On the Philosophy of Discovery, Chapters Historical and Critical

The Revival of Platonism

1. Causes of Delay in the Advance of Knowledge.—In the insight possessed by learned men into the method by which truth was to be discovered, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries went backwards, rather than forwards, from the point which had been reached in the thirteenth. Roger Bacon had urged them to have recourse to experiment; but they returned with additional and exclusive zeal to the more favourite employment of reasoning upon their own conceptions. He had called upon them to look at the world without; but their eyes forthwith turned back upon the world within. In the constant oscillation of the human mind between Ideas and Facts, after having for a moment touched the latter, it seemed to swing back more impetuously to the former. Not only was the philosophy of Aristotle firmly established for a considerable period, but when men began to question its authority, they attempted to set up in its place a philosophy still more purely ideal, that of Plato. It was not till the actual progress of experimental knowledge for some centuries had given it a vast accumulation of force, that it was able to break its way fully into the circle of speculative science. The new Platonist schoolmen had to run their course, the practical discoverers had to prove their merit by their works, the Italian innovators had to utter their aspirations for a change, before the second Bacon could truly declare that the time for a fundamental reform was at length arrived.

It cannot but seem strange, to any one who attempts to trace the general outline of the intellectual progress of man, and who considers him as under the guidance of a Providential sway, that he should thus be permitted to wander so long in a wilderness of intellectual darkness; and even to turn back, by a perverse caprice as it might seem, when on the very border of the brighter and better land which was his destined inheritance. We do not attempt to solve this difficulty: but such a course of things naturally suggests the thought, that a progress in physical science is not the main object of man's career, in the eyes of the Power who directs the fortunes of our race. We can easily conceive that it may have been necessary to man's general welfare that he should continue to turn his eyes inwards upon his own heart and faculties, till Law and Duty, Religion and Government, Faith and Hope, had been fully incorporated with all the past acquisitions of human intellect; rather than that he should have rushed on into a train of discoveries tending to chain him to the objects and operations of the material world. The systematic Law[86 - Gratian published the Decretals in the twelfth century; and the Canon and Civil Law became a regular study in the universities soon afterwards.] and philosophical Theology which acquired their ascendancy in men's minds at the time of which we speak, kept them engaged in a region of speculations which perhaps prepared the way for a profounder and wider civilization, for a more elevated and spiritual character, than might have been possible without such a preparation. The great Italian poet of the fourteenth century speaks with strong admiration of the founders of the system which prevailed in his time. Thomas, Albert, Gratian, Peter Lombard, occupy distinguished places in the Paradise. The first, who is the poet's instructor, says,—

Io fui degli agni della santa greggia
Che Domenico mena per cammino
U' ben s'impingua se non si vaneggia.
Questo che m'è a destra piu vicino
Frate e maestro fummi; ed esso Alberto
E di Cologna, ed io Tomas d'Aquino....
Quell' altro fiammeggiar esce del riso
De Grazian, che l'uno et l'altro foro
Ajutò si che piace in Paradiso.

I, then, was of the lambs that Dominic
Leads, for his saintly flock, along the way
Where well they thrive not swoln with vanity.
He nearest on my right-hand brother was
And master to me; Albert of Cologne
Is this; and of Aquinum Thomas, I....
That next resplendence issues from the smile
Of Gratian, who to either forum lent
Such help as favour wins in Paradise.

It appears probable that neither poetry, nor painting, nor the other arts which require for their perfection a lofty and spiritualized imagination, would have appeared in the noble and beautiful forms which they assumed in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, if men of genius had, at the beginning of that period, made it their main business to discover the laws of nature, and to reduce them to a rigorous scientific form. Yet who can doubt that the absence of these touching and impressive works would have left one of the best and purest parts of man's nature without its due nutriment and development? It may perhaps be a necessary condition in the progress of man, that the Arts which aim at beauty should reach their excellence before the Sciences which seek speculative truth; and if this be so, we inherit, from the middle ages, treasures which may well reconcile us to the delay which took place in their cultivation of experimental science.

However this may be, it is our business at present to trace the circumstances of this very lingering advance. We have already noticed the contest of the Nominalists and Realists, which was one form, though, with regard to scientific methods, an unprofitable one, of the antithesis of Ideas and Things. Though, therefore, this struggle continued, we need not dwell upon it. The Nominalists denied the real existence of Ideas, which doctrine was to a great extent implied in the prevailing systems; but the controversy in which they thus engaged, did not lead them to seek for knowledge in a new field and by new methods. The arguments which Occam the Nominalist opposes to those of Duns Scotus the Realist, are marked with the stamp of the same system, and consist only in permutations and combinations of the same elementary conceptions. It was not till the impulse of external circumstances was added to the discontent, which the more stirring intellects felt towards the barren dogmatism of their age, that the activity of the human mind was again called into full play, and a new career of progression entered upon, till then undreamt of, except by a few prophetic spirits.

2. Causes of Progress.—These circumstances were principally the revival of Greek and Roman literature, the invention of Printing, the Protestant Reformation, and a great number of curious discoveries and inventions in the arts, which were soon succeeded by important steps in speculative physical science. Connected with the first of these events, was the rise of a party of learned men who expressed their dissatisfaction with the Aristotelian philosophy, as it was then taught, and manifested a strong preference for the views of Plato. It is by no means suitable to our plan to give a detailed account of this new Platonic school; but we may notice a few of the writers who belong to it, so far at least as to indicate its influence upon the Methods of pursuing science.

