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Updated: May 21, 2025
The wall on the N. is broken through and almost completely wrecked by the great ring- plain Gassendi A. The bright eastern section of the border is in places very lofty, rising at one peak, N. of the well-known triangular depression upon it, to 9000 feet, and at other peaks on the same side still higher. It is very low on the S., being only about 500 feet above the surface.
For it is worthy of notice, that the latter, or the system of Idealism may be traced to sources equally remote with the former, or Materialism; and Berkeley can boast an ancestry at least as venerable as Gassendi or Hobbes. These conjectures, however, concerning the mode in which our perceptions originated, could not alter the natural difference of Things and Thoughts.
Gassendi himself began to investigate it with that view; and when science cured him of the prejudices of superstition, he repented that he so openly declared his conversion, because, he said, many persons formerly studied astronomy to become astrologers, and he now perceived that they ceased to learn astronomy, since he had condemned astrology.
Those who ask how it was possible that he should not believe in them since he had seen them are unaware of the lengths to which scepticism can go in an argumentative mind. Nourished on Lucretius, imbued with the doctrines of Epicurus and Gassendi, he often provoked Monsieur de La Rochecoupée by the display of a cold disbelief in fairies.
Had she died at this time history would rank her with the greatest of women sovereigns. Naude, the librarian of Cardinal Mazarin, wrote of her to the scientist Gassendi in these words: To say truth, I am sometimes afraid lest the common saying should be verified in her, that short is the life and rare the old age of those who surpass the common limits.
The metaphysics of the seventeenth century, as specially represented for France by Descartes, had materialism for its antagonist from its hour of birth. In person this antagonist confronted Descartes in the shape of Gassendi, the restorer of Epicurean materialism. French and English materialism always remain in close relationship with Democritus and Epicurus.
In the former line he worked diligently and became expert. With his instructor Duteil he grew intimate and the friendship was close throughout life. He associated on the best of terms with his old friend des Mazis and began a pleasant acquaintance with Gassendi. So faithful was he to the minutest details of his profession that he received marks of the highest distinction.
Cartesian metaphysics found another antagonist in the English materialist Hobbes. Long after their death, Gassendi and Hobbes triumphed over their opponent at the moment when the former reigned in all the schools of France as the official power.
If some cities held him in horror, others erected statues in his honor, and if, among the Christians, the Fathers have condemned him, Gassendi and Bernier approve his principles. In view of all these contrary authorities, how can the question be decided?
Still another doctrine of Democritus is now revived; an evident symptom of the quantification and mechanical interpretation of natural phenomena being furnished by the doctrine of the subjectivity of sense qualities, in which, although on varying grounds, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes agree. Descartes and Hobbes will be discussed later.
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