(Pierre Gassendi), one of the most distinguished philosophers of the seventeenth century, was born in the last decade of the sixteenth (22d January 1592) at the village of Chanterieir, near Digne in Provence. His family was humble, but his parents were virtuous; and to their instructions and influence Gassendi seems to have owed more than usual debt of gratitude. His childhood exhibited the most astonishing, not to say incredible, precocity; and, if the feats told of him are true, shows (as M. De Gerando observes in his able sketch of this philosopher in the Biographie Universelle) that the feeling which is apt to regard unusual precocity as a treacherous omen is not always to be trusted. At the age of four, Sorbière tells us, he sometimes played among his youthful companions the part of a censor, and imitated the manner of a preacher. At the same tender age he often crept out at night to watch the stars—to the great alarm of his parents. At ten he declaimed in a tiny harangue before the Bishop of Digne (Antony of Boulogne), on the occasion of a pastoral visitation; which struck that prelate (as it well might) with such wonder, that he did not hesitate, in spite of the aforesaid general distrust of precocity, to prophesy the boy-orator's future eminence. Either that, or an early grave, or speedy fatuity, would certainly be a very rational deduction from symptoms of such premature mental activity.
Gassendi was then receiving lessons from the curé of the village; but such was his ardour, that when he had learned the prescribed tasks, he would pursue his solitary studies by the light of the church lamp. At Digne he studied rhetoric, and composed certain petites comédies. He then went to Aix to study philosophy under Esayé, a professor who strongly shared and expressed the rising discontent with the reigning scholastic philosophy. At sixteen our still beardless philosopher was elected to the chair of rhetoric at Digne; but, being destined for the church, speedily returned to Aix to study theology, and other branches appropriate to the ecclesiastical profession. At the early age of twenty-one he was simultaneously elected to the two chairs of philosophy and theology in the university of Aix. He chose the latter, and delivered his first course extemporaneously. He retained this chair for ten years. Not content with merely fulfilling the duties of his chair, he indulged in ample excursions into almost every department of science and literature, and made large collections of notes, which were afterwards of great service to him as a philosophical critic. His favourite pursuits in his leisure hours were astronomy and anatomy. He confesses, too, to a passing penchant for astrology; but it soon disappeared, and he became one of the most strenuous opponents of that delusive science. In 1623 he was presented to a benefice in the cathedral of Digne, and gave up his chair in order to surrender himself more completely to study. In the following year he commenced author by the publication of a portion of his Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristotelem, a work which naturally called forth, in equal measure, the censures of the servile lovers of antiquity, and the admiration of the ardent minds who longed to inaugurate a new era in science and philosophy. He himself, according to M. De Gerando, seemed half astonished at the report of his own artillery. But being now committed as author, he desired, says the same writer, "s'éclairer par des observations et des conseils et former des relations utiles." With this view he made excursions in Provence and Dauphiné, visited the capital, and took a journey to the Low Countries and Holland—everywhere forming friendships with the literati of the age, haunting learned establishments and consulting public libraries. With similar views, as a pilgrim of science, he projected, in common with other learned men, a journey to Italy and Constantinople, but this design he never executed. During his stay at Marseilles in 1636 he made some important astronomical observations; and, by the aid of lunar eclipses, ascertained more correctly the limits, in latitude and longitude, of the Mediterranean, the length of which hydrographers, following Ptolemy, had exaggerated in the current charts by no less than 200 leagues. In 1638 he found an ardent friend and admirer in Louis de Valois, afterwards Duc d'Angoulême; and if the philosopher, who ever preferred studious retirement to public life, had been ambitious, he might have availed himself of this patron's aid to secure station and riches. In 1645 there was some thought of making him tutor to the young prince, afterwards Louis XIV., but it came to nothing. He was appointed, however, mathematical lecturer in the Royal College of France by the good offices of the Archbishop of Lyons, brother of Cardinal Richelieu. From that ambitious minister himself he never received any favour; which, says De Gerando, is remarkable, considering the affection of the archbishop and the renown of the philosopher. But, too often, politicians regard neither affection nor merit where talents cannot be serviceable to them, and Gassendi's modest and retiring spirit was little likely to help the ambitious cardinal. Meantime, his fame gradually spread. Amongst his ardent admirers appear royal and noble names—Christina, Queen of Sweden; Frederick III. of Denmark; a couple of popes; and several French princes. The Cardinal de Retz also highly esteemed and honoured him. But he has more legitimate claims to remembrance than the suffrages of contemporaries illustrious only for rank and station; and indeed, with the exception of De Retz, he is himself better known now than any of the above-mentioned admirers. A more emphatic testimony to the deserved esteem in which he was held is found in
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1 The facts of Gassendi's life are abridged from this article and Sorbière's General Preface to the Opera Omnia. The limits of a work like the present necessitate brevity, and allow but scanty space even to the writer of six folios. The reader is referred for fuller information to the above preface, entitled De vida et moribus Petri Gassendi; to Brucker's Hist. Crit. Phil., vol. iv., and Appendix; and to De Gerando's Histoire comparée des systèmes de philosophie; ample references to other sources will be found in the Biographie Universelle, vol. xvi., p. 532, 533.
