CHAPTER XII.

HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1550 TO 1600.

_Aristotelian Philosophers--Cesalpin--Opposite Schools of Philosophy-- Telesio--Jordano Bruno--Sanchez--Aconcio--Nizolius--Logic of Ramus._

|Predominance of Aristotelian philosophy.|

1. The authority of Aristotle, as the great master of dogmatic philosophy, continued generally predominant through the sixteenth century. It has been already observed that, besides the strenuous support of the Catholic clergy, and especially of the Sorbonne, who regarded all innovations with abhorrence, the Aristotelian philosophy had been received, through the influence of Melanchthon, in the Lutheran universities. The reader must be reminded that, under the name of speculative philosophy we comprehend not only the logic and what was called ontology of the schools, but those physical theories of ancient or modern date, which, appealing less to experience than to assumed hypotheses, cannot be mingled, in a literary classification, with the researches of true science, such as we shall hereafter have to place under the head of natural philosophy.

|Scholastic and genuine Aristotelians.|

2. Brucker has made a distinction between the scholastic and the genuine Aristotelians; the former being chiefly conversant with the doctors of the middle ages, adopting their terminology, their distinctions, their dogmas, and relying with implicit deference on Scotus or Aquinas, though, in the progress of learning, they might make some use of the original master; while the latter, throwing off the yoke of the schoolmen, prided themselves on an equally complete submission to Aristotle himself. These were chiefly philosophers and physicians, as the former were theologians; and the difference of their objects suffices to account for the different lines in which they pursued them, and the lights by which they were guided.[1034]

[1034] Brucker, Hist. Philos. iv. 117, et post.

|The former class little remembered.|

3. Of the former class, or successors and adherents of the old schoolmen, it might be far from easy, were it worth while, to furnish any distinct account. Their works are mostly of extreme scarcity; and none of the historians of philosophy, except perhaps Morhof, profess much acquaintance with them. It is sufficient to repeat that, among the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits, especially in Spain and Italy, the scholastic mode of argumentation was retained in their seminaries, and employed in prolix volumes, both upon theology and upon such parts of metaphysics and natural law as are allied to it. The reader may find some more information in Brucker, whom Buhle, saying the same things in the same order, may be presumed to have silently copied.[1035]

[1035] Brucker, ibid. Buhle, ii. 448.

|The others not much better known.|

4. The second class of Aristotelian philosophers, devoting themselves to physical science, though investigating it with a very unhappy deference to mistaken dogmas, might seem to offer a better hope of materials for history; and in fact we meet here with a very few names of men once celebrated and of some influence over the opinions of their age. But even here their writings prove to be not only forgotten, but incapable as we may say, on account of their rare occurrence, and the improbability of their republication, of being ever again known.

|Schools of Pisa and Padua.|

|Cesalpini.|

5. The Italian schools, and especially those of Pisa and Padua, had long been celebrated for their adherence to Aristotelian principles, not always such as could justly be deduced from the writings of the Stagyrite himself, but opposing a bulwark against novel speculation, as well as against the revival of the Platonic, or any other ancient philosophy. Simon Porta of the former university, and Cæsar Cremonini of the latter, stood at the head of the rigid Aristotelians; the one near the commencement of this period, the other about its close. Both these philosophers have been reproached with the tendency to atheism, so common in the Italians of this period. A similar imputation has fallen on another professor of the university of Pisa, Cesalpini, who is said to have deviated from the strict system of Aristotle towards that of Averroes, though he did not altogether coincide even with the latter. The real merits of Cesalpin, in very different pursuits, it was reserved for a later age to admire. His “Quæstiones Peripateticæ,” published in 1575, is a treatise on metaphysics, or the first philosophy, founded professedly upon Aristotelian principles, but with considerable deviation. This work is so scarce that Brucker had never seen it, but Buhle has taken much pains to analyse its very obscure contents. Paradoxical and unintelligible as they now appear, Cesalpin obtained a high reputation in his own age, and was denominated by excellence, the philosopher. Nicolas Taurellus, a professor at Altdorf, denounced the “Quæstiones Peripateticæ” in a book to which, in allusion to his adversary’s name, he gave the puerile title of Alpes Cæsæ.

|Sketch of his system.|

6. The system of Cesalpin is one modification of that ancient hypothesis which, losing sight of all truth and experience in the love of abstraction, substitutes the barren unity of pantheism for religion, and a few incomprehensible paradoxes for the variety of science. Nothing, according to him, was substance which was not animated; but the particular souls which animate bodies are themselves only substances, because they are parts of the first substance, a simple, speculative, but not active intelligence, perfect and immovable, which is God. The reasonable soul, however, in mankind is not numerically one; for matter being the sole principle of plurality, and human intelligences being combined with matter, they are plural in number. He differed also from Averroes in maintaining the separate immortality of human souls; and while the philosopher of Cordova distinguished the one soul he ascribed to mankind from the Deity, Cesalpin considered the individual soul as a portion, not of this common human intelligence, which he did not admit, but of the first substance, or Deity. His system was therefore more incompatible with theism, in any proper sense, than that of Averroes himself, and anticipated in some measure that of Spinoza, who gave a greater extension to his one substance, by comprehending all matter as well as spirit within it. Cesalpin also denied, and in this he went far from his Aristotelian creed, any other than a logical difference between substances and accidents. I have no knowledge of the writings of Cesalpin except through Buhle; for though I confess that the “Quæstiones Peripateticæ” may be found in the British Museum,[1036] it would scarce repay the labour to examine what is both erroneous and obscure.

