0230
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The Great Conversation
THE
GREAT-
CONVERSATION
Mortimkr J. Adler, Associate Editor
Members of the Advisory Board: Strinofellow Barr, Scott Buchanan, John
Erskjne, Giarence H. Faust, Alexander MErKLEjoHN, Joseph J. Schwab,
Mark Van Doren. Editorial Consultants: A. F. B. Clark, F. L. Lucas, Walter
Murdoch. Wallace Brockway, Executive Editor
1923
X Great Books of the Western World
Robert Maynard Hutchins, Editor
Mortimer J. Adler, Associate Editor
Members of the Advisory Board
Stringfellow Barr, Professor of History in the University of Virginia,
and formerly President of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland
ScoiT Buchanan, philosopher, and formerly Dean of St. John’s College
John Erskine, novelist, and formerly Profes^’r* of ■•English in Columbia
University
(h arence Faust, President of the Fund foi' tWe •Advancement of Educa-
tion, and formerly Dean ot ITiM lumanihjdi^jid Sciences in Leland
Stanford University
Alexander Meiklejohn, philosopher, and formerly Chairman of the
School for Social Studies in San Francisco
Joseph Schwab, scientist, and Professor in the College of the University
of Chicaf^o
Mark Van Doren, poet, and Profes.sor of English in Columbia University
Editorial Consultants
CANADA : A. F. B. Clark, Professor of French Literature in the
University of British Columbia, Canada
ENGLAND : F. L. Lucas, Fellow and Lecturer of King’s College,
Cambridge, England
AUSTRALIA : Walter MtmnocH, Professor of English Literature in
the University of Western Australia
CONTENTS
The Groat Conversation . . . 9
Introduction 33
The contents of the Great Books with
biographical notes on the authors - 51
1: PREFACE £
The Great Conversation
^ Until recently the Western
world regarded it as self-e\ddent that the road to education
lay through great books. No man wa.s considered educated
unless he was acquainted with the masterpieces of Western
literature.
There was never much doubt about which the masterpieces
were; they were the books which had stood the te.st of time
and had continued to be acclaimed as the fine.st creations, in
writing, of the Western mind.
That is not to say that the list remained static. In the course
of history, from epoch to epoch, new books have been written
which have won their place in it, and books formerly thought
entitled to belong to it have been superseded ; and this process
of selection will continue as long as men can think and write.
It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in
9
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into
context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent
contributions to the Great Conversation which has gone on
from age to age in these creative writings.
This set of books is the result of an attempt to re-appraisc
and re-embody the tradition of the West for the present
generation.
The Editors do not believe that any of the social and
political changes which have taken place during the past half
century, or any that now seem imminent, have invalidated, or
can inv^alidatc, the tradition, or render it irrelevant for modern
man. On the contrary, we arc convinced that the West needs
to recapture and re-emphasize and bring to bear upon its
present problems the wisdom that lies in the works of its
greatest thinkers and in the discussion which conjointly they
have carried on.
Consequently, this set of books is offered in no antiquarian
spirit. We have not seen our task as that of taking touri.sts on a
visit to ancient ruins or to the quaint productions of primitive
peoples. Nor have we thought of providing our readers merely
with a means to hours of relaxation or of escape from the
dreadful load of cares that is the lot of man in the second half
of the twentieth century. We are as concerned as anyone at
the headlong plunge into the abyss which We.stern civilization
seems to be taking. We believe that the voices that have taken
part in the Great Gon versa tion’.can do much to recall the West
to sanity. That is why we want them to be heard again : not
because we want to go back to antiquity, to the Middle Ages,
the Renaissance or the Eighteenth Gentury, but because we
believe they may help us to learn to live better now. We
believe that progress, in the best sense of the term, depends on
the incorporation of the ideas and images to be found in these
10
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
books in the daily lives of all of us, from childhood onwards
to old age.
We do not suggest, of course, that these books will solve our
problems for us, but we do suggest that they shed light on all
our basic problems — and that it is folly to do without any light
we can get. We believe that these books show the origins of
many of our most serious difficulties. We believe that the
spirit they represent and the habit of mind they teach are
more necessary today than ever before.
We believe that the reduction of the citizen to an object of
propaganda, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers
threatening democracy. The notion is prevalent that the great
mass of people cannot be expected to understand and to form
an independent judgment upon any serious matter, and that
they cannot be educated to do .so ; hence the reiteration of
slogans, the distortion of news, the great stonn of propaganda
that bcat.s upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day.
The alternatives are clear. Democracy will fall a prey to
the loude.st and most persistent propagandists unless the people
■save themselves from this fate by so strengthening their minds
that they can apprai.se the issues for themselves.
As we have said, the reading of great books such as those
in this set will not alone .suffice; people must have the infor-
mation on which to ba.se a judgment as well as the ability to
make one. But we believe that the.se books are a help to that
grasp of history, politics, morals and economics, and to that
habit of mind necessary to form valid judgments. They may
even help us to know what information we should demand.
The reader who docs his best to understand these books will
find himself led to read and helped to understand other books ;
and the reading and understanding of great books will give
him a standard by which to judge all other books and printed
material.
11
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
The Tradition of the West
The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conver-
sation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to
the present day. Whatever the merits of other civilizations in
other respects, no civilization is like that of the West in this
respect. No other civilization can claim that its defining
characteristic is a dialogue of this sort. No dialogue in any
other civilization can compare with that of the West in the
number of great works of the mind that have contributed to
this dialogue. The goal toward which Western society moves
is the Civilization of the Dialogue. The spirit of Western
civilization is the spirit of inquiry. Its dominant element is the
LOGOS. Nothing is to remain undiscussed. Everybody is to
speak his mind. No proposition is to be left unexaniined. The
exchange of ideas is held to be the path to the realization of the
potentialities of the race.
At a time when the West is tnost often represented by its
friends as the .source of that technology for which the whole
world yearns and by its enemies as the fountainhead of selfish-
ness and greed, it is worth relnarking that, though both
elements can be found in the Great Conver.sation, the Western
ideal is not one or the other strand in the Conversation, but the
Conver.sation itself. It would be an exaggeration to .say tnat
We.stern civilization means these books. The exaggeration
would lie in the omission of the plastic arts and music, which
havt; quite as important a part in Western civilization as the
great productions included in this set. But to the extent to
which books can present the idea of a civilization, the idea of
We.stern civilization is here presented.
These books are the means of understanding our society and
ourselves. They contain the great ideas that dominate us
without our knowing it. There is no comparable repository of
our tradition.
12
THE CREA'J' CONVERSATION
To put ail end to the spirit of inquiry that has characterized
the West it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to
do is to leave them unread for a few generations. On the other
hand, the revival of interest in these books from time to time
throughout history has provided the West with new drive and
creativencss. Great books have .salvaged, preserved and
transmitted the tradition on many occasions similar to our
own.
The books contain not merely the tradition, but also the
great exponents of the tradition. Their writings are models of
the fine and liberal arts. They hold before us what A. N.
Whitehead called “the habitual vision of greatness.” These
books have endured becau.se men in every era have been lifted
beyond themselves by the in.spiration of their examples. Sir
Richard I jvingstorie said : “We are tied down, all our days
and for the greater part of our days, to the commonplace.
That is where contact with great thinkers, great literature
helps. In their company we are still in the ordinary world,
but it is the ordinary world tran.sfigured and seen through the
eyes of wi.sdom and genius. And .some of their vision becomes
our own.”
Until veiy recently these books have been central in
education in the We.sl. They were the principal instruments of
liberal education, the education that men acquired as an end
in itself, for no other purpose than that it would help them to
be men, to lead human lives, and better lives than they would
otherwise be able to lead.
The aim of liberal education is human excellence, both
private and public (for man is a political animal). Its object is
the excellence of man as man and man as citizen. It regards
man as an end, not as a means ; and it regards the ends of life,
and not the means to it. For this reason it is the education of
free men. Other types of education or training treat men as
13
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
means to some other end, or at best concerned with the means
of life, with earning a living, and not with its ends.
The substance of liberal education appears to consist in the
recognition of basic problems, in knowledge of distinctions and
interrelations in subject matter, and in the comprehension of
ideas.
Liberal education seeks to clarify the basic problems and to
understand the way in which one problem bears upon another.
It strives for a grasp of the methods by which solutions can be
reached and the formulation of standards for testing solutions
proposed. The liberally educated man understands, for
example, the relation between the problem of the immortality
of the soul and the problem of the best form of government ; he
understands that the one problem cannot be solved by the same
method as the other, and that the test that he will have to
bring to bear upon solutions proposed differs from one problem
to the other.
The liberally educated man understands, by understanding
the distinctions and interrelations of the basic fields of subject
matter, the differences and connections between poetry and
history, science and philosophy, theoretical and practical
science; he understands that the same methods cannot be
applied in all these fields ; he knows the methods appropriate
to each.
The liberally educated man comprehends the ideas that are
relevant to the basic problems and that operate in the basic
fields of subject matter. He knows what is meant by soul, state,
God, beauty, and by the other terms that are basic to the
discussion of fundamental issues. He has .some notion of the
insights that these ideas, singly or in combination, provide
concerning human experience.
The liberally educated man has a mind that can operate
14
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
well in all fields. He may be a specialist in one field. But he
can understand anything important that is said in any field
and can see and use the light that it sheds upon his own. The
liberally educated man is at home in the world of ideas and in
the world of practical affairs, too, because he understands the
relation of the two. He may not be at home in the world of
practical affairs in the sense of liking the life he finds about
him ; but he will be at home in that world in the sense that
he understands it. He may even derive from his liberal
education some conception of the difference between a bad
world and a good one and some notion of the ways in which
one might be turned into the other.
The method of liberal education is the liberal arts, and the
result of liberal education is discipline in those arts. The hberal
artist learns to read, write, speak, listen, understand and think.
He learns to reckon, measure and manipulate matter, quantity
and motion in order to predict, produce and exchange. As we
live in the tradition, whether we know it or not, so we are all
liberal artists, whether we know it or not. We all practi.se the
liberal arts, well or badly, all the time every day. As we should
understand the tradition as well as we can in order to under-
stand ourselves, so we should be as good liberal artists as wc
can in order to become as fully human as we can.
The liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they are
unavoidable. Nobody can decide for himself whether he is
going to be a human being. The only question open to him is
whether he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one or one who
has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining.
The question, in short, is whether he will be a poor liberal
artist or a good one.
The tradition of the Wc.st in education is the tradition of
the liberal arts. Until very recently nobody took seriously the
15
THE HREAT CONVERSATION
suggestion that there could be any other ideal. The educational
ideas of John Locke, for example, which were directed to the
preparation of the pupil to fit conveniently into the social and
economic environment in which he found himself, made no
impression on Locke’s contemporaries. And so it will be found
that other voices raised in criticism of liberal education fell
upon deaf ears until about a half-century ago.
This Western devotion to the liberal arts and liberal
education must have been largely responsible for the
emergence of democracy as an ideal. The democratie ideal
is equal opportunity for full human development, and, sinee
the liberal arts are the basic means of such development,
devotion to democracy naturally results from devotion to them.
On the other hand, if acquisition of the liberal arts is an
intrin.sic part of human dignity, then the democratic ideal
demands that we should strive to .see to it that all have the
opportunity to attain to the fulle.st measure of the liberal arts
that is possible to each.
The present crisis in the world has been precipitated by the
vision of the range of practical and productive art offered by
the West. All ovei- the world men are on the move, expressing
their deterntination to share in the technology in which the
West has excelled. 'This movement is one oi the most spec-
tacular in history, and everybody is agreed upon one thing
about it : we do not know how to deal with it. It would be
tragic if in our preoccupation with the crisis we failed to hold
up as a thing of value for. the world, even as that which might
show us a way in which to deal with the crisis, our vision of
the best thai the West has to offer. That vision is the range
of the liberal arts and liberal edueation. Our determination
about the distribution of the fullest measure of these arts and
this education will measure our loyalty to the best in our own
past and our total service to the future of the world.
16
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
Economics and the Decline of Liberal Education
Most writers on education hold that, though education
through great books and the liberal arts is still the best
education for the few, it cannot be the best education for the
many, because the many have not the capacity to acquire it.
It would seem, however, that this education is the best for
everybody, if it is the best for the best, provided everybody can
get it. The question then, is: Can everybody get it? This is
the most important question in education. Perhaps it is the
most important question in the world.
The poverty of a country may seem to prevent it from the
rapid attainment of its educational ideal. In the past the
education of the few rested on the labour of the many. It was
assumed, perhaps rightly, that the few could not have educa-
tion unless the many were deprived of it.
The economic question can arise in another way. It can be
suggested that liberal education is no good to a man who is
starving, that the first duty of man is to earn a living, and that
learning to earn a living and then earning it will absorb the
time that might be devoted to liberal education in youth and
maturity.
This argument is persuasive in countries where people are
actually starving and where the economic system is at so
rudimentary a stage that all a man’s waking hours must be
dedicated to extracting a meagre livelihood from the soil.
Millions of men throughout the world are living in economic
slavery. They are condemned to subhuman lives. We should
do everything we can to strike the shackles from them. But
even while we are doing so we. must remember that economic
independence is not an end in itself ; it is only a means, though
an ab.solutely nt^cessary one, to leading a human life.
No one can question the desirability of technical training in
17
'i’HE (iREAl' CON VERSA'!' ION
under-developed countries. No one can be satisfied with
technical training as an ideal. The ideal is liberal education,
and technical training can be justified only because it may
help to supply the economic base that will make universal
liberal education pos.sible.
In developed countries technical training is also necessary,
just as work is necessary in .such countries. But the West has
already achieved such a standard of living that it cannot use
economic backwardness as an excuse for failing to face the
task of making liberal education available to all. As the
business of earning a living has become easier and simpler, it
has also become less interesting and significant ; and all
personal problems have become more perplexing. This fact,
plus the fact of the di.sappcarance of any education adequate
to deal with it, has led to the extension on an unprecedented
scale of the most trivial recreations, through which the baffled
individual may hope to forget that his human problems are
ui^olved.
^ Adam Smith slated the case long ago; “A man without the
proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible,
more contemptible than even a coward, and seems to be
mutilated and deformed in a still more essential part of the
character of human nature.” He points out that this is the
condition of “the great body of people,” who, by the division
of the labour are confined in their employment “to a few very
simple operations” in which th(; worker “has no occasion to
exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding
out expedients fot removing difficulties which never occur.”
I do not believe that industrialization and democracy are
inherently opposed. But they are in actual practice opposed
unless the gap between them is bridged by liberal education
for all. That mechanization which tends to reduce a man to
18
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
a robot also supplies the economic base and the leisure that
will enable him to get a liberal education and to become truly
a man.
* * *
I’he countries of the West are committed to universal, free,
compulsory education but the West has not accepted the
proposition that the democratic ideal demands liberal educa-
tion for all. Indeed, where the United States is concerned, it
seems that the results of universal, free, compulsory education
can be acceptable only on the theory that the object of the
.schools is .something other than education; that it is, for
example, to keep the young from cluttering up homes and
factories during a difficult period of their lives, or that it is to
bring them together for social or recreational purposes.
Since this does not take any greater effort than is required
to pass compulsory school laws and build buildings, the
accomplishment of this purpose would not at first blu.sh seem
to be a matter for boasting. Yet we often hear of it as some-
thing that should suggest to us the main line of a sound
educational policy. We often hear that bringing young people
together, having them work and play together, and having
them organize themselves “democratically” are the great
contributions to democracy that the educational system can
make.
No one can deny the value of getting together, of learning
to get along with others, of coming to appreciate the methods
of organization and the duties of membership in an organiza-
tion any more than one can deny the importance of physical
health and sportsmanship. It seems on the face of it a trifle
absurd, however, to go to the trouble of training and engaging
teachers, of erecting laboratories and libraries, and of laying
out a programme of instruction and learning if, in effect, the
19
THE CREA'I' CONVERSATION
curriculum is extra and the extra-curriculum is the heart of the
matter.
It seems doubtful whether the purposes of the educational
system can be found in the pursuit of objects that the Boy
Scouts and the Y.M.C.A., to say nothing of the family and the
church, purport to be pursuing. The unique function of the
educational system would appear to have something to do with
the mind. No other agency in the community sets itself up, or
is set up, to train the mind. To the extent to which the
(educational system is diverted to other objects, to that extent
the mind of the community is neglected.
This is not to say that the educational system should not
contribute to the physical, social, and moral development of
those conunitled to its charge. But the method of its contribu-
tion, apart from the facilities for extra-curriculum activities
that it provides, is through the mind. The educational system
seeks to establish the rational foundations for good physical,
moral and social behaviour. These rational foundations arc
the result of liberal education, education through great books
and the liberal arts.
However, the triumphs of industrialization, which made
educational expansion possible, resulted from triumphs of
technology, which rested on triumphs of science, which in turn
were promoted by specialization. Specialization, experimental
science, technology, and industrialization were new. Great
books and the liberal arts were* identified in the public mind
with dead languages, arid routines and an archaic, prescientific
past. The march <.'f progress could be speeded by getting rid
of them, the public thought, and using scientific method and
specialization for the double purpose of promoting tech-
nological advance and curing the social maladjustments that
industrialization brought with it.
20
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
The revolt against the classical dissectors and arid routines
was justified. So was the new interest in experimental science.
The revolt against liberal education was not justified. Neither
was the belief that the method of experimental science could
replace the methods of history, philosophy and the arts.
Do science, technology, industrialization and specialization
render the Great Conversation irrelevant? On the contrary, it
is clear that industrialization makes liberal education more
necessary than ever, and that the leisure it provides makes
liberal education possible, for the first time, for everybody.
Must the specialist, on the other hand, be excluded from the
community? If .so, there can hardly be one; for increasingly
in the Wc.sl everybody is a specialist. The ta.sk is to have a
community nevertheless, and this can be done through the
Great Conversation. Through it the expert can discover the
great common principles that underlie the activities of the
specialists. Through it he can bring ideas to bear upon his
experience. In the light of the Great Conversation, his special
brand of knowledge loses its particularistic vices and becomes
a means of penetrating the great books. The mathematical
specialist, for example, can get farther faster into the great
mathematicians than a reader who is without his specialized
training. With the help of great books, .specialized knowledge
can radiate out into a genuine interfiltration of common
learning and common life.
Experimental Science
The Great Conversation began before the beginnings of
experimental .science. But the birth of the Conversation and
the birth of science were simultaneous. The earliest of the
prc-Socratics were investigating and seeking to understand the
natural phenomena ; among them were men who used
21
THE C. REA'I' CONVERSATION
mathematical notions for this purpose. Even experimentation
is not new; it has been going on for hundreds of years. But
faith in the experiment as an exclusive method is a modem
manifestation. The experimental method has won such clear
and convincing victories that it is now regarded in some
quarters not only as the sole method of building up scientific
knowledge, but also as the sole method of obtaining knowledge
of any kind.
Thus we arc often told that any question that is not
answerable by the empirical methods of science is not really
answerable at all, or at least not by significant and verifiable
statements. Exceptions may be made with regard to the kinds
of questions mathematicians or logicians answer by their
methods. But all other questions must be submitted to the
methods of experimental rc.search or empirical inquiry.
If they are not answerable by these methods, they are the
sort of questions that should never have been a.sked in the first
place. At best they are questions we can answer only by guess-
work or conjecture ; at worst they arc meaningless or, as the
saying goes, non.sensical questions. Genuinely significant
problems, in contrast, get their meaning in large part from the
scientific operations of observation, experiment, and measure-
ment by which they can be solved ; and the solutions, when
discovered by these methods, are better than guesswork or
opinion. They are supported by fact. They have been tested
and are subject to further verification.
^Vc are told furthermore that the best answers we can obtain
by the scientific method are never more than probable. We
must free ourselves, therefore, from the illusion that, outside
mathematics and logic, we can attain necessary and certain
truth. Statements that are not mathematical or logical
formulae may look as if they were necessarily or certainly true,
22
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
but they only look like that. They cannot really be either
necessary or certain. In addition, if they have not been
subjected to empirical verification, they arc, far from being
necessarily true, not even established as probable. Such state-
ments can be accepted provisionally, as working assumptions
or hypotheses, if they are acceptable at all. Perhaps it is better,
unless circumstances compel us to take another course, to
accept such statements at all.
Clonsider, for example, statements about Cod’s existence or
the immortality of the soul. These are answers to questions
that cannot be answered — one way or the other — by the
experimental method. If that is the only method by which
probable and verifiable knowledge is attainable, wc are
debarred from having knowledge about God’s existence or the
immortality of the soul. If modern man, accepting the view
that he can claim to know only what can be demonstrated
by experiment or verified by empirical research, still wishes to
believe in these things, he must acknowledge that he does so
by religious faith oi' by the exercise of his will to believe ; and
he must be prepared to be regarded in certain quarters as
hopelessly superstitious.
It is .sometimes admitted that many propositions that are
affirmed by intelligent people, .such as that democracy is the
best form of government or that world peace depends upon
world government, cannot be te,sted by the method of
experimental .science. But it is .suggested that this is simply
because the method is .still not fully developed. When our use
of the method matures, we .shall find out how to employ it in
an.swering every genuine que.stion.
Since many propo.sitions in the Great Conversation have not
been arrived at by experiment or have not been submitted to
empirical verification, wc often hear that the (Conversation,
though perhaps interesting to the antiquarian as .setting forth
23
THE Cl R E A r CONVERSATION
the bizarre superstitions entertained by “thinkers” before the
dawn of experimental science, can have no relevance for us
now, when experimental science and its methods have at last
revealed these superstitions for what they are. We are urged to
abandon the reactionary notion that the earlier voices in the
( lonvcr.sation arc even now saying .something worth listening
to. We are urged to place our trust in the experimental
method as the only source of valid or verifiable an.swers to
questions of every sort.
One voice in the Great C]onversation itself announces this
modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes:
“When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles,
what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any
volume ... let us a.sk. Does it contain any abstract reasoning
concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any
experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact existence?
No. Commit it then to the flames : for it can contain nothing
but sophistry and illusion.”
The books that Hume and his followers, the positivists of our
own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to
dismissal from serious consideration, do not reflect ignorance or
neglect of Hume’s principles. Those books, writtui after as
well as before Hurne, argue the case against the kind of
positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and
experimental science is sophistry and illusion. They state and
defend propositions quite opposite to those of Hume.
The Great Conversation, in .short, contains both sides of the
issue that in modern times is thought to have a most critical
bearing on the significance of the Great Conversation itself.
Only an unashamed dogmati.st would dare to assert that the
issue has been finally resolved now in favour of the view that,
outside logic or mathematics, the method of modem science is
24
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
the only method to employ in seeking knowledge. The dog-
matist who made this assertion would have to be more than
unashamed. He would have to blind himself to the fact that
his own assertion was not established by the experimental
method, nor made as an indisputable conclusion of mathema-
tical reasoning or of purely logical analysis.
With regard to this issue about the scientific method, which
has become central in our own day, the contrary claim is not
made for the Great ( lonversation. It would be equally
dogmatic to assert that the issue has been resolved in favour of
the opposite point of view. What can be justly claimed
however, is that the great books ably present both sides of the
issue and throw light on aspects of it that arc darkly as well
as dogmatically treated in contemporary discussion.
They raise the question for us of what is meant by science
and the scientific method. If all that is meant is that a scientist
is honest and careful and precise, and that he weighs all the
evidence with discrimination before he pronounces judgment,
then we can agree that the scientific method is the only method
of reaching and testing the truth in any field. But this
conception of the scientific method is so broad as to include the
methods used by competent historians, philosophers, and
theologians since the beginning of time ; and it is not helpful,
indeed it is seriously misleading, to name a method used in all
fields after one of them.
Sometimes the scientific method seems to mean that we must
pay attention to the facts, which carries with it the suggestion
that those who do not believe that the method of experimental
science is appropriate to every other field of inquiry do not pay
attention to the facts and arc therefore remote from reality.
The great books show, on the contrary, that even those thinkers
of the past who are now often looked upon as the most
reactionary, the medieval theologians, insisted, as Aristotle
25
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
had before them, that the truth of any statement is its con-
formity to reality or fact, and that sense-experience is required
to discover the particular matters of fact that test the truth
of general statements about the nature of things.
“In the knowledge of nature,” Aristotle writes, the test of
principles “is the unimpeachable evidence of the senses as to
each fact.” He holds that “lack of experience diminishes our
power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts.
Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and
its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the
foundation of their theories, principles such as to admit of a
wide and coherent development ; while those whom devotion
to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts
arc too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.”
Theories should be credited, Aristotle insists, “only if what
they affirm agrees with the observed facts.” Clenturies later, an
experimental physiologist such as William Harvey says neither
more nor less when he declares that “to test whether anything
has been well or ill advanced, to ascertain whether some false-
hood does not lurk under a proposition, it is imperative on us
to bring it to the proof of sense, and to admit or reject it on the
decision of sense.”
To proclaim the necessity of observing the facts, ,ind all the
facts, is not to say, however, that merely collecting facts will
solve a problem of any kind. The facts are indispensable ; they
arc not sufficient. To .solve a problem it is nece.s.sary to think.
It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.
Even the experimental scientist cannot avoid being a liberal
artist, and the bc'.! of them, as the great books show, are men
of imagination and of theory as well as patient observers of
particular facts. Those who have condemned thinkers who
have insisted on the importance of ideas have often overlooked
the equal insistence of these writers on obtaining the facts.
26
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
These critics have themselves frequently misunderstood the
scientific method and have confused it with the aimless
accumulation of data.
When the various meanings of science and the scientific
method arc distinguished and clarified, the issue remains
whether the method associated with the experimental science,
as that has developed in modern times, is the only method of
seeking the truth about what really exists or about what men
and societies should do. As already pointed out, both sides of
this issue are taken and argued in the Great Conversation. But
the great books do more than that. They afford us the best
examples of man’s efforts to seek the truth, both about the
nature, of things and about human conduct, by methods other
than those of experimental science ; and because these
examphts are presented in the context of equally striking
examples of man’s efforts to learn by experiment or the method
of empirical science, the great books provide us with the best
materials for judging whether the experimental method is or
is not the only acceptable method of inquiry, into all things.
Certainly the rise of experimental science has not made the
Great C!onver.sation irrelevant. Experimental .science is a part
of the Clonversation. As Etienne GiLson has remarked, “our
science is a part of our humanism” as “the science of Pericles’
time was a part of Greek humanism.” Science is itself part of
the Great Conversation. In the Conversation we find science
rai.sing is.sues about knowledge and reality. In the light of the
Convcr.sation we can reach a judgment about the question in
dispute: How many valid methods of inquiry are there?
Because of experimental science we now know a very large
number of things about the natural world of which our pre-
decessors were ignorant. In this set of books we can observe
the birth of .science, applaud the development of the
experimental technique, and celebrate the triumphs it has won.
27
THE OREAT CONVERSATION
But we can also note the limitation of the method and mourn
the errors that its misapplication has caused. We can
distinguish the outline of those great persistent problems that
the method of experimental natural science may never solve
and find the clues to their solutions offered by other disciplines
and other methods.
dhoosing the Great Books
In preparing this set of books the Editors had principally in
mind the needs of adults, who have today, thanks to the social
changes of the past fifty years, the leisure to make themselves
educated men and women. We do not underrate the possibili-
ties of these books as a means of educating young people : on
the contrary, we think the sooner the young are introduced to
the Great Conversation the better. They will not be able to
understand it very well : to do that demands maturity of mind
and experience. They should be introduced to it in the hope
that they will eventually come to understand it, and even to
take part in it. But our primary aim in putting together this
set was to enable adults to understand themselves through
understanding of their cultural heritage.
The members of the Advisory Board, in addition to long
experience as teachers of young people, had all devoted a large
part of their lives to the education of adults. They had all
sought to use great books for the purpose of educating adults.
They determined to try to offer, this means of liberal education
in a coherent programme. This .set of books was the result.
In making the selection the Board asked of each book
considered whether it had contributed in an important way to
the Great Conversation. They do not, of course, suggest that
their judgment was unerring. They do not claim that all the
great books of the West are included. They would not be
28
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
embarrassed by the suggestion that they had omitted a book,
or several books, greater than any found here. But they would
be perturbed at the thought that they had omitted books
essential to a liberal education or included any that had little
bearing upon it.
In point of fact the Board’s discussions revealed few
differences of opinion about the overwhelming majority of the
books in the list. There was not much doubt in their minds
about which are the most important voices in the Great
Conversation. Of marginal cases there were a few. Many
readers will no doubt be disappointed to find one, if not more,
of their favourite authors of works missing. One reason for
this is that there are writers — Leibnitz, Voltaire and Balzac
are notable examples — who, while they have undoubtedly
madt; an important contribution to the Great Conversation,
hav'c done so through the total volume of their writings, rather
than in a few great works, and whose total volume is too large
to be included in a set like this, or whose single works do not
come up to the standard of the other books in the set. Other
readers will be surprised to discover some author, or authors,
included of whom they had a low opinion. As Editor in Chief,
I accept the responsibility; the final decision on the list was
made by nu;. I do not pretend that my prejudices played no
part : I do claim that I sought, obtained, and usually accepted,
excellent advice.
Readers who are startled to find the Bible omitted are
assured that this was done solely because the Bible is so widely
distributed that it was felt unnecessary to include it. References
to the Bible, in both the Authorised and the Douai versions,
are included under appropriate topics in the Syntopicon.
The omission of twentieth-century works may surprise some
people. This is not to be taken to imply that the Editors
imagine that the Great Conversation came to an end before
29
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
the twentieth century began. On the contrary, we are well
aware that it has been going on vigorously during this century,
and we feel confident that great books have been written since
1900. But we simply did not feel that we, or anyone else, could
accurately judge the merits of contemporary writings. During
the editorial deliberations about the contents of the set more
difficult problems were encountered with nineteenth-century
authors and titles than with those of any preceding century.
The cause of these difficulties — the proximity of the authors
and woiks to our own day, and our consequent lack of
perspective with regard to them — would render it far more
difficult to make a just selection of twentieth-century authors.
Readers interested in knowing some of the possible candidates
for inclusion will find their names in the Bibliography of
Additional Readings appendc^d to the Syntopicon (vol. 3,
pp. 1143-1217). The Additional Readings listed at the end of
each of the Syntopicon’ s chapters on the great ideas try to
provide an adequate representation of work written in the
twentieth century. In so doing, they name books that may
prove themselves great, as other great books have done, by
submission with the passage of time to the general judgment
of mankind.
The Editors did not seek to assemble a set of books represen-
tative of particular periods, countries, or points of view.
Antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times are included in
proportion as the great writers of these epochs were judged to
have contributed to the deepening, extension or enrichment of
the tradition of the West. It is worth noting, however, that
though the peritnl from 1500 to 1900 represents less than one-
sixth of the total extent of the literary record, these four
hundred years are represented by more than one-half of the
volumes of Great Books of the Western World.
We thought it no part of our duty to emphasize national
30
THE GREA'i' CONVERSATION
contributions. Since the set was conceived of as a great conver-
sation, the books could not be chosen with any dogma or point
of view in mind ; in a conversation that has gone on for twenty-
five centuries all dogmas and all points of view appear.
We attached importance to making whole works, not
excerpts, available. In all but three case.s — Aquinas, Kepler
and Fourier — the 443 works of the 74 authors in the set are
printed complete. The Advisory Board insisted most strongly
that the great writers should be allowed to speak for them-
selves, with their full voice, and not be digested or mutilated
by editorial decisions.
Finally, as indicated by the title, the set is confined to
authors and books of the Western world; it includes none of
the wisdom of the East. The omission from this collection of
the great books of the Eastern world implies no depreciation
of them. But the conversation presented in this set is peculiar
to the West. Wo believe that everybody. Westerners and
Easterners, should understand it : not because it is better than
anything the East can show, but because it is a means of under-
standing the West. We hope that editors who understand the
tradition of the East will do for that part of the world what
we have attempted to do for our own tradition in Great Books
of the Western World and the Syntopicon. With that task
accomplished for both the West and the East, it should be
possible to put together the common elements in the two
traditions and to present Great Books of the World. Few enter-
prises could do .so much to advance the unity of mankind.
* * *
The Editors felt that the chronological order was the most
appropriate organizing principle for the volumes of this set.
As we c()ncci\'cd of the collection as reproducing a conversation
among its authors, it was a natural decision to make the
31
THE GREAT CONVERSATION
successive volumes of the set present, so far as possible, the
authors in the temporal sequence in which they took part in
the conversation. We believe that readers may derive much
benefit from this arrangement, for they will find that one book
leads to another which amplifies, modifies, or contradicts its
views.
The Syntopicon began as an index and developed into a
means of helping the reader find paths through the books : it
ended by becoming, as well as a tool for reference, research
and study, a preliminary sununation of the issues around
which the Great Conversation has revolved, together with
indications of the contemporary course of the debate. Like the
set, the Syntopicon argues no case, presents no point of view.
It will not interpret any book to the reader ; it will not tell him
which author is right and which wrong on any question. It
simply supplies him with suggestions as to how he may
conveniently pursue the study of any important topic through
the range of the intellectual history of the West. It shows
him how to find what great men have said about the greatest
i.ssues and what is being said about these issues today.
Robert Maynaid Hutchins
Editor-in-Chief
32
^ INTRODUCTION ^
^ X HE claim that the West
has produced a larger number of “great works of the mind”
than any other civilization is a breathtaking one. Nevertheless,
I imagine that it would be generally accepted. (Jertainly, the
imposing array of authors assembled in this magnificent
collection of books suggests that there is substantial evidence
in support of it.
Here are to be found theologians and philosophers,
historian.s, poets, dramatists and novelists, scientists, mathe-
maticians and physicians, statesmen and social reformers.
They come from many countries, and are representative of
every age from the .5th eentury B.C^. to the 19th century A.D.
And the seventy or more authors included in this collection are
but a few of the brightest stars in a vast and brilliant
constellation. In every sphere of knowledge, of thought and of
imagination which they illuminate scores, if not hundreds, of
other illu.strious names could be added to theirs.
33
1 N I R O D U G 1 1 O N
It may be asked, however, what connection there is between
the works of the philosophers who figure so prominently in
this set and expression in, say, architecture, music, painting or
sculpture. It is easy enough to sec the connection between the
works of the early mathematicians and scientists and today’s
immense and far-reaching efflorescence of science and tech-
nology ; but surely Plato, Aristotle, and even more St.
Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas are utterly remote from
the present-day world? Nothing could be farther from the
truth; it was they who fashioned the fundamental ideas of
b(;auty, of truth and of goodness which have set the standards
of excellence at which creators in every medium have aimed
ever since. They were the fundamental research workers in the
field of ideas; and the applications of their researches are
evident in every field. The result of this has been to produce in
the West an all-round civilization, one that has reached great
heights in the realms of both thought and action.
We who belong to, and believe in, this civilization must have
the courage to sec it as a whole, to acknowledge and deplore the
crimes, the errors and the short-,comings of Western civilization
as well as to laud its virtues and its high achievements. In
order to be able to see the picture as a whole we must know
not only the West of today but its historical recoid; and not
only the record of its actions but also the record of the ideas
and the ideals which have in.spircd and determined those
actions. That record is to be found, in full, in these books.
The “Clonversation” omits nothing ; it lays bare the depths as
well as the heights.
In seeking thus to inform ourselves about the dynamics of
our civilization we shall be following a tradition which has
persisted throughout the entire history of the West. “The
spirit of Western civilization”, declares Mr. Robert Maynard
Hutchins, the Editor-in-Chief of this set of books, “is the spirit
34
1 N R O D U C I' I O N
of inquiry.” No words could be more true. If the defining
characteristic of the West is to be compressed within a single
phrase, it might be suggested that the urge to inquire would
come as near as any to describing it.
In the long course of Western history the spirit of inquiry
has at times burned brightly, at others with but a dim and
flickering light. It has never been extinguished. Despotic
rulers and tyrannical organizations have again and again
endeavoured to stamp it out. All have failed. They have put
men to death or to torture, they have driven them oversea or
underground, they have even imposed their will upon them
temporarily, but, however terrifying the means they have used,
they have never finally succeeded in eliminating the funda-
mental urge of We.stern man to find out the truth, to probe
with his mind every proposition that thought can produce, and
to inquire critically into the purpose, the validity, and the
results of e\'cry human action.
The present century has afforded striking illustration of this.
Attempt.s have been made, and arc still being made, to repress
the spirit of inquiry (except along lines prescribed by the State)
and to wrest from man the right -and even the capacity- — to
think as an individual, for his own purposes and his own
.satisfaction. Already, however, such attempts made by Hitler
and Mussolini can be seen to have been failures: in the
countries they .savaged the spirit of inquiry is already — after
not much more than a decade — as vigorous and lively as
though the two dictators had never been. And farther East,
where repression has been much longer maintained, the
questing spirit of man nevertheless remains alive, and gives
tongue — as witne.s.s the two great novels which have recently
come out of Soviet Russia : Dudintsev’s Not by Bread Alone
and Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago.
If we arc to be able to discuss intelligently the affairs of our
35
IN TRODUC I'lON
civilization, and still more if we aspire to exercise our rights to
intervene in them, it is essential that we know and understand
that civilization. And not merely, I would submit, its contem-
porary institutions, conventions and practices, but also their
evolution and the ideas and the convictions which brought
them into being and have shaped their development.
This set of books offers invaluable, indeed unique, assistance
towards attaining that knowledge and understanding. It
presents the quintessence of Western thought and wisdom,
distilled over many centuries, about the fundamental problems
of life and society. It lays bare the ideas and emotions, the
beliefs and convictions which have shaped the course of
Western civilization and determined the character of its
culture. It shows how those ideas and faiths emerged, and
traces the long record of their refinement. It is a guide to the
mind of the West.
Nev(;rthele.ss, I would not have any of you who read these
words imagine that I am urging you to study the Great Books
out of a sense of civic duty alone. That is an extremely
important rea.son — in the final analy.si.s probably the most
important one — but it is far from being the only one. First and
foremost among the others is the unending personal enjoyment
and satisfaction one should derive from the books.
Far more should accrue, however, for anyone from study of
these great books than intellectual stimulus and mental
exhilaration. Provided, that is, that the reader approaches
the books with confidence. Many readers will do so : they will
already be familiar with some, perhaps many, of the authors,
and will have experienre of serious and systematic reading.
They will ru^ed no encouragement, and probably little
guidance.
But I feel sure that there will be many more people who,
though immensely attracted by the idea of possession of this
36
INTRODUCTION
noble library, will doubt whether they can read with enjoy-
ment and master the contents of its volumes. Are these books,
they will ask, really within the capacity of the ordinary man
or woman? Are they not too difficult? Are they not too
highbrow, too “Third Programme” ? To such people I would
venture to give a few words of advice, and I hope of encourage-
ment.
hirst let me say that you cannot tell how much you will get
out of a book until you have tried, and secondly, that the
chances are that you will probably get a very great deal more
than you expected. It is quite wrong to imagine that because a
book has become a “classic” it must therefore be difficult to
read. Countless people have, unhappily, been prevented from
reading countless books because of this fear, whereas had they
but tried they would have found that they both understood
and enjoyed them. Actually, “cla.s.sics” arc often easier to read
than many so-called “popular” works, if only because they are
better written. This fact has never been more strikingly
demonstrated than during the past few years in the new
secondary schools, the Secondary Modern schools. Teachers
in these schools have been courageous enough to introduce
their pupils to books previously considered beyond the capacity
of children of moderate intellectual ability. They have found
that in numerous cases the children have taken them in their
stride, and have come back and eagerly a.sked for more. There
is no reason why the same should not happen with adults.
Thirdly — and at the risk of seeming to contradict my second
point — just as any other skill has to be learned before it can be
practised with ease and surety, ,so has the skill of reading books
which deal with ideas or .specialized topics. Of course one
cannot expect to understand such books all at once. Every
branch of knowledge has its particular vocabulary and its own
modes of expression ; and one must learn these in order to gain
37
INTRODUCTION
understanding, just as certainly as one must learn French in
order to read a book written in that language.
As for the books in this set, no simple answers can be given to
the questions of the doubters. To begin with — and this I hope
will be at once encouraging — the contents of the different
works range, as reading material, from the extremely easy to
th(; extremely difficult. A reader coming fresh to them all
could confidently embark upon a number of these books whose
titles at first sight appear forbidding — for example, Thucy-
dides’ The History of the Pelopojinesian War, Plutarch’s The
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Rabelais’ Gargantua
and Pantagruel, or Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire — with every expectation of thoroughly
enjoying them. He would be far from completely under-
standing them, but that need be no bar to enjoyment of them.
If however, the same reader began with, say, Ari.stotle’s
Categories, the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Spinoza’s Ethics, or even Freud’s Selected Papers on Hysteria,
he would be likely to find himself in .such deep, not to say
unfathomable, waters that he would quickly give up in despair.
So my first piece of practical advice to the reader who
doubts his capacity to master the contents of The Great Books
is don’t, please don’t, attempt to begin at Volume 4 and tr plod
your way .stolidly through to Volume ,54. You will almost
certainly never get anywhere near Volume 54 if you do. You
will probably have given up before you reach Volume 10; you
may love Homer, enjoy the Greek dramati.sts and be
enthralled by Herodotus and Thucydides, but you will be a
very able or an extremely pertinacious reader if you do not
flounder helplessly in Plato and Aristotle. Stern training is
needed for grappling with them or at any rate with their more
ab.struse works.
Secondly, do not at first feel bound to read whole works, or
38
INTRODUCTION
to follow any chronological order. That can come later. For
the present, browse through the volumes until you come across
a work which really grips you, which compels you to read it.
You will probably not have to go far before you discover
such a work. There are many in this collection which any
reader endowed with average intelligence and reasonably
broad Interests should be able, without previous training, to
read easily and with pleasure. I have already mentioned a
few books which I think might appeal to readers without
previous experience of classics. When selecting those examples
I deliberately did not choose any of the works of fiction. But
for many — may I call you novice readers? — entry into the
Great Books by way of the works of fiction they include may
be the easiest and most enjoyable way. And what a choice
there is: Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Fielding’s The History of
Tom Jones, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Melville’s Moby Dick, to
give but four examples.
The fact that each one of tho.se stories is much more than
a work of fiction, that Don Quixote is an elaborate burlesque
of mediaeval chivalry, and that War and Peace is history told
in the guise of fiction, should not be allowed to trouble the
reader cotning to them for the first time. Nor should the fact
that inevitably the meaning of countless references to the life
of the period in which the tale is set escapes him. For the
beginner, let enjoyment be all ; it is of the first importance that
he discover that great books can be enjoyed, that they arc not
wearisome tasks to be undertaken out of a sense of duty or in
a conscious effort at .self-education.
Approach by way of works of fiction is far from being the
only means of effecting an enjoyable entry into the Great
Books. Many readers will find themselves drawn to particular
authors or books by interests they have already developed.
Those with a taste of modern history, for example, may
39
INTRODUCTION
welcome the chance to extend their knowledge, to learn some-
thing about the ancient world, and so will be attracted to
Herodotus or Thucydides, Plutarch or Tacitus.
Similarly, the reader who has hitherto lived in the world of
science fiction may think it worth while to see what Galileo or
Newton had to say, and if he can bear in mind that they were
in their day as bold adventurers into space as are the Sputnik
engineers of our day he may well find their works enthralling.
So one might go on indefinitely. There is, I would maintain,
an agreeable route into the Great Books for anyone who can
discover a taste for serious reading. My advice to all who are
unpractised in such reading — and most of us arc — is to defer
any attempt at systematizing their reading until they have
acquired a genuine feeling of enjoyment through the reading
of those books which arc to them immediately attractive. Read
what you ar(; certain you like until you find yourself compelled
- as you will — to explore further, to take on works which
demand more of you.
As you thus gradually extend your range, you will probably
be surprised and delighted to find how easily and eagerly you
make this extension. The lines along which you do so will of
cour.se be a matter for your own choice. If you began with
works of fiction, you may find yourself moving ove; into
biography — Boswell’s The Life of Dr. Johnson could prove an
admirable introduction to this form of literature — or to drama,
beginning perhaps with Shakespeare, and thus reviving
memories of school days, or poetical narrative — of which
Cihaucer is a superb exponent — or belles lettres, or history or
science or philosophy: in short, into whatever field attracts
you.
As you thus make your way from one author to another, and
from one literary form to another, you will begin to realize that
you are meeting the same ideas again and again, though
40
INTRODUCTION
approached from different standpoints and treated in different
ways — and with varying degrees of respect ! This is a crucial
discovery, and it is at this point that you may wish to consider
making use of the Syntapicon, which enables you, first, to
follow through the history of any idea from its first mention
up to almost the present day, and secondly, to discover to the
full how the Great Books are bound together by the community
and continuity of the ideas they embody.
I could write at great length about the Syntapicon, which
impresses me the more I study it. But Mr. Mortimer J. Adler,
the Editor-in-(’hief, and his colleagues have, I think, in their
Preface (to be found in Volume 2) made good their claim that
this remarkable instrument which they have created does
indeed “show that the 443 works which comprise Volumes 4 to
.34 can be seen and used as .something more than a collection of
books”.
That is the ultimate justification for the selection and
publication as a set of these books : that they are very much
more than just a collection of books. They are, as the Editors
of the Syntopicon say : —
. . . pre-rmincntly those [books] whicli have given the Western
tradition its life and light. The unity of this set of books does not
consist merely in the fact that each member of it is a great book
worth reading. A deeper unity exists in the relation of all the
books to one tradition of common themes and problems. It is
claimed for this set of books that all the works in it are signifi-
cantly related to one another and that, taken together, they
adequately present the ideas and issues, the terms and topics,
that have made the western tradition what it is.
Reading selectively with the aid of the Syntopicon may
well be for many readers without previous experience of
philosophical writings the best mode of approach to the great
philosophers. Whether you adopt this or any other method
41
I N I’ R O D U C T I O N
you should as you progress in your reading begin to find
yourself moving more easily in the world of ideas. But it would
be dishonest not to warn you that quite early in your explora-
tion of these books — and this does not by any means apply to
the works of the philosophers alone — you may expect to come
across passages which are incomprehensible to you. Do not let
these daunt you. There are passages in many of these books
which still baffle scholars who have given a lifetime of study to
them.
There arc many reasons why it is inevitable that this should
be so. In the first place, and most important, these books have
all been written by men with abnormally profound, acute,
sensitive and perceptive minds. Such minds arc capable on the
one hand of perceiving steps in, and objections to, an argument
which the ordinary mind fails to notice, and on the other,
because of their acuity of perception, of omitting or leaping
lightly over steps in an argument up which the ordinary mind
must plod laboriously if it is to climb successfully to the
conclusion. Similarly, just as the artist who paints discovers
colours and forms in a landscape which are unperceived by
the eye of the ordinary man, so these artists in the use of
thought discover shades of meaning in abstract concepts
beyond the vision of ordinary folk.
This breadth and subtlety of mind means that frequently a
great writer will escape from the confines of a single literary
medium, or will so write that he can be read at more than one
level of under.standing. To take a very obvious example of the
former, Shakespeare is at one and the same time dramatist,
poet, sociologist, and philosopher. He is supremely skilled in
engineering dramatic situation.s, he enchants with the beauty
and power of his poetry, he is inimitable in his deft and
accurate portraiture of the whole range of Elizabethan
characters, and he is continually compelling the reader or
42
INTRODUCTION
viewer of his plays to ponder the profoundest problems of
human living.
A famous example of the work written at more than one
level is afforded by Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. These fables
have been read with huge enjoyment by many generations of
young children, who delight in the hero’s strange and
grotesque adventures in the lands of the Lilliputians, the
Brobdingnagians, the Laputans, and the Houyhnhnms. But
they never even begin to realize that there is anything more
than a good story in these lively narratives ; it never dawns on
them in their immaturity that these enthralling tales are but
a vehicle for one of the most savage satires on the follies and
vices of the human race ever written.
Secondly — and this is a point which is often ignored — these
writers have all done their thinking and composed their works
within a very different social and intellectual atmosphere from
that in which we of today live and do our thinking. No thinker,
however great, can quite escape from his age. He may be
“ahead of his time’’- that is a characteristic of greatness — but
he will in the main express himself not only in the language
of his time but in the thought patterns of that time. He will be
bounded by the limits of contemporary knowledge — how naive
seem to us sonu; of the beliefs of even the greatest scientists
of even a few generations ago! — but he will be kept at a
greater distance from us by the fact that even the words and
phrases most familiar to us which he uses evoked in his mind
images and emotions different from those they evoke in our
minds.
May I illustrate this point very simply? In Shakespeare’s
As Tou Like It there is a scene in which the banished Duke
is told by one of his courtiers how the eccentric Jacques
moralized over the sufferings of a deer wounded in the chase.
In the courtier’s description are the following lines :
43
INTRODUCTION
. . . and thus the hairy fool.
Much marked of the melancholy Jacques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.
The different shades of meaning which the word “fool” has
carried during its long history are almost innumerable. The
Latin word from which it derives, follis, meant in classical
times “a pair of bellows”. It is easy to see how, in the colloquial
Latin of later days, the word came to mean a “wind-bag”, in
the sense that we use this word today to describe an empty-
headed braggart. As follis had also meant a boxer’s punch
bag, it is equally easy to see how it came to mean “dupe”, and
thus any half-witted or silly person. But by the time the word
reached, via mediaeval French, the English language, it had
also acquired two more dissimilar, and contrasting, meanings:
“simple”, in the sense of “innocent” or “naive”, with no
implication of sillincs.s — it is in this sense that it is used by
Shakespeare in the words quoted above — and “impious”, the
meaning it carries in the famous sentence with which Psalm
XIV begins: “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no
God’ ”. And the word had also become a technical term,
signifying the professional jester whose business it was to amuse
mediaeval monarchs.
In whichever of these senses it was used, the word “fool”
conveyed to the Elizabethans a meaning more or less different
from any we understand when wc hear or read the word today.
The word “melancholy” conveyed to their minds meanings
even more markedly different. To them it meant primarily a
depressing physiological condition resulting from having in the
body too much “black bile”, a substance long ago discovered
by medical science to be non-existent.
One other important consideration must be mentioned.
These illustrations of the changing meanings of words are all
44
IN IROUUC 1 ION
selected from a single language — our own. But the majority
of the authors included in this collection of great books wrote
in other languages, and their works have consequently to be
presented here in translation. Now translation is one of the
most difficult of arts, because it is not a matter of rendering
one set of words into another (that would be easy enough), but
of rendering one mode of thinking, expressed in the idiom of
one language, into another mode of thinking, expressed in the
idiom of another language. Frequently the transfer of exact
meaning is impossible, because either the mode of thought, or
the form of verbal expression which conveys it, does not exist
in the language into which the work is being translated. An
approximation is all that is possible.
Sometimes, owing to misunderstanding, much less than
approximation is reached. I .shall not easily forget the late Sir
Alfred Zimmern, a lifelong student of international affairs,
declaring that the greatest source of misunderstanding between
Englishmen and Frenchmen was the different meanings they
attached in conversation to the words oui and yes. “When a
Frenchman replies 'Oui’,” he .said, “he means ‘I have heard
what you say and I agree with it’. But when an Englishman
replies, ‘Ves’ all he means is ‘I have heard what you say, and
1 understand it’. He implied no agreement. It was this
different use of the two words”, declared Sir Alfred, “which
was largely responsible for the growth of the belief in France
that the English were a perfidious people, never to be relied on
because they were always prone to go back on their word”.
Such gross misunderstanding should not, of course, occur in
written translation. But even the ablest translators are up
against the stubborn fact that some words — often highly signifi-
cant ones — cannot be exactly translated into any other
language, because no other language has words which exactly
describe the ideas they convey. An example of this is the Greek
4,'j
INTRODUC r ION
word dpeni used by Plato and Aristotle to describe the
quality which above all others enables men to live the good life.
This word is normally translated into English as “virtue”, but
its meaning is much fuller and more positive than that. Similar
examples of “untranslatable” words arc the German words
Weltanschauung and Zeitgeist.
Third among the reasons which make great works difficult
is the fact that there is always the possibility, especially when
complex or profound ideas are concerned, cither that the
writer has not fully comprehended an idea with which he has
been .struggling, or that he has not been able to find appro-
priate words in which to express himself. The human mind,
even at its finest, is not a perfect instrument, and language,
being a creation of the human mind, is similarly imperfect.
Every great thinker has had the experience, many times
repeated, of wrestling with ideas which baffled and defeated
him. Every writer knows the frustration of being unable to
express in words an idea which is perfectly clear in his mind.
Every reader, then, who sets out seriously to master the
contents of this set of books must be prepared not only for
strenuous mental exercise but also for moments of defeat.
Apart from all the reasons I have given, no really great book,
no matter how simple it may appear to be, gives up its total
meaning at a single reading. It would not be a great book if it
did. Nor does it surrender it to the immature mind : it takes
an adult mind, reinforced with adult knowledge and fortified
by adult experience, to get the most out of great works of the
mind.
This is not said with any intention of discouraging young
people from reading the books. On the contrary, there is every
reason for encouraging them to do so. At the very least they
will thereby know that the books cxi.st ; and far too many
young people have not even this knowledge. And there is no
46
INTRODUC riON
knowing where that knowledge may lead. I heard the other
day the story of a girl in her late ’teens, a shop assistant, who
went into a public library to borrow a novel, strayed by error
into the non-fiction section, was attracted by an unknown
name on a book, asked “Who is this Plato?”, took home the
Republic and had the whole course of her life changed. Within
a few years she had won brilliant academic successes and had
begun a career in a learned profession. An exceptional case,
no doubt, but such cases do happen.
A second very good reason for encouraging young people to
read the Great Books is that they will by doing so amass a vast
quantity of miscellaneous information which, because they are
young, they will acquire more easily and retain more surely
than most older people. They will meet, too, ideas outside
their experience, many of which it is to be hoped they will find
exciting and stimulating.
But most of all, young people .should be encouraged to read
such works as these in the hope that, as Plato said* 2,300 years
ago, “beauty, the effluence of fair works, .shall flow into the eye
and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and
insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and
sympathy with the beauty of reason”.
He who has received this true education of the inner being,
continued Plato, will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults
in art and nature and with a true taste, while he praises and
rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes
noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in
the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason
why; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute the
friend w'ith whom his education has made him long familiar.
The sceptic will say that Plato was over-optimistic, that
nobility and goodness do not necessarily ensue from the
reading of works that arc noble and good. Nevertheless, they
* In till* Republic, Book III, Gieat Books, Vol. 7, p. 333.
47
IN I RODUC riON
may; and other things being equal, the earlier the influence
of great works of literature and philosophy can be brought to
bear the greater the chance that they will. But one must be
quite realistic about the matter, and acknowledge that much
of the wisdom to be found in the Great Books can only be
appreciated when it is fertilized with experience gained by
living and by personal contacts with life’s problems. And such
experience is the one advantage which, save in rare cases,
youth cannot possess.
Twenty - three centuries ago Aristotle recognized this
truth ; — *
. . . while young men become gcomclriciaiis and mathematicians
and wise in matters like these, it is thought that a young man of
practical wisdom cannot be found. The cause is that sucli
wisdom is concerned not only with universals but with
particulars, which become familiar from experience, but a young
man has no experience, for it is length of time that gives
experience; indeed one might ask this question too, why a boy
may become a mathematician but not a philosopher or a
pfiysicist.f It is because the objects of mathematics exist by
abstraction, while the first principles of these othe^r sulqects come
from experience, and because* young men have no conviction
about the latter but merely use the proper language, whiUi the
essence of mathematical objects is plain enough to them.
In our own day this profound truth remains as inescapable
as ever, despite the tremendous advances wc have made in the
education of the young. As Sir Charles Morris, Vice-
Chancellor of Leeds University, recently said in a public
address : —
If the study of history or of literature has some deep value for
us all, how much this value can be acquired as a re.sult of
reading which is done before the age of 18? Let us be honest
with ourselves. What did we make of Hamlet or Othello, or of
* In Nirornac hfan Kthi(s, B(^ok VI Chapter 8. Great B(»ok.s. Vol. 9, p. 3^1.
t This ward has a veiy different meaning today.
48
1 N r R O D U C 1’ I O N
Prometheus or of Paradise Lost when we were 18.'’ What were
we able to make of the French, still less of the Industrial Revolu-
tion? What could we take from the great philosophers?
Humanistic studies if they have a part to play in full education
can hardly begin to play that part at all until we begin to come
to .some intellectual maturity and to some fullness of experience.
If the young have not experience, they certainly have time
on their side ; and that is an immense advantage. As will be
obvious to everyone, merely to read one's way through this
large collection of books must be a lengthy undertaking, one to
be reckoned in terms of years rather than of weeks or months.
And a single cursory reading, though certainly not without
value, will not bring a tithe of the full benefits to be reaped
from them. That can be gained only by prolonged study, by
reading and rc-reading the books, or at least parts of them, by
living with the* books until they have become incorporated
into one’s v'ery being.
I wrote in the preceding paragraph “the full benefit”. But
of course that can be gained by no one. A lifetime is too short,
and the human mind too finite, to absorb the accumulated
wisdom of a great and many-sided civilization. What one can
hope to reap from living with these books for many years is a
continuous and increasingly rich intellectual and emotional
satisfaction, a broad and deep knowledge of what Western
ch ilization is and of the ideals to which it has aspired, and the
right to act as an interpreter of that civilization, and thus to
facilitate — if only to the most modest extent — that under-
standing between our civilization and others which must be
established if ever the world is to be truly at peace.
H. C. Dent
Profk.s.sor of EnuGATroN in the In.stitutf,
OF Education, Sheffif.ed Univf.rsity
49
^ THE CONTENTS OF ^
Great Books of the Western World
VOLUME 1
The Great Conversation
VOLUME 2
The Great Ideas, A Syntopicon of Great Books of the
Western World [I. Angel to Love]
VOLUME 3
The Great Ideas, A Syntopicon of Great Books of the
Western World [II. Man to World; Bibliography of
Additional Readings; Inventory of Terms]
VOLUME 4
HOMER
The Iliad • The Odyssey
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
HOMER
HOMER is not a man known to liave existed to whom the authorship of
the Iliad and Odyssey is imputed. Homer is the author of the Homeric
poems, a hypothesis constnicted to account for their existence and quality.
.■)1
HOMER
There were several “Lives of Homer” in antiquity. Their date is
uncertain, but the Homer they present is certainly a figure of romance
and conjecture. Seven cities, though not always the same seven, are
recorded as claiming to be the birth-place of Homer; six centuries are
proposed as containing his birth-date.
Homeric scholarship turns around the facts known about the existence
of a written text of the Iliad and Odyssey. It is established that the
works of Homer, “and no other poet,” were recited at the Panathenaic
festivals and that there was a fixed order for these recitations. It is
accordingly inferred that there was some standard Athenian text by the
second half of the sixth century b.g. If there was such a text, it did
not maintain itself, because the quotations from Homer made in the
fourth and third centuries B.c. show the texts then current to have been
widely divergent. This disagreement in the texts docs not appear to
have been resolved until about 150 b.c., when the Alexandrian librarian,
Aristarchus of Samothrace, published editions which were afterw^ards
regarded as authoritative. It is not known whether Aristarchus prepared
his edition from many, widely differing manuscripts or whether he had
n'course to an impressive singlt* text from earlier times, 'flit' modern
vulgate text is thought to be derived Irom that of Aristarchus.
Extrinsic evidence, then, does not reveal an Iliad or Odyssey, written
poems, in anything like their present form, before 500 B.c. However,
intrinsic evidence convinces scholars that such a date was a late stage in
the history ol “Homeric” poetry. "J’o reconstruct that history has always
been the Homeric problem. I’his reconstruction, when made by argument
fiom the text of the present poems, has sometimes seemed to involve a
denial of their artistic unity. Certain scholars have seen the epics as onl)
imperfectly unified, resulting from accretion to an imagined short original
or from a joining of several remembered songs. Further, the poems have
been held to be neither of the same period nor by the same author;
Samuel Butler contended on this last point that the Odyssey was written
by a woman.
In recent times, although the inclusion of traditional material and the
probability of later interpolation are admitted, most scholars se(‘m to
believe in one Iliad, one Odyssey, undated, and in one Homer, unknown,
as author of them both.
Both the Iliad and the Odyssey belong to the series of legends told by
the Greeks about the Trojan War and the people who took part in it. In
52
HOMER
this war the armies of the Greek princes besieged the City of Troy for
ten years before they could capture and destroy it. The events described
in the Iliad happened in the tenth year of the siege, but the story of the
Odyssey came later, when the Greek heroes were all returning to their
homes after the long war was over.
The Iliad is so-called because lliom, or Ilium, was another name for
Troy, and the part of the Trojan legend described in the poem is known
as the Wrath of Achilles. Indeed, Wrath is the very first word of the
Iliad. T he poem is in th(‘ kind of verse known as hexameters and it
contains more than 15,000 lines, divided into 24 hooks.
