CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
By far the longest part of the _Syntagma_ of Gassendi is comprised under the title ‘Physics.’ Of the general nature of this work and its significance we must speak later; for the present we shall be content to follow Gassendi’s order of treatment and reproduce his views on the various topics.
The Introduction is intended to clear our minds as to the character and range of the subject. The term nature is frequently used for two very distinct things. If used with an active significance it denotes a ‘vis agendi,’ a ‘natura divina’ which sustains and supports everything; if used passively it denotes simply the ‘universitas rerum,’ the totality of existing things. This distinction invites the use of two terms made famous by Spinoza, naturans and naturata. But terms live by their associations, and as Gassendi does not use either of these verbal forms, it is better to avoid them. Natura naturans would indeed distort the meaning of ‘vis agendi’ beyond recognition. In spite of the alternative phrase, natura divina, this active aspect of nature is in no sense God: the activity may be from God and in its nature divine, but nature and God remain distinct realities without fusion of their being. The manifestations of this activity are the ordinary processes of life, including all that belongs neither to art nor chance, which are the complementary categories.
Nature as the sum of existing things may be regarded in an abstract or a concrete way. The true sphere of our Physics lies in this system of things, and the true keynote of our method is concreteness. Thales was the founder of the true method, because he first sought the explanation of natural phenomena in natural causes. To be scientific we must be immanent; our results will probably not be final, but none the less our end will be attained. That end is, according to Gassendi, ethical: he is never tired of pointing out that if we desire finality we labour in vain. The greatest lesson of past ages is that we too are doomed to be superseded. None the less we are not aimless or without an end: it is meritorious to do what we may, and as it is a duty so it is also a happiness to attain a knowledge of the world in which we live, and through Nature come to God. Of the limitations of our powers Gassendi has no doubt; with Bacon he finds in nature a subtlety we cannot compass. But he has no scepticism by which hope is numbed or enterprise chilled. It is the quantity not the quality of knowledge that suffers: what we can know is in its way true and final, and if we pass beyond it, the lower stage had its own reality in its own day.
To revert to detail, a scheme is given us in this introduction of the whole work.[25] It is to deal with (_a_) nature in general, (_b_) things celestial, (_c_) things earthly. The subdivisions of the programme run thus:
(_a_) De rebus naturae universe: (1) The world—its number, parts, disposition. (2) Time and place. (3) Matter, causal principles, qualities, origin and end.
(_b_) De rebus celestibus: (1) The heavenly bodies, their motions and the like. (2) Predictions based on these.
(_c_) De rebus terrenis: (1) Plants. (2) Animals. (3) Man and especially the soul.
This programme we shall follow as Gassendi has followed it.
I.
The discussions of the first section are prolix and contain chiefly refutations of views which are generally of theological import and belong to an age of thought so entirely superseded that they are no longer of any interest. We can therefore pass it over with a mere summary of conclusions.
The first question of the plurality of worlds was generally treated in an a priori and speculative manner for which it was peculiarly unfitted. One prominent argument of the scholastic divines asserted that an infinite God could not express himself in a finite world. The word here used is mundus, and must be taken to mean a habited or habitable globe, as there is no question of the plurality of the heavenly bodies. The answer to such a ‘trifling proposition’ is easy but instructive. In the first place, the infinity of worlds might be successive, which is the more probable if we grant that the given world must perish. Again, it does not follow that an effect must be identical with its cause, and therefore, an infinite cause need not produce an infinite effect. Finally, the whole argument suggests that we can judge the Divine Agent by human standards, which Gassendi denies. Gassendi refuses to say that ‘Deus propter excellentiam non immerito nihil vocatur’; the concept of God has to be formed through our concepts of all that is highest on earth, but the sublimation is carried far enough to justify the position that when regarded as active and real, God cannot be brought under ordinary categories of judgment.