In the fourteenth century[87 - Tenneman, ix. 4.], the frequent intercourse of the most cultivated persons of the Eastern and Western Empire, the increased study of the Greek language in Italy, the intellectual activity of the Italian States, the discovery of manuscripts of the classical authors, were circumstances which excited or nourished a new and zealous study of the works of Greek and Roman genius. The genuine writings of the ancients, when presented in their native life and beauty, instead of being seen only in those lifeless fragments and dull transformations which the scholastic system had exhibited, excited an intense enthusiasm. Europe, at that period, might be represented by Plato's beautiful allegory, of a man who, after being long kept in a dark cavern, in which his knowledge of the external world is gathered from the images which stream through the chinks of his prison, is at last led forth into the full blaze of day. It was inevitable that such a change should animate men's efforts and enlarge their faculties. Greek literature became more and more known, especially by the influence of learned men who came from Constantinople into Italy: these teachers, though they honoured Aristotle, reverenced Plato no less, and had never been accustomed to follow with servile submission of thought either these or any other leaders. The effect of such influences soon reveals itself in the works of that period. Dante has woven into his Divina Commedia some of the ideas of Platonism. Petrarch, who had formed his mind by the study of Cicero, and had thus been inspired with a profound admiration for the literature of Greece, learnt Greek from Barlaam, a monk who came as ambassador from the Emperor of the East to the Pope, in 1339. With this instructor, the poet read the works of Plato; struck by their beauty, he contributed, by his writings and his conversation, to awake in others an admiration and love for that philosopher, which soon became strongly and extensively prevalent among the learned in Italy.

3. Hermolaus Barbarus, &c.—Along with the feeling there prevailed also, among those who had learnt to relish the genuine beauties of the Greek and Latin writers, a strong disgust for the barbarisms in which the scholastic philosophy was clothed. Hermolaus Barbarus[88 - Tenneman, ix. 25.], who was born in 1454, at Venice, and had formed his taste by the study of classical literature, translated, among other learned works, Themistius's paraphrastic expositions of the Physics of Aristotle; with the view of trying whether the Aristotelian Natural Philosophy could not be presented in good Latin, which the scholastic teachers denied. In his Preface he expresses great indignation against those philosophers who have written and disputed on philosophical subjects in barbarous Latin, and in an uncultured style, so that all refined minds are repelled from these studies by weariness and disgust. They have, he says, by this barbarism, endeavoured to secure to themselves, in their own province, a supremacy without rivals or opponents. Hence they maintain that mathematics, philosophy, jurisprudence, cannot be expounded in correct Latin;—that between these sciences and the genuine Latin language there is a great gulf, as between things that cannot be brought together: and on this ground they blame those who combine the study of philology and eloquence with that of science. This opinion, adds Hermolaus, perverts and ruins our studies; and is highly prejudicial and unworthy in respect to the state. Hermolaus awoke in others, as for instance, in John Picus of Mirandula, the same dislike to the reigning school philosophy. As an opponent of the same kind, we may add Marius Nizolius of Bersallo, a scholar who carried his admiration of Cicero to an exaggerated extent, and who was led, by a controversy with the defenders of the scholastic philosophy, to publish (1553) a work On the True Principles and True Method of Philosophizing. In the title of this work, he professes to give "the true principles of almost all arts and sciences, refuting and rejecting almost all the false principles of the Logicians and Metaphysicians." But although, in the work, he attacks the scholastic philosophy, he does little or nothing to justify the large pretensions of his title; and he excited, it is said, little notice. It is therefore curious that Leibnitz should have thought it worth his while to re-edit this work, which he did in 1670, adding remarks of his own.

4. Nicolaus Cusanus.—Without dwelling upon this opposition to the scholastic system on the ground of taste, I shall notice somewhat further those writers who put forwards Platonic views, as fitted to complete or to replace the doctrines of Aristotle. Among these, I may place Nicolaus Cusanus, (so called from Cus, a village on the Moselle, where he was born in 1401;) who was afterwards raised to the dignity of cardinal. We might, indeed, at first be tempted to include Cusanus among those persons who were led to reject the old philosophy by being themselves agents in the progressive movement of physical science. For he published, before Copernicus, and independently of him, the doctrine that the earth is in motion[89 - "Jam nobis manifestum est terram istam in veritate moveri," &c.—De Doctâ Ignorantiâ, lib. ii. c. xii.]. But it should be recollected that in order to see the possibility of this doctrine, and its claims to acceptance, no new reference to observation was requisite. The Heliocentric System was merely a new mode of representing to the mind facts, with which all astronomers had long been familiar. The system might very easily have been embraced and inculcated by Plato himself; as indeed it is said to have been actually taught by Pythagoras. The mere adoption of the Heliocentric view, therefore, without attempting to realize the system in detail, as Copernicus did, cannot entitle a writer of the fifteenth century to be looked upon as one of the authors of the discoveries of that period; and we must consider Cusanus as a speculative anti-Aristotelian, rather than as a practical reformer.

The title of Cusanus's book, De Doctâ Ignorantiâ, shows how far he was from agreeing with those who conceived that, in the works of Aristotle, they had a full and complete system of all human knowledge. At the outset of this book[90 - De Doct. Ignor. lib. i. c. i.], he says, after pointing out some difficulties in the received philosophy, "If, therefore, the case be so, (as even the very profound Aristotle, in his First Philosophy, affirms,) that in things most manifest by nature, there is a difficulty, no less than for an owl to look at the sun; since the appetite of knowledge is not implanted in us in vain, we ought to desire to know that we are ignorant. If we can fully attain to this, we shall arrive at Instructed Ignorance." How far he was from placing the source of knowledge in experience, as opposed to ideas, we may see in the following passage[91 - De Conjecturis, lib. i. c. iii. iv.] from another work of his, On Conjectures. "Conjectures must proceed from our mind, as the real world proceeds from the infinite Divine Reason. For since the human mind, the lofty likeness of God, participates, as it may, in the fruitfulness of the creative nature, it doth from itself, as the image of the Omnipotent Form, bring forth reasonable thoughts which have a similitude to real existences. Thus the Human Mind exists as a conjectural form of the world, as the Divine Mind is its real form." We have here the Platonic or ideal side of knowledge put prominently and exclusively forwards.

