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GAS of the Latin tongue that his style was considered equal to that of the great Roman orator. In the midst of his literary occupations his sovereign, Filippo Maria Visconti, recalled him to Milan, there to revive the study of the classics, and in a short time he became the bosom friend of that prince. His volume of Latin letters, to the number of one hundred and sixty-five, greatly eulogized by Furietti, was the first work published by the Sorbonne in 1470. He died in 1431.—A. C. M.  GASSE, and, Italian architects, twin-brothers, were born at Naples, August 8, 1778. They studied together at Paris in the French institute, and afterwards for four years at Rome, whence they returned in 1802 to Naples, where they settled and practised together as architects until death parted them. Many of the best of the modern buildings in Naples were erected by them; and those left unfinished at the death of Luigi, Nov. 1833, were completed by Stefano, who afterwards designed several other public and private edifices, and two or three new streets, Cavaliere Stefano Gasse (he had been made a knight of the order of Francesco Primo) died February 21, 1840. Among the public buildings erected by the brothers were the Dogana, the Osservatorio, San Giacomo, the additions to the Villa Reale, and the entrance to the Campo Santo. Among the private mansions were the palaces of Terranova and Montemiletto, and the casinos di Sofia at Posilipo, Cacace at Sorrento, and several others. Luigi is said to have been the better designer, Stefano the better constructive architect; but the works executed by Stefano after his brother's death, differ little in style from those of an earlier date.—J. T—e.  GASSENDI or GASSEND,, a French writer of the seventeenth century, of whom it has been said, such was the versatility of his talents, and the variety of his learning, that he was "le meilleur litterateur des philosophes; et le meilleur philosophe des litterateurs." He was equally distinguished as a scholar, a theologian, an astronomer, and a naturalist. He was born on the 22nd of January, 1592, at the little village of Champtercier, near Digne, in the department of the Basses Alpes. His parents were farmers in humble circumstances, and intended to bring up their son to follow their lowly avocation; but his precocious genius and his extraordinary taste for knowledge induced them to send him for instruction to the curé of Digne. With him Gassendi acquired such proficiency, especially in Latin, that he was shortly after removed to Aix, where he completed his education under Fesaye, one of the early reformers of the scholastic philosophy. At sixteen years of age he made a short visit to his family, but soon again left them; being appointed, whilst still a mere boy in years, teacher of rhetoric at Digne. This office he appears to have held only for a short period, as the following year we find him studying theology, Greek, and Hebrew at the university of Aix, his ambition being to become an ecclesiastic. When only twenty-one years of age, Gassendi was called to fill the important chairs of theology and philosophy at Aix. These he held till 1623, when he was presented to a benefice in the cathedral of Digne. The following year he published the first part of a work entitled "Exercitationes paradoxicæ adversus Aristotelicos," Gratianop. 1624. The same year he made his first visit to Paris, where he met with François Luillier, La Mothe, Mydorge, and others; and on passing through Grenoble, on his return to Provence, he made the acquaintance of Diodati, the friend of Galileo, through whom he established a correspondence with the great astronomer. Soon after his return he was appointed, through the influence of his friend Peiresc, then president of the university of Aix, to the office of prevôt of the cathedral of Digne. For the four following years he employed himself in the study of astronomy and philosophy; and in 1628, in company with Luillier, he made a scientific excursion to Holland, where, along with some writings of minor importance, he completed his "Epistolica Exercitatio in qua præcipua principia philosophiæ Roberti Fluddi detegautur," &c., which was published at Paris in 1630. Gassendi appears about this time to have contemplated a visit to Italy and Constantinople for the purpose of study, but he never realized his intention. On his return to Digne he again employed himself in the study of astronomy, and was the first to observe the transit of Mercury over the sun's disc (predicted by Kepler), in November, 1631. In 1641 he was chosen by the clergy of his chapter to visit Paris, in order to settle some legal difficulties in which they were involved; and while there he received much attention from Cardinal Richelieu and from his brother, the Cardinal du Plessis, as well as from others