2 "Il parait presque intimé lui-même de l'avoir tenté." Gassendi's intimacy with all the great literati and philosophers of his day, with most of whom he maintained an active correspondence which forms by no means the least interesting portion of his works. A formidable list of these illustrious friends and acquaintances is given in Soreire's "General Preface" to Gassendi's works. Galileo conferred upon him signal proofs of esteem, and Gassendi consoled Galileo in his persecutions; though, like Descartes, he prudently declined any chance of sharing them. The martyrs of science have been always scarce.
The lectures of Gassendi at the Royal College were well attended. To astronomy, which had been too much neglected, he gave due prominence. Public speaking, however, was injurious to his lungs, which were always delicate, and he was at length compelled to desist. He then repaired to Digne for the benefit of his native air, and also spent some pleasant time under the hospitable roof of his friend and patron Louis de Valois, Earl of Alais. During this interval he was chiefly occupied in composing his biographies. He finally returned to Paris, where, after a long and gradual decay, he died October 14, 1655. His death is said to have been hastened by the mad phlebotomy then in vogue. He himself had often condemned the practice; somewhat inconsistently, it will be thought, since he allowed himself to be killed by the Sangradores of his day. He is said to have reconciled himself to the treatment to which he submitted, though he could not approve it, by the thought that the weakness it induced would probably diminish the pangs of dissolution. His last words, as he begged his attendant to feel the feeble pulsation of his heart, were, "You see what man's life is!" He was buried in the church of St Nicholas des Champs, where he is honoured by a mausoleum and bust.
The countenance of Gassendi is very imposing. The broad, massive brow, full eye, and expressive contour of the face, bespeak a mind full of intelligence, vivacity, and benevolence.
The character of Gassendi's intellect is everywhere indicated by his works—it was critical rather than inventive. Probably no one was ever better qualified to be a genuine historian of philosophy, possessing as he did keen analytical skill, in conjunction with profound and accurate erudition. His *Syntagma Philosophicum* everywhere displays these characteristics. It is a vast attempt to exhibit in one encyclopedic view the entire circle of science as then known—logic, physics, physiology, ethics, all find a place there. Subjects are discussed with a minuteness, copiousness, and patience, which remind one of the style in which questions, equally subtle and intractable, and not always more profitless, are treated in the *Summa Theologica* of Thomas Aquinas. Gassendi's powers of acquisition must have been singularly active; nor was his logical acuteness, or the liveliness of his imagination, much inferior to the promptness and retentiveness of his memory. His learning is never mere learning; like that of many of his erudite contemporaries, it ministers to his intellect, but does not oppress it. The vivacity of his mind animates and penetrates the mass; and the acuteness of his reasoning and the exuberance of his illustrations relieve much of their tedium discussions in themselves often uninviting enough.