[1036] Buhle, ii. 525. Brucker (iv. 222), laments that he had never seen this book. It seems that there were few good libraries in Germany in Brucker’s age, or at least that he had no access to them, for it is surprising how often he makes the same complaint. He had, however, seen a copy of the Alpes Cæsæ of Taurellus, and gives rather a long account both of the man and of the book. Ibid. and p. 300.

|Cremonini.|

7. The name of Cremonini, professor of philosophy for above forty years at Padua, is better known than his writings. These have become of the greatest scarcity. Brucker tells us he had not been able to see any of them, and Buhle had met with but two or three.[1037] Those at which I have looked are treatises on the Aristotelian physics; they contain little of any interest; nor did I perceive that they countenance, though they may not repel, the charge of atheism sometimes brought against Cremonini, but which, if at all well-founded, seems rather to rest on external evidence. Cremonini, according to Buhle, refutes the Averoistic notion of an universal human intelligence. Gabriel Naudé, both in his letters, and in the records of his conversation called Naudæana, speaks with great admiration of Cremonini.[1038] He had himself passed some years at Padua, and was at that time a disciple of the Aristotelian school in physics, which he abandoned after his intimacy with Gassendi.

[1037] Buhle, ii. 519.

[1038] Some passages in the Naudæana tend to confirm the suspicion of irreligion, both with respect to Cremonini and Naudé himself.

|Opponents of Aristotle.|

|Patrizzi.|

8. Meantime the authority of Aristotle, great in name and respected in the schools, began to lose more and more of its influence over speculative minds. Cesalpin, an Aristotelian by profession, had gone wide in some points from his master. But others waged an open war as philosophical reformers. Francis Patrizzi, in his “Discussiones Peripateticæ” (1571 and 1581), appealed to prejudice with the arms of calumny, raking up the most unwarranted aspersions against the private life of Aristotle, to prepare the way for assailing his philosophy; a warfare not the less unworthy, that it is often successful. In the case of Patrizzi it was otherwise; his book was little read; and his own notions of philosophy, borrowed from the later Platonists, and that rabble of spurious writers who had misled Ficinus and Picus of Mirandola, dressed up by Patrizzi with a fantastic terminology, had little chance of subverting so well-established and acute a system as that of Aristotle.[1039]

[1039] Buhle, ii. 548. Brucker, iv. 422.

|System of Telesio.|

9. Bernard Telesio, a native of Cosenza, had greater success, and attained a more celebrated name. The first two books of his treatise, “De Natura Rerum juxta Propria Principia,” appeared at Rome in 1565; the rest was published in 1586. These contain an hypothesis more intelligible than that of Patrizzi, and less destitute of a certain apparent correspondence with the phenomena of nature. Two active incorporeal principles, heat and cold, contend with perpetual opposition for the dominion over a third, which is passive matter. Of these three all nature consists. The region of pure heat is in the heavens, in the sun and stars, where it is united with the most subtle matter; that of cold in the centre of the earth, where matter is most condensed; all between is their battle-field, in which they continually struggle, and alternately conquer. These principles are not only active, but intelligent, so far at least as to perceive their own acts and mutual impressions. Heat is the cause of motion; cold is by nature immovable, and tends to keep all things in repose.[1040]

[1040] Brucker, iv. 449. Buhle, ii. 563. Ginguéné, vii. 501.

10. Telesio has been generally supposed to have borrowed this theory from that of Parmenides, in which the antagonist principles of heat and cold had been employed in a similar manner. Buhle denies the identity of the two systems, and considers that of Telesio as more nearly allied to the Aristotelian, except in substituting heat and cold for the more abstract notions of form and privation. Heat and cold, it might rather perhaps be said, seem to be merely ill-chosen names for the hypothetical causes of motion and rest; and the real laws of nature, with respect to both of these, are as little discoverable in the Telesian as in the more established theory. Yet its author perceived that the one possessed an expansive, the other a condensing power; and his principles of heat and cold bear a partial analogy to repulsion and attraction, the antagonist forces which modern philosophy employs. Lord Bacon was sufficiently struck with the system of Telesio to illustrate it in a separate fragment of the Instauratio Magna, though sensible of its inadequacy to solve the mysteries of nature; and a man of eccentric genius, Campanella, to whom we shall come hereafter, adopted it as the basis of his own wilder speculations. Telesio seems to have ascribed a sort of intelligence to plants, which his last-mentioned disciple carried to a strange excess of paradox.