of the most distinguished men of letters of France. Des Cartes was at this time engaged in preparing his Meditationes de Prima Philosophia; and Gassendi differing from the views of that philosopher, wrote those strictures on his work which led to a prolonged controversy between them, the superiority of temper, if not of argument; being decidedly on the side of Gassendi. Eventually they were reconciled through the instrumentality of the abbé d'Estrées. In 1645 the chair of mathematics in the college of France having fallen vacant, cardinal du Plessis, in whose gift it was, offered the appointment to Gassendi, who at first refused on the score of ill health, but eventually accepted the office. His reputation whilst occupying this important position increased widely, and amongst his admirers we find the names of Queen Christina of Sweden, the patroness of Des Cartes; of Frederick III. of Denmark, Pope Innocent X., and his successor, Alexander VII., the cardinal de Retz, and several of the princes of France. His arduous labours and intense study at length occasioned an affection of the lungs, which compelled him to retire for a time to Digne. In 1647 he brought out his greatest work, "De Vita et Moribus Epicuri," and in 1649 appeared his "Syntagma Philosophiæ Epicuri," in which he attempts to reconstruct the theory of Epicurus. He returned to Paris in 1653, but his health was hopelessly broken, and after a lingering illness he expired October 14th, 1655, in the sixty-third year of his age. Gassendi was buried in the church of St. Nicholas des Champs. It is said of him that he was "critical rather than inventive." His studies embraced theology, classical criticism, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and belles-lettres; and he appears to have been at one time attracted by the pretensions of astrology. Had he been more careful to concentrate his powers, his name would probably have held a yet higher rank. In an age of reformers Gassendi was distinguished by the zeal with which he asserted the independence of thought. His love of reform was in his early writings exaggerated into a somewhat rash disparagement of authority. He had not sufficiently discriminated between the original doctrines of Aristotle and the trifling formulæ of Schoolmen, who claimed and abused the sanction of his name, and his attack grounded on this misconception, is on the whole the weakest of his works. Gassendi occupies a place in the history of philosophy as the founder of modern sensationalism. An avowed disciple of Bacon, and noted for his ardour in the pursuit of physics, he was tempted to apply to metaphysics the same method which he had so clearly expounded in its application to external phenomena. His psychology was directed by principles akin to those which had conducted him to a successful investigation of nature. This tendency throws light at once on his opposition to Descartes and his advocacy of Epicurus. The atomic philosophy is in some respects the most complete of all sensational systems. The love of physical research, the clear and definite formulæ of Democritus, had already drawn a tribute from the great founder of inductive science. In his reaction against the logical mysticism of the middle ages. Bacon was disposed to look with more approbation on the earlier efforts of Anaxagoras and Leucippus, than the mature systems of Plato and Aristotle. Similarly in assailing the Meditations, Gassendi was assailing the method of metaphysics; he wished to keep the science of mind in harmony with the science of matter, and pointed to antiquity for an example of a successful endeavour in the same direction. The value of his work on Epicurus is mainly historical. The author enters on his task of exposition con amore; it results in a full vindication of the philosopher's character, and disentangles his doctrine from the vulgar misapprehensions which had obscured it. The question especially mooted in Gassendi's controversy with Descartes was that regarding the origin of our knowledge. Have we any ideas prior to, and independent of, experience? Gassendi answered in the negative: he not only concurred with the verdict of after speculation in asserting that some fact of experience necessarily precedes and gives occasion to every conception of a principle, thereby avoiding the extreme of idealism, but he pushed this view beyond its legitimate extension in contending that the mind brings nothing with it for experience to evolve. He maintained that the sum of our impressions is an adequate expression for the sum of our knowledge; and resolving even those truths which appear absolute and necessary into generalizations from sense, he fell into the opposite extreme of sensationalism. Within the sphere of the Baconian induction, Gassendi was thoroughly at home; and he understood more clearly than his great rival the 