Current opinion was divided between two views. Some upheld that each star was a world and these worlds were related to each other:[26] others maintained that there was a plurality of worlds, but each one dwelt apart, dissociated from the rest. In the second case it follows that we cannot know the others; while the former statement is a mere assumption, since we do not in fact know those relations. The assumption of relations was a pure deduction from the assumed unity of the whole, and was made valueless by the fact that the relations asserted to be actual were never revealed in experience. An entirely different proof was based on the assumption that the number of atoms was infinite and could only be exhausted by an infinity of worlds. These so-called proofs Gassendi rejects: his attitude is one of provisional scepticism based on common-sense. There is no proof either for or against, since the worlds if existent are certainly unknown.[27] He pours scorn on Lucretius for praising Epicurus as though a proclamation of endless worlds had broken down the barriers of human knowledge. Lucretius exclaimed in vain
‘moenia mundi discedunt: video totum per inane geri res.’
The one word ‘video’ reduced the whole sentiment to bathos: it expressed exactly what could not be done; and there is no gain in widening the realm of the unknown: it is not the number of possible objects that must be increased, but the powers of sense and constructive imagination as based on sense. To indulge an empty fancy in the ecstasy that the word ‘infinite’ too often inspires is harmful rather than advantageous: we must confine ourselves to what we know, and curb the imagination within the limits dictated by experience. In this reference at least Gassendi seems to have been clear on the distinction of unknown from unknowable, and to have felt the futility of asserting existences to which we have no relation.
II.
The fifth chapter takes up the question of the World Soul, a subject which has been discussed from time immemorable, and still retains something more than a merely historical interest. Gassendi’s treatment of it is systematic and much more interesting than some of his other discussions.
The root of the question is the opinion that the world is an organised whole; not a ‘totum inordinatum’ like a pile of stones, but ‘ordinatum’ or constituted of organised parts.[28] This position is definitely though perhaps unconsciously advanced by the addition of the idea that these parts stand to each other in some relation other than that of mere co-existence in space: it is universally admitted that Earth, Sun, and Moon are interrelated (inter se affectae relatione aliqua sint). This advance in the doctrine really carries us over the crucial step from the view of the world as organised to the declaration that it is organic, from which an easy analogy brings us to the all-pervading soul.[29] It is this step that we must defend or repudiate. In spite of the example of the pile of stones, it may be possible to have an ordered Universe without all the implications of a universal soul.
The greatest advocates of the world soul are Pythagoras and Plato, supported by Aristotle to a certain extent, and the more recent ‘chymici.’ The outline of the doctrine shows that the Soul of the world was conceived as a very subtle substance pervading the Universe. Its nature is not simple but twofold, being composed of a purer and a grosser part, the latter being however ‘purissima’ as compared with the grossness of corporeal entities. This forms a spiritual body which mediates the entrance of the higher part into the natural body.[30] These parts are called respectively Mens and Anima (νοῦς, ψυχή). The term anima then denotes νοῦς taken as conjoined to some material existent, and can be used in this discussion without further reference to νοῦς or mens per se.