|Jordano Bruno.|

|His Italian works. Cena de li Ceneri.|

11. The name of Telesio is perhaps hardly so well-known at present as that of Jordano Bruno. It was far otherwise formerly; and we do not find that the philosophy of this singular and unfortunate man attracted much further notice than to cost him his life. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the Inquisition at Rome did not rather attend to his former profession of protestantism and invectives against the church, than to the latent atheism it pretended to detect in his writings, which are at least as innocent as those of Cesalpin. The self-conceit of Bruno, his contemptuous language about Aristotle and his followers, the paradoxical strain, the obscurity and confusion, in many places, of his writings, we may add, his poverty and frequent change of place, had rendered him of little estimation in the eyes of the world. But in the last century the fate of Bruno excited some degree of interest about his opinions. Whether his hypotheses were truly atheistical became the subject of controversy; his works, by which it should have been decided, were so scarce that few could speak with knowledge of their contents; and Brucker, who inclines to think there was no sufficient ground for the imputation, admits that he had only seen one of Bruno’s minor treatises. The later German philosophers, however, have paid more attention to these obscure books, from a similarity they sometimes found in Bruno’s theories to their own. Buhle has devoted above a hundred pages to this subject.[1041] The Italian treatises have within a few years been reprinted in Germany, and it is not uncommon in modern books to find an eulogy on the philosopher of Nola. I have not made myself acquainted with his Latin writings, except through the means of Buhle, who has taken a great deal of pains with the subject. The principal Italian treatises are entitled, La Cena de li Ceneri, Della Causa, Principia ed Uno, and Dell’Infinito Universo. Each of these is in five dialogues. The Cena de li Ceneri contains a physical theory of the world, in which the author makes some show of geometrical diagrams, but deviates so often into rhapsodies of vanity and nonsense, that it is difficult to pronounce whether he had much knowledge of the science. Copernicus, to whose theory of the terrestrial motion Bruno entirely adheres, he praises as superior to any former astronomer; but intimates that he did not go far beyond vulgar prejudices, being more of a mathematician than a philosopher. The gravity of bodies he treats as a most absurd hypothesis, all natural motion, as he fancies, being circular. Yet he seems to have had some dim glimpse of what is meant by the composition of motions, asserting that the earth has four simple motions, out of which one is compounded.[1042]

[1041] Vol. ii. p. 604-730.

[1042] Dial. v. p. 120 (1830). These dialogues were written, or purport to have been written, in England. He extols Leicester, Walsingham, and especially Sidney.

|Della Causa, Principio ed Uno.|

12. The second, and much more important treatise, Delia Causa, Principio ed Uno, professes to reveal the metaphysical philosophy of Bruno, a system which, at least in pretext, brought him to the stake at Rome, and the purport of which has been the theme of much controversy. The extreme scarcity of his writings has, no doubt, contributed to this variety of judgment; but though his style, strictly speaking, is not obscure, and he seems by no means inclined to conceal his meaning, I am not able to resolve with certainty the problem that Brucker and those whom he quotes have discussed.[1043] But the system of Bruno, so far as I understand it from what I have read of his writings, and from Buhle’s analysis of them, may be said to contain a sort of double pantheism. The world is animated by an omnipresent intelligent soul, the first cause of every form that matter can assume, but not of matter itself. The soul of the universe is the only physical agent, the interior artist that works in the vast whole, that calls out the plant from the seed and matures the fruit, that lives in all things, though they may not seem to live, and in fact do not, when unorganised, live separately considered, though they all partake of the universal life, and in their component parts may he rendered living. A table as a table, a coat as a coat, are not alive, but inasmuch as they derive their substance from nature, they are composed of living particles.[1044] There is nothing so small or so unimportant, but that a portion of spirit dwells in it, and this spiritual substance requires but a proper subject to become a plant or an animal. Forms particular are in constant change; but the first form, being the source of all others, as well as the first matter, are eternal. The soul of the world is the constituent principle of the universe and of all its parts. And thus we have an intrinsic, eternal, self-subsistent principle of form, far better than that which the sophists feigned, whose substances are compounded and corruptible, and, therefore, nothing else than accidents.[1045] Forms in particular are the accidents of matter, and we should make a divinity of matter like some Arabian peripatetics, if we did not recur to the living fountain of form--the eternal soul of the world. The first matter is neither corporeal nor sensible, it is eternal and unchangeable, the fruitful mother of forms and their grave. Form and matter, says Bruno, pursuing this fanciful analogy, may be compared to male and female. Form never errs, is never imperfect, but through its conjunction with matter; it might adopt the words of the father of the human race: Mulier quam mihi dedisti (la materia, la quale mi hai dato consorte), me decepit (lei è cagione d’ogni mio peccato). The speculations of Bruno now become more and more subtle, and he admits, that our understandings cannot grasp what he pretends to demonstrate--the identity of a simply active and simply passive principle: but the question really is, whether we can see any meaning in his propositions.

[1043] Brucker, vol. v. 52.