The intellectual characteristics of Gassendi, as compared with those of the far more original and profound Descartes, are sharply set off in a long and elaborate parallel in the article by De Gerando in the *Biographie Universelle*, and it will be well to find space for a translation of a few of its more discriminating touches. "There was no less opposition," says he, "between the character of their minds than between the principles of their systems. The genius of Descartes, full of originality, energy, and audacity, aspired in all things to create; the understanding of Gassendi, reserved, prudent, calm, and investigating, contented itself with a sound judgment of everything; Descartes, shut up in himself, strove to reconstruct universal science by the force of meditation alone; Gassendi, observing nature, studying the writings of all ages, strove to co-ordinate facts, and to make an enlightened election among opinions. The former, proceeding in the track of the geometers, deduced from a few simple principles a long train of corollaries: the second, imitating the naturalists, collected a great number of given facts in order to draw solid deductions from their comparison. The former evinced admirable ability in the art of forming a system, the latter excelled in the criticism of other people's systems. The one, an absolute dogmatist, loved to speak in the style of a master, perhaps because he was conscious of profound convictions, and did not patiently bear contradiction; the other, a skilled dialectician, unravelled objections with art, distrusted himself, and easily entertained doubts which presented themselves. The one made great and veritable discoveries, and at the same time wandered into rash hypotheses; the other brought together a great number of partial truths, and, above all, destroyed a great number of errors."
The qualities of Gassendi's mind are perhaps nowhere more distinctly marked than in his commentary on the *Tenth Book of Diogenes Laertius*, and his tractate on the life and philosophy of Epicurus. In his attempt to ascertain, illustrate, and defend the philosophy of his favourite Epicurus, there was ample scope for his exuberant learning, his critical acumen, and his eclectic tendencies. It is a pity that he should have been so inordinately enamoured of this Greek philosopher; for his strong expressions have invited accusations, and even given colour to them, which seem wholly unfounded. Whatever his predilections for the atomic philosophy, he explicitly repudiates the irreligious dogmas founded upon it; and acknowledges that a supreme intelligence alone created and organized matter, alone imparted and conserves its laws and properties. "Metaphysics, morals, and physics," says M. de Gerando, "are conform to the opinions of Epicurus; yet with the modifications which the principles of Christianity demand." Whether even the eclectic criticism of Gassendi could quite harmonize such materials, even by the most judicious selections and rejections, may be a question; but that he sincerely thought he had advanced nothing contrary to Christianity, is evident from the entire tenor of his declarations; and he must be believed unless we are determined on a more unpleasant alternative—that of supposing him at least as great a hypocrite as philosopher. If the works just referred to exhibit as distinctly as any the more marked features of Gassendi's intellectual character, it is the *Syntagma Philosophicum*, of course, which displays all the endowments of this great philosopher in their fullest form. The remarks on the *Meditations* of Descartes, however (supplied at the request of Father Mersenne), best present many of its phases. They are marked by an acuteness and vivacity which he never surpassed.
As a metaphysician it has been mentioned that, however ingenious and learned, he is yet critical rather than
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1 The engraving in the folio edition of his works (1728) is in striking contrast with the grim effigies of Tycho Brahe and Copernicus in the quarto which contains Gassendi's lives of those philosophers. But it must be confessed the art of engraving had made prodigious progress in the interval.
2 After avowing his orthodoxy very explicitly, he says, in the Proemial Book of his *Syntagma*, "Et videri quidem potest Epicurus arridere pro ceteris . . . . at non idcirco aut probo omnia qua illus sunt, —etiam Religiosum non attinentia placita; aut quae probo non sic amplexor ut indubia certa habeam . . . ."—Opera, tom. i., p. 25. Edit. Florent. Gassendi, creative. The same must be said of him as a mathematician and physical philosopher. His attainments in the mathematics were such as to elicit the praises of Barrow, no incompetent judge; and doubtless his fame might have been yet greater had he not, like Barrow himself, Pascal, Descartes, and so many other great mathematicians, varied or combined this study with so many very different pursuits. It seems, if we may judge by the conduct of almost every great mathematician from the time of those just mentioned to the present day, that, delightful as is the discovery and contemplation of mathematical truth, it cannot alone fill or content the mind. It is hardly possible to name instances of great mathematicians who are known only as great mathematicians, or who have not profoundly studied some branches either of physics or abstract science. Gassendi, according to Sorbière, avowedly valued mathematics chiefly as an indispensable instrument of discovery in physical science.
Ardently attached to the new philosophy of experiment, Gassendi was one of the first Frenchmen, if not the first, who fully appreciated Bacon, and, in introducing him to his countrymen, paid ungrudging homage to his genius. Though such an admirer, however, of the new school of physics, he himself, as in other departments, made but moderate contributions to discovery. Here, too, his genius was critical. But it is not to be forgotten that he was the first to observe the transit of a planet across the sun's disc—verifying the prediction of Galileo—and that, as before mentioned, he made some valuable hydrographic corrections by means of lunar eclipses.