'rhe Odyssey is a very different kind of poem. Whereas the Iliad is
about battles at the City of 4Voy, with many important warlike and
heroic characters, in the Odyssey there is only one hero, Odysseus, and
the action is comprised not of battlers but of his adventures during his
eight-year voyage home to Ithaca where bis wife Penelope and his son
Telemachus were waiting for him. The Odyssey is more than 4,000 lines
shorter than th.e Iliad and many readers think that it comes second to
the Iliad in greatness. Even if this is tnie the Ody^u^y is still one of the
most magnifictmt poems in any language.
o o o
VOLUME 5
AESCHYLUS
The Suppliant Maidens • The Persians
The Seven Against Thebes • Prometheus Bound
Agamemnon • Choephoroe
Eumenides
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus the King • Oedipus at Colonus
Antigone • Ajax • Electra
Trachiniae • Philoctetes
53
A E S C H Y L IT S
EURIPIDES
Rhesus
Medea
H ippolytus
Alcestis
Heracleidae
The Suppliants
The Trojan Women
Ion
Helen
Andromache
Electra
The Bacchantes
Hecuba
Heracles Mad
The Phoenician Maidens
Orestes
Iphigenia among the T auri
Iphigenia at Aulis
The Cyclops
ARISTOPHANES
The Acharnians • The Knights • The Clouds
The Wasps • The Peace • The Birds • The Frogs
The Lysistrata ' The 7 hesmophoriazusac
The Ecclesiazusne • 7 he Plutus
BIOGKAPIIICAI, NOTE
AESCHYLUS, r. 325 45fi ii.c.
AT:s^.H^ Lus was a (ireek poet wlio was in a very real si'nse the founder
of Cireek drama. His plays are serious and are about the powTT the g;ods
have over men and of th(* mysterious way in which fati' works in their
lives.
He was born at Eleusis around the year 525 B.c. His father, Euphorion,
belonged to tlie “Eupatridae," or old • noliility, of Athiuis. Whether
Aeschylus was actually initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries is not
know'll. J'he accusation that he divulged the secrets of Demeter has been
interpreted botii as supporting and as refuting the view' that he was an
initiate.
Aeschylus fought against the Persian invader at Marathon in 490, and
he may also hav(‘ been with the Athenians seven years later at Salamis,
and even at Artemisium and Plataea. Some scholars have found in the
54
AESCHYLUS
poet’s knowledge of Thracian geography and customs an indication that
he took part in one or more of the northern e'xpcditions in the years
following the Persian War.
1 he first of Aeschylus’ plays was exhibited in 499, only thirty years
after the establishment by Peisistratus of the annual contest in tragedy at
the festival of the City Dionysia. Thespis, who won the prize at that
competition, was called by the ancients the earliest tragic poet. But
Aeschylus himself would seemi to be the true founder of tragedy, since,
according to Aristotle, he first introduced a second actor, diminished the
importance of the chorus, and assigned the leading part to the dialogiie.
Aeschylus’ first recorded victory was in 484, when he had been
competing for fifteen >cars. Between that date and the performance of
his last work, the Oresteian trilogy and the satyr play Proteus, in 458,
he won the prize at least twelve times. 1 le wrote more than ninety plays,
of w^hich seven survive. The oldest of these, the Suppliant Maidens,
cannot be much later than 490. The Pcisians, w'hich is the only extant
Creek tragedy on an historical subject, w^as exhibited in 472, the Seven
a^i^ainU Thebes in 467, the Prometheus probably not long before 458, the
date of the trilogy made up of the A^^amemnon, the Choephoroe, and
the Plumenides. T’hc' plays were exhibited in groups of four — three
tragedies and a satyr })lay. Sometimes, as in the case of the surviving
trilogy, but not always, the tragedies formed a dramatic cycle, integrated
in fable and in theme. The poet acted in his own plays.
According to Aristotle, Aeschylus was charged with impiety for reveal-
ing certain parts of the Eleusinian ritual, and defended himself by saying
that he was not aw^are the matter w^as a secret. But the ancients knew
neither the name of the ofTending play nor the precise nature of what
was revealed. A later tradition adds to the fact of the accusation, the
doubtful details that Aeschylus escaped the fury of the audience by
clasping the altar of Dionysus in the theatre, and that he was later
acquitted by the Court of the Areopagus because he had fought bravely
at Marathon.
The first of Aeschylus’ several trips to Sicily appears to have been made
some time between 476 and 473. Like Pindar and Simonides he was
invited to visit the court of King Hiero of Syracuse. After the eruption
of Etna, Hiero had re-established the town of the same name at the base
of the mountain. To celebrate the new city and to honour his patron,
Aeschylus wrote and produced the Women of Etna. On a second visit
55
SOPHOCLES
to Sicily around 472 the poet is said to have repeated for Hicro the
Persians, which had just been crowned with the first prize at Athens.
Some time after 458 he was yet a third time in Sicily.
There is little reason to believe the various explanations ofTered in
anticjuity for Aeschylus’ leaving Athens. Most of them are based upon
his supposed envy of the popularity of Sophocles and Simonides, and
are made improbable, if not impossible, by known facts and dates. The
fable that he met his death from an eagle letting fall a tortoise upon his
bald head, presumably mistaking it for a stone upon which to break the
animal’s shell, may have had its origin in an attempt to interpret the
allegorical representation of an apotheosis.
Aeschylus died and was buried at Ciela in 456. The epitaph inscribed
on his tomb is attributed by some to Aeschylus himself : This memorial
stone covers Aeschylus the Athenian, Euphorion's son, who died in wheat-
hearing Gela. His famed valour the precinct of Maiathon could tell and
the long-haired Mede, who knows it well.
Shortly after the death of Aeschylus the Athenians passed a decree
that his plays should be eixhibited at public expense, and that whoev(‘r
desired to produce one of his plays should “receive a chorus.” His tomb
Ix'came a place of pilgrimage, and in the middle of the fourth century, at
the proposal of the orator Lycurgus, his statue was set up in the I'heatre
of Dionysus at Athens.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTL
SOPHOCT.es, r. 495-406 b.c.
sopiroci.ES followed AescTiylus as the favourite writer of tragedies for
the Athenian stage. He gave to tragedy its absolute dramatic form. Every
action and every speech in a tragedy of Sophocles’ leads towards the
climax. WTien the climax is reached tlie situation is unfolded with
restraint and power that have never been surpassed.
He was born at Colonus in Attica' around 495 k.c. His father,
Sophillus was a maker of munitions. 7’hat Sophillus himself worked as
a smith or carpenter, as has sometimes been said, seems unlikely, in view
of his son’s social position and civic offices. According to Pliny, Sophocles
was bom in the highest station. 'Phis tradition gains support from the
story that at the age of fifteen or sixteen he led the Boys’ Chorus, which
celebrated with song and the music of the lyre the victory of Salamis.
56
SOPHOCLES
As a schoolboy Sophocles was already famous for his beauty and won
prizes in athletics and in literature. He was taught music by Lamprus, whom
Plutarch praised for sobriety and preferred to the more impassioned and
“realistic” I'irnolheus, who influenced Euripides in his later choruses.
From the ancient Lije, which is probably of Alexandrian origin, and
from references in other authors it is evident that Sophocles both as poet
and as citizen played a prominent and varied role in the life of Athens.
His own life was co-extensive with the rise and fall of the city. Between
his birth a few years before Marathon and his death on the eve of the
defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, the greatest events of
Athenian history took place. During that time Sophocles wrote and
produced over one hundred and twenty plays. In 443, as president of
the imperial treasury, he was in charge of collecting the tribute of the
allies. In 440 he was elected general and served with Pericles in the
Samian War. He went on embassies, and he was probably the Sophocles
referred to by Aristotle in the Rhetoric as one of the ten ciders chosen
to manage the alTairs of the city after the Sicilian disaster. He was a
friend of Cimon and a member of his social circle, which included such
distinguished foreigners as Ion of Chios, the tragic poet, and the painter,
Polygnotus. Among other friends of Sophocles were Archelaus and
Herodotus, to whom he wrote elegiac potuns.
Plutcirch, in his Life oj Cirnon, says that Sophocles won his first victory
with the first play he produced. His first victory came in 468 when he
defeated Aeschylus with the Triptolcmus, which is now lost. He was
thus twenty-seven when he began his public dramatic career. In the
remaining sixty-two years of his life h(‘ wTote on an average two plays a
year and competed for the tragic prize thirty-one times. He won at least
eighteen victories and was never placed third.
Of the seven plays that survive, the Ajax is pro})ably the earliest.
The Antij[;onc belongs to 443 or 441. The chronological order of the
Trachiniar and the Oedipus the Khig is uncertain, the Elecira is later,
and all three are assigned to the years between 433 and 410. The
Philoctctcs is known to have been produced in 408 when Sophocles was
eighty-seven years old. 4’he Oedipus at Colonus, according to the story
made famous by the De Senectutc of Cicero, was Sophocles’ last play.
Sophocles is supposed to have been accu.sed by his son of being unable to
manage his property, and to have convinced his judges of his competence
by reciting a chorus from this play, which he had just completed.
57
EURIPIDES
Aristotle says in tlie Poetics that Sophocles raised the number of actors
to three and added scene-painting. Sophocles is also said to have written
his plays with certain actors in mind and not to have acted in them
himself because of the weakness of his voice. That he was interested in
the theory as well as the practice of dramatic art is evident from his
having writU‘n a book “on the chorus,” and having formed a “company
of the educated” in honour of the Muses. “Chorus” was the official name
for tragedy, and a book on the chorus would have dealt, presumably,
with all aspects of the tragic poet’s art. The “company of the educated”
was prohal)ly a society of cultivated Athenians who met to discuss poetry
and music, though it has also been suggested that its members were actors
who had been trained by Sophocles.
Sophocles died in 406 b.g., as we know from the Froji^s of Aristophanes,
brought out in the following year. His epitaph, attributed to Simmias,
the friend of Socrates, honours his learning and wisdom and calls him
“the favourite of the Grace's and the Muses.” While Aeschylus and
Euripides visited the courts of foreign kings and di(*d abroad, Sophocles
never left home, except in the service of the city, and died where he had
livc'd, in Athens.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTL
EURIPIDES, c. 480-406 b.g.
KURiiMPBS was the third of the three great writers of tragedy in ancient
(ireece. He was called by the ancients “the philosopher of the stage”
because* of the wide variety and great number of philosophic statements
in his work. Although his language and composition were perhaps more
formal than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the characters in Eurij)idcs’
plays were more natural and true to life than those of his two great
contemporaries. Instead of showing heroes acting out their great and
terrible destiny as if they were superhuman, his sincerity gave them
human weaknesses and feelings.
He was born of Athenian parents on the island of Salamis. The year
of his birth seems to have been a matter of conjecture. One tradition
groups the three tragedians round the battle of Salamis in 480 b.g. :
Aeschylus fought in the ranks, Sophocles danced in the Boys’ Chorus,
Euripides was born. Another source associates his birth with Aeschylus’
first victory in 484.
38
EURIPIDES
Euripides’ father, Mncsarchus, was a merchant; his mother, Cleito, is
known to have been “of very high family.” Yet for some reason it was a
recognized joke to say she was a greengrocer and sold inferior greens.
Despite the gibes of the comedians, he was probably neither poor nor of
humble origin. As a boy he poured wine for the dancers and carried a
torch in religious festivals, which he could not have done had he not
enjoyed a certain social position. Since he was called upon for costly
public duties, such as equipping, in whole or in part, a warship and
acting as consul for Magnesia, he must have had independent means.
He also possessed a large library, which was a rare thing in Greece for a
private citizen.
In accordance with a prophecy that the boy would win victories, the
poet’s father is said to have had him trained as a professional athlete.
He may have thought at one time of turning from boxing to painting as
a career, for paintings attril)uted to him were shown at Megara in later
times. He is also known to have been friendly with the philosophers. He
is said to have been a pupil of Anaxagoras and a close friend of
Protagoras, and we are told that Socrates never went to the theatre unless
there was a play by Euripides, when he would walk as far as the Piraeus
to .see it.
Euripides early discovered his dramatic gift. He began to write at the
age of eighte(‘n, and in 455 b.c. he was “granted a chorus,” that is, he
was permitted to compete for the tragic prize. In the fifty years of his
dramatic career he wrote betwet*n eighty and ninety plays, but he did
not win a victory until 442, thirteen years after his first appearance before
the public. His fifth and last victory was for plays exhibited after his
death, in 405, by his son, the younger Euripides. He was incessantly
assailed by the comedians, especially by Aristophanes, and was frequently
defeated by lesser poets, but long before his death he had acquired a
great reputation throughout the CJreek world. Plutarch, in his Life of
Nicias, says that Athenian prisoners in Syracuse escaped death and even
received their freedom if they could recite passages from the works of
Euripides, and that .some of them, upon returning home, expre.ssed their
gratitude directly to the poet. Aristotle, in spite of specific strictures, calls
Euripides “the most tragic” of the poets, and Euripides is more often
quoted by him and by Plato than are Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Of the nineteen plays that survive under the name of Euripides, one,
the Cyclops, is a satyr play, and the Rhesus is frequently, though not
59
ARISTOPHANES
always, considered spurious. The oldest of the extant plays is the Alcestis,
which appeared in 438. The Bacchantes and the Iphigenia at Aulis were
posthumously presented. The other plays that can be approximately dated
are the Medea, 431, the Hippolytus, 428, the Trojan Women, 415, the
Helen, 412, the Orestes, 408.
Unlike Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides seems to have taken little
part in politics and war, although there is an allusion to him in Aristotle
which seems to imply that he had on one occasion a dipkuuatic post.
The ancients thought of Euripides as a gloomy recluse who never
laughed. According to these stories, he wore a long beard, lived much
alone and hated society; he had crowds of books and did not like women;
he lived in Salamis, in a cave with two openings and a beautiful sea
view, and there he could be seen “all day long, thinking to himself and
writing, for he despised anything that was not great and high.”
Towards the end of his life Euripides received honours and distinctions
in Macedonia, where, like other men of letters, he went at the invitation
of King Archelaus. He spent his last years at the Macedonian court, high
in the favour and confidence of the king, and when he died, the king cut
off his hair as an expression of his grief.
Euripides died in 406 n.c., a f(‘w months before Sophocles, who wore
mourning for him in the tragic competition of that year. The Athenians
sent an embassy to Macedonia to bring hack his body, but King Archelaus
refused to give it up. A cenotaph to the memory of Euripides was then
erected on the road between Athens and Piraeus. The poet’s lyre, stylus,
and tablets were bought for a talent of gold by Dionysius of Syracuse,
w^ho enshrined them in the temple of the Muses.
BIOGRAPHICAT. NOTE
ARISTOPHANES, r. 445-c. 380 n.c.
ARISTOPHANES was the great comic poet and dramatist of Athens. He
was a national conservative, his ideal being the Athens of the Persian
Wars. He had a warm love for the traditional glories of Athens; a horror
of what was ugly or ignoble; a keen perception for the absurd. His rooted
antipathy to intellectual progress must lower his intellectual rank, but
as a mocker — to use the word which seems most closely to describe him
— he is incomparable in his plays for the union of subtlety with riot of
the comic imagination.
60
ARISTOPHANES
'Phe son of Philippus of the tribe Pandionis in the deine Gydathenc,
Aristophanes was almost certainly a full Athenian citizen by birth. The
exact year of his birth is not known. However, his first play, the
Banqueters, won the second prize in 427 b.c., and he must then have
been less than eighteen years of age, since, as he notes in the Clouds, he
was too young to produce it in his own name.
It is inferred from his comedies that Aristophanes passed much of his
boyhood in the country. His family owned land on Aegina, which may
have been acquired wlien that island was expropriated by Athens in 431.
His political sympathies, as revealed in the plays, seem to be conservative
and to favour the “ancestral democracy” of the landowning class.
The character of the “Old Comedy,” to which most of Aristophanes’
plays belong, made it aliriost inevitable for him to enter into political
disputes. Comedy then served something of the function of a satirical
censorship and was expected to deal with the issues and personalities
before the public. Aristophanes’ first play was concerned with the contrast
betw'(‘(‘n the old and the new systems of education. His second, the
Babylonians, although like the first no longer extant, is known to have
involved Aristophanes in his conflict with Cleon, which lasted until the
demagcjgue’s death in 422. In this play Aristophanes attacked the policy
towards the allies of Athens in the Peloponnesian War as one that made
slaves, or “Babylonians,” of them. Cleon responded by subjecting Aris-
tophanes to prosecution, and accused him among other things of falsely
claiming the privileges of citizenship. The poet was acquitted, l)ut only
after, as he charged in tlu* Acharnians, Cleon had “slanged, and lied,
and slandered, and betongued me . . . till I well nigh was done to death.”
I'he treatment failed to silence Aristophanes. Two years later in the
Knights (424) he made his sharpest attack upon Cleon, who then enjoyed
his greatest popularity, and the play won the first prize in the contest of
that year.
The dramatic carc(*r (^f Aristophanes lasted for forty years or more,
ext('nding from the time when Athens was at the height of its power in
the first years of the Peloponnesian War, through its fall in 404, and into
the period when the city had begun to recover its fortunes after the
Athenian league of 395. The various attempts made during that time to
restrict the freedom of comedy are reflected to some extent in the
character of Aristophanes’ work. He wrote somewhere between forty and
sixty plays, eleven of which have survived. 'Phe oldest surviving play is
til
HERODOrUS
the Acharnians, which won first place in 425. The Knights was victorious
the following year; the Clouds, produced in 423, although much admired
by its author, failed to win a prize. With the Wasps, Aristophanes again
took first place in 422. The Peace (421) and the Birds, produced seven
years later, were awarded second prize. I'hc^ Lysistrata and the Thes~
mophotiazusae belong to 411. The Progs (405) was produced when
Athens was making her last effort in the Peloponnesian War. The
Ecclesiazusac was presented around 392, and the Plutus (388), which is the
last of the extant plays, already belongs to the so-called “Middle Comedy.”
Despite his frequent and bitter attacks upon such idols of the Athenian
populace as Cleon and Euripides, Aristophanes appears to have been
widely appreciated throughout his long career. Plato is knowm to have
been particularly fond of his plays. He included the comic poet in his
Syrnpostum, and a copy of Aristophanes is said to hav(‘ bf‘en found on
his death bed. The story is also told that when asked by Dionysius of
Syracuse for an analysis of the Athenian constitution, Plato sent an
edition of Aristophanes' plays.
Aristophanes j^roduced a play for the last time in 388. The following
year, his son, Araros, won the first prize with one of Ins father’s plays.
Since Araros was producing his own plays by 375, it has been inferred
that Aristophanes died somewhere between 383 and 375 h.g.
O O O
VOLUME 6
HERODOTUS
The History
THUCYDIDES
The History of the Peloponnesian War
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
HERODOTUS, c. 484-c. 425 b.g.
THE Greek historian Herodotus is often known as the Father of History.
However, in descril)ing his great work it is important to understand what
that work was intended to be. It has been called “a universal history,”
62
H E R O D O I’ U S
“a history of the wars between the Greeks and the barbarians” and “a
history of the struggle between CJreece and Persia.” But these titles are,
all of them, too comprehensive. His intention was not to give an account
of the entire long contest between Greece and Persia, but to wTitc the
history of a particular war — the Great Persian War of invasion. Only
Herodotus determined to treat his subject in a certain way. Every partial
history requires an “introduction”; Herodotus, untrammelled by examples,
resolved to give his history a magnificent introduction. Thucydides is
content with a single introductory book, forming little more than one-
eighth of his work; Herodotus has six such books, forming two-thirds of
the entire composition.
By this arrangement he is enabled to treat his subject in the grand
way, which is so characteristic of him. Making it his main object in his
“introduction” to set liefore his readers the previous history of the two
nations who we re the actors in the great war, he is able in tracing
their history to bring into his narrative some account of almost all the
nations of the known world, and has room to expatiate freely upon their
geography, antiquities, manners and customs.
Herodotus was born about four years after the battle of Salamis in
Halicarnassus in Asia Minor. Although a Cireck colony, the* city had been
subject to Persia for some time, and it remained so for half of Herodotus’
life. He came from a (irei'k family w'hich enjoyed a position of respect in
Halicarnassus, and his uncle, or cousin, Panyasis, was famous in antiquity
as an epic poet.
'Fhe Persian tyranny made any free political life impossible, and
Herodotus after his elementary education appears to have devoted
himself to reading and travelling. In addition to his unusually thorough
knowledge of Homer, he liad an intimate acquaintance witli the whole
range of Grerk literature. In his History he quotes or show^s familiarity
with, among others, Hesiod, Hecatacus, Sappho, Solon, Aesop, Simonides
of Geos, Aeschylus, and Pindar. Whether or not the plan of his History
governed or grew out of his travels is not known. All the dates of his
travels arc uncertain; it is thought that most of them were made between
his twentieth and thirty-seventh year. I'he History reveals the elaborate-
ness of his observation and inquiry. He traversed Asia Minor and
European Greece probalily more than once, visited all the most important
islands of the Archipelago — Rhodes, Cyprus, Delos, Paros, Thasos,
Samothracc, Crete, Samos, Cythera, and Aegina — , made the long
63
HEROD OIUS
journey from Sardis to the Persian capital of Susa, saw Babylon, Colchis,
and the western shores of the Euxinc as far as the Dnieper, travelled in
Scythia, Thrace, and Creater Greece, explored the antiquities of Tyre,
coasted along the shores of Palestine, saw Gaza, and made a long stay
in Egypt.
Apart from the travels undertaken in liis professional capacity, political
developments involved Herodotus in many shifts of residence. About
454 B.G. his relative, Panyasis, was executed by Lygdamis, the tyrant of
Halicarnassus. Herodotus left his native city for Samos, which was then
an important member of the Athenian Confederacy. He was there for
seven or eight years and perhaps took part in the preparations for the
overthrow of Lygdamis. After the expulsion of the tyrant, in which
the Athenian fleet may have been a decisive factor, he returned to
Halicarnassus, which then became a member of the Confederacy. He
remained there less than a year. It is surmised that an unfavourable
reception to parts of his History and the ascendency of the anti-Athenian
party caused Herodotus to leave Halicarnassus for Athens.
At Athens, Herodotus seems to have been admitted into the brilliant
Periclean society. He was particularly intimate with Sophocles, who is
said to have written a poem in his honour. Plutarch records that the
public readings lie gave from his History won such approval that in
445 B.C., on the proposal of Anytus, the Athenian people voted to award
him a large sum of money. At one of his 'recitations, the story is told that
the young Thucydides was present with his father and was so moved that
he burst into tears, whereupon Herodotus remarked : “Olorus, your son
has a natural enthusiasm for letters.'’
Despite his fame in Athens, Herodotus may iK)t have been reconciled
to his status as a foreigner without citizenship. He was either unwilling
or unable to return to his native land. Wh»> n in 443 b.g. Pericles sent out
a colony to settle Ihurii in southern Italy, Herodotus was one of its
members. He was then forty years old.-
From this point in his career Herodotus disaf)pears completely. He
may have undertaken some of his travels after this time, and there is
evidence of his returning to Athens, but it is inconclusive. He was
undoubtedly occupied with completing and perfecting his History, He
may also have composed at Thurii the special work on the history of
A.ssyria to which he refers and which Aristotle quotes.
r>4
I’ H U C Y D 1 D E S
From the indications afTorded by his work it is inferred that he did
not live later than 425 b.g. Presumably he died at Thurii; it was there
that his tomb was shown in later ages.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
ITIUCYDIDES, 460 c. 400 b.g.
THUCYDIDES records that he began writing his History of the Pelopon-
nesian IVar “at the moment that it broke out’’ and that he was then “of
an age to comprehend events." From this it is inferred he was somewhere
between twenty-five and forty years of age at that time, which would
place his birth between 471 and 455 b.g.
His father, Olorus, was an Athenian citizen and perhaps related to the
Thracian prince, Cfimon, son of Miltiades. He derived considerable wealth
from the possession of the gold mines on the coast opposite Thasos.
1 hucydides by birth thus enjoyed two homes, one in Athens and the
other in Thrace, and a position in society which gave him access to the
leading figures of his time.
It is uncertain how much of his youth was passed in Athens, but,
according to the ancient biographers, he studied philosophy with
Anaxagoras and rhetoric with Antiphon, the oligarch famous for his
oratory, whom Thucydides praised as “one of the best men of his day in
Athens." During his youth Athenian power was at its height, and he was
presumably a member of the brilliant circle about Pericles.
I'hucydides was in Athens when the Peloponnesian War broke out in
431 B.G. and also the following year during the great plague, when, as
he records, “I had the disease myself and watched its operation in the
case of others.’' The turning-point in his career came six years later, in
424. He had attained a position of sufficient importance to have been
appointed one of the two generals assigned to guard the Athenian
interests in “the regions towards Thrace.’’ His colleague, Eucles, com-
manded the land forces while he had charge of the navy. The town of
Amphipolis was the Athenian stronghold in that region, and to guard it
was then a matter of particular urgency since the ablest of the Spartan
leaders, Brasidas, was then making rapid gains in the vicinity. Thucydides
with the seven ships under his command was anchored at the isle of
Thasos, half a day’s sail away. He records that “Brasidas, afraid of help
65
THUCYDIDES
arriving by sea from Thasos, and learning that Thucydides possessed the
right of working the gold mines in that part of Thrace, and had thus
great influence with the inhabitants of the continent, hastened to gain
the town.” By the offer of generous terms and the aid of the disaffected
part of the population, he succeeded in his object before Thucydides
could bring relief. “The news that Amphipolis was in the hands of the
enemy caused great alarm at Athens,” and Thucydides for his share in
the disaster was relieved of his command and exiled.
His exile from Athens lasted for twenty years and is supposed to have
been passed for the most part at his property in Thrace. He probably
took advantage of his position as an Athenian exile to visit the countries
of the Peloponnesian allies, including Sparta and perhaps Sicily. The
main purpose of such travels was undoubtedly to gather material for his
History, for, as he noted, “being present with both parties, and more
especially with the Peloponnesians by reason of my exile, T had leisure to
observe affairs somewhat particularly.”
His own words make it clear that he returned to Athens, at least for a
time, in 404. The general amnesty of that year would have made it
possible if he had not already received a special pardon, as is sometimes
claimed. According to ancient testimony, he soon afterwards met his
death at the hands of an assassin. Plutarch declares that he was killed at
his home in Thrace and buried at Athens in the vault of Gimon’s family.
At the outset of the History of the Peloponnesian War I’hucydidcs
indicates his general conception of his work and states the principles
which governed its composition. His purpose had been formed at the
very beginning of the war, in the conviction that it would prove more
important than any event of which the Greeks had record. The leading
belligerents, Athens and Sparta, were both in the highest condition of
effective equipment. The whole Hellenic world (including Greek settle-
ments outside of Greece proper) was divided into two parties, either
actively helping one of the two combatants or meditating such action.
The aim of Thucydides was to preserve an accurate record of this war,
not only in view of the intrinsic interest and importance of the facts, but
also in order that these facts might be permanent sources of political
teaching to prosperity.
Thucydides conceived his Greek predecessors in the recording of facts
to have been of two classes. First there were the epic poets, with Homer
at their head, whose characteristic tendency, in the eyes of Thucydides,
66
PLATO
is to exaggerate the splendour of things past. Secondly, there were the
Ionian prose writers whom he calls “Chroniclers”, whose general object
was to diffuse a knowledge of legends, preserved by oral tradition, and
of written documents (usually lists of officials or genealogies) preserved
in public archives; and they published their materials as they found
them, without criticism. The vice of the Chroniclers, in his view, is that
they cared only for popularity, and took no pains to make their narrative
trustworthy. Herodotus was presumably regarded by Thucydides as in
the same general category.
In contrast with these predecessors, Thucydides has subjected his
materials to the most searching scrutiny. The ruling principle of his work
has been strict adherence to carefully verified feets.
O O O
VOLUME 7
PLATO
Charmides • Lysis • Laches • Protagoras
Euthydemus • Cratylus • Phaedrus
Ion • limaeus • Critias • Parmenides
Theaetetus • Symposium • Meno
tluthyphro • Apology • Crito • Phaedo
Gorgias • The Republic • Sophist
Statesman • Philebus • Laws • The Seventh Letter
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
PLATO, c. 428 b.g.-c. 348 b.g.
PLATO, son of Arislon and Perictionc, was born in 428 or 427 b.g. His
family was, on both sides, one of the most distinguished of Athens.
Ariston is said to have traced his descent through Codrus to the god
Poseidon; on the mother's side, the family, which was related to Solon,
goes back to Dropides, archon of the year 644 b.g. His mother apparently
married as her second husband her uncle Pyrilampes, a prominent
67
PLATO
supporter of Pericles, and Plato was probably chiefly brought up in his
house.
Plato’s early life coincides with the disastrous years of the Peloponnesian
War, the shattering of the Athenian Empire, and the fierce civil strife of
oligarchs and democrats in the year of anarchy 404-403 b.c. He was too
young to have learned anything by experience of the imperial democracy
of Pericles, or of the full tide of the “sophistic” movement. He must have
known Socrates from boyhood, for his relatives, Critias and Gharmides,
were old friends of the philosopher. Aristotle also ascribes to him an early
familiarity with the Heracleitean, Cratylus. But Plato himself tells us in
The Seventh Letter that his early ambitions were political. Following
the establishment of the Tyranny of the Thirty in 404, in which his
relatives were leaders, Plato was “invited to share in their doings as
something to which I had a claim.” He held back until their policy was
revealed and then was repelled by their violence, particularly by their
attempt to implicate Socrates in an illegal execution. He hoped for better
things from the restored democracy until the condemnation of Socrates
convinced him that he could no more collaborate with the democrats
than with the oligarchs. Concluding that “public affairs at Athens were
not carried on in accordance with the manners and practices of our
fathers, nor was there any ready method by which T could make new
friends,” Plato abandoned his intention of devoting himself to politics.
After the execution of Socrates in 399 b.c., Plato went on a series of
travels. It would seem that he then discovered his vocation to philosophy
as he reflected on the life and teaching of Socrates. Hermodorus, an
immediate disciple, is the authority for the statement that Plato and other
Socratic men took temporary refuge at Megara with the philosopher
Eucleides, who is said to have taught the doctrines of Socrai-.s and of
Pannenides. The Alexandrian Lives represent the next few years as spent
in extensive travels in Greece, Egypt, and Italy. Plato’s one statement is
only that he visited Italy and Sicily at the age of forty, was disgusted by
the gross sensuality of life there, but found a kindred spirit in Dion,
brother-in-law of Dionysius I of Syracu'^e, who was to involve him again
in politics twenty years later.