The anima was defined by Pythagoras as a harmony, not of course in a material sense as we speak of vocal harmony, but in the sense of proportion of parts. We naturally ask what are the parts and what are the proportions, and we look to Plato’s _Timaeus_ for the answer. That exposition is taken by Gassendi to be the true statement of what the Anima Mundi meant to the original authors of the doctrine. Are we to accept this Anima or not? Such expositions as we have clearly indicate that it is an entity whose being is not exhausted in these analogical descriptions. To say it is a harmony is only to say that its nature can be thus analogically described. What is it in reality? If we take it to mean God there is no objection so long as we speak of him as assistens, not pars, just as the pilot is in but not part of the ship. Similarly it may be a fiery substance (calor) if taken as immanent, not like the sun’s heat, irradiated. This interpretation requires a further modification, inasmuch as the position is radically altered by using the term soul for a substance like calor. To use the term soul in any intelligible way is to imply certain functions such as generation and nutrition. These are essential to life as we know it, either in animals or plants, and without these the term becomes meaningless. But one world does not beget another, and therefore has no claim to be recognised as an animal. Neither has the world any functions of nutrition: Plato and the Stoics have indeed spoken of the stars as being nourished by exhalations from the earth, and the earth from the water of the moon, but these are idle fables: a commutation of parts there may be, but that is not properly speaking nutrition. Finally, the earth has no functions such as sight and hearing; and if we speak of the ‘heart’ of the world, or make it like a Cyclops with the Sun for an eye, these are pure metaphors! Why, then, is the world said to have a soul at all? The reason is, that without it we cannot explain how there should be individual souls. The only argument for it is a regress from particular to universal. Lactantius expresses this tersely: ‘sic enim argumentatur: fieri non posse ut sensu careat quod sensibilia ex se generat. Mundus autem generat hominem, qui est sensu praeditus. Ergo et ipsum sensibilem esse.’ This argument breaks down by generating its own contradiction: for many things in the world have no soul, and it is equally possible to argue from them that the world has no soul. That which has soul derives its soul from the particular antecedent to which it owes its production and not to a universal entity. (Animam nimirum habet animal non ex totali anima mundi sed ex speciali anima quae aut in parentibus praeest. This applies not to anima as such only, but to any specific nature, _e.g._ of stone, I. 160.)
A second main argument is derived from the belief that the soul is the architect of its own body. Granted then that the world is an animal, it must have a Soul. As this argument assumes the World to be an animal, and deduces from that the presence of a soul, we must attack the assumption. This animal called the world must either be eternal or have had a beginning. If it is eternal, in what sense did the soul make it?—and if it was created, this must have been done by some agent other than itself. If it began, but not by creation, it was born either spontaneously or of parents, which means it was due either to chance or to definite purpose. In any case its cause is outside itself, and therefore cannot be its own anima. It appears then, that the theory has no support so long as we take the term soul exactly. If we take it to mean either God or a substance such as fire, we either go beyond the world for its soul, or we apply the term soul to material forms of existence in a way that will make havoc of our psychology.
III.
Some additional questions remain to be settled, but they are of minor importance. They comprise a discussion on the leading theories of the universe and their relative values, an enquiry into the beginning and end of the world, and a description of the known parts of the world. Of these the last requires no notice, being a mere description of the apparent place of things, _e.g._ the place of the air, of the water, of the earth, and of the heavenly bodies. This essay on physical geography applied to the universe belongs, with its complementary disquisition on the figure of the earth, to an age still near the times when the earth was thought to be flat, and may be consigned to the limbo of forgotten problems.
The three main theories of the world were those evolved by Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe respectively. Of these Gassendi considers that of Tycho Brahe to be the best for reasons worth noting. Ptolemy’s system is dismissed for not explaining the movement of the heavenly bodies in a satisfactory way: the Copernican system is most in accord with facts, but the sacred texts attribute rest to the earth and movement to the sun. Moreover, there is a decree bidding us take this to mean not apparent but real rest. Those, therefore, who respect the decree must approve and defend Tycho Brahe’s modifications of the Copernican system. Here, as elsewhere, Gassendi’s language implies reluctant acquiescence. He writes: ‘Ideo superest ut tale Decretum reverentibus Tychonicum potius systema et probetur et defendetur’; and we can see through the veil of orthodoxy that the author’s heart is with Copernicus and the system which can so truthfully be called ‘planius et concinnius.’
In dealing with the question of the world’s beginning Gassendi is supported by Epicurus and the Bible. The doctrine of atoms implies a theory of creation, and therefore puts its adherents in opposition to Aristotle and the supporters of an infinite and unproduced world. But while support is thus gained for the theory of creation, the alleged method cannot be accepted. A blind concursus of atoms is not a method of creation that a good Churchman can advocate. Fortunately it can be rejected on rational no less than religious grounds. The world gives us obvious proof that it was made by design: this implies a cause, which must be outside it; and therefore production in time, for the cause existed before it produced the world, and the relation of before and after constitutes Time. Again, every part of the world is corruptible and perishing, and the whole must therefore be of the nature of the corruptible and have its own creation and decease.