5. Marsilius Ficinus, &c.—A person who had much more influence on the diffusion of Platonism was Marsilius Ficinus, a physician of Florence. In that city there prevailed, at the time of which we speak, the greatest enthusiasm for Plato. George Gemistius Pletho, when in attendance upon the Council of Florence, had imparted to many persons the doctrines of the Greek philosopher; and, among others, had infused a lively interest on this subject into the elder Cosmo, the head of the family of the Medici. Cosmo formed the plan of founding a Platonic academy. Ficinus[92 - Born in 1433.], well instructed in the works of Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, and other Platonists, was selected to further this object, and was employed in translating the works of these authors into Latin. It is not to our present purpose to consider the doctrines of this school, except so far as they bear upon the nature and methods of knowledge; and therefore I must pass by, as I have in other instances done, the greater part of their speculations, which related to the nature of God, the immortality of the soul, the principles of Goodness and Beauty, and other points of the same order. The object of these and other Platonists of this school, however, was not to expel the authority of Aristotle by that of Plato. Many of them had come to the conviction that the highest ends of philosophy were to be reached only by bringing into accordance the doctrines of Plato and of Aristotle. Of this opinion was John Picus, Count of Mirandula and Concordia; and under this persuasion he employed the whole of his life in labouring upon a work, De Concordiâ Platonis et Aristotelis, which was not completed at the time of his death, in 1494; and has never been published. But about a century later, another writer of the same school, Francis Patricius[93 - Born 1529, died 1597.], pointing out the discrepancies between the two Greek teachers, urged the propriety of deposing Aristotle from the supremacy he had so long enjoyed. "Now all these doctrines, and others not a few," he says[94 - Aristoteles Exotericus, p. 50.], "since they are Platonic doctrines, philosophically most true, and consonant with the Catholic faith, whilst the Aristotelian tenets are contrary to the faith, and philosophically false, who will not, both as a Christian and a Philosopher, prefer Plato to Aristotle? And why should not hereafter, in all the colleges and monasteries of Europe, the reading and study of Plato be introduced? Why should not the philosophy of Aristotle be forthwith exiled from such places? Why must men continue to drink the mortal poison of impiety from that source?" with much more in the same strain.

The Platonic school, of which we have spoken, had, however, reached its highest point of prosperity before this time, and was already declining. About 1500, the Platonists appeared to triumph over the Peripatetics[95 - Tiraboschi, t. vii. pt. ii. p. 411.]; but the death of their great patron, Cardinal Bessarion, about this time, and we may add, the hollowness of their system in many points, and its want of fitness for the wants and expectations of the age, turned men's thoughts partly back to the established Aristotelian doctrines, and partly forwards to schemes of bolder and fresher promise.

6. Francis Patricius.—Patricius, of whom we have just spoken, was one of those who had arrived at the conviction that the formation of a new philosophy, and not merely the restoration of an old one, was needed. In 1593, appeared his Nova de Universis Philosophia; and the mode in which it begins[96 - "Franciscus Patricius, novam veram integram de universis conditurus philosophiam, sequentia uti verissima prænuntiare est ausus. Prænunciata ordine persecutus, divinis oraculis, geometricis rationibus, clarissimisque experimentis comprobavit.Ante primum nihil,Post primum omnia,A principio omnia," &c.His other works are Panaugia, Pancosmia, Dissertations Peripateticæ.] can hardly fail to remind us of the expressions which Francis Bacon soon afterwards used in the opening of a work of the same nature. "Francis Patricius, being about to found anew the true philosophy of the universe, dared to begin by announcing the following indisputable principles." Here, however, the resemblance between Patricius and true inductive philosophers ends. His principles are barren à priori axioms; and his system has one main element, Light, (Lux, or Lumen,) to which all operations of nature are referred. In general cultivation, and practical knowledge of nature, he was distinguished among his contemporaries. In various passages of his works he relates[97 - Tiraboschi, t. vii. pt. ii. p. 411.] observations which he had made in the course of his travels, in Cyprus, Corfu, Spain, the mountains of the Modenese, and Dalmatia, which was his own country; his observations relate to light, the saltness of the sea, its flux and reflux, and other points of astronomy, meteorology, and natural history. He speaks of the sex of plants[98 - Dissert. Perip. t. ii. lib. v. sub fin.]; rejects judicial astrology; and notices the astronomical systems of Copernicus, Tycho, Fracastoro, and Torre. But the mode in which he speaks of experiments proves, what indeed is evident from the general scheme of his system, that he had no due appreciation of the place which observation must hold in real and natural philosophy.