On his return to Athens about 387, Plato founded the Academy. He
had presumably already completed some of his dialogues, in particular
those celebrating the memory of Socrates. For the rest of his life he
presided over the Academy, making it the intellectual centre of Greek
68
PLATO
life; its only rival was the school of Isocrates. From the allusions of Aris-
totle it appears that Plato lectured without manuscript, and “problems”
were propounded for solution by the joint researches of the students. In
addition to philosophy, particular attention was given to science and law.
7 he most important mathematical work of the fourth century was done
by friends or pupils of Plato. Theatetus, the founder of solid geometry,
was a member of the Academy, and Eudoxus of Cnidus is said to have
removed his school from Gyzicus to Athens for the purpose of co-
operation with Plato. The Academy was frequently called upon by
various cities and colonies to furnish advisers on legislative matters;
Plutarch records that among others “Plato sent Aristonymus to the
Arcadians, Phormiun to Elis, Menedemus to Pyrrha.”
In 367, when Plato was in his sixtieth year and renowned as the head
of the Academy, he was invited to intervene in the politics of Syracuse.
Dionysius II had just assumed power, and Plato’s friend, Dion, urged
the philosopher to come and undertake the education of the younger
king and to strengthen him against the encroachment of Carthage in
Sicily. Plato’s reluctance to make such an attempt was overcome only by
his friendship for Dion and “a feeling of shame . . . lest 1 might some day
appear to myself wholly and solely a mere man of words.” Plato started
Dionysius on a programme of philosophical education, but in a few
months found himself involved in the intrigues of the court against Dion,
and when Dion was finally forced into virtual banishment, Plato returned
to Athens. Dionysius, who prided himself on his philosophical accomplish-
ments, kept in correspondence with Plato and prevailed upon him to visit
Syracuse again in 361. Plato renewed his attempt to persuade Dionysius
“not to enslave Sicily nor any other State to despots . . . but to put it
under the rule of laws.” But he again found that the tyrant refused
“to act righteously” and allowed no opportunity for a rule in which
“philosophy and power really met together.” It was only after considerable
personal danger that Plato reached Athens. He never again attempted
direct intervention in political affairs, although several members of the
Academy joined Dion’s expedition against Syracuse in 357, which resulted
in the overthrow of the tyranny.
I’he Sicilian voyages are considered to mark a distinct break in Plato’s
literary activity. 'Fhe work of his last years is now usually held to
consist of a group of seven dialogues : Theaetetus, Parmenides, Sophist,
Statesman, Timaeus, Philebus, and Laws. The Academy was presumably
69
PLATO
well organized by that time and made fewer administrative demands
upon Plato. But we know from Aristotle, who became a student there in
367, that Plato still continued to lecture and to take a leading part in
the research “problems”. Legislation seems to have been given particular
concern, and the Laws is said to have been in the process of publication
when Plato died in 348 or 347 b.c.
To us Plato is important primarily as the greatest of the ancient Greek
philosophical writers, but to himself the foundation and organization of
the Academy must have appeared as his chief “work”. In The Seventh
Letter he utters on his own account the same comparatively unfavourable
verdict on written works, in contrast with the contact of living minds, as
a vehicle of “philosophy”, which he ascribes to Socrates in the Phaedrus,
It can hardly be doubted that he regarded his dialogues as intended in
the main to interest an educated outside world in the more serious and
arduous labours of his “school”.
The great initial difficulty which besets the modem student of Plato’s
philosophy is that created by the dramatic form of Plato’s writings. Since
Plato never introduces himself into his own dialogues he is not formally
committed to anything which is taught in them. The speakers who are
formally bound by the utterance arc their protagonists Socrates,
Parmenides, the Pythagorean Timaeus, and all these are real historical
persons. The question thus arises, with what right do we assume that
Plato means us to accept as his own the doctrines, put into the mouths
of these characters ?Ts his purpose dogmatic and didactic, or may it be
that it is mainly dramatic? Are we 'more at liberty to hold Plato
responsible for what is said by dramatis personae than we should be to
treat a poet like Browning in the same fashion?
It is tempting to evade this formidable issue in one of two ways. One
is to hold that Plato allows himself freely to develop in a dialogue any
view which interests him for the moment, without pledging himself to
its truth or considering its compatibility with other positions assumed
elsewhere in its writings. The most common assumption of the nineteenth
century was that some of Plato’s characters, notably Socrates and
Timaeus, are “mouth pieces” through which he inculcates tenets of his
own without concern lor dramatic or historical propriety. Careful study
of the dialogue should satisfy us that neither of these two extreme views
is tenable.
O O O
70
ARISTOTLE
VOLUME 8
ARISTOTLE
Categories • On Interpretation
Prior Analytics • Posterior Analytics • Topics
On Sophistical Refutations • Physics
On the Heavens • On Generation and Corruption
Meteorology • Metaphysics • On the Soul
On Sense and the Sensible
On Memory and Reminiscence
On Sleep and Sleeplessness
On Dreams • On Prophesying by Dreams
On Longevity and Shortness of Life
On Youth and Old Age • On Life and Death
On Breathing
o o o
VOLUME 9
ARISTOTLE
History of Animals • On the Parts of Animals
On the Motion of Animals • Oh the Gait of Animals
On the Generation of Animals
Nicomachean Ethics • Politics
The Athenian Constitution
Rhetoric • On Poetics
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
ARISTOTLE, 384-322 b.c.
ARISTOTLE was a philosopher, a psychologist, a logician, a moralist, a
political thinker, a biologist and the founder of literary criticism. His
writings fall into three main kinds. There are literary essays intended for
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ARISTOTLE
publication, such as the early dialogues (now lost except for fragments);
there are the set works of his later years, such as the Constitution of
Athens; and above all there are what we may call treatises, intended for
use in lectures and for the reading of the students of the Lycaeum, of
which we possess a large variety. They include the Organon, Physics,
Metaphysics, Eudcmian Ethics and the Nicomachean Ethics, Politics,
Poetics and Rhetoric.
Aristotle was born in 384 at Stagira, a Greek colonial town on the
Aegean near the Macedonian border and somewhat east of the modern
city of Salonica. Both of his parents were Ionian in origin. His mother
was a native of Chalcis, from which Stagira had been colonized. His
father, Nicomachus, belonged to the guild of the “sons of Aesculapius”
and was court physician to Amyntas TI, the father of Philip of Macedon.
Aristotle, who seems to have remained with his parents during his first
seventeen years, may have studied medicine with his father, and it was
sometimes claimed in antiquity that he practised medicine when he first
went to Athens.
In 367 Aristotle entered the Academy at Athens. Plato was then sixty-
one and just entering upon his intervention in the politics of Syracuse.
The Academy was giving particular attention to the problems of politics
and legislation and, in addition to its more general philosophic interests,
was increasingly preoccupied with mathematics and astronomy. Few
details have survived of the life Aristotle led at the Academy for twenty
years. He is said to liave been called by Plato the intellect of the school.
There is also a tradition that he taught rhetoric. He is known to have
written numerous dialogues modelled on those of his master, which were
famed in antiquity for their lucidity and the easy flow of their style.
There is little evidence of any serious disagreement between raaster and
pupil during these years, and on Plato’s death in 347 Aristotle wrote an
elegy for an altar of friendship to Plato in which he praised him as “the
man whom it is not lawful for bad men even to praise, who alone or
first of mortals clearly revealed, by his own life and by the methods of
his words, how to be happy is to be good.”
When Speusippus became head of the Academy in 347, Aristotle and
another of Plato’s pup.ls, Xenocrates, left Athens for Assus, in the
Troiad, where two former members of the Academy were teaching. The
“tyrant”, or ruler, of the territory, Hennias, had become their pupil and,
out of gratitude, had bestowed upon them the town of Assus. The four
72
ARISTOTLE
set up something like a colonial Academy. Through his teaching Aristotle
apparently became the intimate friend of Hermias, and he married the
ruler’s adopted daughter. Theophrastus from the neighbouring island of
Lesbos was also among his pupils, and it may have been on his suggestion
that Aristotle moved about 344 to Mytilene on Lesbos, where for two
years he was engaged largely in the study of natural history, particularly
marine biology.
In 342 Aristotle returned to Macedonia to act as tutor to the young
Alexander. Although he had been in early youth close to the Macedonian
court and already enjoyed some reputation for his dialogues, the deciding
factor in the appointment may have been Aristotle’s connection with
Hermias, who at this time was apparently negotiating with Philip
regarding an expedition against Persia. Aristotle stayed in Macedonia
for seven years. The tradition is that he taught politics and rhetoric, and
he is said to have prepared an edition of Homer for the use of Alexander,
who was thirteen at the time of his coming. In 340, after Philip went to
war, Alexander directed political affairs at home as regent, and it is likely
that Aristotle set up a school and gave the greater part of his time to his
own studies. He induced Alexander to restore Stagira, which had been
destroyed a few years before, and is said to have provided it with a
constitution. Perhaps at Alexander’s request, he wrote the two political
treatises or pamphlets, no longer extant, On Kingship and On Colonies.
Although Aristotle could have seen but little of his royal pupil during the
latter years of his Macedonian sojourn, there is evidence that Alexander
did not forget his master. When he made his expedition to the East, he
took Aristotle’s nephew, Callisthenes, as his historian, and to further
Aristotle’s scientific researches, he appointed men to collect materials and
specimens.
After the accession of Alexander in 336, Aristotle returned to Athens,
where his friend, Xenocrates, had become head of the Academy. He
established the Lycaeum, which came to be known as the Peripatetic
School from the path in its garden where he walked and talked with his
pupils. The Lycaeum was an organized institution for the “cult of the
Muses.” It possessed extensive equipment, including maps and the largest
library then collected in Europe. It had its regular dinners and even its
plate, and Aristotle himself wrote rules for holding symposia. The staff
of lecturers included Theophrastus and Eudemus, and there was a fixed
schedule for the lectures. Aristotle, according to tradition, devoted the
73
ARISTOTLE
mornings to the more difficult parts of philosophy and in the afternoon
addressed a wide audience on rhetoric and dialectic.
The great body of the extant Aristotelian treatises probably represents
the lectures which Aristotle delivered at the Lycaeum. It is not likely
that all were written at this time; they had probably been growing since
he first began teaching. His various works of compilation almost certainly
belong to these last years. He drew up lists of the victors in the Pythian
and Olympic games and a chronology of the Athenian drama, later the
basis for dating the Greek plays. He organized the collection of one
hundred and fifty-eight Greek constitutions, and his work On the
Athenian Constitution, the only extant tre^atise of this collection, is
thought to have provided the model for this research. He also drew up
an account of the “customs of the barbarians” and a treatise on “cases
of constitutional law.” I'he results of his investigations in natural history
are evident in his biological works, particularly the History of Animals.
With the death of Alexander in 323, Aristotle’s life at the Lycaeum
came to an abrupt end. Although Aristotle apparently had little relation
with Alexander, especially after his nephew had been put to death for
refusing to render oriental obeisance to him, the philosopher enjoyed
the friendship and protection of Antipater, who governed Alexander’s
Greek affairs from Athens. The revolt of the Athenian party, following
the news of Alexander’s death, was directed against Antipater and
through him it involved Aristotle. Charged with impiety for the elegy
he had written to Hermias twenty years before, Aristotle recalled the
fate of Socrates and fled to his mother’s property in Ghalcis, declaring,
“I will not let the Athenians offend twice against philosophy.”
Aristotle lived in Ghalcis for only a few months. Writing to A^ntipater,
he noted, “The more 1 am by myself, and alone, the fonder I have
become of myths.” He died in 322. His will discloses the care with which
he put his affairs in order; he provided for his children and the
disposition of his property in Stagira and Ghalcis, left bequests for his
household servants and directions for their freedom, directed that his
body should be buried with that of his wife, as she had desired, and, as
one ol the arrangements for the observance of familial piety, ordered his
executors to “set up in Stagira statues of life-size to Zeus and Athena
the Saviours.”
O O O
74
HIPPOCRATES
VOLUME 10
HIPPOCRATES
The Oath • On Ancient Medicine
On AirSy WaterSy and Places • The Book of Prognostics
On Regimen in Acute Diseases • Of the Epidemics
On Injuries of the Head • On the Surgery
On Fractures • On the Articulations
Instrument of Reduction! • Aphorisms • The Law
On Ulcers • On Fistulae • On Haemorrhoids
On the Sacred Disease
GALEN
On the Natural Faculties
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
HIPPOCRATES, 400 b.g.
THE character and abilities of the Greek physician Hippocrates have
been held in almost universal veneration by medical men since ancient
times. He it \vas who, according to tradition, first separated medicine
from philosophy. That is, in the language of the present day, he observed
his patients and inferred their condition without allowing his judgment
to be biased by preconceived ideas.
Nevertheless, our knowledge of the historical Hippocrates is almost
completely dependent upon Plato. From the Protagoras and the Phaedrus
we learn that Hippocrates was a contemporary of Socrates, that he was
a native of Cos, and an Asclepiad, a member, that is, of a family or
guild that traced its origin to the God of Healing. He was well known
both as a practitioner and a teacher of medicine, and he held that
knowledge of the body depends upon the knowledge of the whole man.
There is also the implication in Plato’s words that Hippocrates travelled
from city to city and that, like the great sophists and rhetoricians, he
came to Athens to practise and to teach his art.
The figure of the legendary Father of Medicine soon replaced the
historical Hippocrates. Although there is no evidence from his own time
75
GALEN
that he left any writings, within a century medical works were being
attributed to him, especially those emanating from the famous medical
school of Cos. The writings which now go by the name of the Hippocratic
Collection consist for the most part of the early Greek medical treatises
which were brought together by the Alexandrian scholars of the third
century. The Collection is large and heterogeneous and although all
were attributed to Hippocrates, the genuineness of some of them was
questioned even in antiquity.
The Alexandrian accounts of the life of Hippocrates are rich in detail.
He was born in the year 460 b.g., descended from Hercules as well as
from Aesculapius. He studied medicine and philosophy from famous
teachers and travelled over the whole Greek world, curing a Macedonian
tyrant of the malady of love, driving out the plague from Athens by
lighting fires in the public squares, refusing to go to Persia to treat the
King, and dying at a great age — the dates range from 375 to 351 b.g.
— at Larissa in Thessaly, where his tomb could still be seen in the second
century a.d. The honey of the bees that swarmed there was said to be
healing to the mouth, a tribute to the man who, according to Gelsus, was
as eminent for eloquence as for knowledge.
For succeeding generations Hippocrates has been, as he was for Galen,
the legislator of medicine, the ideal physician “who with purity and with
holiness lived his life and practised his art.”
BIOGRAPIIICAI. NOTE
C;ALEN, c. a.d. l30-r. 200
GALEN may be regarded as the founder of experimental physiology, and,
after Hippocrates, as the most distinguished physician of antiquity. To
Hippocrates he acknowledges his deep obligations in practical medicine,
and he is equally frank about his indebtedness to the Alexandrian
anatomists.
His anatomical investigations were unrivalled in antiquity for their
fullness and accuracy. He was an indefatigable dissector, describing mainly
what he actually saw. He dissected apes and lower animals, though much
that is relevant to the human body is incorporated in his works.
Galen was born at Pergamurn, the capital of Mysia in Asia Minor,
which had once been a centre of art and learning and which still
possessed at the time of Galen’s birth the second greatest library in the
76
GALEN
ancient world and a temple of Aesculapius. His father was an architect
or engineer, “amiable, just, worthy, and benevolent”; his mother “had a
very bad temper, at times used to bite her serving-maids, and was forever
shouting at my father and quarrelling with him — worse than Xanthippe
with Socrates.” “When I compared the excellence of my father’s
disposition with the disgraceful passions of my mother,” Galen wrote, “I
resolved to love and imitate the former qualities and to hate and avoid
the latter.”
The father provided a liberal education for his son, and by the age of
seventeen or eighteen Galen was familiar with the Platonic, Aristotelian,
Stoic, and Epicurean philosophies. About this time, in obedience to a
dream of his father, he began the study of medicine in his native city.
When he fell ill from overwork, he kept a careful record of his symptoms.
After his father’s death, he left Pergamum for Smyrna in order to study
with Pclops the physician and Albinus the peripatetic. In search of more
knowledge he roamed through Greece, Cilicia, Phoenicia, Palestine, Crete,
Cyprus, and finally visited the famous medical school at Alexandria,
which was still the best place to learn anatomy, although the dissection
of the human body was no longer allowed.
On his return to Pergamum in 157-158, Galen was appointed physician
and surgeon to the gladiators; he supervised their diet and treated their
wounds. He also had a private practice, continued the study of philosophy,
and wrote the first of his many treatises.
In the first years of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Galen went to Rome,
where he soon acquired fame as a physician and as a philosopher. He
healed the celebrated Aristotelian, Eudemus, and other persons of dis-
tinction, and by his learning attracted to his lectures many of the most
eminent people of Rome, including the consul Flavius Boethus. His
success earned for him the titles of “Paradoxologus”, the wonder-speaker,
and “Paradoxopoeus”, the wonder-worker.
Despite his name, meaning “gentle” or “peaceful”, and his disapproval
of his mother’s temper, Galen was an incessant critic of the contemporary
medical sects then flourishing in Rome. He opposed all fads and cults,
the tyranny of theory and the contempt of theory, and every doctor who
lost sight of what he held to be the Hippocratic teaching on the unity of
the living organisms and the force of “what nature does.” The enmities
he incurred by polemical activity may have caused his sudden departure
from Rome in 168 and retirement to Pergamum. He was soon recalled
77
GALEN
by imperial command. Marcus Aurelius, who was one of his patients,
desired his attendance for the campaigns against the Germans. But Galen
did not wish to go and in the end was allowed to remain at Rome as
physician to Commodus, the young heir to the throne.
Little is known of Galen after this appointment. He certainly devoted
much of his time to writing. He left five hundred treatises written in
clear Attic Greek. One of them argued : “That the best Physician is also
a Philosopher,” and many of his own works dealt with philosophical
problems. In his De Libris propriis he mentions one hundred and
twenty-four philosophical treatises, which include commentaries on the
Categories and Analytics of Aristotle, and on the Timacus and Philebus
of Plato. He also wrote five treatises on Ancient Comedy. Only fragments
remain of his non-medical writings. Of the surviving medical works some
eighty or ninety are believed to have been written by him; sixty-five are
of doubtful authorship or certainly spurious. Fifteen of his commentaries
on the Hippocratic works are extant.
Galen was apparently in Rome during the fire of 191, when his library
burned, and he was still lecturing and practising during the reign of
Pertinax. fie may have spent his last years as physician-in-ordinary to
the emperor. He died at the turn of the century.
O O O
VOLUME IJ
EUCLID
The Thirteen Books of Euclid\^ Elements
ARCHIMEDES
On the Sphere and Cylinder
Measurement of a Circle ’ On Conoids and Spheroids
On Spirals ’ On the Equilibrium of Planes
The Sand-Reckoner * Quadrature of the Parabola
On Floating Bodies ' Book of Lemmas
The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems
APOLLONIUS OF PERGA
On Conic Sections
78
EUCLID
NICOMACHUS OF GERASA
Introduction to Arithmetic
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
EUCLID, fl. c. 300 B.c.
THE cilief work of the Greek mathematician Euclid is The Elements.
It is safe to say that no other scientific textbook in the world has
remained in use practically unchanged for more than 2,000 years. In
Great Britain it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that
a so-called “away from Euclid” movement began, which led to the
appearance of a miiltitude of rival textbooks giving the substance of
Euclid’s early books in so many different forms as to produce a state of
chaos in geometrical teaching. But the textbook that shall really replace
Euclid has not yet been written and probably never will be.
Euclid is said to have been younger than the first pupils of Plato but
older than Archimedes, which would place the time of his flourishing
about 300 B.c. He probably received his early mathematical education
in Athens from the pupils of Plato, since most of the geometers and
mathematicians on whom he depended were of that school. Proclus, the
Neo-Platonist of the fifth century, asserts that Euclid was of the school
of Plato and “intimate with that philosophy.” His opinion, however, may
have been based only on his view that the treatment of the five regular
(“Platonic”) solids in Book XIII is the “end of the whole Elements.^'
The only other fact concerning Euclid is that he taught and founded
a school at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy I, who reigned from 306
to 283 B.c. The evidence for the place comes from Pappus (fourth
century a.d.), who notes that Apollonius “spent a very long time with
the pupils of Euclid at Alexandria, and it was thus that he acquired such
a scientific habit of thought.” Proclus claims that it was Ptolemy I who
asked Euclid if there was no shorter way to geometry than the Elements
and received as answer : “There is no royal road to geometry.” The
other story about Euclid that has come down from antiquity concerns
his answer to a pupil who at the end of his first lesson in geometry asked
what he would get by learning such things, whereupon Euclid called his
slave and said : “Give him a coin since he must needs make gain by what
he learns.”
79
ARCHIMEDES
Something of Euclid’s character would seem to be disclosed in the
remark of Pappus regarding Euclid’s “scrupulous fairness and his
exemplary kindness towards all who advance mathematical science to
however small an extent.” The context of the remark seems to indicate,
however, that Pappus is not giving a traditional account of Euclid but
offering an explanation of his own of Euclid’s failure to go further than
he did with his investigation of a certain problem in conics.
Euclid’s great work, the thirteen books of the Elements, must have
become a classic soon after publication. From the time of Archimedes
they are constantly referred to and used as a basic textbook. It was
recognized in antiquity that Euclid had drawn upon all his predecessors.
According to Proclus, he “collected many of the theorems of Eudoxus,
perfected many of those of Theatetus, and also brought to incontrovertible
demonstration the things which were only loosely proved by his pre-
decessors.” The other extant works of Euclid include : the Data, for use
in the solution of problems by geometrical analysis, On Divisions (of
figures), the Optics, and the Phenomena, a treatise on the geometry of
the sphere for use in astronomy. His lost Elements of Music may have
provided the basis for the extant Sectio Canonis on the Pythagorean
theory of music. Of lost geometrical works all except one belonged to
higher geometry.
Since the later Greeks knew nothing about the life of Euclid, the
mediaeval translators and editors were left to their own devices. He was
usually called MegarensE, through confusion with the philosopher
Eucleides of Megara, Plato’s contemporary. Fhe Arabs found that the
name of Euclid, which they took to be compounded from ucli (key) and
dis (measure) revealed the “key of geometry.” They claimed that the
Greek philosophers used to post upon the doors of their schools the
well-known notice : “Let no one come to our school who has not
learned the Elements of Euclid,” thus transferring the inscription over
Plato’s Academy to all scholastic doors and substituting the Elements for
geometry.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
ARCHIMEDES, c. 287-212 b.c.
THE range of the scientific labours of the Greek mathematician
Archimedes can be seen from the list of works printed here. It need
only be added that his greatest achievement was in geometry, where he
80
ARCHIMEDES
so extended the method of exhaustion as originated by Eudoxus, and
followed by Euclid, that it became in his hands, though purely
geometrical in form, actually equivalent in several cases to integration, as
expounded in the first chapters of our textbooks on the integral calculus.
Archimedes was a citizen of Syracuse, in Sicily, where he was born
around the year 287 b.g. He was intimate with Hiero, King of Syracuse,
and with his son, Gelo, and Plutarch says that he was related to them.
In his Sand-Reckoner, which was dedicated to Gelo, Archimedes speaks
of his father, Pheidias, as an astronomer who investigated the sizes and
distance of the sun and moon.
As a young man Archimedes seems to have spent some time in Egypt,
where he invented the water-screw as a means of drawing water out of
the Nile for irrigating the fields, though it is also said that he invented
this machine to drain bilge water from a huge ship built for King Hiero.
He may have studied with the pupils of Euclid in Alexandria. It was
probably there that he made the friendship of Gonon of Samos and
Eratosthenes. To Conon he was in the habit of communicating his
discoveries before their publication, and it was for Eratosthenes that he
wrote the Method and through him tliat he addressed the famous Cattle-
Problem to the mathematicians of Alexandria — if the tradition is to be
credited that associates Archimedes with this problem. After the death of
Conon, Archimedes sent his discoveries to Conon’s friend and pupil, Dosi-
theus of Pelusium, to whom four of the extant treatises are dedicated.
His mechanical inventions won great fame for Archimedes and figure
largely in the traditions about him. After discovering the solution of the
problem To move a i>ivcn weight by a given force, he boasted to King
Hiero : “(hve me a place to stand on and I can move the earth.” Asked
for a practical demonstration, he contrived a machine by which with the
use of only one arm he drew out of the dock a large ship, laden with
passengers and goods, which the combined strength of the Syracusans
could scarcely move. From that day Hiero ordered that “Archimedes
was to be believed in everything he might say.” At the king’s request
Archimedes then made for him catapults, battering rams, cranes, and
many other engines of war, which were later used with such succe^ss in the
defence of Syracuse against ihe Romans that they were unable to take the
city except by treachery. There is also a story in Lucian that Archimedes
set fire to the Roman ships by an arrangement of burning glasses.
Although Archimedes acquired by his mechanical inventions “the
81
ARGIilMEDES
renown of more than human sagacity,” according to Plutarch, he “would
not deign to leave behind him any commentary or writing on such
subjects” since he considered that “sordid and ignoble.” He did, however,
write a description, now lost, of an apparatus composed of concentric
glass spheres moved by water power, representing the Eudoxian system
of the world. This astronomical machine, which survived to be seen and
described by Cicero in his Republic, was sufficiently accurate to show the
eclipses of the sun and the moon. Except for this lost work On Sphere-
making, Archimedes wrote only on strictly mathematical subjects. He
took all the mathematical sciences for his province : arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, mechanics, and hydrostatics. Unlike Euclid and Apollonius
he wrote no textbooks. Of his writings, although some have been lost the
most important have survived.
"J he absorption of Archimedes in his mathematical investigations was
so great that he forgot his food and neglected his person, and when
carried by force to the })ath, Plutarch records, “he used to trace
geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire and diagrams in the oil on
his body.” Asked by Hicro to discover whether a goldsmith had alloyed
with silver the gold of his crown, Archimedes found the answer while
bathing by considering the water displaced by his body, whereupon he is
reported to have run home in his excitement without his clothes, shouting
“Eureka” (I have found it).
Archimedes’ preoccupation with mathematics is even said to have been
the cause of his death. In the general massacre which followed the
capture of Syracuse by Marcellus in 2\2 r.g., Archimedes was so intent
upon a mathematical diagram that he took no notice, and when ordered
by a soldier to attend the victorious general, he refused until he should
have solved his problem, whereupon he was slain by the enraged soldier.
No blame attaches to the Roman general, Marcellus, since he had given
orders to spare the house and person of the mathematician, and in the
midst of his triumph he lamented the death of Archimedes, provided him
with an honourable burial, and befriended his surviving relatives. In
accordance with the expressed desire of Archimedes, his family and
friends inscribed on his tomb the figure of his favourite theorem, on the
sphere and the circumscribed cylinder, and the ratio of the containing
solid to the contained. When Cicero was in Sicily as quaestor in 75 b.g.
he discovered the neglected and forgotten tomb of Archimedes near the
Agrigentine Gate and piously restored it.
82
APOL LONIUS
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
APOLLONIUS, r. 262~c. 200 b.g.
THE treatise on Conics of the (ireek mathematician Apollonius of Perga
gained him the title of the Great Geometer, and it is that by which his
fame has been transmitted to modern times.
Apollonius was born at Perga in Pamphylia, Asia Minor, some twenty-
five years after the birth of Archimedes, which would place his birth
around the year 262 b.g. He seems to have gone when quite young to
Alexandria, where, according to Pappus, the fourth-century mathema-
tician, he was attracted by the reputation of the astronomer, Aristarchus
of Samos. Apollonius studied under the successors of Euclid at Alexandria
and continued to reside there during the reigns of Ptolemy Euergetes
and of Ptolemy Philopator (247-203 b.g.). He was also for some time in
Pergamum, where he made the acquaintance of the mathematician,
Eudemus, to whom he dedicated the first three books of his Conics, and
of King Attains I (269-197 b.g.), to whom the remaining five books of
the Conics were dedicated.
Apollonius appears to have been associated with the leading mathema-
ticians of his day. In the dedicatory epistles of the Conics he records that
he met Philonides while on a trip to Ephesus and that he undertook the
composition of this work in the first instance for Naucrates, who was
staying in Alexandria. Speaking in the same place for the preceding
writers on conics, Apollonius points out their limitations and inadequacies
in such a way that some of his readers, such as Pappus, have considered
him boastful and envious, but it would seem that Apollonius is only
trying to explain the appearance of a new textbook on the elements of
conics (Books I-IV) and the publication of his own original and more
advanced investigations (Books V-VIII).
The Conics were at once recognized as the authoritative treatise on
the subject. They are regularly cited by later writers. Pappus added a
group of lemmas, and Eutocius (//. a.d. 500) edited and commented on
the first four books. 'Jhe.se books are extant in the original Greek; the
fifth, sixth, and seventh books exist in an Arabic translation; the eighth
book is known only indirectly.
Although the titles and a general indication of the contents of other
works by Apollonius are given by later writf‘rs, especially by Pappus,
only one, the Cutting of a Ratio, has survived, and that, like parts of
83
NICOMACHUS
the Conics, only in an Arabic version. All of the original work, with the
exception of the second half of the Conics, has perished. Books not extant
but known through Pappus are : Cutting of an Area, Determinate
Section, Tangencies, Inclinations, and Plane LocL He wrote on irrationals
and, like Archimedes, devised a system of multiplication for counting
large numbers and calculated an approximate value for the ratio of the
circumference of a circle to the diameter. The ancient writers also record
that Apollonius wrote On the Burning-Glass, in which he probably treated
the properties of the parabola, a work comparing the dodecahedron and
the icosahedron inscribed in the same sphere, and a book, perhaps on the
general principles of mathematics, in which he criticized and suggested
improvements for Euclid’s Elements, Lastly, in astronomy he is credited
by Ptolemy with an explanation of the motion of the planets l)y means
of epicycles and eccentric circles. He seems to have been especially
interested in the theory of the moon, and the Alexandrians arc said to
have called him Epsilon from the resemblance of that Greek letter to the
lunar crescent.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTH
NICOMACHUS, //. c. a.d. 100
THE Introduction to Arithmetic of the mathematician Nicomachus of
Gerasa is important because it sets out the elementary theory and
properties of numbers. Numbers are no longer denoted by lines as in
Euclid, but are written in the ordinary notation ; hence general principles
can be stated with reference only to particular numbers taken as
illustrations.
