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38 terity as philosophical reformers, and, in particular, as revolters against the authority of the Stagirite. Of the individuals just mentioned, Nizolius is the only one who seems entitled to maintain a permanent place in the annals of modern science. His principal work, entitled Antibarbarus, is not only a bold invective against the prevailing ignorance and barbarism of the schools, but contains so able an argument against the then fashionable doctrine of the Realists concerning general ideas, that Leibnitz thought it worth while, a century afterwards, to republish it, with the addition of a long and valuable preface written by himself.

At the same period with Franciscus Patricius, flourished another learned Italian, Albericus Gentilis, whose writings seem te have attracted more notice in England and Germany than in his own country. His attachment to the reformed faith having driven him from Italy, he sought an asylum at Oxford, where he published, in 1588, a book de Jure Belli; and where he appears to have read lectures on Natural Jurisprudence, under the sanction of the University. His name has already sunk into almost total oblivion; and I should certainly not have mentioned it on the present occasion, were it not for his indisputable merits as the precursor of Grotius, in a department of study which, forty years afterwards, the celebrated treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis was to raise to so conspicuous a rank among the branches of academical education. The avowed aim of this new science, when combined with the anxiety of Gentilis to counteract the effect of Machiavel’s Prince, by representing it as a warning to subjects rather than as a manual of instruction for their rulers, may be regarded as satisfactory evidence of the growing influence, even at that era, of better ethical principles than those commonly imputed to the Florentine Secretary.

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