N.B./

justifies Gassendi's second objection. But if it is proposed to substitute the psychological method, then the first of Gassendi's objections asserts itself: This psychological process does not, and can not exist; it is a pure fiction.

The justification adopted by Descartes himself appears to go furthest, which relies upon the logical deduction, and makes the distinction that in one case the premiss 'I think' is certain, whilst, on the other hand, in 'I go to walk, and therefore I am,' the premiss upon which it rests is doubtful, and therefore the conclusion is impossible. But this also is idle sophistry; for if I really go to walk, I can assuredly consider my walking as the mere phenomenal side of an act entirely different in itself, and I can do the same in precisely the same way with my thinking as a psychological phenomenon; I cannot, however, without absolute untruth, annul the idea that I go to walk, any more than I can the idea of my thinking, especially if in cogitare one includes, with Cartesius, also velle, imaginare, and even sentire.

And, least of all, can the inference to a subject of thinking be justified, as Lichtenberg has shown in the excellent remark: "Shall we say 'it thinks' as we say 'it lightens': to say 'cogito' is too much if we are to translate it I think."" It is practically necessary to assume, to postulate the I9

9 The credit for the priority of this remark appears to be due to Kant, who says in the Krit. d. r. Vern. Elementarl, ii. 2, 2, 1 Hauptst. (Paralogismen d. r. Vern.), E. T., p. 239: "By this I, or He, or It which thinks, nothing more is represented than a transcendental subject of thought = x, which is cognised only by means of the thoughts that are its predicates, and of which, apart from these, we cannot form the least conception." At the same time, this does not detract from the great merits of Lichtenberg's statement of the

question, which, in the simplest way,
demonstrates so clearly the surrepti-
tious nature of the Subject.
We may mention, by the way, that
the attempt to prove the existence of
the soul from the very fact of doubt,
in very striking agreement with the
'Cogito ergo sum,' was first intro-
duced by the Father Augustine, who
thus argues in the roth Book De
Trinitate:' "Si quis dubitat, vivit
si dubitat, unde dubitet meminit;
si dubitat, dubitare se intelligit."
This passage is quoted in the once
widely spread "Margarita Philoso

In 1646, Gassendi became Regius Professor of Mathematics at Paris, where his lecture-room was crowded by listeners of all ages, including well-known men of letters. He had only with difficulty resolved to quit his Southern home, and being soon attacked by a lung complaint, he returned to Digne, where he remained till 1653. In this period falls the greater part of his literary activity and zeal in behalf of the philosophy of Epikuros, and simultaneously the positive extension of his own doctrines. In the same period Gassendi produced, besides several astronomical works, a series of valuable biographies, of which those of Copernicus and of Tycho Brahe are especially noteworthy. Gassendi is, of all the most prominent representatives of Materialism, the only one gifted with a historic sense, and that he has in an eminent degree. Even in his "Syntagma Philosophicum," he treats every subject at first historically, from all possible points of view.

Of cosmical systems, he declares the Ptolemaic, the Copernican, and the Tychonic to be the most important. Of these, he entirely rejects the Ptolemaic, declares the Copernican to be the simplest and the one most thoroughly representing the facts; but one must adopt that of Tycho, because the Bible obviously attributes motion to the sun. It affords us an insight into the time, that the once so cautious Gassendi, who on all other points kept peace between his Materialism and the Church, could not even reject the Copernican system without drawing upon himself, by his laudatory expressions, the reproach of a heretical view of cosmology. Yet the hatred of the supporters of the old

phica" (1486, 1503 and often) at the beginning of the 10th book, "De Anima." Descartes, who had his attention called to its agreement with his principle, seems not to have known it; he admits that Augustine had, in fact, proposed to prove the certainty of our existence in this way; he himself, however,

had used this argument in order to show that that ego which thinks is an immaterial substance. Descartes therefore quite rightly emphasises as his special property precisely that element which is most obviously surreptitious. Comp. Oeuvres, t. viii., ed. Cousin, p. 421.

cosmology becomes in some measure intelligible when we see how Gassendi contrived to undermine its foundations without open assault. A favourite argument of the opponents of Copernicus was, that if the earth revolved, it would be impossible for a cannon-ball fired straight up into the air to fall back upon the cannon. Gassendi thereupon, as he relates himself, had an experiment made: 10 on a ship travelling at great speed a stone was thrown straight up into the air. It fell back, following the motion of the ship, upon the same part of the deck from which it had been thrown. A stone was dropped from the top of the mast, and it fell exactly at its foot. These experiments, to us so ordinary, were then, when men were only beginning, by the aid of Galilei, to understand the laws of motion, of great significance, and the main argument of those who denied the motion of the earth was by their assistance hopelessly overthrown.

The world Gassendi regarded as one ordered whole, and the only question is as to the nature of the order, especially if the world possesses a soul or not. If by the worldsoul one means God, and it is only meant that God by his being and presence maintains, governs, and so in a sense constitutes the soul of all things, this may always be possible.

All are agreed also that heat is diffused throughout the universe; this heat might also be called the soul of the world; and yet to attribute to the world, in the strict sense, a vegetative, feeling, or thinking soul contradicts the reality of things. For the world neither produces another world, as the plants and animals, nor grows or nourishes itself by food and drink; still less has it sight, hearing, and other functions of things possessing souls.

Place and time are viewed by Gassendi as existing quite independently, neither substance nor accident. At the

10 In the treatise "De Motu Impresso a Motore Translato," which, as it was pretended, was printed against the author's wish, together with a

letter of Galilei's on the reconciliation of the Holy Scriptures with the doctrine of the earth's revolution, at Lyons, 1649.

point where all corporeal things cease space still extends without limit, and time sped before the creation of the world as regularly as now. By the material principle or materia prima is meant that matter which cannot be further dissolved. So man is composed of head, heart, belly, and so on. These are formed out of chyle and blood; these again from food, and food from the so-called elements; but these also are again composed of atoms, which are therefore the material principle or materia prima. Matter is consequently in itself as yet without form. But there is also no form without a material body, and this is the durable substratum, while forms change themselves and go. Matter is therefore itself indestructible, and it is incapable of being produced, and no body can arise out of nothing, although this does not go to deny the creation of matter by God. The atoms are in point of substance identical, but vary in figure.

The further exposition of atoms, void, the denial of infinite divisibility, the motion of the atoms, and so on, closely follows Epikuros. We need only remark, that Gassendi identifies the weight or gravity of the atoms with their inherent capability of self-determined motion. For the rest, this motion also has been from the beginning bestowed by God upon the atoms.

God, who made the earth and sea bring forth plants and animals, created a finite number of atoms, so as to form the seeds of all things. Thereupon commenced that alternation of generation and dissolution which exists now, and will continue to exist.

'The first cause of everything is God,' but the whole inquiry is concerned only with the secondary causes, which immediately produce each single change. Their principle, however, must necessarily be corporeal. In artistic productions, the moving principle is indeed independent of the material; but in nature the active cause works inwardly, and is only the most active and mobile part of the material. In the case of visible bodies, one is always

moved by the other: the self-moving principles are the

The falling of bodies Gassendi explains to be due to the attraction of the earth; but this attraction cannot be an actio in distans.' Unless something from the earth. reached the stone and overpowered it, it would not trouble itself about the earth; just as the magnet must in some real if invisible manner lay hold upon the iron in order to draw it to itself. That this is not to be conceived crudely, as done by the throwing out of harpoons or hooks, is shown by a remarkable picture employed by Gassendi to explain this attraction, of a boy attracted by an apple, a figure of which has reached him through the senses.11 It is worth