Nicomachus of Gerasa flourished around the end of the first century
of our era. In one of his surviving books, the Introduction to Harmonics,
he mentions a certain Thrasyllus, presumcibly Thrasyllus of Mendes, a
writer on music, who lived in the reign of Tiberius. Another book by
Nicomachus, the Introduction to Arithmetic, was translated into Latin
by Apuleius under the Antonines. This places the life of Nicomachus
somewhere between the middle of the first century and the middle of
the second century. Perhaps the fact that Ptolemy, whose recorded
astronomical observations were made between a.d. 127 and 131, is not
mentioned in the Introduction to Harmonics makes it probable that he
was not yet famous at the time Nicomachus was writing.
84
NIGOM AGHUS
1 he manuscripts of Nicomachus’ books and the scholia call him “of
Gerasa.” The best known city of that name was in Palestine and was
primarily Greek. However, it can hardly be supposed that Nicomachus
received all of his philosophical and mathematical education at Gerasa.
He probably studied at Alexandria, at this time the centre of
mathematical studies and of Neo-Pythagoreanism. Jamblichus says of
Nicomachus, “The man is great in mathematics, and has as instnactors
those that were most skilled in the subject.”
Nothing is known f)f th(‘ personal life of Nicomachus except what is
said or implied in the dedication of the Introduction to Harmonics to
an unknown lady : “But T must spur on all my zeal, most noble and
august lady, since it is you that bid me . . . And, if the gods are willing,
just as soon as T shall have leisure and a rest from my journeyings, I
will compile for you a better and more detailed Introduction dealing
with this very subject . . . and, so that you may the more easily follow
the argument, I will take my beginning, say, from the same point as that
at w'hich I began your instruction when I was expounding the subject
to you.’'
Nicomachus appears to have l)een an important member of the Neo-
Pythagorean group, though his extant writings would seem to indicate
that he was a popularizer and a compiler of manuals and not the head
of a school. Besides the Introduction to Arithmetic and the Introduction
to Harmonics, he also wrote a book on the mystical doctrine of number
called Thcolo iioumcna Arithmeticae, which is one of the best sources on
Neo-Pythagorcanism; extracts and paraphrases of this work survive' in a
later anonymous work of the same name and in the Bibliotheca, a
collection of extracts from ancient works made in the ninth century by
Photius, patriarch of Gonstantinople. Nicomachus also wrote an Intro-
duction to Geometry and a Life of Pythagoras, which have not survived,
and a larger work on music, possibly that promised in the dedication to
the Introduction to Harmonics, of which we have only fragments. He
may have written a book on the interpretation of Plato, though the
evidence for it is slight, and also an Introduction to Astronomy, thereby
completing the quadrivial series.
The success of the Introduction to Arithmetic must have been
immediate. It was used in a textl)ook throughout later antiquity and, in
the Latin paraphrase of Boethius, throughout the Middle Ages. It has
a host of commentators. In the Philopatris, attributed to Lucian, a
85
LITCRETIUS
character says : “You reckon like Nicomachus.’^ I'his remark lends itself
to more than one interpretation, hut in any case it is evidence of his
fame. Nicomachus also appears to have been considered one of the
“golden chain*’, or succession, of true philosophers; for Proclus, the
fifth-century Neo-Platonist, who belonged to that “chain”, claimed, on
the basis of a dream, that he had within him the soul of Nicomachus.
O O O
VOLUME 12
LUCRETIUS
On the Nature of Things
EPICTETUS
The Discourses
MARCUS AURELIUS
The Meditations
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
LUCRETIUS, r. 98 55 b.g.
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUs, generally known as Lucretius, was one of
the greatest of Roman poets. Apart from its philosophic and poetical
interest, his great didactic epic De Rcrum Natura (On the Nature of
'Phings) presents several striking features, one of the most notable being
the general archaic nature of the language. Indeed the truest analogue
to Lucretius’ poems would probably be Milton’s Paradise Losty which is
similarly characterized by an archaic poetic diction. Milton is in general
more alike perhaps in genius to Lucretius than any other poet that could
be named. If the sheer poetic gift of Milton is the higher, as no doubt
it is, yet he has a singular affinity with Lucretius in his combination of
moral earnestness with a lively sense of the beauty of external nature,
animate and inanimate. And in Lucretius, as in Paradise Lost, the
sublimest passages of pure poetry are strictly germane to the argument
of which they are the crown and complement. In his greatest passages
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LUCRETIUS
Lucretius reaches heights hardly attained by any other Roman poet. If
we seek further to enquire what is the secret of his power, we would find
it not in any gift of memorable phrase — although he has memorable
phrases enough — but in the vivid imagination and consequent power of
sympathy.
Titus Lucretius Carus was born somewhere between 99 and 93 b.g.,
probably at Rome. The Lucretian gens to which he belonged was one
of the oldest of the great Roman houses, and it is likely that he was a
member of either a senatorial or an equestrian family. In his poem he
.speaks to the aristocratic Ciaius Memmius, to whom he dedicated his
work, as to an equal.
Nothing is known of the poet’s education except what might be
inferred from the presence in Rome during his youth of eminent Greek
teachers of the Epicurean sect who lived on terms of intimacy with
members of the governing class. Lucretius’ reading is evident from his
poem. In addition to the works of his master, Epicurus, he shows
knowledge of the philosophical poem of Einpc'docles and at least an
acquaintance with the works of Democritus, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus,
Plato, and the Stoics. Of the other Greek prose writers he knew
Thucydides and Hippocrates. Among the poets he expresses highest
admiration for Homer, frequently reproduces Euripides, and shows a
close study of Ennius.
The only account of Lucretius’ life is a short note by St. Jerome
written more than four centuries after the poet’s death. St. Jerome in
liis Chronicle under the year 94 n.c. has the i*ntry : “Titus Lucretius the
poet is born. He was rendered insane by a love-philtre and, after writing
during intervals of lucidity, some books, which Cicero emended, he died
by his own hand in tlic forty-third year of his life.”
The account of St. Jerome, though perhaps based on a lost work of
Suetonius, has not been traced to any earlier source and has been found
incapable of either proof or disproof. Historians have pointed out that love
potions, which occasionally caused madness, were sufficiently common at
the time of Lucretius to necessitate a legal penalty against tlieir use.
Some critics have argued that the supposed mental ailment is compatible
with the impression the poem makes and have pointed to the evidence
of its not having received a final revision. Other critics have inferred
that the whole story is a fiction invented by the enemies of Epicureanism
to discredit the work of its greatest expositor.
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EPICTETUS
Cicero’s relation to the poem as emender or editor rests on no other
authority than that of St. Jerome. A letter of Cicero’s to his brother does
reveal that the poem, probably published posthumously, was being read
in 54 B.c.
Donatus, in his Life of states that Lucretius died on the same
day in 55 b.c. that Virgil assumed the U\^a virilis.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
EPICTETUS, A.i). 60-r. 138
THE philosophy of the Greek teacher Epictetus, as contained in the four
books of his Discourses, exhibits a high idealistic type of morality. The
all important problem is how life is to be carried out well. True education
lies in our recognizing that there is only one thing which is fully our
own — that is, our will, or purpose. God, acting as a good king and
father, has given us a will which cannot he compelled or thwarted by
anything external. We are not responsible for the ideas which present
themselves to our consciousness, but we are absolutely responsible for the
way in which we use them. “Two maxims,” he says, “we must ever
hear in mind — that apart from the will there is nothing good or bad,
and that we must not try to anticipate or direct events, but merely to
accept them with intelligence.” We must in short believe that there is a
( lod whose thought directs the universe.
Epictetus was born sometime in the reign of Nero and lived through
the greaU^r part, if not all, of the reign of Hadrian. He was a native of
Phrygia, and his language was Greek. His original name is unknown.
The name Epictetus (“acquired”) refers to his servitude; as a boy he was
a slave in Rome of Epaphroditus, a freedman and courtier of Nero.
While still a slave, Epictetus attended the lectures of the Stoic
philosopher, Musonius Rufus, who, he records, “spoke in such fashion
that each of us as he sat there thoyght he was himself accused.” The
slave apparently came to appreciate Musonius’ teaching that “the gifted
soul is all the more inclined towards its natural object, the more you try
to beat it off.” According to Gelsus, as quoted by Origen, Epictetus was
permanently lamed by his master. “When his master was twisting his
leg,” it is said, “Epictetus only smiled and noted calmly, ‘You will break
it’, and when it was broken, ‘I told you so’.”
88
MARCUS AURELIUS
Sometime before the year 89, Epictetus obtained his freedom and
became a teacher of philosophy in Rome. But along with other
philosophers suspected of republicanism he was expelled from Rome and
Italy by Domitian around the year 90. Epictetus withdrew to northern
Greece, to the city of Nicopolis, which had been founded by Augustine
to celebrate the victory of Actium. There he spent the rest of his long
life, expounding Stoic doctrine. He lived in poverty, having only, as he
said, earth, sky and a cloak.
Epictetus wrote nothing, but he acquired renown as a teacher. When
he was speaking, “his hearers,” we learn from one of them, “were forced
to feel just what he would have them feel.” Their reverence for him is
attested by Lucian’s story that after his death an admirer paid three
thousand drachmas for an earthenware lamp he had used.
Among his pupils, who came from all parts of the Empire, was a
certain Flavius Arrian, later consul under Hadrian and the historian of
Alexander. Arrian took careful notes of the lectures and teaching of
Epictetus and published them in the eight books of the Discourses, of
which the first four have survived. Arrian says in his preface that the
Discourses are “in the very language Epictetus used, so far as possible,”
and preserve “the directness of his speech.” Arrian also compiled out of
his lecture notes a compendium of the main tenets of Epictetus, the
Eucheiridion, or Mavual.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
MARCUS AURELIUS, a.d. 121-180
THE book which contains the philosophy of the Roman emperor Marcus
Aurelius is known as the Reflections, or Meditations. Throughout his life
he was a practising Stoic, although in his hands Stoicism is a practical
rule of life, not a philosophy of Quietism. In the Meditations are no
speculations on the absolute nature of the deity, and no clear expression
of opinion as to a future state. He is, above all things, a practical
moralist. 7'he goal in life to be aimed at, according to him, is not
happiness, but tranquillity, or equanimity.
What give the sentences of Marcus Aurelius their enduring value and
fascination, and makes them superior to the utterances of Epictetus or
Seneca, is that they arc the gospel of his life. His precepts arc simply
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MARCUS AURELIUS
the records of his practice, lb the saintliness of the cloister he added the
wisdom of the man of the world.
Marcus Annius Verus, known to history as the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, was born at Rome in the year 121. His father’s family, like that
of Trajan, was Spanish, but had been resident in Rome for many years
and had received patrician rank from Vespasian. He lost his father in
infancy and was brought up by his mother and his paternal grandfather,
who not only gave fiim the example of their own virtue and piety, but
secured for him the best of teachers in Greek and Latin literature,
rhetoric, philosophy, law, and even painting. In the first book of his
Meditations Marcus Aurelius makes grateful and precise acknowledgment
of what he learned from the members of his family and from his teachers.
“To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents,
a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends,
nearly everything good.’'
Among the teachers of Marcus Aurelius were Sextus of Chaeronea, a
grandson of Plutarch, Junius Rusticus, to whom he owed his acquaintance
with the discourses of Epictetus, and the rhetorician Marcus Cornelius
Fronto, with whom between the years 143 and Ifil he carried on a
correspondence. From Diognetus the Stoic he learned what it meant “to
have become intimate with philosophy . . . and to have desired a plank
bed and skin and whatever else of the kind belongs to the (arecian
discipline.” For a time he assumed the dress of the Stoic sect and lived
so abstemious and laborious a life that he injured his health.
As a child Marcus Aurelius had gained the favour of Hadrian by the
frankness of his character. Hadrian called him V erissimus (most true or
sincere) from his family name Verus, gave him equestrian honours at the age
of six, and made him a priest of the Salian brotherhood at the age of eight.
After the death of Aelius Caesar, Hadrian adopted as his heir Marcus
Antoninus Pius, the uncle of Marcus, on condition that he in turn adopt
Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Ceionius Coiiimodus, son of Aelius Caesar.
Hadrian died in 138. In 139 the title of Caesar was conferred upon
Marcus Aurelius; in 140 he was consul and from 147, when he was
invested with the tribunician power, to the death of Antoninus Pius in
161, Marcus Aurelius shared the burdens, if not the honours, of imperial
rule. At the age of fifteen he had been betrothed to a daughter of Aelius
Caesar, but after his adoption this engagement vas broken and he
married Faustina, the daughter of Antoninus Pius.
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MARCUS AURELIUS
When the Emperor Antoninus was dying he had the Statue of Victory
carried into the rooms of Marcus Aurelius as the material sign of the
transfer of imperial power, and he recommended Marcus Aurelius to the
senate as his successor without any mention of Gommodus. Marcus
Aurelius, however, at once conferred upon his adoptive brother the
tribunician and proconsular powers and the titles of Caesar and Augustus.
For the first time Rome had two emperors. But Lucius Verus, as
Commodus was henceforth known, was more interested in his pleasures
than in his imperial duties. He deferred to Marcus Aurelius and was
content to play the second role until his death in 169.
The reign of Antoninus Pius Iiad been a time of peace and prosperity;
that of Marcus Aurelius was filled with every kind of calamity. The
wisdom and finnness of the emperor could not prevent the beginning of
decline. In the first year of his reign there were floods and famine in
Italy, earthquakes in Asia, eruptions of barbarians across the northern
frontier, riots and seditions of the legionaries in Britain. But there were
even more serious preoccupations for Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian and
Antoninus had kept the kingdom of Armenia under Roman influence,
but as soon as Antoninus died the Parthians drove out the Armenian
king, friendly to Rome, and put in a king of their own choice. The
province of Syria was at once attacked. At the same time the Goths,
coming down from the Baltic, were driving other German tribes befon*
tht*m, some of whom overflowed into the Roman provinces on the right
bank of the Danube. Marcus Aurelius spent most of his reign fighting
the Parthians, in the East and the Quadi, the Marcomanni, and other
barbarian nations in the north. The last ten years of his life he was
almost continuously absent from Rome. The Meditations, “Thoughts
addressed to himself” and not, presumably, intended for publication,
were written down, in part at least, during the time Marcus Aurelius
was campaigning against the (jermans.
In 173, after a series of victories, Marcus Aurelius left the Danube to
restore order in Syria, where the brilliant general, Avidius Cassius, had
revolted and declared himself emperor. Before the arrival of Marcus
Aurelius, Cassius was assassinated liy one of his officers, thereby depriving
the emperor “of the pleasure of pardoning him.” Marcus Aurelius showed
remarkable clemency toward the family and friends of Cassius and is said
to have burned his correspondence without reading it.
While he was returning from the pacification of the East, Marcus
91
VIRGIL
Aurelius lost his wife, who died in a village of Asia Minor. Faustina’s
name has become a symbol for infidelity and debauchery, though all
that is known of her is that she bore eleven children, that her husband
trusted her and mourned her death. On his way home Marcus Aurelius
visited Athens where he endowed chairs of philosophy and rhetoric and
was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. In 176 he entered Rome with
his son Commodus, and celebrated a triumph for his German victories,
after which he took the title of Germanicus Maximus.
The role played by Marcus Aurelius in the persecution of the
Christians in 177 has been the subject of much controversy. He was
undoubtedly unsympathetic to Christianity as he knew it. His attitude
as emperor was perhaps the same as that of Trajan, that the Christians
should not be “pursued”, but if, w^hen asked to sacrifice to the gods, they
refused, they should be punished on the ground that they were opposing
the order and authority of the state.
The Gennan war soon broke out again and Marcus Aurelius had to
return to the Danube, where he died, probably from natural causes, on
the 17th of March, 180, toward the close of his fifty-ninth year. His
ensuing deification met with widespread response, and for a long time his
statue held a prominent place among the penates of the Romans.
O O O
VOLUME 13
VIRGIL
The Eclogues • The Georgies • The Aeneid
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
VIRGIL, 70-19 B.c.
viroil’s fame as a poet rests on the three acknowledged works of his
early and mature manhood — the pastoral poems or Eclogues, the
Georgies and the Aeneid. As a vehicle for the expression of feeling, the
Eclogues, in which the poet’s expressed aim is to pay tribute to the
Italian countryside, hold an undefined place between the objectivity of
the Greek idyll and the subjectivity of the Latin elegy. The supreme
92
VIRGIL
charm of their diction and rhythm is universally recognized. The
Georgies is not only the most perfect, but the most native of all the
the works of the ancient Italian genius. Even where he borrows from
Greek originals, Virgil makes the Greek mind tributary to his national
design. The Georgies, the poem of the land, is as essentially Italian as
the Odyssey, the poem of the sea, is essentially Greek.
The work which yet remained for Virgil to accomplish was the
addition of a Great Roman epic to literature. The problem before him
was to compose a work of art on a large scale, which should represent a
great action of the heroic age, and should at the same time embody the
most vital ideas and sentiments of the hour — which in substance, should
glorify Rome and the present ruler of Rome while in form it should
follow closely the great models of epic poetry. A new type of epic poetry
had to be created. It was desirable to select a single heroic action which
should belong to the legendary events celebrated in the Homeric poems
and which could be associated with Rome. The only subject which in
any way satisfied these conditions was that of the wanderings of Aeneas
and of his final settlement in Latium. The story, though not of Roman
origin, had long been familiar to the Romans. I'he subject enabled
Virgil to tell again of the fall of Troy, and to weave a tale of sea-
adventure similar to that of the wanderings of Odysseus.
The idea which underlies the whole action of the Aeneid is that of the
great part played by Rome in the history of the world, that part being
from of old determined by divine decree, and carried out through the
virtue of her sons. Virgil's true and yet idealizing interpretation of the
important idea of Rome is the basis of the greatness of the Aeneid as a
representative poem. It is on this representative character and on the
excellence of its artistic execution that the claim of the Aeneid to rank
as one of the great poems of the world mainly rests.
Publius Vergilius Maro was born on October 15, 70 b.c., on a farm on
the banks of the Mincio, near Mantua in the region north of the Po.
Although the province did not obtain the rights of Roman citizenship
until 51 B.G. Virgil’s father was of old Latin stock and already a citizen.
I'hc owner of a farm and pottery-works, he had acquired sufficient
wealth to provide Virgil with the best available education.
Somewhere between the ages of ten and twelve he was sent to school
at Cremona, which was then serving as winter headquarters for Caesar’s
armies; and Virgil was probably there when the Gallie Wars first
93
VIRGIL
appeared. After he had received the toga virilisj he continued his studies
briefly at Milan before proceeding to Rome for the study of rhetoric, the
traditional preparation for political life. He entered the school of Epidius,
who also had as pupils the young Octavian and Mark Antony. But
Virgil did not find rhetoric congenial, and, after pleading one case before
the courts, he abandoned the forensic life for philosophy.
Virgil left Rome and became associated with “the Garden”, a school
of philosophy at Naples directed by Siron the Epicurean. He remained
under his tutelage until the philosopher’s death and is said to have
inherited his villa. Poetry as well as philosophy was discussed at “the
Garden”, and many of the rising generation of poets gathered there to
read Catullus and Lucretius and to write verses modelled upon the
Alexandrians. A number of Virgil’s minor poems, included in the
Appendix V ergiliana, are thought to have been written during his student
days.
'Pherc is little evidence of VirgiFs activities during the tumultuous
years of the Civil War. His health was never robust, and, if he was
conscripted into Caesar’s army, it was for a very brief period. In 42 b.g.,
the year of the battle of Philippi, it is known that he was “cultivating
his woodland Muse.” 'Phe year following, his father’s land and his home
were involved in the confiscations made for the benefit of the soldiers of
the triumvirs. He is thought to have used his influence with powerful
friends to obtain their restitution, although it is not known whether he
succeeded. 'Phe event figures prominently in Virgil’s first published work,
the Eclogues,
These pastoral poems, which had been commenced at his home in the
country, were completed and published in Rome when he was about
thirty. 'Phey immediately established hijn as the most celebiated poet of
the day, and Tacitus records that on one occasion when Virgil was
present at a theatre where the Eclogues were recited, the audience arose
and acclaimed him as they did the Em|^>eror. He enjoyed the friendship
and protection of powerful patrons and in addition to an income was
given a house on the Esquiline near the garden of Maecenas. Here he
made the acquaintance of Horace, Varius, the epic poet, and other men
of letters and becaim the head of the group, which, under the patronage
of Octavian and Maecenas, functioned as a kind of semi-official committee
on literature for promoting the peace and well-being of the Empire.
The life of the city did not appeal to Virgil, and he soon withdrew to
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VIRGIL
the seclusion of Campania, where he continued his writing. He may have
begun the Georgies at the suggestion of Maecenas, who in his official
capacity was interested in reviving agriculture and commending to the
soldiers newly settled on the land the traditional virtues associated with
the farm. Virgil worked for seven years on the 2,188 lines that compose
the Georgies. He completed them in 30 b.g. and in the following year
read the poem to Augustus on his return from Asia. The remaining years
of his life were spent on the composition of the Aeneid.
In the Eelogues there is already a hint that Virgil was thinking of
writing an epic : “When I tried to make a poem of warring kings,
Apollo twitched my ear . . Even earlier, if the poems in the Appendix
Vergiliana are his work, he had handled epic material and pondered the
pre-eminence of the Julian line. And in the Georgies he tells of the
temple he will build with Caesar “in the middle”, and how he will sing
of Caesar’s battles and bring him lasting fame. By 25 b.g. he was at work
upon his epic poem, for in that year Augvistus, although involved with
the campaign in Spain, wrote to Virgil requesting to see selections from
it. Virgil replied : “Regarding my Aeneas, if I had anything worth your
hearing, T would gladly send it, but the thing is so inchoate that it
almost seems to me that I must have been out of my mind to have
started such a work.” The selections were provided two or three years
later when Virgil read from the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia; he
was famed for his beautiful reading voice, and Octavia fainted when he
recited the passage from the Sixth Book relating the death of her son,
Marcell us.
In 19 B.G. the Aeneid was finished although not corrected, and Virgil
set out for Athens, intending to pass three years in Greece and Asia, to
visit the places described in the poem, and to perfect his work. At Athens
he met Augustus and was persuaded to accompany him back to Italy.
While visiting Megara under a burning sun, he was seized with illness,
which grew rapidly worse as he continued his voyage. Realizing that
death was imminent, he asked for his manuscripts which he wished to
destroy. The poem w^as saved, it is said, only by the intervention and
command of Augustus; it was published within a year of his death
by Varius and Tucca, the two friends he had designated as his literary
executors.
On September 21, a few days after landing at Brindisi, in Calabria,
Virgil died, being then in his fifty-first year. He was buried at his own
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VIRGIL
request near his villa in Naples, beneath the epitaph : Mantua me
genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc Parthenopc ; cecini pascua, rura,
duces — “Mantua gave me birth, Calabria took me away, and now
Naples holds me; I sang of pastures, farms, leaders.”
O O O
VOLUME 14
PLUTARCH
The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Theseus
Romulus
Romulus and Theseus Com-
pared
Lycurgus
Numa Pompilius
Lycurgus and Numa Com-
pared
Solon
Poplicola
Poplicola and Solon Compared
Themistocles
Camillus
Pericles
Fabius
Fabius and Pericles Compared
Alcibiades
Coriolanus
Alcibiades and Coriolanus
Compared
Timoleon
Aemilius Paulus
Aemilius Paulus and Timoleon
Compared
Pelopidas
Marcellus
Marcus Cato
Aristides and Marcus Cato
Compared
Philo poemen
Flaminius
Flamminus and Philopoemcn
Compared
Pyrrhus
Caius Marius
Lysander
Sulla
Lysander and Sulla Compared
Cimon
Lucullus
Cimon and Lucullus Compared
Nicias
Crassus
Crassus and Nicias Compared
Sertorius
Eumenes
Eumenes and Sertorius Com-
pared
Agesilaus
Pompey
Agesilaus and Pompey Com-
pared
96
PLUTARCH
Marcellus and Pelopidas Com-
pared
Aristides
Cato the Younger
Agis
Cleomenes
Tiberius Gracchus
Caius Gracchus
Caius ajid Tibet ius Gracchus
and Agis and Cleomenes
Compared
Demosthenes
Cicero
Demosthenes and Cicero Com-
pared
Alexander
Caesar
P ho cion
Demetrius
Antony
Antony and Demetrius Com-
pared
Dion
Marcus Brutus
Brutus and Dion Compared
Aratus
Artaxetxes
Galba
Otho
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
PLIJIARCH, c. 46 c. 120
celebrity of Plutarch, or at least his popularity, is mainly founded
on his Parallel Line^. His design in writing the Parallel Laves — for this
is the title which he gives them in dedicating Theseus and Romulus to
Sosius Senccio - - appears to have been the publication, in successive
books, of authentic biographies in pairs, taking together a Greek and a
Roman. Nearly all the lives are in pairs; but the series concluded with
single biographies of Artaxerxes, Aratus (of Sicyon), Galba and Otho.
In the life of Aratus, not Sosius Scnecius, but one Polycrates, is addressed.
I'he laves arc works of great learning and research, long lists of
authorities are given, and they must for this reason, as well as from
their considerable length, have taken many years to complete. His vast
acquaintance with the literature of his time is everywhere apparent.
Plutarch lived in the time of the emperors Nerva, Trajan, and
Hadrian, a time usually thought of as the beginning of the best age of
tile Roman imperial period and as the last great era of Greek and
Roman literature. He is not quoted nor even mentioned by his celebrated
contemporaries, Juvenal, Quintilian, Martial, Tacitus, and the younger
Pliny. He never wrote directly of himself, and the sources for his life are
the many scattered passages where some reminiscence appears incidentally.
97
PLUTARCH
Later, when his fame became widespread, legends grew up to supple-
ment the little extant knowledge. The legends tended to confirm the
impression made by his works that he was to an exceptional degree
representative of his time. Plutarch was pictured as tutor to Trajan, to
whom he was supposed to have dedicated a treatise on the good of a
prince after the manner of Plato’s epistle to Dion. He was supposed to
have lived for a long period in Rome, where he was held in great esteem,
honoured with consular rank, and later appointed governor of Greece by
the Emperor, who had been his pupil.
These legendary titles and distinctions apparently have no basis in fact.
The truth seems to be that the man who wrote of the fall of Athens, of
the growth of Roman dominion over the East, of the overthrow of the
Roman republic, was a Theban provincial, fortunate in his ancestors and
in his education, contented with his family and his friends, and loyal in
a spirited way to his town. He did go to Rome on several occasions.
His visits were short. He himself records that he had “no leisure while
there to study and exercise the Latin tongue, as well for the business I
had then to do, as also to satisfy them that came to learn philosophy of
me.” He adds, however, that he had familiar conversation with many of
the highest men in Rome; his lack of Latin would not prevent that in
the “Greek city”, as Juvenal indignantly called it. From this “great place,
containing plenty of all sorts of books” he returned to “his poor little
town and remained there willingly, being loath to make it less by the
withdrawal of even one.”
The place of his birth was Chaeronea in Boeotia. It was a town not
incapable of stirring the imagination by the contrast of its memories with
its present obscurity. Plutarch relates that long ago Epaminondas had
called it “the playfield of Mars.” Not as long ago as that, Macedon and
the allied armies of Thebes and Athens had fought on its plains a battle
“fatal to Greek liberty.” Chaeronea appears in Plutarch’s life of Antony,
where he recalls the story he had from his great-grandfather Nicarchus.
The citizens of the town, Nicarchus among them, had been forced by
Antony’s supply officers to carry corn like beasts of burden. They were
starting out in file on their second trip to the sea when news came
of Antony’s defeat at Actium. “Antony’s purveyors and soldiers fled
upon the news, and the citizens of Chaeronea divided the corn among
themselves.”
Among the sons of Nicarchus w^as Lamprias, Plutarch’s grandfather.
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PLUTARCH
Plutarch remembers him with joy as a man whose wit was affected by
wine as incense by fire. Lamprias too figures in the life of Antony as able
to pass on, from a friend who had lived in Alexandria, tales of the
luxurious revels of Antony and Cleopatra. Plutarch’s father is mentioned
by him a number of times, once with vivid gratitude for the way in
which he taught his son to share honour and avoid envy.
As a young man, Plutarch studied at Athens with Ammonius, reputedly
an Egyptian who taught at Alexandria before settling in Athens. Plutarch
boarded in his teacher’s house and records that one of his fellow-students
was a descendent of Thcmistocles.
It is not known when he wrote the series of treatises collected under
the title Moralia. Many of them, he tells us, were expansions of his notes
for lectures at Rome. It was after his return to Chaeronca that he
compiled his Symposiacsj or Table Talk, wherein a variety of personages
are depicted in discussion of a wide variety of lively, often trivial,
problems. According to most opinion, he began work on the Parallel
Lives towards the end of his life. He states that his original intention
had been to instruct others, but in the course of writing he discovered
that more and more it was he himself who was deriving profit and
stimulation from “lodging these men orie after the other in his house.”
In his native Cliaeronea, Plutarch seems to have held many municipal
offices. When he was ridiculed on one occasion for his patience in
discharging trivial duties, he said : “You remember what Antisthenes
said, when someone was surprised that he carried some pickled fish home
from the market : ‘But it is for myself.’ When you reproach me for
watching tiles measured out and stone and mortar brought up, 1 give you
the converse answer: ‘It is not for myself, but for the city.’” He filled
the position of Archon a number of times and served as a priest of
Apollo at Delphi. His term in this last office .seems to have lasted to the
end of his lib', for in one of his Symposiacs he argues on the question
Whether an Old Man should continue in Public Life by submitting that
no one would say to him : “You have served for many pythiads, you
have taken part enough in the sacrifices, processions, and dances, and it
is high time, Plutarch, now you are an old man, to lay aside your garland
and retire as superannuated from the oracle.”
There is much testimony in his writing of the tenderness and warmth
in the smaller circle of his family. Plutarch wrote affectionate descriptions
of his little girl, 'Pimoxena, and a famous letter of consolation to his wife
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TACITUS
at the time of this child’s death. In another letter to his wife he writes
that he finds “scarcely an erasure, as in a book well-written” in the
happiness of his long life. Legend reports that the people of Rome
requested after his death that a statue be erected to honour his virtue
O O O
VOLUME 15
P. CORNELIUS TACITUS
The Annals • The Histories
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
TACITUS, 55-r. 117
'j'liE AyiTuils of Tacitus record the histories of tlie emperors of the Julian
line, from I'iberius to Nero, comprising thus a period from a.o. 14 to 68.
