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of Patrizzi, which led him to impute atrocious crimes to Aristotle, to impugn the authenticity of his works, to blacken his memory and tarnish his philosophical fame ;-the learning and eloquence of Ramus, who comprehended the absurdity of reasoning from given premises to a given conclusion, who stripped theology of its dry and abstract form, and whose tragic death, amid other massacres of St. Bartholomew, has so often been lamented; combined with the influences of other great and erratic minds to prepare the way for the daring steps of Descartes. Wherever the chains were fairly snapped, loud was the indignation of cowled priests, fiercely glared the torture-chamber of the Holy Inquisition, and not a few expiated their love of novelty and freedom by their blood.

Among others, Jordano Bruno, who was Eleatic in his tendencies, passed over Platonism in his recoil from Aristotelianism, and became the great type of the poetic scepticism of later times. He was, as Cousin has remarked, the poet of the system of which Spinoza was the geometer; and, of course, became obnoxious to the vehement hatred and persecution of his contemporaries. Schoffe, in a letter to Ritterhausen, said of him, 'Il n'est pas une erreur des philosophes païens et de nos hérétiques anciens ou modernes qu'il n'ait soutenue.' The man who could boldly defy the Holy Fathers, when they pronounced their sentence on him with the words, 'Majori forsan tum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam'-was not likely long to have eluded their bigoted vengeance.

Campanella is the name of another cultivated and poetic soul, who, spurning the yoke of mental tyranny forged by scholasticism, and imposed by spiritual despotism on the neck of a sluggish age, incurred the vindictive wrath of the Church. His Platonism was more subtle than that of Bruno, and his mysticism was more refined. His tragic life was, at least, a flash of aurora in the midnight.

Again, there was born near Naples, towards the close of the sixteenth century, Julius Cæsar Vanini.* Like Bruno, he travelled through Europe, drawing enthusiasm in with every breath, and inhaling within the pale of the Church some of the air of liberty, that had swept, as a reviving breeze, from Wittemberg across the world.

This man wrote two celebrated works at the beginning of the seventeenth century, under the following pompous titles: the first The Amphitheatre of Eternal Providence, DivinoMagical, Physico-Christian, Astrologico-Catholic, in opposi

• Lucilius was his baptismal name, which he changed in the title-pages of his works into that of Julius Cæsar.

tion to the Ancient Philosophers, Atheists, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and Stoics;' the second, On the Wondrous Secrets of Nature, the Queen and Goddess of Mortals.' The first of these works contains, unquestionably, a formal à priori argument for the existence of God; but it is for the existence of a god that can neither be known nor loved; and his pompous proof is a bare recognition of the imposing conception of a personal god. Disappointed in the success of his metaphysical method, he fell back upon the authority of the Church, in every great question which affected man's moral position or destiny; and, if we were to judge him by the Amphitheatre' alone, we should pronounce him a believer in a personal god, every attribute of whom was to be communicated by the revelation of the Bible, and by the Church. But in the second work, which appears, from his letters, to have contained his true opinions, he proclaims himself the philosophical atheist, and the ill-concealed hater of Christianity.

Led by his evil genius, after having wandered over Europe, he settled in Toulouse, where the secret tribunal of the Inquisition was in active operation. The novelty of his opinions excited the attention of the holy office to his spiritual crimes, he was delivered over to the secular arm, and on the 9th of February, 1619, was burnt alive as a heretic. There was in this man an extraordinary combination of mental forces. He was by turns pusillanimous and bold, the hypocrite and the hero: to-day masking his opinions in deference to the opinions of others; to-morrow, baring the depths of his perturbed and sceptical spirit. As long as there was hope, he cringed before inquisitors, and professed implicit deference both to Theism and to Christianity: as soon as hope had fled, he drew up the visor, and died as he had lived. Thus there were many forces opposed to philosophy. It could not act freely in its search after truth; and no means were at its disposal, if it would not reason from principles that were stereotyped, and in a method that had almost the authority of inspiration. Natural philosophy and astronomy were gagged. The telescope, pointed to heaven, was fenced by the cheval-de-frise of ecclesiastical injunctions, and darkened by a medium which distorted the light of the stars. We owe it mainly to Bacon and Descartes that science has overstepped the narrow bounds which had been so long assigned it, and has occupied its legitimate field of inquiry. We owe it to the spirit of these men, that the tendency which exhibited itself in the tragic course of Bruno, Ramus, Campanella, and

Victor Cousin, Fragmens de Philosophie Cartesienne. La Philosophie avant Descartes. Schrammius de Vita et Scriptis J. C. Vanini, 1715.

Vanini, was neither strangled in its birth nor consummated in a heartless scepticism.

Bacon and Descartes differed widely in many respects; but there are many observable points of connexion between them. They were both laymen, and yet they dared to be the innovators in science and philosophy. They both propounded methods for its study, and each luxuriated in the facts of nature. But they differed, inasmuch as the one made metaphysical truth, and the other physical laws, the subject of his investigation. Bacon made facts his study, that he might arrive at principles; Descartes assumed principles, that he might understand facts. Bacon sought to arrive at the extreme generalizations of science -those ultimate laws which, being supposed, the universe might be constructed; Descartes examined his own consciousness, and there searched for principles which would legitimate and conditionate all knowledge.

The opening recommendations of the Novum Organon,' and those of the Discourse on Method,' are remarkably akin; but 'The Doubt' of Bacon was in order to clear his eyes for the observation of what was the Doubt' of Descartes was to prepare his consciousness for the assumption of what must have been. Bacon's great failure was his neglect of deduction; Cartesian misunderstandings arose from the neglect of induction.

