws of his nature.† Natural instinct he defines to be an act of those faculties existing in every man of sane mind, by which the common notions as to the relations of things not perceived by the senses (rerum internarum), and es * Lord Herbert defines appearance, icetypum, seu forma vicaria rei, quæ sub conditionibus istis sub conditionibus etiam suis, conformari et modo cum prototypo suo conformata, cum conceptu denuo quodam spirituali, tanquam ab objecto decisa, etiam in objecti absentia conservari potest. nefas, p. 44. pecially such as tend to the conservation | the breasts of all mankind. 1. That there of the individual, of the species, and of the is a God: 2. That he ought to be worwhole, are formed without any process shipped: 3. That virtue and piety are the of reasoning. These common notions, chief parts of worship: 4. That we are though excited in us by the objects of to repent and turn from our sins: 5. That sense, are not conveyed to us by them; there are rewards and punishments in anthey are implanted in us by nature, so other life. Nothing can be admitted in that God seems to have imparted to us not religion which contradicts these primary only a part of his image, but of his wis- notions; but if any one has a revelation dom. And whatever is understood and from Heaven in addition to these, which perceived by all men alike, deserves to be may happen to him sleeping or waking, accounted one of these notions. Some of he should keep it to himself, since nothem are instinctive, others are deduced thing can be of importance to the human from such as are. The former are dis- race which is not established by the evitinguishable by six marks: priority, inde-dence of their common faculties. Nor pendence, universality, certainty, so that no man can doubt them without putting off, as it were, his nature; necessity, that is, usefulness for the preservation of man; lastly, intuitive apprehension, for these common notions do not require to be inferred.t 1 can anything be known to be revealed which is not revealed to ourselves; all else being tradition and historic testimony, which does not amount to knowledge. The specific difference of man from other animals he makes not reason, but the capacity of religion. It is a curious coinci25. Internal perceptions denote the con-dence, that John Wesley has said someInternal per- formity of objects with those thing of the same kind. It is also receptions. faculties existing in every man markable that we find in another work of of sane mind, which, being developed by Lord Herbert, De Religione Gentilium, his natural instinct, are conversant with which dwells again on his five articles of the internal relations of things, in a sec- natural religion, essential, as he expressly ondary and particular manner, and by lays it down, to salvation, the same illusmeans of natural instinct. By this ill-tration of the being of a Deity from the worded definition he probably intends to analogy of a watch or clock, which Paley distinguish the general power, or instinct- has since employed. I believe that it ocive knowledge, from its exercise and ap- curs in an intermediate writer.‡ plication in any instance. But I have found it very difficult to follow Lord Herbert. It is by means, he says, of these internal senses that we discern the nature of things in their intrinsic relations, or hidden types of being. And it is necessary well to distinguish the conforming faculty in the mind, or internal perception, from the bodily sense. The cloudiness of his expression increases as we proceed, and in many pages I cannot venture to translate or abridge it. The injudicious use of a language in which he did not write with facility, and which is not very well adapted, at the best, to metaphysical disquisition, has doubtless increased the perplexity into which he has thrown his readers. 26. In the conclusion of this treatise, Herbert lays down the five common notions of natural religion, implanted, as he conceives, in Five notions of natural religion. 27. Lord Herbert sent a copy of his treatise De Veritate, several Remarks of years after its publication, to Gassendi on Gassendi. We have a letter to Herbert. the noble author in the third volume of the works of that philosopher, showing, in the candid and sincere spirit natural to him, the objections that struck his mind in reading the book. Gassendi observes that the distinctions of four kinds of truth are not new; the veritas rei of Lord Herbert being what is usually called substance; his veritas apparentiæ no more than accident; and the other two being only sense and reason. Gassendi seems * P. 222. I have somewhere read a profound remark of animals display, we cannot fix upon reason as the Wesley, that, considering the sagacity which many distinction between them and man: the true difference is, that we are formed to know God, and they are not. Et quidem si horologium per diem et noctem integram horas signanter indicans, viderit quispiam non mente captus, id consilio arteque summa factum judicaverit. Ecquis non planè demens, qui hanc mundi machinam non per viginti quatuor horas tantum, sed per tot sæcula circuitus suos obeuntem animadverterit, non id omne sapientissimo utique potentissimoque alicui autori tribuat?