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Rh he fell, were most instructive to the world. The controversies provoked by the latter had certainly a more immediate and palpable effect in awakening a general spirit of free inquiry. To this consideration may be added an ingenious and not altogether unsound remark of D’Alembert, that “when absurd opinions are become inveterate, it is sometimes necessary to replace them by other errors, if nothing better can be done. Such (he continues) are the uncertainty and the vanity of the human mind, that it has always need of an opinion on which it may lean; it is a child to whom a play-thing must occasionally be presented in order to get out of its hands a mischievous weapon: the play-thing will soon be abandoned, when the light of reason begins to dawn.”

Among the opponents of Descartes, Gassendi was one of the earliest, and by far the most formidable. No two philosophers were ever more strongly contrasted, both in point of talents and of temper; the former as far superior to the latter in originality of genius—in powers of concentrated attention to the phenomena of the internal world—in classical taste—in moral sensibility, and in all the rarer gifts of the mind; as he fell short of him in erudition—in industry as a book-maker—in the justness of his logical views, so far as the phenomena of the material universe are concerned—and, in general, in those literary qualities and attainments, of which the bulk of mankind either are, or think themselves best qualified to form an estimate. The reputation of Gassendi, accordingly, seems to have been at its height in his own lifetime; that of Descartes made but little progress, till a considerable time after his death.

The comparative justness of Gassendi’s views in natural philosophy, may be partly, perhaps chiefly, ascribed to his diligent study of Bacon’s works; which Descartes (if he ever read them), has nowhere alluded to in his writings. This extraordinary circumstance in the character of Descartes, is the more unaccountable, that not only Gassendi, but some of his other correspondents, repeatedly speak of Bacon in terms which one should think could scarcely have failed to induce him to satisfy his own mind whether their encomiums were well or ill founded. One of these, while he contents himself, from very obvious feelings of delicacy, with mentioning the Chancellor of England, as the person who, before the time of Descartes, had entertained the justest notions about the method of prosecuting physical inquiries, takes occasion, in the same letter, to present him, in the form of a friendly admonition from himself, with the following admirable summary of the instauratio magna. “To all this it must be added, that no architect, however skilful, can raise an edifice, unless he