The Histories, as originally composed in 12 books, brought the history
of the Roman Empire from Galba in 69 down to the close of Domitian’s
reign in 97. The first four books and a small fragment of the fifth, giving
us a very minute account of tlie eventful year of revolution, 69, and
the brief reigns of Galba, Otho and Vitellius are all that remain to us.
Tacitus has given us a startling, and on the whole doubtless a true,
picture of the empire in the last century'. He is convinced of the
degeneracy of the age, although it be relieved by the existence of trading
noble virtues- and he connects this degeneracy more or less directly with
the imperial regime.
Whatever judgment may be passed on Tacitus’ style, it is ciutainly
that of a man of genius, and cannot fail to make a deep impression on
the careful reader. Tacitean brevity has b(‘Comc proverbial, and with
this are closely allied an occasional obscurity and a rhetorical affection
which even his warmest admirers must admit.
The little that is known about ' the life of Tacitus is provided by
allusions in his own writings and the letters addressed to him by his
intimate friend, Pliny the Younger. When Tacitus began his Histories,
somewhere about his forty-fifth year, he related his life to the empire
that was to be the burden of his narrative : “I myself knew nothing of
Galba, of Otho, or of Vitellius, either from benefits or from injuries. I
100
TACITUS
would not deny that my elevation was begun by Vespasian, augmented
by Titus, and still further advanced by Domitian ... I have reserved
as an employment for my old age, should my life be long enough, a
subject at once more fruitful and less anxious in the reign of the Divine
Nerva and the empire of Trajan, enjoying the rare happiness of times,
when we may think what we please, and express what we think.”
The influential part of Tacitus’ education took place during the early
part of Vespasian’s reign. It is possible, that, like his friend, Pliny, he
was trained in rhetoric by Quintillian, for whom Vespasian had founded
the first public chair of elo(iucnce at Rome. 1"acitus himself records how
zealous he was for achievement and how diligently he pursued and
studied the leading orators. It is not known on what occasion he began
his own political career, but he won renown quickly. Pliny, only a few
years his junior, recalls in a famous letter that in his youth Tacitus
seemed of all the eminent men then active the most worthy of imitation.
7'acitus’ success as an orator was followed by marriage to the daughter
of Julius Agricola, Ciovernor of Britain, whose biography he later wrote,
and by rapid attainment und(*r successive emperors of the office's of
quaestor, aedile, and praetor. During the four years from 89 to 93 he
was absent from Rome in some administrative capacity, possibly a
provincial governorship in Belgic Gaul, where he could have acquired the
knowledge of German manners and customs he later used in his Germany,
By the time Tacitus returned to Rome the full force of Domitian’s
tyranny had developed. He later declared his father-in-law fortunate in
death since he thereby escaped the sight of these last three years during
which Domitian “leaving now no interval or breathing space but, as it
were, with one continuous blow, drained the life-blood of the Common-
wealth.” Tacitus was at the height of his powers and a consulship was
due him in the normal course of advancement. Yet, unless he would risk
his life, he could not abandon his office, seek advancement, or absent
himself. The orator chose silence, broken only when Domitian demanded
flattery as an accompaniment to his acts of terror. The Emperor enforced
full attendance in the Senate when honourable men were being judicially
murdered, so that he could “see plainly whether you have any affection
for me.” Tacitus wrote of this experience : “Even Nero turned his eyes
away, and did not gaze upon the atrocities which he ordered ; with
Domitian it was the chief part of our miseries to see and to be seen, to
know that our sighs were being recorded.”
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TACITUS
The assassination of Domitian in 96 brought unexpected release from
this tyranny, which Tacitus said left some of the living no more than
“survivors of themselves”. There can be no doubt of the effect upon
him : “We witnessed the extreme of servitude when the informer robbed
us of the interchange of speech and hearing. We should have lost memory
as well as voice, had it been as easy to forget as to keep silence.” That
he vowed to maintain memory during that period of unnatural silence
seems probable, since the opening pagt\s of his Life of Agricola (98) refer
to his Histories as having been begun shortly after the death of Domitian.
It would hold, he said, the memory of past servitude and then give
testimony to present happiness. As he worked on this book, and later on
the Annals, he extended his memory past the emperors of his childhood,
the four who succeeded one another within fourteen months after the
death of Nero, to the death of Augustus,
Tacitus was not out of public office during the rule of Nerva and
Trajan. He advanced to the consulship in 97. With Pliny he conducted,
in 99, a famous trial before the Senate. He is known, from a recently
di.scovered inscription, to have held, in 112, the. important office of
Proconsul of Asia. It is not known whether he survived the emperor
Trajan, in whose reign his histories were brought out. He did not fulfil
his intention of celebrating Nerva and 'Prajan and the happiness of
their times.
O O O
VOLUME 16
PTOLEMY
The Almagest
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
JOHANNES KEPLER
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy [Book IV-V]
The Harmonies of the World [Book V]
102
PTOLEMY
BIOGRAPHICAI, NOTE
PTOLEMY, A.D. c. 100-r. 178
PTOLEMY realized that the sciences of mathematics, geography and
astronomy are closely related. He used his mathematical knowledge to
prove that the Earth was round and studied the revolving movements
of the heavenly bodies. The geocentric theory, that the Earth is the
centre of* the universe, was developed by him and was generally accepted
until replaced by the Copernican system. His greatest work was the
Almagest, in which he developed and explained plane and spherical
geometry. Many ideas in it were not developed further for 1,400 years.
It is the only completely comprehensive treatise of Greek astronomy to
come down to us. Indeed, for detail, completeness and perfection, the
Almagest might be said to contain all those treatises which preceded it.
Its perfection is such that it often covers up the modes of discovery, and
its geocentric theory is propounded with the barest reference to its helio-
centric opponents.
The life of Claudius Ptoleinaeus is almost entirely unknown despite
his fame as an astronomer and geographer. What little can be said of
his personal history has to be pieced togc’ther from indications in his
writings, two ancient scholia, and brief notices by much later writers,
some of them Arabian. From these it appears that Ptolemy was born at
Ptolemais Hennii, a Grecian city of the Egyptian Thebaid; even this is
not certain, sinc(' another early source gives his birth-place as Pelusium.
His work is traditionally associated with Alexandria, but according to
one scholium, he devoted his lift* to astronomy and lived for forty ytars
at Canopus, about fifteen miles east of the capital. Ptolemy himself notes
that he made his observations “in the parallel of Alexandria. The dates
of his birth and death are also uncertain. His observations recorded in
the Almagest extend from a.d. 127 to 151; the Arabic writers claim that
he lived to the age of seventy-eight; from this evidence it is inferred that
Ptolemy’s life covered the first three quarters of the second century and
the reigns of IVajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.
There seems to he no basis for the claim once made that he was related
to the royal house of the Ptolemies.
From his writings it is evident that Ptolemy knew well the work of his
predecessors, and most of what is now known about ancient astronomy
owes its preservation to him. He was particularly indebted to Hipparchus
103
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS
(c. 130 B.G.), “that enthusiastic worker and lover of truth,” whom Ptolemy
considered his master. From his own observation he was able to add to the
records compiled by prior astronomers; he increased by several hundred
stars the list drawn up by Hipparchus. His discoveries are said to have
been inscribed on pillars erected in the temple of Serapis at Canopus.
Ptolemy’s fame as an astronomer rests chiefly upon the Almagest. This
work was originally known as The Mathematical Composition, but after
it had come to be used as a text in astronomy, it was called The Great
Astronomer to distinguish it from a collection known as The Little
Astronomer. The Arabs called it “The Greatest”, prefixing the article al
to the Greek megiste, and ever since it has been known as the Almagest.
In addition to his great work, Ptolemy composed many shorter books
dealing with the heavens. In his Hypothesis on the Planets he provided
a summary of part of the Almagest and a brief statement of the principal
theories explaining the motion of the heavenly bodies. He drew up a list
of annual sidereal phenomena and also a chronological table of Assyrian,
Persian, Greek, and Roman kings for use in reckoning the lapse of titne
between an event and a given fixed date. The two astrological writings,
the Tetrabiblon (or Quadripartitum) and the Centiloquinm, arc usually
attributed to Ptolemy, although their authenticity has sometimes been
doubted. Of his other mathematical works, the most important are the
Harmonica, a treatise on music, and the Optics, which is apparently the
first recorded attempt at a theory of refraction of luminous rays through
media of different densities.
After the Almagest, Ptolemy’s most important work is his Guide to
Geography, the most comprehensive and scientific work of antiquity on
the subject. It consists largely of a tabulation of places with their latitude
and longitude, but it also contains an estimate of the size ad extent of
the “inhabited world” and a discussion of map-making. The Guide came
to be for geography what the Almagest was for astronomy, and until
well into the Renaissance, Ptolemy was hardly less celebrated as a
geographer than as an astronomer.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS, 1473-1543
COPERNICUS made a great advance in the study of astronomy by
stating that the Earth revolves on its own axis once every 24 hours, that
it travels round the Sun once a year and that it and the other planets
104
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS
form what is now known as the Solar System. His view of the universe
was therefore heliocentric, in contrast with that of the second-century
astronomer Ptolemy, who propounded a geocentric theory of the universe.
The book in which Copernicus sets out in detail his views on astronomy
is called Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres,
Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473, at Torun, Poland, the
youngest of the four children of a prosperous merchant. Upon the father’s
death in 1484, the children were adopted by their maternal uncle, Lucas
Watzelrode, a priest of some scholarly attainments who became Bishop
of Ermland in 1489; it was decided that Nicolaus should be trained for
the Church.
At the University of Cracow, which he entered in 1491, Copernicus
first became seriously interested in mathematics. He studied particularly
with Albert Brudzewski, the author of a commentary on Peurbach’s text-
book of Ptolemaic astronomy, and the leader of the humanist faction at
the university. From him Copernicus not only learned mathematics and
astronomy, but also acquired an attraction for the new humanistic studies.
He left Cracow in 1494, without taking his examinations for a degree.
After it had become apparent that his uncle would provide him with a
sinecure, Copernicus went to Italy. He remained there from 1496 to 1506
perfecting his education in many different fields. He first attended the
University of Bologna, where he followed the course in canon law as a
preparation for administrative work in the Church. But mathematics and
astronomy continued to be his particular interest, and he became closely
associated with Domenico Maria de Novara, a Platonist who had
detected the diminution in the obliquity of the ecliptic and the variation
in latitude. Although he obtained his appointment as canon of the
cathedral of Frauenburg in 1497, he immediately obtained a leave of
absence to continue his studies. In the jubilee year of 1500 he visited
Rome and lectured on mathematics. The following year he returned to
Ermland and obtained an extension of his leave of absence so that he
might study medicine at Padua. Except for the interval in 1503 when he
completed his doctorate in canon law at Ferrara, Copernicus studied
from 1501 to 1505 in the medical school at Padua. When he returned to
Poland the following year, he was not only a humanist learned in Greek,
mathematics, and astronomy, but also a jurist and a physician.
Copernicus did not actively assume his duties as a canon until six years
after his departure from Italy. Until 1512 he resided at the episcopal
105
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS
palace of Heilsberg as physician to his uncle, the bishop. Upon the death
of his uncle in that year he took up residence as a canon of the rich
cathedral of Frauenburg on the Baltic. Although he never took holy
orders, and only those vows necessary for his office as a canon, he was
the official representative of the cathedral chapter in the many disputes
in which it was involved. After the war between Poland and the Teutonic
Knights from 1519 to 1521, he planned and aided the reconstruction of
Ermland. He served as commissary for the diocese of Ermland and his
medical skill was always at the service of the poor and frequently in
demand by the rich. In 1522 he presented a scheme for the reform of
the currency before the Diet of Craudenz. He never became personally
involved in the conflict of the Reformation.
While engaged in many practical duties, Copernicus continued his
intellectual pursuits. His first work, published in 1509, was a Latin
translation of the fictitious correspondence of famous men written by
Thcophylact Simocatta, a seventh-century Byzantine historian. The
introductory poem written by a college friend provided the first public
praise of Copernicus as an astronomer, who “explores the rapid course
of the moon and the changing movements of the fraternal star and the
whole firmament with the planets.” Copernicus himself said that it was
in 1506, immediately after his return from Italy, that he began to develop
his astronomical system and to write it down. The astronomical observa-
tions, which he had begun in Italy, were continued in Poland, particularly
at Frauenburg, where he established an obst^rvatory. By 1514 his reputa-
tion as an astronomer led to his being' invited by the Lateran Council to
give his opinion on the proposed reform of the calendar. He declined on
the ground that the movements of the Sun and the Moon had not yet
been determined with sufficient accuracy. Although continually making
observations and elaborating his own doctrine, Copernicus showed great
reluctance to publish the result of his work. His Letter A^iainst Werner,
which appeared in 1524, tried to demolish the old explanation of the
alleged variation in the precession of the equinoxes but revealed nothing
of his new theory.
Ii was not until 1530 that Copernicus provided in the Commentariolus
a preliminary outline of his heliocentric theory. It immediately attracted
great attention. At Rome, Johann Albrecht Widmanstadt lectured upon
the new doctrine; Pope Clement VII gave his approval; Cardinal
Schonberg entreated the author to make public his full thought upon the
106
JOHANNES KEPLER
subject. In the spring of 1539 Copernicus was visited by Joachim
Rheticus, a protege of Melanchthon and at the age of twenty-five
professor of mathematics at the University of Wittenberg. Rheticus
stayed for some time, studied the details of Copernicus’ planetary system,
and in 1540 composed and published, with Copernicus’ approval, a
general account of it entitled Narratio Prima. At length Copernicus was
prevailed upon by his friends to allow Rheticus to publish the Dc
revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Copernicus lived only long enough to
witness its appearance. 'Towards the close of 1542 he was seized with
apoplexy and paralysis; on May 24, 1543, an advance copy of his work
was presented to him, and on the same day he died. He was buried in
the Frauenburg Cathedral.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
JOHANNES KEPLER, 1571 lb30
KEPLER was one of the founders of modern astronomy. His Epitome of
Copernican Astronomy, a lucid and attractive textbook of Copernican
science, was remarkable for the prominence given to “physical astronomy”
as well as for the extension to the system of laws recently discovered to
regulate the motions of the planets. Using the observations of Tycho
Brahe, Kepler worked out three important facts relating to the motion
of the planets. 'Fhese facts are often known as Kepler’s Laws. The first
states that the planets move round the Sun in ellipse's not circles; the
second describes the rate of motion of a planet at any point in its ellipse;
and the third describes the length of time taken by a planet to travel
along an ellipse of any particular size. The knowledge of thest' three laws
helped Newton to discover the Law of Gravitation.
Kepler was lx)rn on December 27, 1571, at Weil in the Duchy of
Wurttemberg. He came from a noble but poverty-stricken family, and, as
he later noted, was himself a premature and sickly son such as the planets
had foretold. His father was a soldier of fortune and frequently away
from home until he acquired a tavern in 1577. Kepler, in the periods
when he was not working in the tavern, attended a German elementary
school at Leonberg, but domestic bankruptcy after three years led to his
being withdrawn and sent to labour in the fields.
Kepler’s intellectual gifts were considered to indicate that he had a
theological vocation, and in 1584 he was sent as a charity student to the
107
JOHANNES KEPLER
Protestant seminary at Adelberg. Two years later he transferred to the
college at Maulbronn. A brilliant examination for the bachelor’s degree
in 1588 enabled Kepler to go to the University of Tubingen, where he
prepared for the master’s degree in philosophy. As a part of the regular
course of studies, he learned astronomy with Mastlin, who introduced
him to the work of Copernicus. He wrote a paper on the reconciliation
of the Gopernican view with Sacred Scripture, but his principal desire
was to enter the ministry. It was with considerable reluctance that he
was finally persuaded in 1594 to accept the first post offered to him, the
chair of astronomy at the Lutheran School of Graz.
While filling his office as astronomer at Graz, Kepler began to speculate
on the order and distances of the planets. On July 19, 1595, he carefully
noted down his “discovery” that “God in creating the universe and
regulating the order of the cosmos had in view the five regular bodies
of geometry as known since the days of Pythagoras and Plato.” He
embodied his theory on these relations in his first published work on
astronomy, entitled the Precursor of Como graphic Dissertations or the
Cosmographic Mystery, which appeared late in 1596. 'Lhe book brought
its author much fame and a friendly correspondence with the two most
eminent astronomers of the time, Tycho Brahe and Galileo.
In 1598 the Catholic Archduke of Styria issued an edict of banishment
against Protestant preachers and professors, and Kepler fled to the
Hungarian border. Although reinstated in his post by the favour of the
Jesuits, Kepler gladly accepted an offer from Tycho Brahe in 1600 to
serve as his assistant at the observatory near Prague. A year later, upon
the death of Tycho, Kepler was appointed his successor as imperial
mathematician.
In his new post Kepler inherited the records of Tycho’s observations.
Utilizing these records and the results of his own observations at the
Prague observatory, Kepler published a series of works which soon gained
him a European reputation. To satisfy the astrological proclivities of the
emperor, he first wrote a treatise On the More Certain Foundations of
Astrology (1602). His prognostication’s were highly successful; comment-
ing on this fact, he remarked that “Nature, which has conferred upon
every animal the means of subsistence, has given astrology as an adjunct
and ally to astronomy.” A preliminary study of optics resulted in the
publication of his Optical Part of Astronomy (1604), which, as completed
by the Dioptrics (1611), contained important discoveries in the theory of
108
JOHANNES KEPLER
vision. But Kepler’s great work during these years was the elaboration of
a new theory of the planets. Inspired by Gilbert’s book on the magnet
and his own investigations of the orbit of Mars, which he had been
studying since his first meeting with Tycho, Kepler published in 1609
his New Aetiological Astronomy or Celestial Physics together with
Commentaries on the Movements of the Planet Mars, in which he
enunciated the laws of elliptical orbits and of equal areas.
Meanwhile in his personal life Kepler was harassed upon every side.
His salary was continually in arrears; his wife “fell a prey to despondent
melancholy . . . became seriously ill with Hungarian fever, epilepsy, and
fits, ’ and finally died; his three children succumbed to smallpox; and
Prague itself became a battlefield. After “the terrible year of 1611”,
Kepler, while still retaining the position of court astronomer, gratefully
accepted the oflcr to become mathematician to Upper Austria. He
moved to Linz, re-married in 1613, and resumed his astronomical
investigations; l)ut his personal fortunes showed little improvement.
1 h(* twelve years of Kepler’s residence at Linz saw the publication of
many of his most important astronomical wwks. The Harmonies of the
World appeared in 1619. Its dedication to James I of England was
acknowledged with an invitation to that country, but Kepler, despite his
distraught circumstances, refused to leave, as two years previously he
had declined the chair of mathematics at Bologna. For some time he had
been working upon the project of comprehending the whole scheme of
the heavens in one great treatise to be called Hipparchus. The difficulties
presented by the lunar theory finally compelled him to abandon his
intention, and he recast a portion of his materials in the form of a
dialogue intended for the general public, which was published as the
Epitome of Astronomy (1618-21). In addition to these works and many
essays dealing with chronology, Kepler devoted years to preparing for
publication the astronomical tables compiled from his own observations
and those of Tycho. In spite of hnancial difficulties and civil and religious
conflict, they finally appeared in 1627 under the title of the Rudolphinc
Tables.
By this time Kepler’s claims upon the insolvent imperial treasury
amounted to twelve thousand florins. In 1628, under an arrangement
with the emperor, the debt was transferred to Duke Wallenstein of
Friedland, and Kepler moved with his family to Sagan in Silesia.
Wallenstein’s promises were only partially fulfilled, and in 1630 Kepler
109
PLOTINUS
went to Ratisbon to present his case to the Diet. Shortly after his arrival
he was taken ill with a fever and died on November 15. He was buried
at Ratisbon. The epitaph, of his own composition, reads : “I had
measured the heavens* now I measure earth’s shadows. Mind came from
the heavens, Body’s shadow has fallen.”
O O O
VOLUME 17
PLOTINUS
The Six Enneads
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
PLOTINUS, 205-270
THE importance of Plotinus in the history of thought can hardly be
exaggerated. Among the philosophers of mysticism he holds an undisputed
pre-eminence, since no other writcT unites in the same measure meta-
physical genius with intimate personal experience. In Plotinus philosophy
and personal religion were closely connected; the apex of the
dialectical pyrainitT was also the beatihe vision in which the mystical
life culminated.
On the theoretical side he draws mainly from Plato, but on Plato as
interpreted by a long series of scholars and buttressed by Aristotle. The
rival schools of (Ireek philosophy w'ere in fact beginning to coalesce into
a theocentric system, at once universal and individual, of religious
discipline. Plotinus gave an impetus to this fusion; for the victory of his
philosophy was so rapid and overwhelming that it absorbed the other
schools, and when Neoplatonism captured the Platonic academy at
Athens, it reigned almost without^ a rival until Justinian closed the
Athenian schools in 529.
Plotinus, according to his biographer and disciple. Porphyry, “seemed
to be ashamed of being in a body and hence refused to tell anything
about his parents, his ancestry, or his country.” He is known, however,
to have come from Egypt, and one ancient source claims that he was
born at Lycopolis, now Asyut, in Upper Egypt. His parents evidently
110
PLOTINUS
possessed some means, for at the age of eight Plotinus was attending a
school of grammar.
At Alexandria when he was twenty-eight Plotinus discovered his
vocation as a philosopher. He had evidently been attending the schools
and listening to the famous men of the city, then the intellectual capital
of the world. But he failed to find any satisfaction until a friend, to
whom he had unburdened himself, took him to hear the philosopher,
Ammonius Saccas, known as the “God-taught”. Porphyry records that
as soon as he had entered and heard Ammonius, Plotinus exclaimed to
his friend : “That is the man I have been seeking.”
For eleven years Plotinus was the disciple of Ammonius. It is possible
that the master and his students led a kind of common life. Plotinus and
two more of the group are known to have entered a compact to keep
secret the doctrine of their master. Ammonius himself left no writings,
and his teaching was probably concerned more with establishing a way
of life than in pursuing intellectual knowledge for its own sake. When
Plotinus at the age of thirty-nine left Ammonius, it was with the decision
to “obtain direct knowledge of the philosophy practised among the
Persians and honoured among the Indians.” I’he emperor, Gordian, was
then preparing to lead an expedition into Persia, and Plotinus arranged
to travel with the army. He reached Mesopotamia, but his plans for study
were cut short when the emperor was assassinated, and Plotinus with
difficulty escaped to Antioch and then to Rome, where he arrived In 245.
For the next twenty-five years Plotinus was a teacher of philosophy in
Rome and something like a director of conscience. Among his followers,
besides professional philosophers, such as Porphyry, there were several
physicians, senators, a poet, a former rhetorician who had turned banker,
and many distinguished women. One senator, as the result of his
association with Plotinus, “reached such a state of detachment that he
abandoned all his goods, dismissed his servants, and gave up all his
offices.” Plotinus was approached for advice on all kinds of questions;
several wealthy people at their death confided the material and spiritual
care of their children to him, and he took them into his house. The
emperor, Gallienus, and his wife, Salonina, held him in particular esteem.
Plotinus attempted to persuade them to established a city in Campania
modelled after Plato’s Republic and to be known as Platonopolis; only
the opposition of the emperor’s advisers is supposed to have prevented
the realization of the project.
Ill
P L O r 1 N u s
During the first ten years that Plotinus was in Rome, he imitated his
master, Ammonius, and committed none of his teaching to writing. This
may have been partly due to his pledge to keep secret his master’s
teaching, for after that pledge had been broken by others, he began to
write. When Porphyry became his follower in 263 Plotinus had completed
twenty-one of his fifty-four treatises, but their circulation was very
restricted. Plotinus is supposed to have been indifferent to his writing.
Much of it was done while he was in the midst of other tasks; he paid
little attention to the niceties of Greek style, and because of the weakness
of his sight, he did not re-read his compositions. He produced most of
his work during the six years that Porphyry was with him; the question-
ing and urging of Porphyry and another philosopher led him to write
twenty-four treatises. The final nine were written in the last two years
of his life while he was seriously failing in health, llis writings were
collected after his death by Porphyry; his arrangement of them in groups
of nine has given them the name Enneads,
"1 he mode of life followed by Plotinus was austere; he abstained
completely from meat and paid little attention to elementary hygienic
precautions. Much of his time was given to meditation. Porphyry
declared that “his end and aim was intimate union with the God who
is above all things” and testified that during the time lu' knew him
Plotinus “attained this end four times.”
The school that Plotinus conducted in Rome depended almost entirely
upon him, and it began to fail soon after the health of Plotinus prevented
him from giving it his usual attention.
Almost blind and suffering from a complication of disorders, Plotinus
finally retired to the estate of a friend and disciple in Campania, where
he died in 270. At the moment of death he is reported to have declared
to his friend : “Now I shall endeavour to make that which is divine in
me rise up to that which is divine in the universe.”
O O O
VOLUME 18
SAINT AUGUSTINE
The Confessions • The City of God
On Christian Doctrine
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SAINT AUGUSTINE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
SAINT AUGUSTINE, 354-430
S T. Augustine's ideas were of the greatest importance to the Ghristian
Church ~ - more so, perhaps, than those of anyone else except St. Paul.
I'hey are based on his own experiences of God, which he reveals most
fully in the prayers he wrote in his Confessions. Indeed it was not only
his learning which made Augustine great, but also his understanding of
the inward struggle which all men have against evil. In the Confessions
he explains how he could never have overcome evil by himself, but had
been able to do so only with God’s help.
'File period during which Augustine was Bishop of Hippo was not an
easy one because the barbarians were sweeping over the Roman Empire
and people were unable to understand why God allowed tliis to happen.
To help them in their difficulties Augustine wrote The City of God, in
which he showed that, altliough the Empire might come to an end, the
Church would remain and God’s purpose would be fulfilled. Augustine
defended the Church against various heresies, and the views that he
expressed on different occasions are not always easy to reconcile. Roman
Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists and Jansenists may all claim his support
in their disagreements on such questions as guilt, huiniin nature and
free will.
Augustine was born on November 13, 354, at 1 agaste, a small town in
the Roman province of Numidia, near what is now the eastern borders
of Algeria. His father, although not wealthy, was an official in the
Roman administration of the village and was then still a pagan. His
mother, Monica, vvas already known as a fervent Ghristian. Both were
probably of Roman stock, although they may have had some Numidian
ancestry, and Augustine himself shows an acquaintance with the Punic
language.
While still a child, Augustine was eniolled by his mother as a
catechumen in the Catholic Church, and although not baptized he
learned something about Christianity from her. At the age of eleven or
twelve, he was sent to Madaura, some twenty miles south of Tagaste, to
study grammar and literature. He did so well that his father aspired to
make a lawyer of him. Augustine spent a year of idleness while his father
sought the necessary funds, and it was finally through the generosity of
a citizen of Tagaste, who continued for some time as his patron, that in
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SAINT AUGUSTINE
370 he was able to go to Carthage for the course in rhetoric. Shortly
after his arrival he began living with a woman with whom he remained
for the next ten years and who bore him a son named Adeodatus. At the
schools he had the reputation of being a quiet and studious young man.
His reading of Cicero’s Hortensius, he tells us, made him in love with
philosophy. He also fell under the influence of the Manicheans and
became an auditor, or beginner, in their sect, which claimed to reconcile
pliilosophy and religion.
On completing his studies in 373, Augustine chose to follow letters
rather than law as a career. After a year of teaching grammar at
Tagaste, he established himself as a rhetorician at Carthage. In 377 he
entered the poetry contest and won the prize with a dramatic poem. Not
long afterwards, he wrote his first book, On the Beautiful and the Fit,
which he later considered not worth preserving. In 383, motivated in
part by his ambition as a rhetorician, Augustine went to Rome. His
expectations were not realized, and a year later he accepted the municipal
chair of rhetoric at Milan.
While at Rome, Augustine had a})andoned Manicheism. At Milan he
came under the influence of St. Ambrose and also began reading the
Nco-Platonists. His ensuing development, recorded in the Confessions^
culminated in the decision in 386 to become a Christian. That autumn
he retired to the estate of a friend at Cassiciacum to prepare for entering
the Catholic C^hurch. Accompanying him were his mother, his son, and
several friends and pupils — at least eight in all. Under the leadership
of Augustine the group spent some time in philosophical discussion. The
results were taken down, edited by Augustine, and published as the
philosophical dialogues, Against the Academics, On the Happy Life, and
On Order. The following spring he returned to Milan and on Holy
Saturday was baptized by St. Ambrose.
Having become a Christian, Augustine decided to return to Africa
and to lead a kind of monastic life witii a few of his friends and pupils.
While waiting for his departure, he worked at several books he had
planned, including a scries on the- liberal arts, of which only one, On
Music, has survived. The death of his mother, which occurred after they
had reached Rome and were at the embarkation port of Ostia, delayed
his return. For more tlian a year he remained in Rome, continued to
work on his philosophical dialogues, and furthen'd his knowledge of
Christian doctrine and practice. His first controversial work. On the
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SAINT AUGUS'J’INE
Morals of the Catholic Church and of the Manichvans, was written at
this time. It was not until 388 that Augustine with his son and two
friends reached Tagaste. He sold his property, gave the proceeds to the
poor, and with his few followers set up a kind of monastery devoted to
a life of prayer and study. His son, Adeodatus, who was one of the
group and whose education had been a particular care of Augustine’s,
died in 389.
In 391 Augustine’s quiet monastic life was brought suddenly to an end.
He hapj)ened to be on a visit to Hippo and was attending church when
the aged bishop was urging his congregation to find a candidate for the
priesthood. Augustine, despite his protestations, was immediately chosen,
and the bishop ordained him as a priest. Later that year he moved his
monastery to Hippo and began his sacerdotal duties. Although it was
then customary for preaching to be reserved for the bishop. Augustine
(‘ven as a priest was assigned that task. He began his sennons on the
Scriptures, which, transcribed as they were delivered, constitute his many
books of commentary on the Bible. He also began the public disputes
with tlie African heretics which were to engage him for the rest of his life.
In 395 or 396 Augustine was called upon to assume what he called
the “l)urden of the episcopate.” For thirty-five years as the Bishop of
Hippo nearly all of his energies were given to the defence and promotion
of the Catholic Church in northern Africa. He took an influential part
in the many councils and conferences called to deal with various heresies
and wrote many works against them, in particular against Manicheism,
Donatism, and Pelagianisni. His diocese was large by African standards
and in governing it he also had to preside over the episcopal court
which, as was customary at the time, heard civil as well as ecclesiastical
cases. J'he administrative and financial duties of his office made constant
demands. Wherever he was, he was called upon to preach, at times for
periods of five consecutive days. His fame and position brought requests
for advice from Christians and non-Christians alike, which involved him
in voluminous correspondence. Augustine also never lost concern for his
monastic community. Besides providing a rule for a common life, he
made his monastery into something of a theological seminary, and many
of its members later became bishops and saints, spreading wherever they
went the influence of Augustine’s teaching and zeal.