7. Picus, Agrippa, &c.—It had been seen in the later philosophical history of Greece, how readily the ideas of the Platonic school lead on to a system of unfathomable and unbounded mysticism. John Picus, of Mirandula[99 - Tenneman, ix. 148.], added to the study of Plato and the Neoplatonists, a mass of allegorical interpretations of the Scriptures, and the dreams of the Cabbala, a Jewish system[100 - Tenneman, ix. 167.], which pretends to explain how all things are an emanation of the Deity. To this his nephew, Francis Picus, added a reference to inward illumination[101 - Ibid. 158.], by which knowledge is obtained, independently of the progress of reasoning. John Reuchlin, or Capnio, born 1455; John Baptist Helmont, born 1577; Francis Mercurius Helmont, born 1618, and others, succeeded John Picus in his admiration of the Cabbala: while others, as Jacob Bœhmen, rested upon internal revelations like Francis Picus. And thus we have a series of mystical writers, continued into modern times, who may be considered as the successors of the Platonic school; and who all exhibit views altogether erroneous with regard to the nature and origin of knowledge. Among the various dreams of this school are certain wide and loose analogies of terrestrial and spiritual things. Thus in the writings of Cornelius Agrippa (who was born 1487, at Cologne) we have such systems as the following[102 - Agrippa, De Occult. Phil. lib. i. c. l.]:—"Since there is a threefold world, elemental, celestial, and intellectual, and each lower one is governed by that above it, and receives the influence of its powers: so that the very Archetype and Supreme Author transfuses the virtues of his omnipotence into us through angels, heavens, stars, elements, animals, plants, stones,—into us, I say, for whose service he has framed and created all these things;—the Magi do not think it irrational that we should be able to ascend by the same degrees, the same worlds, to this Archetype of the world, the Author and First Cause of all, of whom all things are, and from whom they proceed; and should not only avail ourselves of those powers which exist in the nobler works of creation, but also should be able to attract other powers, and add them to these."

Agrippa's work, De Vanitate Scientiarum, may be said rather to have a skeptical and cynical, than a Platonic, character. It is a declamation[103 - Written in 1526.], in a melancholy mood, against the condition of the sciences in his time. His indignation at the worldly success of men whom he considered inferior to himself, had, he says, metamorphosed him into a dog, as the poets relate of Hecuba of Troy, so that his impulse was to snarl and bark. His professed purpose, however, was to expose the dogmatism, the servility, the self-conceit, and the neglect of religious truth which prevailed in the reigning Schools of philosophy. His views of the nature of science, and the modes of improving its cultivation, are too imperfect and vague to allow us to rank him among the reformers of science.

8. Paracelsus, Fludd, &c.—The celebrated Paracelsus[104 - Philip Aurelius Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, also called Paracelsus Eremita, born at Einsiedlen in Switzerland, in 1493.] put himself forwards as a reformer in philosophy, and obtained no small number of adherents. He was, in most respects, a shallow and impudent pretender; and had small knowledge of the literature or science of his time: but by the tone of his speaking and writing he manifestly belongs to the mystical school of which we are now speaking. Perhaps by the boldness with which he proposed new systems, and by connecting these with the practical doctrines of medicine, he contributed something to the introduction of a new philosophy. We have seen in the History of Chemistry that he was the author of the system of Three Principles, (salt, sulphur, and mercury,) which replaced the ancient doctrine of Four Elements, and prepared the way for a true science of chemistry. But the salt, sulphur, and mercury of Paracelsus were not, he tells his disciples, the visible bodies which we call by those names, but certain invisible, astral, or sidereal elements. The astral salt is the basis of the solidity and incombustible parts in bodies; the astral sulphur is the source of combustion and vegetation; the astral mercury is the origin of fluidity and volatility. And again, these three elements are analogous to the three elements of man,—Body, Spirit, and Soul.

A writer of our own country, belonging to this mystical school, is Robert Fludd, or De Fluctibus, who was born in 1571, in Kent, and after pursuing his studies at Oxford, travelled for several years. Of all the Theosophists and Mystics, he is by much the most learned; and was engaged in various controversies with Mersenne, Gassendi, Kepler, and others. He thus brings us in contact with the next class of philosophers whom we have to consider, the practical reformers of philosophy;—those who furthered the cause of science by making, promulgating, or defending the great discoveries which now began to occupy men. He adopted the principle, which we have noticed elsewhere[105 - Hist. Sc. Id. b. ix. c. 2. sect. 1. The Mystical School of Biology.], of the analogy of the Macrocosm and Microcosm, the world of nature and the world of man. His system contains such a mixture and confusion of physical and metaphysical doctrines as might be expected from his ground-plan, and from his school. Indeed his object, the general object of mystical speculators, is to identify physical with spiritual truths. Yet the influence of the practical experimental philosophy which was now gaining ground in the world may be traced in him. Thus he refers to experiments on distillation to prove the existence and relation of the regions of water, air, and fire, and of the spirits which correspond to them; and is conceived, by some persons[106 - Tenneman, ix. 221.], to have anticipated Torricelli in the invention of the Barometer.

We need no further follow the speculations of this school. We see already abundant reason why the reform of the methods of pursuing science could not proceed from the Platonists. Instead of seeking knowledge by experiment, they immersed themselves deeper than even the Aristotelians had done in traditionary lore, or turned their eyes inwards in search of an internal illumination. Some attempts were made to remedy the defects of philosophy by a recourse to the doctrines of other sects of antiquity, when men began to feel more distinctly the need of a more connected and solid knowledge of nature than the established system gave them. Among these attempts were those of Berigard[107 - Tenneman, ix. 265.], Magernus, and especially Gassendi, to bring into repute the philosophy of the Ionian school, of Democritus and of Epicurus. But these endeavours were posterior in time to the new impulse given to knowledge by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and were influenced by views arising out of the success of these discoveries, and they must, therefore, be considered hereafter. In the mean time, some independent efforts (arising from speculative rather than practical reformers) were made to cast off the yoke of the Aristotelian dogmatism, and to apprehend the true form of that new philosophy which the most active and hopeful minds saw to be needed; and we must give some account of these attempts, before we can commit ourselves to the full stream of progressive philosophy.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Theoretical Reformers of Science

We have already seen that Patricius, about the middle of the sixteenth century, announced his purpose of founding anew the whole fabric of philosophy; but that, in executing this plan, he ran into wide and baseless hypotheses, suggested by à priori conceptions rather than by external observation; and that he was further misled by fanciful analogies resembling those which the Platonic mystics loved to contemplate. The same time, and the period which followed it, produced several other essays which were of the same nature, with the exception of their being free from the peculiar tendencies of the Platonic school: and these insurrections against the authority of the established dogmas, although they did not directly substitute a better positive system in the place of that which they assailed, shook the authority of the Aristotelian system, and led to its overthrow; which took place as soon as these theoretical reformers were aided by practical reformers.