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On turning from the philosophy of Bacon to his life we recoil with shame and grief. Passing from his essays or his laboratory to his judgment-seat, we discover a man whose principles were lofty, but whose actions were mean; who said, that it was heaven upon earth to move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth,' but whose duplicity, selfishness, ingratitude, and avarice, cannot, to the honour of human nature, often find a parallel.

The life of Descartes furnishes no such contrast to his philosophy. Heavy charges of literary plagiarism have been brought against him, but they cannot be said to have been substantiated. There is an able résumé in the 'Biographie Universelle,' of the voluminous memoirs of him written by Baillet: but the true philosophical sketch of his history will be found in his own celebrated 'Discourse on Method.' A few particulars will here suffice. He was born in Tourraine, on the 31st of March, 1596, of noble Breton parentage. The Jesuit college at La Flêche had the honour of conducting his early education, of watching, if not of fanning, the flame of his early devotion to study. Here, he tells us, he was first addicted to the pursuit of literature, and was not a little exalted by his conscious equality with the illustrious youth who were there competing for the presidency of the age.

At La Flêche he became convinced that there was nothing more delicious and nothing more sweet than poesy;' that mathematics had in some sense availed to lighten the burdens of mankind; that theology had presumed to show the way to heaven, and that philosophy, at least, gave the power of confounding and dazzling the simple. Mathematical proofs riveted his mind, but he felt wofully disappointed at the fewness of the practical results of such an imposing, and, to his mind, satisfactory science. He contrasted these spare practicalities with the moral theories of the ancients, which loomed in the distance like splendid palaces on a foundation of sand.

His thorough dissatisfaction with the philosophy of the schools impelled him to renounce all literature, and begin to study consciousness and life, or, as he says, 'the great book of the world.' Armies, courts, cities, were for several years the pages of that book. His vindication of this daring renunciation of all authority -of this attempt to construct a system and devise a method of his own--is one of the happiest efforts of his genius.* 'He did not seek to rebuild the town in which others dwelt, but to reconstruct the abode of his own mind. He might for this purpose use old materials; but the plan must be new, and the ground must be cleared.'

An anonymous mathematician in Breda-where he was wintering in the uniform, and with the occupation, of the young and intrepid soldier-had placarded the wall with an unsolved problem. It would have been amusing to watch the countenance of Professor Beckmann, of Dort, when young Descartes, who had submissively asked him to translate it into French for him, solved it with that instinctive, and almost intuitive, perception of mathematical truth for which he was afterwards so famous.

He continued his wandering and warlike life some eight or nine years; and it was not until 1629 that he sought and found a retreat in Holland. Here he composed his Traite du Monde,' and exhibited what some would term a craven spirit and a pusillanimous alarm at the decision of authority against the motion of the earth; and unquestionably modified his statements, if not his principles-his mode of expression, if not his premises-in deference to the Court of Rome. M. Bouillier, in the admirable prize-essay, the title of which is prefixed to this article, vindicates him on the ground of his excessive desire to propagate the system he had been maturing, and his fear that persecution might have impaired the interests that were dearer to him than life itself. He published his great work, the Discourse on Method,' with his Dioptrics,' Meteors,' and Geometry,' in

• Discourse on Method, Part I.

6

1637. It was written in French, and afterwards translated into Latin by a friend, and published with the corrections and additions of the author. The Meditations' were written first in Latin, and published in 1641; and six years afterwards, they appeared in a French translation by Le Duc de Luynes. The Principia' was published in Latin, in 1644. It contains, perhaps, the final statement of all his opinions on metaphysical and physical subjects. Through the whole of this period he remained in perfect secrecy. Père Mersenne, through whom his 'Meditations' were given to the world, and who became the channel of communication between Descartes and his great opponents, alone knew of his retirement.

In 1643, the Meditations' penetrated the massive walls of the Vatican, and were greeted with execrations by the Sacred College. It was denounced an ecclesiastical crime to print, read, or hold, a copy of the works of Descartes. There was too much daring in his style-too much of the spirit of a man consummating a revolutionary victory-to suit the pretensions of Rome.

Francis Bacon had separated the provinces of religion and science, by declaring that human wisdom failed completely in the solution of the mysteries of the faith. Pomponatus had shown that they were distinct; but had proclaimed his readiness to believe as a Christian what he disbelieved as a philosopher. Descartes was prepared to wrest from the hand of ecclesiastics the charter by which they alone had been permitted to pronounce on the immortality of the soul and the being of God, and established an absolute and universal criterion of all knowledge, which would not supersede, but must take the precedence of, all authority. Catholics, however, had other victims 'to harry out of their dominions;' Jesuits left Cartesianism to contend with Jansenism; and the Parliament of Paris found the Port-Royal more troublesome than our philosopher.

Strange to say, Descartes suffered more persecution from Protestant theologians than from Jesuit priests. Gisbert Voet, Professor at Utrecht, sought by fair and foul means to damn his reputation; and the strong arm of William Prince of Orange was powerless before the storm of prejudice and hatred which this bitter enemy had raised. A discovery of the treasonable and insidious intentions of Voet terminated that persecution; but it was under a fresh insult from the bigoted Professors of Leyden that Descartes accepted the invitation of Christina, Queen of Sweden, to become the inmate of her palace, the instructor of her own mind, and the ornament of her court. He died on February 11th, 1650, after a short illness. Christina wept over him, and sought to bury him among the magnates of Sweden; but the spread of Cartesianism throughout Europe made the

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