However onerous and varied his duties, Augustine always found time
to write. In 397 he wrote the first three books. On Christian Doctrme;
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SAINT AUGUSTINE
the final book was not completed until thirty years later. At the same
time he also began his Confessions, and the completed work seems to
have been published by 400. He had no sooner finished that than he
began one of his greatest doctrinal treatises, On the Trinity, Following
the sack of Rome in 410, he was drawn into the controversy regarding
the responsibility of Christianity for the fall of the “eternal city”, and
into a correspondence with two Roman officials on the relation of the
Church and the Empire. Out of such reflections he seems to have
conceived the City of God, which was begun in 413 and appeared serially
for thirteen years.
In 426 Augustine arranged for his successor as Bishop of Hippo.
Considering it useful “to compile and point out all those things which
displease me in my works,” he read through all his writings and in his
Retractions noted down what revision he would make in their doctrine.
In the work as he left it, he comments on two hundred and thirty- two
separate titles, not including his letters and sermons, which were to have
been considered in a separate account.
While Augustine was engaged in this task, North Africa was becoming
involved in what amounted to civil war. Vandals from Spain had been
invited to Africa, to help in the fight against the imperial forces, but it
was soon evident that they came not to aid but in their own interest.
In 430 the imperial forces were defeated and sought refuge in Hippo,
where they were besieged by the Vandal army. There, when the siege
was in its third month, Augustine died, on August 28, 430.
O O O
VOLUME 19
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica
Treatise on God (Part i, qq 1-26)
Treatise on the Trinity (Part i, qq 27 -43)
Treatise on the Creation (Part i, qq 44-49)
Treatise on the Angels (Part i, qq 50-64)
Treatise on the Work of the Six Days (Part i, qq 65-74)
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ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
Treatise on Man (Part i, qq 75-102)
Treatise on the Divine Government (Part qq 103-119)
Treatise on the Last End (Part i-ii, qq 1-5)
Treatise on Human Acts (Part i-ii, qq 6-48)
O O O
VOLUME 20
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica [cont.)
Treatise on Habits (Part i-ii, qq 49-89)
Treatise on Law (Part i-ii, qq 90-108)
Treatise on Grace (Part i-ii, qq 109 -114)
Treatise on Faith, Hope and Charity (Part i-ii, qq 1-46)
Treatise on Active and Contemplative Life (Part ii-ii, qq 179-182)
Treatise on the States of Life (Part n-ii, qq 183-189)
Treatise on the Incarnation (Part iii, qq 1-26)
Treatise on the Sacraments (Part iii, qq 60-65)
Treatise on the Resurrection (Part iii Supplement, qq ('>9-86)
Treatise on the Last Things (Part iii Supplement, qq 87-99)
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTH
ST. I’HOMAS AQUINAS, r. 1225-1274
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, the priiice of scholastic philosophers, was known
as Doctor Angelicus (the Angelic Doctor). No theologian, save Augustine,
has had an equal influence on the thought of the Western Church, a
fact strongly emphasized by Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical of August
4, 1879, which directed that the teachings of St. Thomas should be
taken as the basis of theology. At least three further justifications for
bestowing this honour upon him could be suggested. First, St. Thomas
was a many-sided nature, as keenly interested in politics or mysticisms
as in metaphysics or theology. Secondly, he was the ideal scholar,
persuading instead of denouncing his opponents, critical within reason,
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ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
sober in judgment, and proving all things while holding fast to that
which is good. Thirdly, he was the producer of a most astounding
synthesis of past theological thought — scholasticism.
St. Thomas intended the Summa Theologica to be the sum of all
known learning. It is divided into three parts, which may be said to
treat of God, Man and the God-Man. Part I, after a short introduction
upon the nature of theology, proceeds to treat of the existence of God,
of His nature and attributes, of the I'rinity, of the Creation, of problems
pertaining to the angels and to man, and lastly, of the divine government
of the world. Part II includes the Prima Secundae and the Sccunda
Secundae, the former embracing general morality as founded on the
ethics of Aristotle, the latter dealing with special morality, including the
theological and cardinal virtues which raise numerous practical issues
and the contemplative life. In Part III of the Summa, St. Thomas
discusses the Person, office and work of Christ, and had begun to discuss
the sacraments when death ended his labours.
At the end of 1224 or the beginning of 1225 Thomas was born at
Roccasecca, near Naples, in the ancestral castle of the counts of Aquino.
He was the seventh and youngest son of Landulfo, the head of one of
the most illustrious families of Southern Italy and nephew to Frederick
Barbarossa. His mother. Countess Teodora Carracciolo, was a descendant
of the Normans who wrested Sicily from the Saracens. Landulfo and
his sons were closely involved in the struggle between Frederick II and
the Pope, and in 1229 they besieged -and plundered the papal stronghold
of Monte Cassino. In connection with the peace settlement of the follow-
ing year, Thomas, who was then in his fifth year, was sent to the Abbey
as an oblate with the hope that he would one day become ’ts abbot. His
stay there lasted for nine years, during which he received lus preliminary
education. In 1239 the emperor again attacked Monte Cassino, and
'Fhomas returned to his family.
To continue his education Thomas attended the University of Naples,
where he followed the course in 'liberal arts. While there he became
acquainted w^ith the Dominicans, who had opened a school of theology
as part of the univ ersity. In 1244 Thomas, against the wishes of his
family, took the habit of the Dominicans and set out for Paris with the
master-general to study theology. His father had recently died, and his
mother, in an effort to alter Thomas’ decision, sent her two elder sons
from the imperial anny to seize him and hold him prisoner. He did not
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ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
obtain his release until the following year after the Dominicans had
appealed to both the pope and the emperor and his family had discovered
that nothing could shake his determination.
Arriving in Paris in 1 245, Thomas began his theology at the Dominican
convent. His master there was Albert the Great, who was beginning to
be known as the champion of Aristotle, whose complete works, recovered
from Arabic sources, were coming into general use at the University of
Paris. When Albert was appointed to organize a Dominican house of
studies at Cologne in 1248, he took Thomas with him as his particular
student. After four years more of study, Thomas received his bacca-
laureate and, on the recommendation of his master, was sent back to
Paris to teach and to prepare for becoming a master in theology.
In 1252 Thomas entered upon the teaching career to which he was to
devote tlje rest of his life and which was to involve him in every great
intellectual conflict of the time. Beginning as a bachelor, he lectured
upon the Scriptures and the basic theological textbook of the day, the
Sentences of Peter Lombard. He enjoyed great popularity as a teacher.
One of his students later recorded that “he introduced new articles into
his lectures, founded a new and clear method of scientific investigation
and synthesis, and developed new proofs in his argumentation.” Although
the university required that a master in theology l>e at least thirty-four
years old, Thomas, after a papal dispensation, was given his degree in
1256, when little more than thirty-one, and appointed to fill one of the
two chairs allowed the Dominicans at the university.
Almost immediately after entering upon his university career, 'Lhomas
was called upon to defend the right of the new religious orders to teach
at the university. Thomas and his friend Bonav(*nture became respectively
the spokesmen for the Dominicans and the Franciscans against the
charges made by the secular clerics of the university. Besides providing
written refutation of their accusations, Thomas show'ed by his own
teaching that the religious orders had all the necessary qualifications. As
part of his work at this period he held during the three academic years
between 1256 and 1259 the two hundred and fifty-three scholastic
disputations which constitute his treatise De veritote. It was also at this
time that he began, perhaps at the request of the famous missionar>%
Raymond of Penafort, the Summa contia Gentile ’i.
In 1259, after three years of theological teaching as a master at Paris,
Thomas returned to Italy. He remained there nine years, residing first at
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ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
the papal curia at Anagni and Orvieto, then at the Dominican convent
in Rome, and again with the pope at Viterbo. Offers to make him
archbishop of Naples or abbot of Monte Gassino were turned down so
that he might continue his teaching. He comm(‘nted on the Scriptures,
lectured on canon law, at the request of the pope compiled the Catena
A urea of the glosses on the Gospels, and wrote a work aiming at the
reconciliation of the Ckeek Church with Rome. On the institution of the
feast of Corpus Ghristi, he was chosen to provide its liturgical office, for
which he wrote the hymns, Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium,
Sacris solemniis juncta sint gaudia, and the Verhum supernum prodiens.
Also with papal encouragement Thomas then began his exposition of the
works of Aristotle. At the papal curia he met his confrere, William of
Moerbeke, who at the suggestion of Thomas began a new translation of
Aristotle direct from the Greek. Aided by a good text, free of the
corruptions that characterized the versions taken from the Arabic, Thomas
between 1265 and 1269 commented on the Physics, Metaphysics, On the
Soul, Ethics, Politics, and the Posterior Analytics.
At the beginning of 1269 Thom^is was suddenly called back to Paris,
where the conflict over Aristotle was coming to a climax. His activity in
large part consisted, on the one hand, in refuting the Latin Averroists of
the Faculty of Arts who were presenting an Aristotelianism seemingly
incompatible with Christianity, and, on the other, in combating the
Augustinians of the Theological Faculty who tended to look with disfavour
upon the use of Aristotle in theol(;gy. Against the Averroists, Thomas
wrote two treatises, De aeternitate mundi and De unitate intellectus, to
prove that their work was not sound philosophically. He also continued
his exposition of the text of Aristotle. He had occasion to answer both
Augustinians and Averroists while expounding his theological doctrine
through Scriptural commentaries, the many disputations he held at this
time, and particularly the Summa Theologica, which he had begun in
Italy in 1267.
I'homas was recalled to Italy by his superiors in 1272 and charged with
reorganizing all the theological courses of his order. Allowed the choice
of location for his work, he returned to Naples. There at the university
he lectured on the Psalms and St. Paul, commented on Aristotle’s On the
Heavens and On Generation and Corruption, and worked on the third
part of the Summa. He also continued to write special treatises at the
requests of his friends, as he had done throughout his life. At the very
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DANTE
/
beginning of his career he had written for his fellow-students the De ente
et essentia \ for the king of Cyprus he composed the De regimine
principum; in the Platonic tradition he had commented on treatises of
Boethius and the Liber de causis, which he showed was not a work of
Aristotle; as his life drew to its close ha composed numerous minor works
on theology, including the Compendium theologiae.
The writing career of Thomas came suddenly to an end on December 6,
1273. While saying mass that morning a great change came over him, and
afterwards he ceased to write or dictate. Urged by his companion to
complete the Summa, he replied : “I can do no more; such things have
been revealed to me that all I have written seems as straw, and 1 now
await the end of iny life.” Early the following year he was appointed by
Pope Gregory X to attend the General Council of Lyons. Overcome by
illness shortly after his departure from Naples, he retired to the Cistercian
monastery of Fossanova. There he commented on the Song of Solomon at
the request of the monks, and died on March 7, 1274.
O O O
VOLUME 21
DANTE ALIGHIERI
The Divine Comedy
BIOGRAPHICAI. NOTE
DANTE, 1265-1321
OF Dante’s works, that by which he is known to all the educated world,
and in virtue of which he holds his place as one of the half-dozen greatest
writers of all ages, is of course the Divine Comedy. The poem is unique
in literature; it may safely be said that at no other epoch of the world’s
history could such a work have been produced. Dante was steeped in all
the learning, which in a way was considerable, of his time; he had read
the Summa Theologica of Aquinas, the Tresor of his Master Brunetto,
and other encyclopaedic works available in that age; he was familiar with
most of what was then known of the Latin classical and post-classical
authors. Further, he was a deep and original political thinker, who had
himself borne a prominent part in practical politics.
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DANTE
The Divine Comedy, though often classed for want of better descrip-
tion among epic poems, is totally different in method and construction
from all other poems of that kind. Its “hero” is the narrator himself;
the incidents do not modify the course of the story; the place of episodes
is taken by theological or metaphysical disquisitions; the world through
which the poet faces his readers is peopled, not with characters of heroic
story, but with men and women known personally or by repute to him
and those for whom he wrote. Its aim is not to delight but to reprove,
to rebuke, to exhort; to form men’s characters by teaching them what
courses of life will meet with reward, what with penalty, hereafter; “to
put into verse,” as the poet says, “things difficult to think.”
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence about the middle of May, 1265.
The city, then under its first democratic constitution, was sharply divided
between the Papal party of the Guelphs and the Imperial party of the
Ghibellines. Dante’s family were adherents of the Guelph faction, and
when Dante was only a few months old, the Guelphs obtained decisive
victory at the Battk' of Benevento. Although of noble ancestry, the
Alighieri family was neither wealthy nor particularly prominent.
It seems probable that Dante received his early education at the
Franciscan school of Santa Croce. He evidently owed much to the
influence of Brunetto Latini, the philosopher and scholar who figured
largely in the councils of the Florentine commune. Before twenty, he
began writing poetry and became associated with the Italian poets of the
“sweet new style”, who exalted their love and their ladies in philosophical
verse. Dant(‘’s “lady”, whom he celebrated with singular devotion, was a
certain Beatrice. According to Boccaccio’s life of Dante, she was Beatrice
Portinari, daughter of a Florentine citizen, who married a wealthy
banker, and died when she was but twenty-four. Dante iirst sang of
Beatrice in the Vita Nuoj'a (1292), a sequence of poems with prose
comment in which he recounts the story of his love, of the first meeting
when they were both nine years of age, the exchange of greetings which
passed between them on May Day, 1283, and of Beatrice’s death in 1290.
Upon turning thirty, Dante became actively involved in Florentine
politics. The constitution of the city was based upon the guilds, and
Dante, upon his enrolment in the guild of physicians and apothecaries,
which also included book dealers, became eligible for office. He partici-
pated in the deliberations of the councils, served on a special embassy,
and in 1300 was elected one of the six priors that governed the city. The
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DANTE
former struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines had appeared in
new form in the conflict between the Whites and the Blacks. As one of
the priors, Dante seems to have been influential in the move to lessen
factionalism by banishing from Florence the rival leaders, including
among the Blacks his wife’s relative, Gorso Donati, and among the Whites
his “first friend”, the poet, Guido Cavalcanti. Despite the opposition of
Dante and the White leaders to Papal interference in Florentine affairs,
Pope Boniface VIII in 1301 invited Charles of Valois, brother of King
Philip of France, to enter Florence to settle the differences between the
two factions. Actually he assisted the Blacks to seize power, and more
than six hundred Whites were condemned to exile. In 1302 Dante, with
four others of the White party, was charged with corruption in office.
He was condemned to pay a fine of five thousand florins within three
days or lose his property, exiled for two years, and denied the right ever
again to hold public office. Three months later, upon his refusal to pay
the fine, Dante was condemned to be burned alive if he should come
within the power of the republic.
“After it was the pleasure of the citizens of the most beautiful and
most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to chase me forth from her
sweet bosom,” Dante writes of his exile in the Convivio, “I have gone
through almost every region to which this tongue of ours extends,
showing against my will the wound of fortune.” It is recorded that Dante
attended a meeting at San Godenzo, where an alliance was fonned
between the Whites in exile and the Ghibellines, but he does not seem
to have been present in 1304 when the combined forces were defeated at
Lastra. Perhaps he had already separated himself from the “evil and
foolish company” of his fellow-exiles, “formed a party by himself,” and
found his “first refuge and hostelry” at the court of the Della Scalas in
Verona. Probably during the following years he spent time at B(^logna
and later at Padua, where Giotto is said to have entertained him. lowards
the end of 1306 he was the guest of the Malaspinas in Lunigiana and acted
as their ambassador in making peace with the Bishop of Luni. Some time
after this date he may have visited Paris and attended the university there.
During the early years of his exile Dante appears to have studied in
those subjects which gained him the title of philosopher and theologian
as well as poet. In the Convivio, probably written between 1305 and
1308, he tells how, after the death of Beatrice, he turned to Cicero’s
De Amicitia and the Consolatio Philosophiac of Boethius, which awoke
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DANTE
in him the love of philosophy. To sing its praises he began his Convivio,
w'hich he intended to be a kind of treasury of universal knowledge in the
form of poems connected by lengthy prose commentaries. At the same
time he worked upon the De Vulgari Eloquentia, a Latin treatise in
which he defended the use of Italian as a literary language.
The election of Henry of Luxemburg as emperor in 1308 stirred
Dante’s political hopes. When Henry entered Italy in 1310 at the head
of an army, Dante in an epistle to the princes and people of Italy hailed
the coming of a deliverer. At Milan he paid personal homage to Henry
as his sovereign. When Florence, in alliance with King Robert of Naples,
prepared to resist the emperor, Dante in a second epistle denounced
them for their obstinacy and prophesied their doom. In a third epistle
he upbraided the Emperor himself for his delay and urged him on against
Florence. It was probably during this period that he wrote liis De
Monarchia, an intellectual defence of the emperor as the sovereign of the
temporal order. The death of Henry in 1313, after a year or so of
ineffectual fighting, brought an end to the political aspirations of Dante
and his party. The city of Florence in 1311 and again in 1313 renewed
his condemnation.
After Henry’s death, Dante passed the rest of his life under the
protection of various lords of Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Romagna.
According to one tradition, he retired for a time to the monastery of
Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana in the Appenines, where he worked on
the Divine Comedy, which may have jjeen planned as early as 1292. He
was almost certainly for a time at the court of Can Grande della Scala,
to whom he dedicated the Paradiso. In 1313 Florence issued a general
recall of exiles. Dante refused to pay the required fine and ^o “bear the
brand of oblation”, feeling that such a return would derogate from his
fame and honour. To the end of his life he appears to have hoped that
his Comedy would finally open the gates of the city to him.
'Fhe last few years of the poet’s life were spent at Ravenna, under the
patronage of Guido da Polenta, a. nephew of Francesca da Rimini.
Dante’s daughter, Beatrice, was a nun in that city, and one of his sons
held a benefice there ; his wife seems to have resided in Florence through-
out his exile. Dante was greatly esteemed at Ravenna and enjoyed a
congenial circle of friends. Here he completed the Divine Comedy and
wrote two eclogues in Latin which indicate that a certain contentment
surrounded his closing days. Returning from a diplomatic mission to
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D AN 'IE
Venice on behalf of his patron, he caught a fever and died on September
14, 1321. He was buried at Ravenna before the door of the principal
church, with the highest honours, and “in the habit of a poet and a great
philosopher.”
O O O
VOLUME 22
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
T roilus and Cressida •
The Proloiiue
The KjiighPs Tale
The Millers Prologue
The Miller's Tale
The. Reeve's Prologue
The Prologue oj the Man of
Law's Tale
The Tale oj the Man of Law
The Wife of Bath's Prologue
The Tale of the Wtfe of Bath
The Friar's Prologue
The Juror's Tale
The Surnrnoner's Prologue
The Summonei's Tale
The Clerk's Prologue
The Clerk's Tale
The Merchant's Prologue
The Mer chant's Tale
Epilogue to the Merchant's Tale
The Squire's Tale
The Words of the Franklin
The Franklin's Prologue
The Franklin's Tale
The Physician's Tale
The Words of the Host
The Prologue of the Pardoner 's
Tale
The Pardoner's Tale
The Reeve's Tale
T he Canterbury T ales
The Cook's Prologue
The Cook's Tale
Introduction to the Man of
Imw's Prologue
The Shipman's Prologue
The Shipman's Tale
The Prioress's Prologue
The Prioress's Tale
Prologue to Sir Thopas
Sir Thopas
Prologue to Melibeus
The Tale of Melibeus
I'he Monk's Prologue
The Monk's Tale
I'he Prologue of the Nun's
Priest's Tale
The Nun's Priest's Tale
I^.pilogue to the Nun's Priest's
Tale
The Second Nun's Prologue
The Second Nun's Tale
The Canon's Yeoman's I^ro-
logue
I'he Canon's Yeoman's Tale
The Manciple's Prologue
The Manciple's Tale
The Parson's Prologue
The Parson's Tale
Jj'Pmvoi
125
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1340-1400
CHAUGhK is the greatest medieval English poet and Troilus and Cressida
and The Canterbury Talcs are his greatest works. Yet although Chaucer
lived in the later part of the Middle Ages, it may reasonably be said that,
with him, modern English poetry begins. It is true that he took over
much from the Middle Ages, both in setting and method, but there is
something in the tone and the scope of his work that is at once recognized
as new and as full of promise for the future. The most striking quality
is his variety, both in range of narrative and in liveliness of character
drawing. Chaucer’s characters, like those of his great successors, arc at
once types and individuals, lifelike and larger than life. He is a k(‘en
observer of human nature and has a sharp eye for the significant details
of dress and appearance which reveal personality. In his breadth of
outlook, his tolerance, has racy humour, and in his dislike of pretence
and hypocrisy Chaucer belongs to that central English tradition which
leads on to Shakespeare, Fielding and Dickens.
Chaucer was born w^hon Edward III was achieving his first victories
in the Hundred Years’ War against France. The history of the Chaucer
family to some extent mirrors the rise of the burgher class during these
years. His father and grandfather were prosperous wine-merchants who
had obtained some standing at court and were beginning to engage in
public service. The poet lor most of his life held government offices, and
"I'homas Chaucer, who was almost certainly the poet’s son, rose to wealth
and influence in the fifteenth century.
The extant records of Chaucer’s life show that he was a busy and
versatile man of affairs, but they disclose almost nothing o1 his peisonal
life or of his literary career. Even the exact date of his birth is a matter
of conjecture. From evidence he gave in a law-suit in 1386 it is known
that he was then “forty years old and more and had borne arms for
twenty-seven years.” From an early age he evidently had intimate
knowledge of the court; he served successively in the households of
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Edward III, and John of Gaunt, Duke of
Lancaster. In 1359 lie was a member of Lionel’s division in the largest
anny which Edward III had so far led into France. Chaucer was taken
prisoner and ransomed by the King, ff’he following year he seems to have
acted as diplomatic com tier in the negotiations resulting in the Peace of
126
C;E0FFREY CHAUCER
Calais. He may then have been chosen to receive special training for
government service, perhaps education at the Inns of Court, for by 1367
he had become a servant to the King with a pension for life.
Chaucer’s social position was advanced by his marriage, perhaps in
1366, to Philippa de Roet, a lady-in-waiting on the Queen and sister of
Katherine Swynford, afterwards the third wife of John of Gaunt, from
whose issue the Tudors traced their descent. Chaucer had already begun
to win some reputation as a poet and on the death of Gaunt’s first wife
in 1369, he wrote, supposedly at the Duke’s request, the Book of the
Duchess y in which he shows an intimate knowledge of the French court
poetry.
During the first ten years of his service as a King’s esquire Chaucer
was frequently employed for diplomatic missions to the continent, “on
the King’s secret affairs.” He went several times to France and the Low
Countries, but perhaps the most important for his literary development
were the two missions that he made to Italy in 1372 and 1378. The first
of these took him to Genoa on a commercial assignment, hut he also
visited Florence and was there when the city was arranging for Boccaccio’s
lectures on Dante. On his second journey to Italy, regarding “certain
affairs touching the expedition of the King’s war,” he visited Milan,
where Petrarch lived and worked the last twenty years of his life.
Even before his second Italian mission Chaucer had begun to receive
offices at home. In 1374 he had been appointed Comptroller of Customs
and Sul^sidy of Wools, Skins, and Hides. I'hat same year he obtained
rent-free the hcnise above the city gate of Aldgate and was awarded by
the King a daily pitcher of w'ine. A fe'w years later he was also given
charge of the customs on wines. In his position in the Custom House,
which he held for almost twelve years, Chaucer came into close associa-
tion with the great merchants who were then beginning to come into
prominence, and seems to have been particularly intimate with the
merchants who actually controlled the city government of London. Yet
there is little indication that he ever became strongly })artisan in politics.
He received his first appointment under Edward II, when John of Gaunt
was the powTr behind the throne; it was confirmed by Richard II, and
Chaucer received several preferments from him; yet he also continued to
receive favours from Henry IV after Richard’s deposition.
The twelve years passed in the tower above Aldgate were among the
most productive for Chaucer as a writer. Besides jhe two court poems,
127
GEOFFREY G A U G E R
the House of Fame and the Parliament of Fowls ^ Ghaucer, as the result
of his Italian journeys and reading of Boccaccio and Petrarch, was
inspired to work upon “the storye of Palamon and Arcyte” and the
Troilus and Cressida. The dedication of the Troilus to “moral Gower”
and “philosophical Strode” disclose something of his intellectual friend-
ships. He seems to have been rather intimate with Gower, for that poet
acted as his deputy at the Gustom House during one of his missions.
Strode, who was known for his work in logic at Oxford, was also
associated with Ghaucer in a business transaction. Ghaucer’s interest in
philosophy is particularly shown in his translation of the De Consolatione
Philosophiae of Boethius, which provided the inspiration for several of
his shorter poems. In the Legend of Good Women Ghaucer proposed to
atone to Love for his portrayal of the “false Gressida” by celebrating the
lives of nineteen of “Gupid’s saints”, nine of which he completed.
In 1385, having obtained deputies for his comptrollerships, Ghaucer
appears to have retired to the country, perhaps to Greenwich. He became
justice of the peace for Kent and the following year was elected to
Parliament as one of the knights of the shire. By the end of that yeai,
however, Chaucer had ceased to work at the customs, perhaps because
of the hostility of the Duke of Gloucester to the King's appointments,
and for three years he was without employment. During this period of
leisure it is probable that he began the Canterbury Tales,
Ghaucer entered upon a new series of governmental posts in 1389
when Richard II assumed direct control of the government. As Glerk of
the King's Works, he supervised the hiaintenance and repair of the royal
buildings and parks, including the construction of scaffolds for the
tournaments at Smithfield. In this office he was obliged to travel con-
stantly and was twice robbed by highwaymen on the saiiie dav. His
clerkship ceased in 1391, and he became administrative director of North
Petherton forest in Somerset. This was his last regular office, and although
he spent some time in Somerset, he was frequently in London, where he
continued to enjoy royal favour. His pensions were somewhat irregular,
for as was common at the time it 'was difficult to exact payment from
tht Exchequer, but there is little evidence that he suffered any real want.
During his last year^ lie pre.sumably continued to work on the Canterbury
Tales, and wrote a few minor poems and the Treatise on the Astrolabe,
written for “litel Lewis my son”.
In 1399, shortly after the coronation of Henry IV, Ghaucer leased for
128
NICOLO MACHIAVELLl
fifty-three years a house in the garden of Westminster Abbey. He had
previously received several gifts from Henry, and his pensions were
approved and increased by the new King. Chaucer lived for less than a
year in the Abbey garden. He died on October 25, 1400, and as a tenant
of the grounds, was buried in Westminster Abbey in the place now known
as the Poet’s Corner.
O O O
VOLUME 23
NICOLO MACHIAVELLl
The Prince
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan y or. Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth,
Ecclesiastical and Civil
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
NICOLO MACHIAVELLl, 1369-1527
“the prince”, by the Italian statesman Machiavelli, is one of the
outstanding works in the* history of political theory. An analysis of the
methods whereby an ambitious man may rise to power, it sets forth his
views at large and in detail upon the nature of principalities, the method
of cementing them and the qualities of a successful aristocrat. However,
the author of V’/ze Prince had more than a speculative aim in view and
brought it forth to serve a special crisis. Machiavelli judged the case of
Italy so desperate that salvation could only be expected from the inter-
vention of a powerful despot. The unification of Italy in a state protected
by a national army was the cherished dream of his life; and the perora-
tion of The Prince showed that he meant this treatise to have a direct
bearing upon the problem.
Practically nothing is known of Machiavelli before he became a minor
official in the Florentine Government. His youth, however, was passed
during some of the most tumultuous years in the history of Florence.
He was born the year that Lorenzo the Magnificent came to power,
129
NIGOLO MAGHIAVELLI
subverting the traditional civil liberty of Florence while inaugurating a
reign of unrivalled luxury and of great brilliance for the arts. He was
twenty-five at the time of Savonarola’s attempt to establish a theocratic
democracy, although, from the available evidence, he himself took no
part in it. Yet through his family he was closer to these events than many
Florentine citizens. The Machiavellis for generations had held public
office, and his father was a jurist and a minor official. Machiavelli
himself, shortly after the execution of Savonarola, became Secretary of
the Second Ghancery, which was to make him widely known among his
contemporaries as the “Florentine Secretary”.
By virtue of his position Machiavelli served the “Ten of Liberty and
Peace”, who sent their own ambassadors to foreign powers, transacted
business with the cities of the Florentine domain, and controlled the
military establishment of Florence. During the fourteen years he held
office, Machiavelli was placed in charge of the diplomatic correspondence
of his bureau, served as Florentine representative on nearly thirty foreign
missions, and attempted to organize a citizen militia to replace the
mercenary troops.
In his diplomatic capacity, which absorbed most of his energies, he
dealt for the most part with the various principalities into which Italy
was divided. His more important missions, however, gave him an insight
into the politics of Europe as well as of Italy. In 1500 he was sent to the
court of the King of France, where he met the mightiest minister in
Europe, Gardinal d’Amboise. On this occasion he began the observation
and analysis of national political forces which were to find expression in
his diplomatic reports. His Re pot I on France was written after he had
completed three assignments for his office in that country; the Report on
Germany was prepared as a result of a mission to the court of Emperor
Maximilian.
The most important mission, in view of his later development as a
political writer, was that, in 1502, to the camp (^f Gesare Borgia, Duke
Valentino. Under the aegis of his father, Pope Alexander VI, Gesare
was engaged in consolidating the Papal States, and Machiavelli was in
attendance upon him at the time of his greatest triumph. Machiavelli
had several audiences with Gesare and witnessed the intrigues culminating
in the murder of his disaffected captains, which he carefully described in
the Method Adopted by Duke Valentino to murder Vitellozzo Vitelli,
As the “Florentine Secretary”, he was also present a few months later
130
NICOLO MAGHIAVELLI
at Rome when Cesarc came to ruin and disgrace upon tlic death of
Alexander VI.