[1044] Thus Buhle, or at least his French translator; but the original words are different. Dico dunque che la tavola come tavola non è animata, nè la veste, nè il cuojo come cuojo, nè il vetro come vetro, ma _come cose naturali e composte hanno in se la materia e la forma_. Sia pur cosa quanto piccola e minima si voglia, ha in se parte di sustanza spirituale, la quale, se trova il soggetto disposto, si stende ad esser pianta, ad esser animale, e riceve membri de qual si voglia corpo, che comunemente si dice animato; per chè spirto si trova in tutte le cose, e non è minimo corpusculo, che non contegna cotal porzione in se, che non inanimi, p. 241. Buhle seems not to have understood the words in italics, which certainly are not remarkably plain, and to have substituted what he thought might pass for meaning.

The recent theories of equivocal generation, held by some philosophers, more on the continent than in England, according to which all matter, or at least all matter susceptible of organisation by its elements, may become organised and living under peculiar circumstances, seem not very dissimilar to this system of Bruno.

[1045] Or, quanto a la causa effectrice, dico l’efficiente fisico universale esser l’intelletto universale, ch’è la prima e principial facultà dell’anima del mondo, la qual è forma universale di quello..... L’intelletto universale è l’intima più reale e propria facultà, e parte potenziale dell’anima del mondo. Questo è uno medesimo ch’empie il tutto, illumina l’universo, e indrizza la natura à produrre le sue specie, come si conviene, e cosi ha rispetto à la produzione di cose naturali, come il nostro intelletto è la congrua produzione di specie razionali.... Questo è nominato da Platonici fabbro del mondo, p. 235.

Dunque abbiamo un principio intrinseco formale eterno e sussistente incomparabilmente migliore di quello, che han finto li sophisti, che versano circa gl’accidenti, ignoranti de la sustanza de le cose, e che vengono a ponere le sustanze corrottibili, per chè quello chiamano massimamente, primamente e principalmente sustanza, che risulta da la composizione; il che non è altro, ch’uno accidente, che non contiene in se nulla stabilità e verità, e si risolve in nulla, p. 242.

|Pantheism of Bruno.|

13. We have said that the system of Bruno seems to involve a double pantheism. The first is of a simple kind, the hylozoism, which has been exhibited in the preceding paragraph; it excludes a creative deity, in the strict sense of creation, but leaving an active provident intelligence, does not seem by any means chargeable with positive atheism. But to this soul of the world Bruno appears not to have ascribed the name of divinity.[1046] The first form, and the first matter, and all the forms generated by the two, make, in his theory, but one being, the infinite unchangeable universe, in which is everything, both in power and in act, and which, being all things collectively, is no one thing separately; it is form and not form, matter and not matter, soul and not soul. He expands this mysterious language much further, resolving the whole nature of the deity into an abstract, barren, all embracing unity.[1047]

[1046] Son tre sorti d’intelletto; il divino, ch’è tutto; questo mondano, che fà tutto; gli altri particulari, che si fanno tutte.... È vera causa efficiente (l’intelletto mondano) non tanto estrinseca, come anco intrinseca di tutte cose naturali.... Mi par, che detrahano à la divina bontà e à l’eccellenza di questo grande animale e simulacro del primo principio quelli, che non vogliano intendere, nè affirmare, il mondo con li suoi membri essere animato, p. 239.

[1047] È dunque l’universo uno, infinito, immobile. Uno dico è la possibilità assoluta, uno l’atto, una la forma o anima, una la materia o corpo, una la cosa, uno lo ente, uno il massimo e ottimo, il quale non deve posser essere compreso, e però infinibile e interminabile, e per tanto infinito e interminato, e per conseguenza immobile. Questo non si muove localmente; per chè non ha cosa fuor di sè, ove si trasporte, atteso chè sia il tutto. Non si genera; per ché non è altro essere, che lui possa desiderare o aspettare, atteso che abbia tutto lo essere. Non si corrompe; per chè non è altra cosa, in cui si cangi, atteso che lui sia ogni cosa. Non può sminuire o crescere, otteso ch’è infinito, a cui come non si può aggiungere, cosi è da cui non si può sottrarre, per ciò che lo infinito non ha parti proporzionali. Non è alterabile in altra disposizione, per chè non ha esterno, da cui patisca, e per cui venga in qualche affezione. Oltre chè per comprender tutte contrarietadi nell’esser suo, in unità e convenienza, e nessuna inclinazione posser avere ad altro e novo essere, o pur ad altro e altro modo d’essere, non può esser soggetto di mutazione secundo qualità alcuna, nè può aver contrario o diverso, che l’alteri, per chè in lui è ogni cosa concorde. Non è materia, per chè non è figurato, ne figurabile, non è terminato, ne terminabile. Non è forma, per chè non informa, ne figura altro, atteso che è tutto, è massimo, è uno, è universo. Non è misurabile, ne misura. Non si comprende; per chè non è maggior di sè. Non si è compreso; per chè non è minor di se. Non si agguaglia; per chè non è altro e altro, ma uno e medesimo. Essendo medesimo ed uno, non ha essere ed essere; et per chè non ha essere ed essere, non ha parti e parti; e per ciò che non ha parte e parte, non è composto. Questo è termine di sorte, chè non è termine; è talmente forma, chè non è forma; è talmente materia, chè non è materia; è talmente anima, chè non è anima; per chè è il tutto indifferentemente, e però è uno, l’universo è uno, p. 280.

