Page:Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - with preliminary dissertations on the history of the sciences - illustrated by engravings (IA gri 33125011196181).pdf/178

124 tieth chapter of the third part, which deserves the attention of every logical student, as an important and instructive supplement to the enumeration of sophisms given by Aristotle.

The soundness of judgment, so eminently displayed in the Art of Thinking, forms a curious contrast to that passion for theological controversy, and that zeal for what he conceived to be the purity of the Faith, which seem to have been the ruling passions of the author’s mind. He lived to the age of eighty-three, continuing to write against Malebranche’s opinions concerning Nature and Grace, to his last hour. “He died,” says his biographer, “in an obscure retreat at Brussels, in 1692, without fortune, and even without the comfort of a servant; he, whose nephew had been a Minister of State, and who might himself have been a Cardinal. The pleasure of being able to publish his sentiments, was to him a sufficient recompense.” Nicole, his friend and companion in arms, worn out at length with these incessant disputes, expressed a wish to retire from the field, and to enjoy repose. “Repose!” replied Arnauld; “won’t you have the whole of eternity to repose in?”

An anecdote which is told of his infancy, when considered in connection with his subsequent life, affords a good illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of reason. He was amusing himself one day with some childish sport, in the library of the Cardinal du Perron, when he requested of the Cardinal to give him a pen:—And for what purpose, said the Cardinal?—To write books, like you, against the Huguenots. The Cardinal, it is added, who was then old and infirm, could not conceal his

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