As Gassendi is among the most literary of philosophers, so is he also among the most voluminous. Six volumes folio attest the vastness of his industry, no less than his erudition and versatility. These have been twice printed: once at Lyons in 1658, under the editorship of Montmort and Sorbière, and once at Florence in 1728. The first two volumes are occupied entirely with his *Syntagma Philosophicum*; the third contains his critical writings on Epicurus, Aristotle, Descartes, Fludd, and Lord Herbert, with some occasional pieces on certain problems of physics; the fourth, his *Institutio Astronomica*, and his *Commentarii de rebus celestibus*; the fifth, his commentary on the Tenth Book of Diogenes Laertius, the biographies of Epicurus, Peiresc, Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Pearsonbach, and Regiomontanus, with some tracts on the value of Ancient Money, on the Roman Calendar, and on the theory of Music; to all which is appended a large and prolix piece, entitled *Notitia Ecclesiae Dinensis*;—the sixth volume contains his correspondence. The *Lives*, especially of Copernicus, Tycho, and Peiresc, have been justly admired. That of Peiresc has been repeatedly printed; it has also been translated into English. Gassendi was one of the first, after the revival of letters, who treated the literature of philosophy in a lively way. His writings of this kind, though too laudatory and somewhat diffuse, have great merit; they abound in those anecdotal details, natural yet not obvious reflections, and vivacious turns of thought, which made Gibbon style him, with some extravagance certainly, though it was true enough up to Gassendi's time—"le meilleur philosophe des litterateurs, et le meilleur litterateur des philosophes." Gassendi wrote in Latin; it is to be regretted that he did not compose some of his works in French. There is little doubt that he would have given us another specimen of that happy philosophical style in which his countrymen have so signalized excelled from Descartes' time downwards; as it is, his writings, as might be expected from the qualities of his mind, are perspicuous and lucid in an eminent degree; but the style is very diffuse, and, in many cases, cumbersome, a fault which it may be reasonably supposed would have been obviated if he had written in his vernacular. His illustrations and examples, especially in the leisurely exposition of the voluminous *Syntagma Philosophicum*, are often multiplied to tediousness, though generally apt and well selected. Instances both of the merits and faults in question may be seen in the parts of the *Syntagma* where he treats "de Sensibus speciation," and (more briefly) in the chapter "de Instinctu Brutorum."
The personal character of Gassendi must have been exceedingly attractive. Of his winning manners, agreeable social qualities, and modesty, there is a pleasing proof recorded by Sorbière, and pleasantly repeated by De Gerando. "Marivat having travelled from Paris to Grenoble in his company without suspecting his name, desired on arriving to be presented to the celebrated Gassendi. He was greatly surprised to recognise him in the amiable companion with whom he had conversed on the route. This behaviour reminds us of that of Plato when he returned from Syracuse into Greece." His temper and manners were such as became a philosopher, and a Christian philosopher rather than a disciple of Epicurus—whose precepts, if capable of being harmonized with virtue, are yet easily perverted to vice. It may be doubted whether any philosopher ever lived more philosophically than Gassendi, if we may judge by the testimony of Sorbière in the preface to the *Opera Omnia*. His eulogium records virtues which make us love the man even more than we revere the philosopher; and with a trait or two from it we shall conclude this notice of his character. "When I consider his private life, I seem to see before me some anchorite, who, in the midst of a crowded city, has set up the severe rule of the desert; so heartily did he embrace a life of poverty, chaste celibacy, and obedience, though unconstrained by any vows. Contented with little, he envied none their riches; none the richer for the patronage of the wealthy, he dispensed whatever he received with a liberal hand. He was voluntarily abstemious, rarely touched flesh, generally subsisted on vegetables, and breakfasted and supped on oatmeal porridge." Sorbière pronounces a deserved eulogium on his modesty, humility, and benevolence.
The precise character and position of the philosophic system of Gassendi has, like that of so many other philosophers, been much debated. It is a topic which there is no space to discuss here, but which cannot be wholly passed by, since from misapprehension Gassendi has been treated with less than justice by eminent philosophical critics, and among the rest by Dugald Stewart in the "Preliminary Dissertation."