1. Bernardinus Telesius.—Italy, always, in modern times, fertile in the beginnings of new systems, was the soil on which these innovators arose. The earliest and most conspicuous of them is Bernardinus Telesius, who was born in 1508, at Cosenza, in the kingdom of Naples. His studies, carried on with great zeal and ability, first at Milan and then at Rome, made him well acquainted with the knowledge of his times; but his own reflections convinced him that the basis of science, as then received, was altogether erroneous; and led him to attempt a reform, with which view, in 1565, he published, at Rome, his work[108 - Bernardini Telesii Consentini De Rerum Natura juxta propria Principia.], "Bernardinus Telesius, of Cosenza, on the Nature of Things, according to principles of his own." In the preface of this work he gives a short account[109 - I take this account from Tenneman: this Proem was omitted in subsequent editions of Telesius, and is not in the one which I have consulted. Tenneman, Gesch. d. Phil. ix. 280.] of the train of reflection by which he was led to put himself in opposition to the Aristotelian philosophy. This kind of autobiography occurs not unfrequently in the writings of theoretical reformers; and shows how livelily they felt the novelty of their undertaking. After the storm and sack of Rome in 1527, Telesius retired to Padua, as a peaceful seat of the muses; and there studied philosophy and mathematics, with great zeal, under the direction of Jerome Amalthæus and Frederic Delphinus. In these studies he made great progress; and the knowledge which he thus acquired threw a new light upon his view of the Aristotelian philosophy. He undertook a closer examination of the Physical Doctrines of Aristotle; and as the result of this, he was astonished how it could have been possible that so many excellent men, so many nations, and even almost the whole human race, should, for so long a time, have allowed themselves to be carried away by a blind reverence for a teacher, who had committed errors so numerous and grave as he perceived to exist in "the philosopher." Along with this view of the insufficiency of the Aristotelian philosophy, arose, at an early period, the thought of erecting a better system in its place. With this purpose he left Padua, when he had received the degree of Doctor, and went to Rome, where he was encouraged in his design by the approval and friendly exhortations of distinguished men of letters, amongst whom were Ubaldino Bandinelli and Giovanni della Casa. From Rome he went to his native place, when the incidents and occupations of a married life for a while interrupted his philosophical project. But after his wife was dead, and his eldest son grown to manhood, he resumed with ardour the scheme of his youth; again studied the works of Aristotle and other philosophers, and composed and published the first two books of his treatise. The opening to this work sufficiently exhibits the spirit in which it was conceived. Its object is stated in the title to be to show, that "the construction of the world, the magnitude and nature of the bodies contained in it, are not to be investigated by reasoning, which was done by the ancients, but are to be apprehended by the senses, and collected from the things themselves." And the Proem is in the same strain. "They who before us have inquired concerning the construction of this world and of the things which it contains, seem indeed to have prosecuted their examination with protracted vigils and great labour, but never to have looked at it." And thus, he observes, they found nothing but error. This he ascribes to their presumption. "For, as it were, attempting to rival God in wisdom, and venturing to seek for the principles and causes of the world by the light of their own reason, and thinking they had found what they had only invented, they made an arbitrary world of their own." "We then," he adds, "not relying on ourselves, and of a duller intellect than they, propose to ourselves to turn our regards to the world itself and its parts."

The execution of the work, however, by no means corresponds to the announcement. The doctrines of Aristotle are indeed attacked; and the objections to these, and to other received opinions, form a large part of the work. But these objections are supported by à priori reasoning, and not by experiments. And thus, rejecting the Aristotelian physics, he proposes a system at least equally baseless; although, no doubt, grateful to the author from its sweeping and apparently simple character. He assumes three principles, Heat, Cold, and Matter: Heat is the principle of motion, Cold of immobility, and Matter is the corporeal substratum, in which these incorporeal and active principles produce their effects. It is easy to imagine that, by combining and separating these abstractions in various ways, a sort of account of many natural phenomena may be given; but it is impossible to ascribe any real value to such a system. The merit of Telesius must be considered to consist in his rejection of the Aristotelian errors, in his perception of the necessity of a reform in the method of philosophizing, and in his persuasion that this reform must be founded on experiments rather than on reasoning. When he said[110 - Proem.], "We propose to ourselves to turn our eyes to the world itself, and its parts, their passions, actions, operations, and species," his view of the course to be followed was right; but his purpose remained but ill fulfilled, by the arbitrary edifice of abstract conceptions which his system exhibits.