-De Relig. Gentil., cap. xiii. Gassendi, Opera, iii., 411. not wholly to approve, but gives, as the least, within the knowledge of that age. best, a definition of truth little differing But, from some expressions of Herbert, I from Herbert's, the agreement of the cog- should infer that he did not think our facnizant intellect with the thing known: ulties competent to solve the whole prob"Intellectûs cognoscentis cum re cognita lem of quiddity, as the logicians called it, congruentia." The obscurity of the trea-or the real nature of anything, at least, tise De Veritate could ill suit an under- objectively without us." He is, indeed, standing like that of Gassendi, always so obscure, that I will not vouch for his tending to acquire clear conceptions; and entire consistency. It has been an addithough he writes with great civility, it is tional motive to say as much as I have not without smartly opposing what he done concerning Lord Herbert, that I does not approve. The aim of Lord Her- know not where any account of his treabert's work, he says, is that the intellect tise De Veritate will be found. Brucker may pierce into the nature of things, is strangely silent about this writer, and knowing them as they are in themselves, Buhle has merely adverted to the letter of without the fallacies of appearance and Gassendi. Descartes has spoken of Lord sense. But for himself he confesses that Herbert's book with much respect, though such knowledge he has always found several of their leading principles were above him, and that he is in darkness far from the same. It was translated into when he attempts to investigate the real French in 1639, and this translation he nature of the least thing; making many found less difficult than the original.† of the observations on this which we read 29. Gassendi himself ought, perhaps, to also in Locke. And he well says that we be counted wholly among the phi- Gassendi's have enough for our use in the accidents losophers of this period, since defence of or appearances of things without knowing many of his writings were pub- Epicurus. their substances, in reply to Herbert, who lished, and all may have been completed had declared that we should be miserably within it. They are contained in six large deficient, if, while nature has given us folio volumes, rather closely printed. The senses to discern sounds and colours, and Exercitationes Paradoxicæ, published in such fleeting qualities of things, we had 1524, are the earliest. These contain an no sure road to internal, eternal, and ne-attack on the logic of Aristotle, the forcessary truths. The universality of those tress that so many bold spirits were eager innate principles, especially moral and re-to assail. But in more advanced life Gasligious, on which his correspondent had built so much, is doubted by Gassendi on the usual grounds, that many have denied or been ignorant of them. The letter is imperfect, some sheets of the autograph having been lost. sendi withdrew, in great measure, from this warfare; and his Logic, in the Syntagma Philosophicum, the record of his latest opinions, is chiefly modelled on the Aristotelian, with sufficient commendation of its author. In the study of ancient philosophy, however, Gassendi was impressed with an admiration of Epicurus. His physical theory, founded on corpuscles and a vacuum; his ethics, in their principles and precepts; his rules of logic and guidance of the intellect, seemed to 28. Too much space may seem to have been bestowed on a writer who cannot be ranked high among metaphysicians. But Lord Herbert was not only a distinguished name, but may claim the precedence among those philosophers in England. If his treatise De Veritate is not, as an enCum facultates nostræ ad analogiam propriam tire work, very successful, or always foundterminatæ quidditates rerum intimas non peneed upon principles which have stood the trent: ideo quid res naturalis in seipsa sit, tali ex test of severe reflection, it is still a mon- analogia ad nos ut sit constituta, perfecte sciri non ument of an original, independent thinker, potest, p. 165. Instead of sit, it might be better to without rhapsodies of imagination, with- read est. In another place, he says it is doubtful out pedantic technicalities, and, above all, whether anything exists in nature concerning which we have a complete knowledge. The eternal and bearing witness to a sincere love of the necessary truths which Herbert contends for our truth he sought to apprehend. The ambi-knowing, seem to have been his communes notitiæ, tious expectation that the real essences of subjectively understood, rather than such as relate to external objects. things might be discovered, if it were truly his, as Gassendi seems to suppose, could not be warranted by anything, at + Descartes, vol. viii, p. 138 and 168. J'y trouvé plusieurs choses fort bonnes, sed non publici saporis ; car il y a peu de personnes qui soient capables d'entendre la métaphysique. Et, pour le général du * Misere nobiscum actum esset, si ad percipien- livre, il tient un chemin fort different de celui que dos colores, sonos et qualitates cæteras caducas at-j'ai suivi.... Enfin, par conclusion, encore que je que momentaneas subessent media, nulla autem ad ne puisse m'accorder en tout aux sentimens de cet veritates illas internas, æternas, necessarias sine er-auteur, je ne laisse pas de l'estimer beaucoup aurore superesset via. dessus de esprits ordinaires. |