To understand this second argument, we must take it as an argument on categories.[31] The assumed question is, ‘Does the world belong to the category of the infinite or the finite?’ If any reason can be shown for including it under one category rather than another, the consequences follow without further argument. Gassendi’s argument against the eternity of the world is based on cruder views than might be expected. He notes that the sea and the rivers continually reduce the land and even wear down the mountains:[32] none of this matter is carried up again, and therefore, if an eternity of time had really elapsed, the whole earth must by now have disappeared beneath the waters. This is a shamelessly eristic procedure for one who has just defended the spherical form of the world.
There arises from this proof of a finite world one problem which touches so nearly our views on motion that it must not be left unsolved. Aristotle had argued from the eternity of movement and the necessity of God’s continual action. Gassendi’s argument is also based on movement, for corruption and decay may be regarded as primarily movements and only apparent changes. It must also be borne in mind that there are three indestructibles, namely atoms, the void, and the universe. If the world is composed of atoms, and atoms never perish, it follows that the destruction of the world is neither more nor less than the dissipation of its material. Movement, then, would be eternal, and if the old material forms a new world with never a break in the history of its parts, why should this second world be said to be created rather than evolved, and why should not our present world be viewed as evolved from a former world or even a former condition of its own elements? It may finally be necessary to say that Gassendi never properly faced this problem, but he seems to have been conscious that such a problem was possible, and to have in some degree anticipated it. His first defence is the denial that time is dependent on motion. If time and motion are inseparable, they must be coeval, and motion is infinite, since it occupies all time: to deny the dependence is to assert a time prior to all motion, and thereby make motion a product in time. The second is contained in the assertion that the first cause need not be physical; in other words, a regress from motion to motion is not infinite, but terminates in a First Cause, by whose creative action motion itself first came into being. The fact that all motion is, as motion, one, and the term ‘different motions’ must be taken to mean motions of different aggregates of matter, does not compel us to regard the creation of motion as the imparting of one impulse to the whole: it is possible, and even more probable, that in the beginning many mobile bodies were created with internal force of movement. As God’s relation to the world is purely external, and its movement is for him a ‘pure relation,’ his essence is not affected by either its becoming or its dissolution.
As we progress more and more with the Physics it will become more and more apparent how empty and vain are these arguments. They perhaps weighed heavily against those who taught that the world could never be destroyed, but would be purified and adorned with flowers ‘ad puerulorum non initiatorum neque in caelum translatorum oblectationem.’ But as serious philosophy they cannot stand examination, because Gassendi never makes it clear whether he is talking as a practical man of science or a theorist. His position is in fact metaphysical, and relies on pure reasoning. His real theorem, therefore, is whether the human mind can think its world and its series of causes as truly infinite. He would probably have decided that the infinite can only be thought by an infinite mind. Speculation of this kind is however quite out of place, for Gassendi never thinks of dividing mind and object in this way. The consequence is that, in spite of the logical and metaphysical character of the argument, the conclusions are purely physical. For Gassendi there are no antinomies of pure reason, and the problems of infinity never suggest a reconsideration of experience itself. So, in spite of the encouraging way in which Gassendi takes up time and causation as the fundamental points in the problem of infinitude, he gets no further than a dogmatic assertion that what is logically possible is physically actual. If we may say of any theory of reality that it regards the actual as necessarily thinkable, it would still be false to regard the thinkable as necessarily actual; and from Gassendi’s point of view neither proposition is defensible.[33] The whole argument is therefore irrelevant and useless: our world as a subject for scientific discussion is not affected by the conclusion; and the reader finds himself, after traversing a circle of argument, for all practical purposes exactly where he was before. It is impossible to suppose that Gassendi was not aware of this, or that these forensic disputes were left in such solemn isolation by mere accident. The practical part of the treatise looks forward: the theoretical serves a different purpose.