Francis Bacon, who, about half a century later, treated the subject of a reform of philosophy in a far more penetrating and masterly manner, has given us his judgment of Telesius. In his view, he takes Telesius as the restorer of the Atomic philosophy, which Democritus and Parmenides taught among the ancients; and according to his custom, he presents an image of this philosophy in an adaptation of a portion of ancient mythology[111 - "De Principiis atque Originibus secundum fabulas Cupidinis et Cœli: sive Parmenidis et Telesii et præcipuè Democriti Philosophia tractata in Fabula de Cupidine."]. The Celestial Cupid, who with Cœlus, was the parent of the Gods and of the Universe, is exhibited as a representation of matter and its properties, according to the Democritean philosophy. "Concerning Telesius," says Bacon, "we think well, and acknowledge him as a lover of truth, a useful contributor to science, an amender of some tenets, the first of recent men. But we have to do with him as the restorer of the philosophy of Parmenides, to whom much reverence is due." With regard to this philosophy, he pronounces a judgment which very truly expresses the cause of its rashness and emptiness. "It is," he says, "such a system[112 - "Talia sunt qualia possunt esse ea quæ ab intellectu sibi permisso, nec ab experimentis continenter et gradatim sublevato, profecta videntur."] as naturally proceeds from the intellect, abandoned to its own impulse, and not rising from experience to theory continuously and successively." Accordingly, he says that, "Telesius, although learned in the Peripatetic philosophy (if that were anything), which indeed, he has turned against the teachers of it, is hindered by his affirmations, and is more successful in destroying than in building."

The work of Telesius excited no small notice, and was placed in the Index Expurgatorius. It made many disciples, a consequence probably due to its spirit of system-making, no less than to its promise of reform, or its acuteness of argument; for till trial and reflection have taught man modesty and moderation, he can never be content to receive knowledge in the small successive instalments in which nature gives it forth to him. It is the makers of large systems, arranged with an appearance of completeness and symmetry, who, principally, give rise to Schools of philosophy.

2. (Thomas Campanella).—Accordingly, Telesius may be looked upon as the founder of a School. His most distinguished successor was Thomas Campanella, who was born in 1568, at Stilo, in Calabria. He showed great talents at an early age, prosecuting his studies at Cosenza, the birth-place of the great opponent of Aristotle and reformer of philosophy. He, too, has given us an account[113 - Thom. Campanella de Libris propriis, as quoted in Tenneman, ix. 291.] of the course of thought by which he was led to become an innovator. "Being afraid that not genuine truth, but falsehood in the place of truth, was the tenant of the Peripatetic School, I examined all the Greek, Latin, and Arabic commentators of Aristotle, and hesitated more and more, as I sought to learn whether what they have said were also to be read in the world itself, which I had been taught by learned men was the living book of God. And as my doctors could not satisfy my scruples, I resolved to read all the books of Plato, Pliny, Galen, the Stoics, and the Democriteans, and especially those of Telesius; and to compare them with that first and original writing, the world; that thus from the primary autograph, I might learn if the copies contained anything false." Campanella probably refers here to an expression of Plato, who says, "the world is God's epistle to mankind." And this image, of the natural world as an original manuscript, while human systems of philosophy are but copies, and may be false ones, became a favourite thought of the reformers, and appears repeatedly in their writings from this time. "When I held my public disputation at Cosenza," Campanella proceeds, "and still more, when I conversed privately with the brethren of the monastery, I found little satisfaction in their answers; but Telesius delighted me, on account of his freedom in philosophizing, and because he rested upon the nature of things, and not upon the assertions of men."

With these views and feelings, it is not wonderful that Campanella, at the early age of twenty-two (1590,) published a work remarkable for the bold promise of its title: "Thomas Campanella's Philosophy demonstrated to the senses, against those who have philosophized in an arbitrary and dogmatical manner, not taking nature for their guide; in which the errors of Aristotle and his followers are refuted from their own assertions and the laws of nature: and all the imaginations feigned in the place of nature by the Peripatetics are altogether rejected; with a true defence of Bernardin Telesius of Cosenza, the greatest of philosophers; confirmed by the opinions of the ancients, here elucidated and defended, especially those of the Platonists."

This work was written in answer to a book published against Telesius by a Neapolitan professor named Marta; and it was the boast of the young author that he had only employed eleven months in the composition of his defence, while his adversary had been engaged eleven years in preparing his attack. Campanella found a favourable reception in the house of the Marchese Lavelli, and there employed himself in the composition of an additional work, entitled On the Sense of Things and Magic, and in other literary labours. These, however, are full of the indications of an enthusiastic temper, inclined to mystical devotion, and of opinions bearing the cast of pantheism. For instance, the title of the book last quoted sets forth as demonstrated in the course of the work, that "the world is the living and intelligent statue of God; and that all its parts, and particles of parts, are endowed some with a clearer, some with a more obscure sense, such as suffices for the preservation of each and of the whole." Besides these opinions, which could not fail to make him obnoxious to the religious authorities, Campanella[114 - Economisti Italiani, t. i. p. xxxiii.] engaged in schemes of political revolution, which involved him in danger and calamity. He took part in a conspiracy, of which the object was to cast off the tyranny of Spain, and to make Calabria a republic. This design was discovered; and Campanella, along with others, was thrown into prison and subjected to torture. He was kept in confinement twenty-seven years; and at last obtained his liberation by the interposition of Pope Urban VIII. He was, however, still in danger from the Neapolitan Inquisition; and escaped in disguise to Paris, where he received a pension from the king, and lived in intercourse with the most eminent men of letters. He died there in 1639.