By critics in general, fifty years ago, he would have been regarded as a genuine precursor of the naked and undisguised sensational French philosophy of the last century; by other and later critics, he is represented as having taught a philosophy not very dissimilar in its main principles from that of Locke. Locke, indeed, is even supposed by some to have derived more from the acute Frenchman than he has allowed the generality of his readers to suspect. Of this a word or two presently.
Meantime, the truth with regard to Gassendi seems to be, that, like many other philosophers who have written folios, and produced their works at distant intervals and under very different circumstances, he has not been altogether consistent in the exhibition of himself. Assuredly
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1. "Id videlicet meditatus attendensque, quan sit exiguum, quod, ex quo tempore homines philosophari coeperant, circa veritatem, intimoque rerum naturae notitiam consecuti sunt; anus vero Heroico novam tentare viam est ausus . . ."—Opera, tom. i., p. 55. Edit. Florent.
2. Syntag. Phil. Physicar, part III., sect. III., lib. vii.; viii., cap. v. Gassendi's tone is very different when urging with so much vigour all the possible "objections" which ingenuity could discover to Descartes' Meditations, and when systematically developing his own doctrines in his Syntagma Philosophicum. "The main scope," says Dugald Stewart in the Preliminary Dissertation, "of Gassendi's argument against Descartes is to materialize that class of our ideas which the Lockists as well as the Cartesians consider as the exclusive objects of the power of reflection, and to show that these ideas are all ultimately resolvable into images or conceptions borrowed from things external." If we look only at the animadversions on Descartes, there is much to favour these observations. But then, again, as Hallam justly observes, if we examine the Syntagma Philosophicum, even the Proemial Book, even the Logic, but more especially the important chapters in the Physics "De Phantasia" and "De Intellectu"—we cannot fail to perceive that this estimate is erroneous, and that Gassendi is very far indeed from resolving all the phenomena of mind into sensation. This Hallam has truly remarked, and has supplied a few extracts from the above chapters of Gassendi in proof. The explanation of the apparent discrepancies, this writer says, is difficult. "Whether he urged some of his objections against the Cartesian metaphysics with a regard to victory rather than truth, or, as would be the more candid and perhaps more reasonable hypothesis, he was induced by the acuteness of his great antagonist to review and reform his own opinions, I must leave to the philosophical reader."
It seems highly probable that both explanations are correct. In accepting Mersenne's invitation, issued by Descartes' commands, to find as much fault as possible with the celebrated Meditations (which made such pretensions to logical rigour), Gassendi would naturally be tempted to urge every objection to the uttermost; and would probably challenge the proof of assertions, when he thought it weak, not less where he agreed with the conclusions themselves than where he denied them. This seems to have been obviously his course in some cases. In such a controversy the true position is apt often to be forgotten both by him who writes and by him who reads. Challenged to show the invalidity of the reasoning which is employed to support a given conclusion, the objector is apt to speak and to be interpreted as if he contended not only for the validity of his objections, but for an opposite conclusion from that of his opponent. This may or not be. In Gassendi's case it is sometimes the conclusion as well as the reasoning, sometimes the reasoning only, to which he is opposed.
From Gassendi's "objections" his own positive opinions on the points in question are not always inferrible. We must look at his dogmatical explanations of his own views as a safer criterion, and we find these in the Syntagma. It must be added that a certain degree of personal feeling evidently gave sharpness to his criticisms on Descartes; and, philosopher though he was, being still a mortal man, this could not but exert some influence. On the other hand, when writing his Syntagma, Gassendi was freed from all such bias; he was no longer the advocate but the judge; he had to show, not merely that such reasoning on behalf of such and such conclusions was not valid, but what conclusions he held himself. He had also had the opportunity of reading all his great antagonist's "criticisms" on his own criticisms," and doubtless profited by them; and lastly, though the interval, as Hallam says, between the controversy with Descartes and the commencement of the ponderous Syntagma Philosophicum was but brief—the dates being 1641 and 1642—yet before its author had reached the chapters "De Phantasia" and "De Intellectu" (nearly 1000 closely-printed folio columns from the commencement), he would have had abundant time to review any opinions of an earlier date, and profit by the discussions with his illustrious opponent.
