CHAPTER I

THE INANIMATE WORLD

The second part of the _Syntagma_ begins with a treatise de rebus terrenis inanimis. The majority of its contents are not worth reproduction in full or with any degree of exactness. The connexion of these chapters with the scheme of the whole work may be gathered from the summary of the subject matter already given (_v._ p. xii). A few points of particular interest may be selected for special comment.

After dealing with the land and the water, including seas, rivers, and the tides, we advance to the bodies that are found in the earth. These are classified as ‘mista perfecta’ in order to distinguish them from the ‘meteora’ (winds, clouds, rains), which are imperfecta: they are also called compositiora, because they are compounded of more than one element. This class includes Fossils, Plants, and Animals. The term ‘fossil’ is used in the bare sense of things which have to be dug up: as a rule this is limited to stones, metals, and minerals; but there are other treasures in the bosom of the earth which are omitted by this limitation, and Gassendi proposes to include under this heading the primary forms of matter which are ‘liquidiora.’ We are now dealing with the very lowest forms of existence. Gassendi’s intention is to begin at the bottom of the scale of existence and rise in orderly procession to the highest. He is not content with starting from even such elementary stages as are given in metals, but desires to get deeper still, to the most formless conditions of matter, and begin with what he calls the ‘mean forms’ out of which nature constructs the comparatively developed things called metals. These ‘mean forms’ or first conditions of matter are the various kinds of earth, the ‘succi concreti’ and the ‘mista mineralia.’ The kinds of earth are first enumerated and their relative fertility is commented on; then the succi concreti are catalogued in the two main classes macri et pingues (among the macri salt comes first, among the pingues sulphur and bitumen are the most important), and finally the mista mineralia are given in their order. Beyond being an integral part of Gassendi’s universe these have no interest for us now, but as part of that conception they demand attention. As we are now in the realm of things inorganic the question of becoming is important. Each class of things has its own semina and each thing is formed by the cohesion of semina of one kind: that is to say, generation is a simple process of cohesion of homogeneous parts, and as there is no question of voluntary unions, the production of any specimen of this class is dependent on the chance which collocates in one place the kindred elements. Whatever we may have to say later on about alimentation and the purposive union of parts, this is the sphere in which we can subscribe unreservedly to the action of chance as it was primarily conceived by the earlier atomists.

Passing over the intermediary discussion of volcanoes and earthquakes we can take up at once the question of the formation of inorganic bodies as it is described by Gassendi, with special reference to ‘lapides’ or stones in the sense in which we use that term when we speak of precious stones. It is absurd to suppose that all these were created at the beginning of things once and for all. Apart from the inherent improbability of the idea, we can see for ourselves that the process is going on around us every day. The matter is in this as in every case given. The point which calls for explanation is the regularity with which similar forms are constantly produced. For this we must postulate a formative power, a vis interna, in this case a vis lapidifica: there is no less reason for asserting the existence of this formative power in the case of stones than there is in the case of the plant or the chicken.[63] If any doubt remained it would be dispersed by the instance of crystallisation in which the presence of such a causa constans is indubitable. This vis lapidifica is a form of vis seminalis, that being the more general term: in the case of some animals and in plants the vis seminalis is obscurior; and in the case of stones it is still more obscure, but not on that account to be denied altogether. We must not however deduce from this too much: although gems and all other stones are formed by the action of this vis seminalis they are not on that account to be called living things: they have not life in the sense that the plants have: they are solid compact bodies in which there is no circulation and no alimentation, not even through that which they call ‘insensilem transpirationem’: they do not grow in the proper sense of the term, and we certainly cannot infer from the fact that one gem is bigger than another that it is therefore older, or ‘grown up’! The coral does indeed grow, but then it is a plant!

The most important topic in this book is that of the magnet. Gassendi has used the magnet frequently in the later parts of his work by way of example, and, as it is one of those marginal topics which seem to have a mystical affinity with higher forms of existence, it will be as well to examine carefully what Gassendi has to say here, where he treats the subject directly and in its proper connexion. The point about the magnet is that it exercises attraction. When the iron comes within its range it is drawn toward it by some invisible power, and the data thus given to the ordinary senses of man are exactly fitted to encourage idle speculation. In the first place Gassendi asserts that the action of the magnet is purely physical: it must therefore be mediated action, not action at a distance, and the mediation must be achieved by a substantialis corporeusve effluxus: there is to be no shirking of the question by introducing emanations of a doubtful order: if we had the required keenness of sight we should see the hooks by which the magnet lays hold of the iron. That is one question, and so far we seem on safe ground; but a more critical point is raised by the two statements that the magnet has something analogous to plants and to sense. The analogy to plants turns out to be a similarity of habits such that, as a cutting can only be grafted on to a tree in one way, so the magnet can only be joined to another magnet or a part of itself according to the way the fibres run. As regards the analogy of the magnet to that of the sensible agent, the analogy consists in the following points of resemblance. (1) As the animal is attracted by the object, so the iron is attracted by the magnet. (2) The action is in both cases per immissas species that is, a definite something is emitted by the one which passes over to the other. (3) The species thus emitted enter into the soul of the object in both cases and produce the disturbance which results in the consequent movement. (4) The activity of motion in both cases begins from the soul.