Ecco, come non è possibile, ma necessario, che l’ottimo, massimo incomprensibile è tutto, è par tutto, è in tutto, per chè come simplice ed indivisibile può esser tutto, esser per tutto, essere in tutto. E così non è stato vanamente detto, che Giove empie tutte le cose, inabita tutte le parti dell’universo, è centro di ciò, che ha l’essere uno in tutto, e per cui uno è tutto. Il quale, essendo tutte le cose, e comprendendo tutto l’essere in se, viene a far, che ogni cosa sia in ogni cosa. Ma mi direste, per chè dunque le cose si cangiano, la materia particolare si forza ad altre forme? vi rispondo, che non è mutazione, che cerca altro essere, ma altro modo di essere. E questa è la differenza tra l’universo e le cose dell’universo; per chè nullo comprende tutto l’essere e tutti modi di essere; di queste ciascuna ha tutto l’essere, ma non tutti i modi di essere, p. 282.

The following sonnet by Bruno is characteristic of his mystical imagination; but we must not confound the personification of an abstract idea with theism:--

Causa, Principio, ed Uno sempiterno, Onde l’esser, la vita, il moto pende, E a lungo, a largo, e profondo si stende Quanto si dice in ciel, terra ed inferno; Con senso, con ragion, con mente scerno Ch’atto, misura e conto non comprende, Quel vigor, mole e numero, che tende Oltre ogni inferior, mezzo e superno. Cieco error, tempo avaro, ria fortuna, Sorda invidia, vil rabbia, iniquo zelo, Crudo cor, empio ingegno, strano ardire, Non basteranno a farmi l’aria bruna, Non mi porrann’avanti gl’occhi il velo, Non faran mai, ch’il mio bel Sol non mire.

If I have quoted too much from Jordano Bruno it may be excused by the great rarity of his works, which has been the cause that some late writers have not fully seen the character of his speculations.

|Bruno’s other writings.|

14. These bold theories of Jordano Bruno are chiefly contained in the treatise Della Causa, Principio ed Uno. In another entitled Dell’Infinito Universo e Mondi, which, like the former, is written in dialogue, he asserts the infinity of the universe, and the plurality of worlds. That the stars are suns, shining by their own light, that each has its revolving planets, now become the familiar creed of children, were then among the enormous paradoxes and capital offences of Bruno. His strong assertion of the Copernican theory was, doubtless, not quite so singular, yet this had but few proselytes in the sixteenth century. His other writings, of all which Buhle has furnished us with an account, are numerous; some of them relate to the art of Raymond Lully, which Bruno professed to esteem very highly; and in these mnemonical treatises he introduced much of his own theoretical philosophy. Others are more exclusively metaphysical, and designed to make his leading principles, as to unity, number, and form, more intelligible to the common reader. They are full, according to what we find in Brucker and Buhle, of strange and nonsensical propositions, such as men, unable to master their own crude fancies on subjects above their reach, are wont to put forth. None, however, of his productions, has been more often mentioned than the Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante, alleged by some to be full of his atheistical impieties, while others have taken it for a mere satire on the Roman church. This diversity was very natural in those who wrote of a book they had never seen. It now appears that this famous work is a general moral satire in an allegorical form, with little that could excite attention, and less that could give such offence as to provoke the author’s death.[1048]

[1048] Ginguéné, vol. vii., has given an analysis of the Spaccio della Bestia.

|General character of his philosophy.|

15. Upon the whole, we may probably place Bruno in this province of speculative philosophy, though not high, yet above Cesalpin, or any of the school of Averroes. He has fallen into great errors, but they seem to have perceived no truth. His doctrine was not original; it came from the Eleatic philosophers, from Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists,[1049] and in some measure from Plato himself; and it is ultimately, beyond doubt, of oriental origin. What seems most his own, and I must speak very doubtfully as to this, is the syncretism of the tenet of a pervading spirit, an Anima Mundi, which in itself is an imperfect theism, with the more pernicious hypothesis of an universal Monad, to which every distinct attribute, except unity, was to be denied. Yet it is just to observe that, in one passage already quoted in a note, Bruno expressly says, “there are three kinds of intelligence, the divine, which is everything; the mundane, which does everything; and the particular intelligences which are all made by the second.” The inconceivableness of ascribing intelligence to Bruno’s universe, and yet thus distinguishing it as he does from the mundane intelligence, may not perhaps be a sufficient reason for denying him a place among theistic philosophers. But it must be confessed, that the general tone of these dialogues conveys no other impression than that of a pantheism, in which every vestige of a supreme intelligence, beyond his soul of the world, is effaced.[1050]

[1049] See a valuable analysis of the philosophy of Plotinus in Degerando’s Histoire Comparée des Systèmes, iii. 357 (edit. 1823). It will be found that his language with respect to the mystic supremacy of unity, is that of Bruno himself. Plotin, however, was not only theistic, but intensely religious, and if he had come a century later would, instead of a heathen philosopher, have been one of the first names among the saints of the church. It is probable that his influence, as it is, has not been small in modelling the mystic theology. Scotus Erigena was of the same school, and his language about the first Monad is similar to that of Bruno. Degerando, vol. iv. p. 372.