Campanella was a contemporary of Francis Bacon, whom we must consider as belonging to an epoch to which the Calabrian school of innovators was only a prelude. I shall not therefore further follow the connexion of writers of this order. Tobias Adami, a Saxon writer, an admirer of Campanella's works, employed himself, about 1620, in adapting them to the German public, and in recommending them strongly to German philosophers. Descartes, and even Bacon, may be considered as successors of Campanella; for they too were theoretical reformers; but they enjoyed the advantage of the light which had, in the mean time, been thrown upon the philosophy of science, by the great practical advances of Kepler, Galileo, and others. To these practical reformers we must soon turn our attention: but we may first notice one or two additional circumstances belonging to our present subject.

Campanella remarks that both the Peripatetics and the Platonists conducted the learner to knowledge by a long and circuitous path, which he wished to shorten by setting out from the sense. Without speaking of the methods which he proposed, we may notice one maxim[115 - Tenneman, ix. 305.] of considerable value which he propounds, and to which we have already been led. "We begin to reason from sensible objects, and definition is the end and epilogue of science. It is not the beginning of our knowing, but only of our teaching."

3. (Andrew Cæsalpinus.)—The same maxim had already been announced by Cæsalpinus, a contemporary of Telesius; (he was born at Arezzo in 1520, and died at Rome in 1603). Cæsalpinus is a great name in science, though professedly an Aristotelian. It has been seen in the History of Science[116 - Hist. Ind. Sc. b. xvi. c. iii. sect. 2.], that he formed the first great epoch of the science of botany by his systematic arrangement of plants, and that in this task he had no successor for nearly a century. He also approached near to the great discovery of the circulation of the blood[117 - Ibid. b. xvii. c. ii. sect. 1.]. He takes a view of science which includes the remark that we have just quoted from Campanella: "We reach perfect knowledge by three steps: Induction, Division, Definition. By Induction, we collect likeness and agreement from observation; by Division, we collect unlikeness and disagreement; by Definition, we learn the proper substance of each object. Induction makes universals from particulars, and offers to the mind all intelligible matter; Division discovers the difference of universals, and leads to species; Definition resolves species into their principles and elements[118 - Quæst. Peripat. i. 1.]." Without asserting this to be rigorously correct, it is incomparably more true and philosophical than the opposite view, which represents definition as the beginning of our knowledge; and the establishment of such a doctrine is a material step in inductive philosophy[119 - Tenneman, ix. 108.].

4. (Giordano Bruno.)—Among the Italian innovators of this time we must notice the unfortunate Giordano Bruno, who was born at Nola about 1550 and burnt at Rome in 1600. He is, however, a reformer of a different school from Campanella; for he derives his philosophy from Ideas and not from Observation. He represents himself as the author of a new doctrine, which he terms the Nolan Philosophy. He was a zealous promulgator and defender of the Copernican system of the universe, as we have noticed in the History of Science[120 - Hist. Ind. Sc. b. v. c. iii. sect. 2.]. Campanella also wrote in defence of that system.

It is worthy of remark that a thought which is often quoted from Francis Bacon, occurs in Bruno's Cena di Cenere, published in 1584; I mean, the notion that the later times are more aged than the earlier. In the course of the dialogue, the Pedant, who is one of the interlocutors, says, "In antiquity is wisdom;" to which the Philosophical Character replies, "If you knew what you were talking about, you would see that your principle leads to the opposite result of that which you wish to infer;—I mean, that we are older, and have lived longer, than our predecessors." He then proceeds to apply this, by tracing the course of astronomy through the earlier astronomers up to Copernicus.

5.(Peter Ramus.)—I will notice one other reformer of this period, who attacked the Aristotelian system on another side, on which it was considered to be most impregnable. This was Peter Ramus,(born in Picardy in 1515,) who ventured to denounce the Logic of Aristotle as unphilosophical and useless. After showing an extraordinary aptitude for the acquirement of knowledge in his youth, when he proceeded to the degree of Master of Arts, he astonished his examiners by choosing for the subject of the requisite disputation the thesis[121 - Tenneman, ix. 420. "Quæcunque ab Aristotele dicta essent commenticia esse." Freigius, Vita Petri Rami, p. 10.], "that what Aristotle has said is all wrong." This position, so startling in 1535, he defended for the whole day, without being defeated. This was, however, only a formal academical exercise, which did not necessarily imply any permanent conviction of the opinion thus expressed. But his mind was really labouring to detect and remedy the errors which he thus proclaimed. From him, as from the other reformers of this time, we have an account of this mental struggle[122 - Rami, Animadv. Aristot. i. iv.]. He says, in a work on this subject, "I will candidly and simply explain how I was delivered from the darkness of Aristotle. When, according to the laws of our university, I had spent three years and a half in the Aristotelian philosophy, and was now invested with the philosophical laurel as a Master of Arts, I took an account of the time which I had consumed in this study, and considered on what subjects I should employ this logical art of Aristotle, which I had learnt with so much labour and noise, I found it made me not more versed in history or antiquities, more eloquent in discourse, more ready in verse, more wise in any subject. Alas for me! how was I overpowered, how deeply did I groan, how did I deplore my lot and my nature, how did I deem myself to be by some unhappy and dismal fate and frame of mind abhorrent from the Muses, when I found that I was one who, after all my pains, could reap no benefit from that wisdom of which I heard so much, as being contained in the Logic of Aristotle." He then relates that he was led to the study of the Dialogues of Plato, and was delighted with the kind of analysis of the subjects discussed which Socrates is there represented as executing. "Well," he adds, "I began thus to reflect within myself—(I should have thought it impious to say it to another)—What, I pray you, prevents me from socratizing; and from asking, without regard to Aristotle's authority, whether Aristotle's Logic be true and correct? It may be that that philosopher leads us wrong; and if so, no wonder that I cannot find in his books the treasure which is not there. What if his dogmas be mere figments? Do I not tease and torment myself in vain, trying to get a harvest from a barren soil?" He convinced himself that the Aristotelian logic was worthless: and constructed a new system of Logic, founded mainly on the Platonic process of exhausting a subject by analytical classification of its parts. Both works, his Animadversions on Aristotle, and his Logic, appeared in 1543. The learned world was startled and shocked to find a young man, on his first entrance into life, condemning as faulty, fallacious, and useless, that part of Aristotle's works which had always hitherto been held as a masterpiece of philosophical acuteness, and as the Organon of scientific reasoning. And in truth, it must be granted that Ramus does not appear to have understood the real nature and object of Aristotle's Logic; while his own system could not supply the place of the old one, and was not of much real value. This dissent from the established doctrines was, however, not only condemned but punished. The printing and selling of his books was forbidden through France; and Ramus was stigmatized by a sentence[123 - See Hist. Ind. Sc. b. iv. c. iv. sect. 4.] which declared him rash, arrogant, impudent, and ignorant, and prohibited from teaching logic and philosophy. He was, however, afterwards restored to the office of professor: and though much attacked, persisted in his plan of reforming, not only Logic but Physics and Metaphysics. He made his position still more dangerous by adopting the reformed religion; and during the unhappy civil wars of France, he was deprived of his professorship, driven from Paris, and had his library plundered. He endeavoured, but in vain, to engage a German professor, Schegk, to undertake the reform of the Aristotelian Physics; a portion of knowledge in which he felt himself not to be strong. Unhappily for himself, he afterwards returned to Paris, where he perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572.

