And hence there is no vacuum in nature, except by violent means; since all bodies delight in mutual contact, and the world no more desires to be rent in its parts than an animal. * 13. It is almost a descent in Campanella from these visions of the separate sensibility of nature in each particle, when he seizes hold of some physical fact or analogy to establish a subordinate and less paradoxical part of his theory. He was much pleased with Gilbert's treatise on the magnet, and thought it, of course, a proof of the animation of the earth. The world is an animal, he says, sentient as a whole, and enjoying life in all its parts. It is not surprising that he ascribes intelligence to plants; but he here remarks that we find the male and female sexes in them, and that the latter cannot fructify without the former. This is manifest in siliquose plants and in palms, (which on this account he calls in another place the wiser plants, plantæ sapientiores,) in which the two kinds incline towards each other for the purpose of fructification.t His works by Adami. 14. Campanella, when he uttered from his Neapolitan prison these dulcet sounds of fantasy, had the advanpublished tage of finding a pious disciple who spread them over other parts of Europe. This was Tobias Adami, initiated, as he tells us, in the same mysteries as himself (nostræ philosophiæ symmysta), who dedicated to the philosophers of Germany his own Prodromus Philosophiæ Instauratio, prefixed to his edition of Campanella's Compendium de Rerum Natura, published at Frankfort in 1617. Most of the other writings of the master seem to have preceded this edition; for Adami enumerates them in his Prodromus. Campanella did not fully obtain his liberty till 1629, and died some years afterwards in France, where he had experienced the kindness of Peiresc, and the patronage of Richelieu. His philosophy made no very deep impression; whether this were his proper dæmon, or the air itself speaking. It is not wonderful that his imagination was affected by length of confinement. * Mundum esse animal, totum sentiens, omnesque portiones ejus communi gaudere vita. 1. i. c. 9. + Inveniemus in plantis sexum masculinum et fœmininum, ut in animalibus, et fœminam non fructificare sine masculi congressu. Hoc patet in siliquis et in palmis, quarum mas fœminaque inclinantur mutuo alter in alterum et sese osculantur, et fœmina impregnatur, nec fructificat sine mare; immo conspicitur dolens, squalida mortuaque, et pulvere illius et odore reviviscit. it was too fanciful, too arbitrary, too much tinctured with marks of an imagination rendered morbid by solitude, to gain many proselytes in an age that was advancing in severe science. Gassendi, whose good nature led him to receive Campanella, oppressed by poverty and ill usage, with every courteous attention, was of all men the last to be seduced by his theories. No one, probably, since Campanella, aspiring to be reckoned among philosophers, has ventured to assert so much on matters of high speculative importance and to prove so little. Yet he seems worthy of the notice we have taken of him, if it were only as the last of the mere dogmatists in philosophy. He is doubtless much superior to Jordano Bruno, and I should presume, except in mathematics, to Cardan.* Basson. 15. A less important adversary of the established theory in physics was Sebastian Basson, in his " Philosophiæ Naturalis adversus Aristotelem Libri XII., in quibus abstrusa veterum physiologia restauratur, et Aristotelis errores solidis rationibus refelluntur. Genevæ, 1621." This book shows great animosity against Aristotle, to whom, what Lord Bacon has himself insinuated, he allows only the credit of having preserved fragments of the older philosophers, like pearls in mud. It is difficult to give an account of this long work. In some places we perceive signs of a just philosophy; but in general his explanations of physical phænomena seem as bad as those of his opponents, and he displays no acquaintance with the writings and the discoveries of his great contemporaries. We find also some geometrical paradoxes; and in treating of astronomy he writes as if he had never heard of the Copernican system. 16. Claude Berigard, born at Moulins, became professor of natural philosophy at Pisa and Padua. In his Berigard. Circuli Pisani, published in 1643, he attempted to revive, as it is commonly said, the Ionic or corpuscular philosophy of Anaxagoras, in opposition to the Aristotelian. The book is rare; but Brucker, who had seen it, seems to have satisfactorily repelled the charge of atheism, brought by some * Brucker (vol. v. p. 106-144.) has given a laborious analysis of the philosophy of Campanella. Magnen. against Berigard.* Another Frenchman domiciled in Italy, Magnen, trod nearly the same path as Berigard, professing, however, to follow the modification of the corpuscular theory introduced by Democritus.t It seems to be observable as to these writers, Basson and the others, that coming with no sufficient knowledge of what had recently been discovered in mathematical and experimental science, and following the bad methods of the universities, even when they deviated from their usual doctrines, dogmatising and asserting when they should have proved, arguing synthetically from axioms, and never ascending from particular facts, they could do little good to philosophy, except by contributing, so far as they might be said to have had any influence, to shake the authority of Aristotle. 