[1050] I can hardly agree with Mr. Whewell in supposing that Jordano Bruno “probably had a considerable share in introducing the new opinions (of Copernicus) into England.” Hist. of Inductive Sciences, i. 385. Very few in England seem to have embraced these opinions; and those who did so, like Wright and Gilbert, were men who had somewhat better reasons than the ipse dixit of a wandering Italian.

|Sceptical theory of Sanchez.|

16. The system, if so it may be called, of Bruno, was essentially dogmatic, reducing the most subtle and incomprehensible mysteries into positive aphorisms of science. Sanchez, a Portuguese physician, settled as a public instructor at Toulouse, took a different course; the preface of his treatise, Quod Nihil Scitur, is dated from that city in 1576; but no edition is known to have existed before 1581.[1051] This work is a mere tissue of sceptical fallacies, propounded, however, with a confident tone not unusual in that class of sophists. He begins abruptly with these words: Nec unum hoc scio, me nihil scire, conjector tamen nec me nec alios. Hæc mihi vexillum propositio sit, hæc sequenda venit, Nihil Scitur. Hanc si probare scivero, merito concludam nihil sciri; si nescivero, hoc ipso melius; id enim asserebam. A good deal more follows in the same sophistical style of cavillation. Hoc unum semper maxime ab aliquo expetivi, quod modo facio, ut vere diceret an aliquid perfecte sciret; nusquam tamen inveni, præterquam in sapiente illo proboque viro Socrate (licet et Pyrrhonii, Academici et Sceptici vocati, cum Favorino id etiam assererent) quod hoc unum sciebat quod nihil sciret. Quo solo dicto mihi doctissimus indicatur; quanquam nec adhuc omnino mihi explêrit mentem; cum et illud unum, sicut alia, ignoraret.[1052]

[1051] Brucker, iv. 541, with this fact before his eyes, strangely asserts Sanchez to have been born in 1562. Buhle and Cousin copy him without hesitation. Antonio is ignorant of any edition of “Quod Nihil Scitur,” except that of Rotterdam in 1649; and ignorant also that the book contains anything remarkable.

[1052] P. 10.

17. Sanchez puts a few things well; but his scepticism, as we perceive, is extravagant. After descanting on Montaigne’s favourite topic, the various manners and opinions of mankind, he says, Non finem faceremus si omnes omnium mores recensere vellemus. An tu his eandem rationem, quam nobis, omnino putes? Mihi non verisimile videtur. Nihil tamen ambo scimus. Negabis forsan tales aliquos esse homines. Non contendam; sic ab aliis accepi.[1053] Yet, notwithstanding his sweeping denunciation of all science in the boldest tone of Pyrrhonism, Sanchez comes at length to admit the possibility of a limited or probable knowledge of truth; and, as might perhaps be expected, conceives that he had himself attained it. “There are two modes,” he observes, “of discovering truth, by neither of which do men learn the real nature of things, but yet obtain some kind of insight into them. These are experiment and reason, neither being sufficient alone; but experiments, however well conducted, do not show us the nature of things, and reason can only conjecture them. Hence there can be no such thing as perfect science; and books have been employed to eke out the deficiencies of our own experience; but their confusion, prolixity, multitude, and want of trust-worthiness prevents this resource from being of much value, nor is life long enough for so much study. Besides, this perfect knowledge requires a perfect recipient of it, and a right disposition of the subject of knowledge, which two I have never seen. Reader, if you have met with them, write me word.” He concludes this treatise by promising another, “in which we shall explain the method of knowing truth, as far as human weakness will permit;” and, as his self-complacency rises above his affected scepticism, adds, mihi in animo est firmam et facilem quantum possim scientiam fundare.

[1053] P. 39.

18. This treatise of Sanchez bears witness to a deep sense of the imperfections of the received systems in science and reasoning, and to a restless longing for truth, which strikes us in other writers of this latter period of the sixteenth century. Lord Bacon, I believe, has never alluded to Sanchez, and such paradoxical scepticism was likely to disgust his strong mind; yet we may sometimes discern signs of a Baconian spirit in the attacks of our Spanish philosopher on the syllogistic logic, as being built on abstract, and not significant terms, and in his clear perception of the difference between a knowledge of words and one of things.

|Logic of Aconcio.|

19. What Sanchez promised and Bacon gave, a new method of reasoning, by which truth might be better determined than through the common dialectics, had been partially attempted already by Aconcio, mentioned in the last chapter as one of those highly-gifted Italians who fled for religion to a Protestant country. Without openly assailing the authority of Aristotle, he endeavoured to frame a new discipline of the faculties for the discovery of truth. His treatise, De Methodo, sive Recta Investigandarum Tradendarumque Scientiarum Ratione, was published at Basle in 1558, and was several times reprinted, till later works, those especially of Bacon and Des Cartes, caused it to be forgotten. Aconcio defines logic, the right method of thinking and teaching, recta contemplandi docendique ratio. Of the importance of method, or right order in prosecuting our inquiries, he thinks so highly, that if thirty years were to be destined to intellectual labour, he would allot two-thirds of the time to acquiring dexterity in this art, which seems to imply that he did not consider it very easy. To know anything, he tells us, is to know what it is, or what are its causes and effects. All men have the germs of knowledge latent in them, as to matters cognizable by human faculties; it is the business of logic to excite and develop them: Notiones illas seu scintillas sub cinere latentes detegere aptèque ad res obscuras illustrandas applicare.[1054]

[1054] P. 30.