Be this as it may, the chapter on the "Human Intellect" shows incontrovertibly that Gassendi was far removed from the sensationalists. While he maintains constantly his favourite maxim "that there is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses;" while he contends that the imaginative faculty, "phantasia," is the counterpart of sense; that like that, as it has to do with material images, it is itself material, and essentially the same both in men and brutes,—the chapter "De Intellectu" plainly proves that he could consistently mean nothing more than that "sensations" are the invariable and indispensable antecedents and conditions of the evolution of the phenomena of intellect; for he admits that the intellect, which he affirms to be "immaterial" and "immortal"—the most characteristic distinction of humanity,—attains notions and truths of which no effort of sensation or imagination can give us the slightest apprehension. He instances in the capacity of forming "general notions;" in the very conception of universality itself; to which he says brutes, who partake as truly as men in the faculty he calls "phantasia," never attain; in the notion of God, whom he says we may imagine to be corporeal, but understand to be incorporeal; and lastly, in the "reflex actions" by which the mind makes its own phenomena and operations the objects of attention.
His remarks on the last point—his very phraseology, "actiones reflexiva;" certainly remind one of Locke, and have suggested that Gassendi's system was the source of Locke's. It was so, exclaims Stewart, of the false system of Locke into which the sensational schools of France distorted that of the English philosopher. To this it seems sufficient to reply, as before, that Gassendi himself, in his more deliberate exhibition of his philosophy, does not belong to those schools. At the same time, whether Locke had ever studied the system of Gassendi is somewhat doubtful. That he was not, at all events, conscious of any signal obligations to Gassendi, may be inferred for the following reasons:—1. Locke's distinct assertion, to Stillingfleet and others, that, right or wrong, his system had been the fruit of his own excogitation. 2. That if he had consciously borrowed from Gassendi, he, who was a model of honour and candour as a writer, would not have failed to acknowledge his obligations. 3. The very name of Gassendi scarcely occurs in all his writings; and though it may be said that this silence was natural if conscious that he had stolen, it is inconsistent with his character that he should have so acted; the silence would have become a thief, but not John Locke. 4. He was no helluo librorum, and the Syntagma extends to two ponderous folios. It is true that the abridgment by Bernier in 8 vols. (if such an abuse of the term may be allowed) was published in 1678, and this, Locke, who was certainly in habits of intercourse with Bernier at Paris in 1677, might have seen. 5. But, sup-
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1 Literature of Europe, vol. iv., p. 293. 2 It must have been so when so severely challenging Descartes' proof of the immateriality of the soul, or of the existence of the material world, for Gassendi denied neither. 3 "Itaque est in nobis intellectus species qua ratiocinando eo provehimus, ut aliquid intelligamus, quod imaginari non cupis habere obserantiam imaginem, quantumcunque animi visus contenturum, non posimus."—De Intellectu, cap. ii. Opera, tom. ii., p. 383. 4 "Non modo universalia, universaliae notiones formamus, sed periculosis quoque ipsam rationem universaliatis."—Ib., p. 384. 5 "Alterum est genus reflexarum actionum quibus intellectus seipsum, susque functiones intelligit, ac speciatim se intelligere animadvertit. Videlice hoc munus est omnium facultate corporeae superius."—Ib., p. 384. 6 He has just introduced his name in the controversy with Stillingfleet, and that is all. posing him to have seen it, what then? The utmost that can be said is, that it is probable that the remarks on the reflex operations of the mind, and the terms "actiones reflexive" (used, however, by Gassendi not with a view to a classification of mental phenomena, but incidentally, in proof of the mind's immateriality) may have unconsciously suggested to Locke his second great division of ideas, and the phraseology in which he has couched it. But the observations themselves are far too scanty to have been of much service to Locke in constructing his general theory, still less in that elaborate and minute analysis of the "ideas of reflection" which constitutes the bulk of the "Essay." The whole of the two books on "Imagination" and "Intellect" in the Syntagma would not make above an eighth of Locke's "Essay," and the greater part of these is occupied with questions which Locke has expressly renounced as belonging to a hopeless psychology; as, for example, whether imagination be material or immaterial (Gassendi deciding for the former)—of how many kinds, or how, mechanically or physiologically, related to sensation—whether and in what sense it can be said to possess reason—whether it be identical with the similar faculty in brutes. Such questions, together with the history of opinions, Gassendi is as prone to discuss as Locke to decline them. The opinion of De Gerando, however, on the relations of Locke's philosophy to Gassendi's is well entitled to attention.
(n. n.)