This language looks on the face of it extremely animistic: none the less Gassendi does not mean to imply that the magnet has a soul in the proper sense of the term at all.[64] He carefully adds every time he mentions the word anima the qualifying quasi: he distinguishes the other anima to which this is analogous as anima sentiens, and assures us that the magnet has only ‘something analogous to a soul.’ What we have in fact is a type of motion; what we might call responsive motion; and Gassendi is well aware that when he comes to sensibility he will not be able to tell us much more about it than can be summed up in some such phrase as this of responsive motion. The significance of this will be pointed out later (p. 262): for the present it is enough to show that we cannot assert on the basis of what Gassendi has to say for himself either that matter is always endowed with soul, or that soul is always material: similarity does not exclude difference, nor does difference destroy the possibility of co-existing similarity: the eagle and the oyster are far enough apart, and yet we find reason to put them on the same scale: can we not then put the magnet and the animal in some relation of similarity, though the magnet is no more an animal than the eagle is an oyster?

The subject of Plants, which occupies the second part of this section on things inanimate, is important in one respect. We shall pass over all that is said on the kinds and classification of plants, and confine our attention to the consideration of their nature, and the place which they are to occupy in our scheme of the universe. Gassendi begins with the most important point, namely the question, have the plants a soul? Many writers had held this theory: as a rule it was a deduction from the doctrine of the world-soul, and there were great differences in the extent to which the doctrine was pushed: the Manichaeans, for example, ‘sic dederunt plantis animam rationalem ut florem aut fructum decerpere foret homocidium patrare’:[65] while Aristotle represents the other extreme of moderation in attributing to them only a nutritive soul. Epicurus is in direct opposition to these ideas, and declares that plants have no soul at all, an opinion with which Gassendi finds himself in perfect accord. He reviews the meanings attached to the word animatus: its Greek counterpart ψυχή is from ψυχεἲν, which is to say, ‘flando refrigerare,’ and this we all know is peculiar to animals; plants are not even animals in the strict sense of ζῶα, much less animata corpora; and finally, if we think of the derivation from ἄνεμος, _i.e._ spiritus, this too excludes plants from the class of animata. But while he is thus clear that a plant is not an animal Gassendi obviously feels that there is some excuse for the general tendency to give plants a place in the scale of nature much nearer to the animal than to the stone: he therefore enumerates all the ‘wonders of plant life’ which were known in his day and seem to have been as fruitful a source of credulous wonder then as now. There is doubtless much that is to us extremely wonderful in the apparently purposeful activities of plants, but, says Gassendi, however wonderful they may be, the original question, are there any proofs of a soul?, remains unanswered: anima is often used loosely, and we speak of things as animated[66] to which we should not give a soul if required to do so explicitly; in other words, there is much we call animate that we should never call animal. We are in fact caught between the animal sphere and the too comprehensive sphere of nature in general. Finally, Gassendi defines the plant as corpus vegetabile sensu carens, admitting that it would be more natural, if less exact, to say corpus animatum, _i.e._ ‘vivens quod nutriri, crescere, sibi simile generare possit.’

This last point directs our attention to the question of the origin and perpetuation of plant life. The first plant in the world’s history must have arisen from a conjunction of like atoms, and this was in the usual way fortuitous. But the tendency which united the first group of atoms in the first plant works on a smaller scale in keeping together those atoms which are the specific semen: hence the process of reproduction is made easier, and the reason why plants are localised is apparent. In this connection Gassendi returns to the question of the soul: the marvel of the structure of the plant with all its adaptations and contrivances rouses him to further comment on that formative power which is thus shown to be innate to the plant. We must, in fact, allow that there is a central principle, and we may even call it a soul if it be remembered that by this term we denote only a definite principle, a substance most like to a flame, which is indeed spread through all the plant, but is especially concentrated in the parts which form the seed (II. 172).