20. Aconcio next gives rules at length for constructing definitions, by attending to the genus and differentia. These rules are good, and might very properly find a place in a book of logic; but whether they contain much that would vainly be sought in other writers, we do not determine. He comes afterwards to the methods of distributing a subject. The analytic method is by all means to be preferred for the investigation of truth, and, contrary to what Galen and others have advised, even for communicating it to others; since a man can learn that of which he is ignorant, only by means of what is better known, whether he does this himself, or with help of a teacher; the only process being, a notioribus ad minus nota. In this little treatise of Aconcio, there seem to be the elements of a sounder philosophy, and a more steady direction of the mind to discover the reality of things than belonged to the logic of the age, whether as taught by the Aristotelians or by Ramus. It has not however been quoted by Lord Bacon, nor are we sure that he has profited by it.

|Nizolius on the principles of philosophy.|

21. A more celebrated work than this by Aconcio is one by the distinguished scholar, Marius Nizolius, “De Veris Principiis et Vera Ratione Philosophandi contra Pseudo-Philosophos.” (Parma, 1553.) It owes, however, what reputation it possesses to Leibnitz, who reprinted it in 1670, with a very able preface, one of his first contributions to philosophy. The treatise itself, he says, was almost strangled in the birth; and certainly the invectives of Nizolius against the logic and metaphysics of Aristotle could have had little chance of success in a country like Italy, where that authority was more undoubted and durable than in any other. The aim of Nizolius was to set up the best authors of Greece and Rome and the study of philology against the scholastic terminology. But certainly this polite literature was not sufficient for the discovery of truth: nor does the book keep up to the promise of its title, though, by endeavouring to eradicate barbarous sophistry, he may be said to have laboured in the interests of real philosophy. The preface of Leibnitz animadverts on what appeared to him some metaphysical errors of Nizolius, especially an excess of nominalism, which tended to undermine the foundations of certainty, and his presumptuous scorn of Aristotle.[1055] His own object was rather to recommend the treatise as a model of philosophical language without barbarism, than to bestow much praise on its philosophy. Brucker has spoken of it rather slightingly, and Buhle with much contempt. I am not prepared by a sufficient study of its contents to pass any judgment; but Buhle’s censure has appeared to me somewhat unfair. Dugald Stewart, who was not acquainted with what the latter has said, thinks Nizolius deserving of more commendation than Brucker has assigned to him.[1056] He argues against all dialectics, and therefore differs from Ramus; concluding with two propositions as the result of his whole book:--That as many logicians and metaphysicians as are anywhere found, so many capital enemies of truth will then and there exist; and that so long as Aristotle shall be supreme in the logic and metaphysics of the schools, so long will error and barbarism reign over the mind. There is nothing very deep or pointed in this summary of his reasoning.

[1055] Nizolius maintained that universal terms were only particulars--collectivè sumpta. Leibnitz replies, that they are particulars--distributive sumpta; as, omnis homo est animal means, that every one man is an animal; not that the genus man, taken collectively, is an animal. Nec vero Nizolii error his levis est; habet enim magnum aliquid in recessu. Nam si universalia nihil aliud sunt quam singularium collectiones, sequitur, scientiam nullam haberi per demonstrationem, quod et infra colligit Nizolius, sed collectionem singularium seu inductionem. Sed ea ratione prorsus evertuntur scientiæ, ac Sceptici vicere. Nam nunquam constitui possunt ea ratione propositiones perfecte universales, quia inductione nunquam certus es, omnia individue a te tentata esse; sed semper intra hanc propositionem subsistes; omnia illa quæ expertus sum sunt talia; cum vero non possit esse ulla ratio universalis, semper manebit possibile innumera quæ tu non sis expertus esse diversa. Hinc jam patet inductionem per se nihil producere, ne certitudinem quidem moralem, sine adminiculo propositionum non ab inductione, sed ratione universali prudentium; nam si essent et adminicula ab inductione, indigerent novis adminiculis, nec haberetur certitudo moralis in infinitum. Sed certitudo moralis ab inductione sperari plane non potest, additis quibuscunque adminiculis, et propositionem hanc, totum magis esse sua parte, sola inductione nunquam perfectè sciemus. Mox enim prodibit, qui negabit ob peculiarem quondam rationem in aliis nondum tentatis veram esse, quemadmodum ex facto scimus Gregorium a Sancto Vincentio negasse totum esse majus sua parte, in angulis saltem contactûs, alios in infinito; et Thomam Hobbes (at quem virum!) cœpisse dubitare de propositione illa geometrica a Pythagora demonstrata, et hecatombæ sacrificio digna habita; quod ego non sine stupore legi. This extract is not very much to the purpose of the text, but it may please some of those who take an interest in such speculations.