Ramus's main objection to the Aristotelian Logic is, that it is not the image of the natural process of thought; an objection which shows little philosophical insight; for the course by which we obtain knowledge may well differ from the order in which our knowledge, when obtained, is exhibited. We have already seen that Ramus's contemporaries, Cæsalpinus and Campanella, had a wiser view; placing definition as the last step in knowing, but the first in teaching. But the effect which Ramus produced was by no means slight. He aided powerfully in turning the minds of men to question the authority of Aristotle on all points; and had many followers, especially among the Protestants. Among the rest, Milton, our great poet, published "Artis Logicæ plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami methodum concinnata;" but this work, appearing in 1672, belongs to a succeeding period.

6.(The Reformers in general).—It is impossible not to be struck with the series of misfortunes which assailed the reformers of philosophy of the period we have had to review. Roger Bacon was repeatedly condemned and imprisoned; and, not to speak of others who suffered under the imputation of magical arts, Telesius is said[124 - Tenneman, ix. 230.] to have been driven from Naples to his native city by calumny and envy; Cæsalpinus was accused of atheism[125 - Ibid. 108.]; Campanella was imprisoned for twenty-seven years and tortured; Giordano Bruno was burnt at Rome as a heretic; Ramus was persecuted during his life, and finally murdered by his personal enemy Jacques Charpentier, in a massacre of which the plea was religion. It is true, that for the most part these misfortunes were not principally due to the attempts at philosophical reform, but were connected rather with politics or religion. But we cannot doubt that the spirit which led men to assail the received philosophy, might readily incline them to reject some tenets of the established religion; since the boundary line of these subjects is difficult to draw. And as we have seen, there was in most of the persons of whom we have spoken, not only a well-founded persuasion of the defects of existing systems, but an eager spirit of change, and a sanguine anticipation of some wide and lofty philosophy, which was soon to elevate the minds and conditions of men. The most unfortunate were, for the most part, the least temperate and judicious reformers. Patricius, who, as we have seen, declared himself against the Aristotelian philosophy, lived and died at Rome in peace and honour[126 - Tenneman, ix. 246.].

7.(Melancthon.)—It is not easy to point out with precision the connexion between the efforts at a Reform in Philosophy, and the great Reformation of Religion in the sixteenth century. The disposition to assert (practically at least) a freedom of thinking, and to reject the corruptions which tradition had introduced and authority maintained, naturally extended its influence from one subject to another; and especially in subjects so nearly connected as theology and philosophy. The Protestants, however, did not reject the Aristotelian system; they only reformed it, by going back to the original works of the author, and by reducing it to a conformity with Scripture. In this reform, Melancthon was the chief author, and wrote works on Logic, Physics, Morals, and Metaphysics, which were used among Protestants. On the subject of the origin of our knowledge, his views contained a very philosophical improvement of the Aristotelian doctrines. He recognized the importance of Ideas, as well as of Experience. "We could not," he says[127 - Melancthon, De Anima, p. 207, quoted in Tenneman, ix. 121.], "proceed to reason at all, except there were by nature innate in man certain fixed points, that is, principles of science;—as Number, the recognition of Order and Proportion, logical, geometrical, physical and moral Principles. Physical principles are such as these,—everything which exists proceeds from a cause,—a body cannot be in two places at once,—time is a continued series of things or of motions,—and the like." It is not difficult to see that such Principles partake of the nature of the Fundamental Ideas which we have attempted to arrange and enumerate in a previous part of this work.

Before we proceed to the next chapter, which treats of the Practical Reformers of Scientific Method, let us for an instant look at the strong persuasion implied in the titles of the works of this period, that the time of a philosophical revolution was at hand. Telesius published De Rerum Natura juxta propria principia; Francis Helmont, Philosophia vulgaris refutata; Patricius, Nova de Universis Philosophia; Campanella, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, adversus errores Aristotelis; Bruno professed himself the author of a Nolan Philosophy; and Ramus of a New Logic. The age announced itself pregnant; and the eyes of all who took an interest in the intellectual fortunes of the race, were looking eagerly for the expected offspring.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Practical Reformers of Science