17. This authority, which at least required but the deference of modest reason to one of the greatest of manParacelsists kind, was ill exchanged, in any part of science, for the unintelligible dreams of the school of Paracelsus, which had many disciples in Germany, and a very few in England. Germany, indeed, has been the native soil of mysticism in Europe. The tendency to reflex observation of the mind, characteristic of that people, has exempted them from much gross error, and given them insight into many depths of truth, but at the expense of some confusion, some liability to self-deceit, and to some want of strictness in metaphysical reasoning. It was accompanied by a profound sense of the presence of Deity; yet one which, acting on their thoughtful spirits, became rather an impression than an intellectual judgment, and settled into a mysterious indefinite theopathy, when it did not even evaporate in pantheism. 18. The founder, perhaps, of this sect was Tauler of and Theo- Strasburg, in the fourteenth century, whose sermons sophists. in the native language, which, however, are supposed to have been translated from Latin, are full of what many have called by the vague word mysticism, an intense aspiration for the union of the soul with God. An anonymous Brucker, iv. 460. Niceron, xxxi., where he is inserted by the name of Beauregard, which is probably more correct, but against usage. + Brucker (p. 504.) thinks that Mag nen misunderstood the atomic theory of Democritus, and substituted one quite different in his Democritus reviviscens, published in 1646. work generally entitled The German Theology, written in the fifteenth century, pursues the same track of devotional thought. It was a favourite book with Luther, and was translated into Latin by Castalio. These, indeed, are to be considered chiefly as theological; but the study of them led readily to a state of mental emotion, wherein a dogmatic pseudo-philosophy, like that of Paracelsus, abounding with assertions that imposed on the imagination, and appealing frequently both to scriptural authority and the evidence of inward light, was sure to be favourably received. The mystics, therefore, and the theosophists belonged to the same class, and it is not uncommon to use the names indifferently. Fludd. 19. It may appear not here required to dwell on a subject scarcely falling under any province of literary history, but two writers within this period have been sufficiently distinguished to deserve mention. One of these was Robert Fludd, an English physician, who died in 1637; a man of indefatigable diligence in collecting the dreams and follies of past ages, blending them in a portentous combination with new fancies of his own. The Rabbinical and Cabbalistic authors, as well as the Paracelsists, the writers on magic, and whatever was most worthy to be rejected and forgotten, form the basis of his creed. Among his numerous works the most known was his "Mosaic Philosophy," in which, like many before his time as well as since, he endeavoured to build a scheme of physical philosophy on the first chapters in Genesis. I do not know whether he found there his two grand principles or forces of nature; a northern force of condensation, and a southern force of dilatation. These seem to be the Parmenidean cold and heat, expressed in a jargon affected in order to make dupes. In peopling the universe with dæmons, and in ascribing all phænomena to their invisible agency, he pursued the steps of Agrippa and Paracelsus, or rather of the whole school of fanatics and impostors called magical. He took also from older writers the doctrine of a constant analogy between universal nature, or the macrocosm, and that of man, or the microcosm; so that what was known in one might lead us to what was unknown Episcopius places the author of the Theologia Germanica, with Henry Ni colas and David George, among mere enthusiasts. Jacob Beh men. in the other.* Fludd possessed, however, some acquaintance with science, especially in chemistry and mechanics; and his rhapsodies were so far from being universally contemned in his own age, that Gassendi thought it not unworthy of him to enter into a prolix confutation of the Fluddian philosophy.† 20. Jacob Behmen, or rather Boehm, a shoemaker of Gorlitz, is far more generally familiar to our ears than his contemporary Fludd. He was, however, much inferior to him in reading, and in fact seems to have read little but the Bible and the writings of Paracelsus. He recounts the visions and ecstasies during which a supernatural illumination had been conveyed to him. It came indeed without the gift of transferring the light to others; for scarce any have been able to pierce the clouds in which his meaning has been charitably presumed to lie hid. The chief work of Behmen is his Aurora, written about 1612, and containing a record of the visions wherein the mysteries of nature were revealed to him. It was not published till 1641. He is said to have been a man of great goodness of heart, which his writings display; but, in literature, this cannot give a sanction to the incoherencies of madness. His language, as far as I have seen any extracts from his works, is coloured with the phraseology of the alchemists and astrologers; as for his philosophy, so to style it, we find, according to Brucker, who has taken some pains with the subject, manifest traces of the system of emanation, so ancient and so attractive; and from this and several other reasons, he is inclined to think the unlearned shoemaker of Gorlitz must have had assistance from men of more education in developing his visions. But the emanative theory is one into which a mind absorbed in contemplation may very naturally fall. Behmen had his disciples, which such enthusiasts rarely want; and his name is sufficiently known to justify the mention of it even in philosophical history. 21. We come now to an English writer of a different class, little known as such at present, but who, without *This was a favourite doctrine of Paracelsus. Campanella was much too fanciful not to embrace it. Mundus, he says, habet spiritum qui est cœlum, crassum corpus quod est terra, sanguinem qui est mare. Homo igitur compendium epilogusque mundi est. De Sensu Re1. ii. c. 32. rum, + Brucker, iv. 691. Buhle, iii. 157. Brucker, iv. 698. |