[1056] Dissertation on Progress of Philosophy, p. 38.

|Margarita Antoniana of Pereira.|

22. The Margarita Antoniana, by Gomez Pereira, published at Medina del Campo in 1554, has been chiefly remembered as the ground of one of the many charges against Des Cartes, for appropriating unacknowledged opinions of his predecessors. The book is exceedingly scarce, which has been strangely ascribed to the efforts of Des Cartes to suppress it.[1057] There is however a copy of the original edition in the British Museum, and it has been reprinted in Spain. It was an unhappy theft, if theft it were; for what Pereira maintained was precisely the most untenable proposition of the great French philosopher--the absence of sensation in brutes. Pereira argues against this with an extraordinary disregard of common phenomena, on the assumption of certain maxims which cannot be true, if they contradict inferences from our observation far more convincing than themselves. We find him give a curious reason for denying that we can infer the sensibility of brutes from their outward actions; namely, that this would prove too much, and lead us to believe them rational beings; instancing among other stories, true or false, of apparent sagacity, the dog in pursuit of a hare, who, coming where two roads meet, if he traces no scent on the first, takes the other without trial.[1058] Pereira is a rejecter of Aristotelian despotism; and observes that in matters of speculation and not of faith, no authority is to be respected.[1059] Notwithstanding this assertion of freedom, he seems to be wholly enchained by the metaphysics of the schools; nor should I have thought the book worthy of notice, but for its scarcity and the circumstance above-mentioned about Des Cartes.

[1057] Biogr. Univ. Brunet, Manuel du Libraire. Bayle has a long article on Pereira, but though he says the book had been shown to him, he wanted probably the opportunity to read much of it.

According to Brunet, several copies have been sold in France, some of them at no great price. The later edition, of 1749, is of course cheaper.

[1058] Fol. 18. This is continually told of dogs; but does any sensible sportsman confirm it by his own experience? I ask for information only.

[1059] Fol. 4.

23. These are, as far as I know, the only works deserving of commemoration in the history of speculative philosophy. A few might easily be inserted from the catalogues of libraries, or from biographical collections, as well as from the learned labours of Morhof, Brucker, Tennemann, and Buhle. It is also not to be doubted, that in treatises of a different character, theological, moral, or medical, very many passages, worthy of remembrance for their truth, their ingenuity, or originality, might be discovered, that bear upon the best methods of reasoning, the philosophy of the human mind, the theory of natural religion, or the general system of the material world.

|Logic of Ramus; its success.|

24. We should not however conclude this chapter without adverting to the dialectical method of Ramus, whom we left at the middle of the century, struggling against all the arms of orthodox logic in the university of Paris. The reign of Henry II. was more propitious to him than that of Francis. In 1551, through the patronage of the Cardinal of Lorraine, Ramus became royal professor of rhetoric and philosophy; and his new system which, as has been mentioned, comprehended much that was important in the art of rhetoric, began to make numerous proselytes. Omer Talon, known for a treatise on eloquence, was among the most ardent of these; and to him we owe our most authentic account of the contest of Ramus with the Sorbonne. The latter were not conciliated, of course, by the success of their adversary; and Ramus having adhered to the Huguenot party in the civil feuds of France, it has been ascribed to the malignity of one of his philosophical opponents, that he perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He had however already, by personally travelling and teaching in Germany, spread the knowledge of his system over that country. It was received in some of the German universities with great favour, notwithstanding the influence which Melanchthon’s name retained, and which had been entirely thrown into the scale of Aristotle. The Ramists and Anti-Ramists battled it in books of logic through the rest of this century, as well as afterwards; but this was the principal period of Ramus’s glory. In Italy he had few disciples; but France, England, and still more Scotland and Germany were full of them. Andrew Melville introduced the logic of Ramus at Glasgow. It was resisted for some time at St. Andrew’s, but ultimately became popular in all the Scottish universities.[1060] Scarce any eminent public school, says Brucker, can be named, in which the Ramists were not teachers. They encountered an equally zealous militia under the Aristotelian standard; while some, with the spirit of compromise, which always takes possession of a few minds, though it is rarely very successful, endeavoured to unite the two methods, which in fact do not seem essentially exclusive of each other. It cannot be required of me to give an account of books so totally forgotten, and so uninteresting in their subjects as these dialectical treatises on either side. The importance of Ramus in philosophical history is not so much founded on his own deserts, as on the effect he produced in loosening the fetters of inveterate prejudice, and thus preparing the way, like many others of his generation, for those who were to be the restorers of genuine philosophy.[1061]

[1060] M’Crie’s Life of Melville, ii. 306.

[1061] Brucker, v. 576. Buhle, ii. 601.