During his diplomatic career Machiavelli enjoyed one outstanding
success. Largely through his efiorts, Florence obtained the surrender of
Pisa, which had revolted from Florentine rule and maintained its
independence for years. Although he did not achieve any other diplomatic
triumphs, he was esteemed for the excellence of his reports and is known
to have had the confidence of the president of Florence, the Gonfalonier,
Piero Soderini. But with the restoration of the Medicis to power, in 1512,
Machiavelli’s public career came abruptly to an end. His efforts to
ingratiate himself with the new masters proved ineffectual. Looked upon
wdth disfavour as the cx-gonfalonier’s man, he was deprived of his office
and exiled from the city for a year. He then fell under suspicion, although
unjustly, of being implicated in a conspiracy against the new government.
1 Ic was imprisoned and tortured on the rack and was released only when
Giovanni de Medici became Pope.
On release from his dungeon, Machiavelli with his wife and children
retired to a small farm not far from Florence. Dividing his time between
farming and petty dissipations, he lamented that, possessing nothing but
“knowledge of the State”, he had no occasion for using it. The only
remaining link with the official world was his friend, the Florentine
ambassador to the Pope, to whom he wrote of public affairs and of his
private amorous adventures. His letters reveal, however, that he led a
hidden life by night in his study. “At the threshold,” he wrote, “I take
off my work-day clothes, filled with dust and mud, and don royal and
CLirial garments. Worthily dressed, I enter into the ancient courts of the
men of aiuicpiity, where, warmly received, I feed on that which is my
only food and which was meant for me. I am not ashamed to speak with
them and ask them the reasons of their actions, and they, because of
their humanity, answer me. Four hours can pass, and I feel no weariness;
my troubles forgotten, I neither fear poverty nor dread death, I give
myself over entirely to them. And since Dante says that there can be no
science without retaining what has been understood, I have noted down
the chief things in their conversation.”
He “conversed” most frequently with Livy, Aristotle and Polybius, and
composed his principal works upon politics : the Discourses upon the
First Decade of Liny, and the Prince (1513). He intrigued to bring his
work to the attention of the Medici rulers. He did not succeed in this,
131
IHOMAS HOBBES
however, until he returned from politics to drama. The comedies he
wrote during these years of retirement were acclaimed by the Florentine
gentility. The Mandragola was so successful that it was performed before
Pope Leo X in 1520.
Largely because of the fame he had acquired as a writer, Machiavelli
was asked by the Medici rulers to give advice on the government of
Florence. He used the occasion to re-state and defend republican
principles in his Discourse on Reforming the State of Florence. He was
also commissioned to write a history of the city and produced his
Florentine History. However, it was not until the last years of his life
that he was recalled to an active role in public work. He was appointed
by Pope Clement VII to organize a national militia, such as he had
defended in his Art of War. But he received little help from the men
with whom he had to work, and his efforts came to nothing when the
troops of Emperor Charles V sacked Rome and put an end to all of
Clement’s plans.
Shortly before Machiavelli’s death the Republic w\'is re-established in
Florence. Although he had never been able to regain public office in
Florence under the Medicis, he still seemed too close to them to be
acceptable to the new republican government. His request to be reinstated
in his old position as Florentine Secretary was refused. Machiavelli died
a few days later on June 20, 1527.
BlOCiRAPlIlCAL NOTE
I HOMAS HOBBES, 1588-1679
THE fear of the Spanish Armada was so acute in England during April,
1588, that the wife of the vicar of Westport gave birtn prematurely.
Hobbes later commented that he was thus born “a twin with fear” and
ever after “abominated his country’s enemies and loved peace.”
From an early age Hobbes was reared by an uncle, his father having
fled from home and disappeared , as the result of a brawl at the church
door. He entered Oxford at fourteen or fifteen, but found little to please
him in the scholastic programme bas(*d upon Aristotle. As he later
declared in his Autobiography, instead of studying, he “fed his mind on
maps and charts of earth and sky, tracked the sun in its path . . . and
followed Drake and Cavendish as they girdled tlu^ main.” His opportunity
to travel came upon graduation when he was appointed tutor to the
132
THOMAS HOBBES
Cavendish family, thus beginning his lifelong connection with the great
and powerful house of Devonshire.
Hobbes made his first trip to the continent as the companion and tutor
to his young patron. He travelled through France and Italy, becoming
acquainted with the customs and languages, and learning for the first
time of the growing revolt against scholasticism. Upon his return he
studied the ancient classical authors with a new zeal. Although he
claimed that he read the Greek and Latin writers in order to polish his
Latin and English style, the first result of his studies reveals an interest
in political problems. For his translations of Thucydides, which he
submitted to his friend, Ben Jonson, for criticism of its style, was
published “to show his countrymen the weakness of democracy.” It first
appeared in 1628 -29, shortly after the Petition of Right.
On the death of his patron, he accepted a position with Sir Gervase
Clifton, and, again as a tutor, made his sexemd voyage to the continent.
It was during this sojourn, spent chiefly in Paris, that he was awakened
to mathematics. His friend and first biographer, John Aubrey, describes
the event as follows : “He w'as forty years old before he looked upon
geometry, which happened accidentally : being in a gentleman’s library,
. , . Euclid’s Elements lay open, and it was th(* 47th Prop., Lib. 1. So he
reads the proposition. ‘By G — ,’ says he, ‘this is impossible.’ So he reads
the demonstration, which referred him back to another, which he also
read, and sic device ps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of
that truth. That made him in love with geometry.” The object of his
love, as he later declared, was “not the theorems but the mc'thod of
geometry, its art of reasoning." From that moment he never lost his
interest in matliematics.
Recalled to the Cavendish family to tutor the new Earl of Devonshire,
Hobbes devote'd the next lew years to training his young pupil in the
classics, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, and the principles of law. In 1634 he
accompanied him on an t'xtensive tour of France and Italy. During this
voyage he began his inquiries into natural philosophy, “seeking out the
secrets of inatt(‘r and motion, whether on horseback, afloat, or on the
road.” He made the acquaintance of Mersenne in Paris and became a
members of the intellectual circle of which the Minim father was the
centre. In Italy he visited Galileo, who, according to one rumour,
suggested to him that ethics might be treated in the method of geometry.
It was from the time of this voyage, Hobbes claimed, that he “began to
133
THOMAS HOBBES
he nunihered among the philosophers”, and he rc'turned home in 1637
prepared to expound his philosophical system in a tripartite treatise on
body, on man, and on society.
The rumblings of Civil War interrupted his plans for the orderly
exposition of his ideas, and, instead of his contemplated work, he produced
the “little treatise” on the Elements ol Law Naturall and Politique, in
which he defended the royal prerogative. Although it was only circulated
privately, Hobbes felt, after the failure of the king’s cause, that he was a
marked man, and, in 1640, he hastened to Paris, “the first of all that
fled”. This was his fourth and last sojourn abroad, and it lasted for
eleven years, spent mostly in or about Paris. Welcomed back to Mersenne’s
scientific circle, he was included among those chosen to make pre-
publication criticism of Descartes’ Meditation^:. His criticism, however,
proved to be rather a cause of separation than of friendship. He continued
his scientific inquiries, and a short treatise on optics, and a condensed
statement of his doctrine on motion as applied to psychological phenomena
were included among the tracts published by Mersenne. But it was above
all to political problems that he devoted his attention. He formulated the
first detailed statement of his political theory in the De Civc, published
by Elzevere in 1647. At the same time he was appointed tutor in mathe-
matics to the young Prince of Wales, later Charles TT.
To reach a wider public than was possible for his treatise in Latin,
Ifobbes prepared to give a definitive expression to his political thought
in English. He published in two volumes the “little treatise” which had
led to his flight in 1640 [Human Nature and De Cor pore Politico), and
issued his translation of the De Civc under the title of Philosophical
Rudiments concerning (government and Society. Finally, in 1651, he
published his magnum opus, the Leviathan. Its publication cost him the
support of the royalist refugees, (*ven though he presented the Prince of
Wales with a special copy. Its doctrine angered the royalist Anglican
divines and at the same time made him fear the action the Catholic
authorities in France might take against him. He was, as he later wrote,
“forced to fly to England for refuge”, where, having made his submission
to the Council of State, he was allowed to retire to private life.
Renewing his ties with the Earl of Devonshire, who had continued to
send him his yearly pension, Hobbes fitted the final pieces into his
philosophical system with the publication of the De Cor pore (1655) and
De Homine (1658). The adverse reception of his works immediately
134
THOMAS HOBBES
plunged him into a series of controversies, which occupied him almost
continuously from his seventieth year until his death at the age of
ninety-one. He was particularly sensitive to attacks on his “solutions” of
mathematical problems, such as the squaring of the circle, and was
involved in a long quarrel with Ward and Wallis, the leading mathema-
ticians of Oxford. The controversy led to the exclusion of Hobbes from
the Royal Society, which was founded at the time by Boyle and other
friends of Wallis.
Although Hobbes regained royal favour after the accession of his
former pupil as Charles II, his alleged atheism brought him under
suspicion, and, after 1666, when Parliament threatened action against the
Leviathan, he was never able to get permission to print anything on
ethical subjects. His Latin works, published after this time, were brought
out in Amsterdam and many of his writings were not made public until
after his death.
In his last years Hobbes returned to the literary pursuits of his youth,
composing his autobiography in Latin verse at the age of eighty-four and,
the year following, translating both the Iliad and the Odyssey, He died
at the country-house of his lifelong patron, on December 4, 1679.
Hobbes was the one English thinker of the 6rst rank in the long period
of two generations separating Locke from Bacon. His Leviathan; or the
Matter, Forms and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil
is a comprehensive statement of his doctrine of sovereignty. The state
might !)c regarded as great artificial man or monster, with its life
traceable tlinnagh human reason under pressure of human needs to its
dissolution through civil strife. He was concerned not so much with the
power of the sovereign as with the power of the state and its claim on
man’s allegiance. Hobbes represented the reaction against the Renaissance
and the Reformation. Freedom of conscience had brought anarchy. Men
must submit to the ruling of the state so that peace and order might be
restored.
O O O
VOLUME 24
FRANCOIS RABELAIS
Gargantua and Pantagruel
135
FRANCOIS RABELAIS
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
FRANCOIS RABELAIS, 1495-1553
GREAT as is the importance of the sixteenth century in the history of
French poetry, its importance in the history of French prose is greater
still. 'Fhere can he no doubt of the precedence, in every sense of the
word, of Frangois Rabelais, with Gargantua and Pantagrucl. With an
immense erudition representing almost the whole of the knowledge of his
time, with an untiring faculty of invention, with the judgment of a
philosopher and the common sense of a man of the world, with an
observation that let no characteristic of the time pass unobserved and
with a tenfold portion of the special Gallic gift of good-humoured satire,
Rabelais reached a height of speculation and a depth of insight and a
vein of poetical imagination rarely found in any writer, but altogether
portentous when taken in conjunction with his other characteristics.
Gargantua and Pantagruel may perhaps be called the exposition and
commentary of all the thoughts, feelings, aspirations and knowledge of a
particular time and nation put forth by a man who for once combined the
practical and literary spirit, the power of knowledge and the power of
expression.
Rabelais was born at Chinon in Touraine somewhere between 1483
and 1500; 1495 is the year most frequently given. His father is thought
to have owned a small estate called La Deviniere and to have been a
vine-grower, and an apothecary, or a tavern-keeper, or a lawyer.
An indistinct allusion in his work has been interpreted to mean that
Rabelais, when about nine, was sent to the convent of Seuilly to he made
a monk. He is supposed to have been educated at La Baumette, near
Angers, where he was at school with the brothers Du Bellay and Geoffrey
d’Estissac, who were his influential friends in later life. He was ordained
a priest at the Franciscan monastery of Fontcnay-lc-Gomtc, and by 1519
had attained a position of sufficient importance to sign deeds for the
community. He also continued his studies, especially Cireek, for he was
soon in correspondence with the famous Humanist, Guillaume Bude.
One of these letters reveals that his ardour for the new studies caused
trouble with his superiors, and for a brief period his library of Greek
books was confi.scated. In 1524, through the influence of D’Estissac, who
had become Bishop of Maillezais, Rabelais obtained permission to transfer
from the Franciscan to the Benedictine order, and he moved to Maillezais,
136
FRANCOIS RABELAIS
a learned and hospitable retreat, where he lived and studied for the next
six years.
In 1530 Rabelais exchanged his Benedictine robes for those of a secular
priest and, as he put it, “wandered for some time about the world.” For
a time the Du Bellays provided him with an abode near their own
chateau of Langey. Later that same year he went to the University of
Montpellier, where he entered the faculty of medicine. In less than two
months he received a bachelor’s degree and in 1531 was lecturing publicly
on Galen and Hippocrates. With this period at Montpellier are associated
his appearance as an actor in the farce, The Man Who Married a Dumb
Wife, and the composition of a fish sauce in imitation of the ancient
garum, which he sent to the famous scholar, Etienne Dolet.
In 1532 Rabelais moved to Lyons, then the centre of an unusually
enlightened society. Although acting as physician to the Hotel Dieu, he
appeared to have devoted most of his time to literature. During the year
of his arrival he edited the medical Epistles of Giovannia Manardi, the
Aphorisms of Hippocrates and the Ars Parva of Galen. It was also
probably at this time that he first began to think of writing about
Gargantua and Pantagruel. Both seem to have been names of popular
giants in the Middle Ages, and in 1532 at Lyons a short burlesque was
published entitled, Les Grandes ct inestimahles chroniques du grand et
enorme geant Gargantua, which Rabelais may have edited. Within a
year he wrote and published his first Pantagruel, which constitutes the
second book of the completed work. In 1533, as wrll, Rabelais issued
the Pantagrueline Prognostication and the first of the series of Almanacs
he compiled annually until 1550. The Pantagruel literature he signed
with the anagrammatic pseudonym of “Alcofribas Nasier”.
Rabelais resumed his wanderings in 1534 when his friend, Jean du
Bellay, who had become Bishop of Paris, passed through Lyons on an
embassy to Rome and engaged him as physician. Although this first visit
to Rome was of short duration, Rabelais edited Marliani’s Topographia
Antiquae Romae and dedicated it to his patron upon his return to Lyons.
The following year he brought out Gargantua and again joined Du
Bellay, who was travelling to Rome to be made a cardinal. While in
Rome, Rabelais filed a petition for absolution from violation of his
monastic vows. There had been some irregularity in his leaving the
Benedictines to become a secular priest, and, furthermore, both Panta-
gruel and Gargantua had been condemned by the Sorbonne almost
137
FRANCOIS RABELAIS
immediately upon publication. While waiting for the absolution, Rabelais
made a collection of flowers and herbs which he sent to his friend,
D’Estissac. Early in 1536 he received the bull of absolution which freed
him from ecclesiastical censure, entitled him to return to the Benedictines
when he chose, and allowed him to practise medicine, provided that he
did not make use of the scalpel and cautery and did not work for gain.
Upon his return to France he became a canon of St. Maur and continued
his work in medicine. In 1537 he publicly demonstrated an anatomical
dissection and took his doctor’s degree at Montpellier, where he lectured
upon a “very ancient” Greek text of Hippocrates.
Through his association with the Du Bellays, Rabelais was appointed
to a diplomatic office at the conference between Francis I and Charles V
in 1538. Following that, he entered the service of Guillaume du Bellay,
the elder brother of his former patron, who was the leading diplomat of
Francis I and at that time governor of Piedmont. He remained with the
elder Du Bellay until his death in 1 543 and during some of that time was
employed in collecting manuscripts in Italy for the king’s library. In
1545 he was allowed to print his book, to which a third volume was now
added, “avec privilege du roi”.
Despite the official sanction, the third book was also banned by the
Sorbonne, and the following year Rabelais appears to have gone into
something like voluntary exile by accepting the position of city physician
in Metz. Shortly after the death of Francis I, he again joined Jean du
Bellay in Rome. While there, in 1549, he wrote an account of the festivals
held to celebrate the birth of a second son to th(* new king, Henry II.
This account, known as the Sciomachic, was dedicated to the powerful
Cardinal de Guise, Rabelais, feeling perhaps that he now had sucli strong
supporters that he need not fear the Sorbonne authorities, returned to
France and was pre.sented with the livings of Saint Martin de Meudon
and Saint Ghristophe de Jambet, although there is no evidence that he
was ever active at either benefice. In 1552 he published the fourth
volume of his work. The Sorbonne censured it, and the parliament
suspended its sale, taking advantage of the king’s absence from Paris,
but it was soon relieved of the suspension. In January, 1553, Rabelais
resigned his ecclesiastical positions because of ill health. He died, it is
said, on April 9.
O O O
138
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
VOLUME 25
MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE
Essays
That Men by Various Ways
Arrive at the Same End
Of Sorrow
That our Affections Carry
Themselves Beyond Us
That the Soul Discharges Her
Passions Upon False Objects,
Where the True are Wanting
Whether the Governor of a
Place Besieged Ought Him-
self to Go Out to Parley
That the Hour of Parley is
Dangerous
That the Intention is Judge of
Our Actions
Of Idleness
Of Liars
Of Quick or Slow Speech
Of Prognostications
Of Constancy
The Ceremony of the Inter-
view of Princes
That Men are Justly Punished
for Being Obstinate in the
Defence of a Fort that is not
in Reason to be Defended
Of the Punishment of Cowardice
A Proceeding of Some Ambas-
sadors
Of Fear
That Men are not to Judge of
Our Happiness till after
Death
That to Study Philosophy is to
Learn to die
Of the Force of Imagination
That the Profit of One Man is
the Damage of Another
Of Custom and That We
Should Not Easily Change a
Law Received
Various Events from the Same
Counsel
Of Pedantry
Of the. Education of Children
That It is Folly to Measure
Truth and Error by Our
Own Capacity
Of Friendship
Nine-and-Twenty Sonnets of
Estienne de la Boctie
Of Moderation
Of Cannibals
That a Man is Soberly to
Judge of the Divine Ordi-
nances
That We are to A void Pleasures,
Even at the F^xpense of Life
That Fortune is Oftentimes
Observed to Act by the
Rules of Reason
Of One Defect in Our Govern-
ment
Of the Custom of Wearing
Clothes
Of Cato the Yotinger
That We Laugh and Cry for
the Same Thing
Of Solitude
A Consideration Upon Cicero
139
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Not to Communicate a Man's
Honour
Of the Inequality Amongst Us
Of Sumptuary Laws
Of Sleep
Of the Battle of Dreux
Of Names
Of the Uncertainty of Our
Judgment
Of War-Horses, or Destriers
Of Ancient Customs
Of Democritus and Heraclitus
Of the Vanity of Words
Of the Parsimony of the An-
cients
Of a Saying of Caesar
Of Vain Subtleties
Of Smells
Of Prayers
Of Age
Of the Inconstancy of Our Ac-
tions
Of Drunkenness
A Custom of the Isle of Cea
To-morrow's a New Day
Of Conscience
Use Makes Perfect
Of Recompenses of Honour
Of the Affection of Fathers to
Their Children
Of the Arms of the Parthians
Of Books
Of Cruelty
Apology for Raimond de
Sebonde
Of Judging of the Death of
Another
Upon Some Verses of Virgil
That the Relish of Good and
Evil Depends in a Great
Measure Upon the Opinion
We Have of them
That the Mind Hinders Itself
That Our Desires are Augmen-
ted by Difficulty
Of Glory
Of Presumption
Of Giving the Lie
Of Liberty of Conscience
That We Taste Nothing Pure
Against Idleness
Of Posting
Of III Means Employed to a
Good End
Of the Roman Grandeur
Not to Counterfeit Being Sick
Of Thumbs
Cowardice the Mother of
Cruelty
All Thing'; Have Their Season
Of Virtue
Of a Monstrous Child
Of Anger
Defence of Seneca and Plu-
tarch
The Story of S purine
Observations on the Means to
Carry on A War According
to Julius Caesar
Of Three Good Women
Of The Most Excellent Men
Of the Resemblance of Chil-
dren to Their Fathers
Of Profit and Honesty
Of Repentance
Of Three Commerces
140
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Of Coaches
Of the Inconvenience of Great-
ness
Of the Art of Conference
Of Experience
Of Diversion
Of Vanity
Of Managing the Will
Of Cripples
Of Physiognomy
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, 1533-1592
MONTAIGNE is onc of the few great writers who have invented a
literary kind. The essay as he gave it had no forerunner in modern
literature and no direct ancestor in the literature of classical times. In
matter of style and language Montaigne’s position is equally important,
but the ways which led him to it are more clearly traceable. His
favourite author was beyond all doubt Plutarch, and his own explicit
confession makes it undeniable that Plutarch’s translator, Jacques Amyot,
was his master in point of vocabulary and (so far as he took any lessons
in it) of style.
'Phere is hardly any writer in whom the human comedy is treated with
such completeness as it is in Montaigne. Phere is discernible in his essays
no attempt to map out a complete plan and thus to fill up its outlines.
But in the desultory and haphazard fashion which distinguishes him there
are few parts of life on which he does not touch, if only to show the
eternal contrast and antithesis which dominate it.
Montaigne was born on F’ebruary 28, 1533. His father, Pierre Eyquem,
was of merchant stock and had acquired the title of “lord and squire of
Montaigne” by bearing arms for Francis I in Italy. His mother was
descended from a family of Spanish Jews. Montaigne was their third son,
but by the death of his elder brothers he became heir to the estate.
Although his father claimed “no knowledge of letters”, he had mastered
Latin, Spanish, and Italian, and like many other men of the time he
made a hobby of education. He had his son awakened each morning by
“the sound of a musical instrument”. Servants who could speak no
French were assigned to teach him Latin orally before he had learned
his native tongue. At the age of six he was sent to the College of Guienne
at Bordeaux, where he remained for seven years. In 1546 Montaigne was
put to the study of law. His interest in jurisprudence and his success
141
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
as a counsellor appear to have been small; he seldom attended the
Parliament at Bordeaux, where his father had secured a magistrate’s
seat for him in 1554. He made frequent visits to Paris, the city “which
makes me French”. He witnessed at Bordeaux one of the frequent riots
caused by the salt-tax, and was present at both the siege of Thionville in
1559 and the siege of Rouen in 1562. He spent much time about the
court, and there gave himself “over to the desires that rule, as freely and
recklessly as anyone else.”
In 1565 Montaigne married Frangoise de la Chassaigne, whose father
was also a member of the Bordeaux Parliament. Montaigne said that
“spoiled natures such as mine, that hate every sort of bond and obliga-
tion” are not fit for marriage; yet he lived on excellent terms with his
wife and bestowed some pains on the education of his daughter, Leonore,
the only one of six children to survive infancy. In 1568, upon the death
of his father, Montaigne inheriteid the family estate. “Being long out of
patience with public duties and the servitude of the court,” he retired to
his chateau in 1571, abandoned the name of Eyqucm, and determined to
live “a tolerable life that is a burden neither to myself nor anyone
else.”
During his father's lifetime, and at his request, Montaigne had
translated the Theologia Naturalis of Raymond of Sabunde, a Spanish
schoolman. Upon first coming to live at Montaigne, he prepared for
j)ublication the works of Etienne de la Boetie, a friend of his youth,
whose death, in 1563, he felt as a great loss. The remaining years of his
seclusion wen^ spent in writing the first two volumes of the Essays, which
were published in 1580 at Bordeaux. He noted that his work found
favour “the further off 1 am read”, that in his own country of Gascony
“they think it droll to see me in print”. In addition to his writing, he
maintained a relation to the court; he was awarded the order of Saint-
Michel in 1571 and served as gentlenian-in-ordinary to both Henry III
and his successor, Henry of Navarre.
In the year following the publication of the Essays, Montaigne left his
estate for extensive travel. He was deteniiincd to obtain relief from
internal disorders that had been troubling him. Distrusting physicians, he
sought cure by tlu use of mineral waters. He journeyed through
Lorraine, Switzerland, Bavaria, and Italy. From the baths of Lucca he
travelled to Rome, where he had an audience with the Pope and was
made a Roman citizen.
142
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
While at Lucca, Montaigne was informed of his election as mayor of
Bordeaux and of a royal endorsement enjoining residence. After some
time he journeyed homewards. His reluctance to hold public office was
tempered only by the memory of his father, who had held various
municipal posts in Bordeaux. Although Montaigne was not satisfied with
his administration, he felt that he “nearly accomplished wliat I expected
to do and far surpassed what I promised.” He was re-elected for a second
period, which terminated in 1585. He again retired to Montaigne but, in
a short time, was driven from his estate by the plague and forced to seek
refuge elsewhere.
Montaigne had begun to revise the Essays almost immediately after
their publication in 1580; he perfected their fonn and added new ones
which average fully four times the length of the earlier ones. By 1588
he completed the work and re-issued a revised version of the first two
books together with a final volume of the essays written since 1580.
While in Paris to superintend their publication he became involved in
the civil strife between Henry III and Henry of Navarre, and was
committed to the Bastille as a kind of hostage. But he was well known to
and favoured by both Catherine de Medici and the Guises and was soon
released. In Paris at this time he met Marie de Jars de Gournay, one of
the most learned ladies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who
had conceived such veneration for the author of the Essays that she
travelled to the capital to make his acquaintance. A whimsical but
pleasant friendship resulted, and Montaigne gave her the title of his
“fille d’alliance” (adopted daughter), which she bore for the rest of her
long life. I'pon his death, with the approval of his widow, she became
his literary executor and, together with Pierre de Brach, a poet of some
note, published an edition, now the standard one, which made use of
Montaigne’s final annotations.
Montaigne did not long survive the publication of his third book.
Shortly after he returned to his chateau, he was stricken with quinsy,
which brought about paralysis of the tongue. He remained in possession
of his other faculties and, on the evening of September 13, 1592, asked
his wife, in writing, to call together some of his neighbours so he might
bid them farewell. He requested Mass to be said in his room, and died
w'hilc it was being celebrated.
O O O
143
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
VOLUME 26
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
T he Comedy of Errors
Titus Andronicus
The Taming of the Shrew
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Lovers Labour's Lost
Romeo and Juliet
The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
A Midsummer-Night's Dream
The Life and Death of King John
The Merchant of Venice
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
Much Ado About Nothing
T he Life of King Henry the Fifth
Julius Caesar • As You Like It
o o o
VOLUME 27
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night : or. What You Will
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Troilus of Cressida
144
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
AlVs Well That Ends Well
M ensure for Measure
Othello, The Moor of Venice
King Lear • Macbeth
Antony and Cleopatra
C oriolanus • Timon of Athens
Pericles, Prince of Tyre • Cymbeline
The Winters Tale • The Tempest
The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth
Sonnets
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564 1616
siiAKEsrKARL\s plays are so universally known and loved and his
pre-eminence as a poet and dramatist is so universally recognized that
any attempt to summarize his many-sided greatness is clearly superfluous.
Suffice it to say that in his plays the reader will find mirrored life in its
entirety and mankind in all its moods from the basest to the most sublime.
Shakespeare was baptized in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon
in Warwickshire on April 26, 1564. His father, John Shakespeare, was a
burgess of the recently constituted corporation of Stratford, and filled
certain municipal offices, including that of high bailiff. By occupation he
was a glover, although he appears to have dealt from time to time in
various kinds of agricultural produce and may have combined a certain
amount of farming with the practice of his trade. His wife, and the
mother of the dramatist, Mary Arden, came of a distinguished Catholic
family, and had brought her husband a farm of about fifty or sixty acres,
known as the Asbics. There were at least eight children, William being
the third child and eldest son.
Stratford possessed a free grammar school, and Shakespeare presumably
obtained his education there. When he was about thirteen, his father’s
fortunes took a turn for tlie worse, and it seems likely that Shakespeare
was apprenticed to some local trade. According to one story, he killed
calves for his father, and “would do it in a high style, and make a
145
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
speech.” In November, 1582, he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight
years his senior, and their first child, Susanna, was baptized on May 26,
1583, followed by twins, Harnnet and Judith, in 1585. Before the birth
of the twins Shakespeare’s career in Stratford seems to have come to a
tempestuous close. One tradition, coming from two different sources,
asserts that he got into trouble through poaching on the estates of a
considerable Warwickshire magnate. Sir Thomas Lucy, and found it
necessary to leave town. But from this event until he emerges as an actor
and rising playwright in 1592, his history is unknown. His entry into
the theatrical world, according to the stage tradition, was in a menial
capacity, perhaps even as a holder of horses at the doors.
By 1592, when he was twenty-eight, Shakespeare had begun to emerge
as a playwright and had evoked the jealousy of at least one of the group
of scholar poets who claimed a monopoly of the stage. Robert Greene, in
an invective against the play-actors in his Groats-worth of Wit, parodies
a line from Henry VI and speaks of an “upstart crow” who is “in his
own conceit the only Shakescene in the country.” While the theatres were
closed from 1592 to 1594 because of riot and the plague, Shakespeare
further enhanced his literary reputation by the publication of Venus and
Adonis and Lucrece. It is also probable that the first of his sonnets then
began to circulate privately, although they were not published as a whole
until 1609.
After the. reopening of the theatres in 1594, Shakespeare is listed
among the “servauntes of the Lord Chamberlayne”, the company for
which he wrote and acted throughout his life. His acting seems to have
been limited to such roles as the (ihost in Hamlet and Adam in As You
Like It, but as a dramatist he was the mainstay of the company for some
fifteen years. As early as 1598 the Pallodis Tomia, a kind of literary
handbook published by Francis Meres, extols Shakespeare as “the most
excellent in both kinds {i.e., comedy and tragedy) for the state”, and
one of “the most passionate among us to bewaile and bemoane the
perplexities of love”; it also provides a list of twelve plays already
written, which serves as a starting point for modern attempts at a chrono-
logical arrangement of his work. Shakespeare seems to havt' written more
rapidly during diese early years than later, but on an average he wrote
for his company alx)ut two plays a year. His fellow-dramatists writing
for the Chamberlain’s men included Ben Jonson, Dekker, Beaumont and
Fletcher, and Tourneur. He seems to have been particularly intimate
146
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
with Jonson; there arc stories of their jests and drinking bouts, and
Jonson later declared, “I lov’d the man and do honour his memory (on
this side idolatry) as much as any.”
In addition to being both actor and playwright, Shakespeare was also
a shareholder in the company, and his prosperity was joined with that
of his theatre. They were frequently asked to play at court, and The
Merry Wives of Windsor is said to owe its origin to Elizabeth’s desire to
see Falstaff in love. James I on his accession took the company under
his patronage, and during the remainder of Shakespeare’s connection
with the stage they were “the King’s men”. 7^he records of performances
at court show that they were by far the most favoured of the companies.
Shakespeare was particularly popular; Jonson refers to his flights “that
so did take Eliza and our James”, and he is said to have received an
autograph letter from King James. He appears also to have been on
cordial terms with his fellows of the stage; one of them left him a small
legacy, and in his own will he paid a similar compliment to three of his
theatrical associates.
Shakespeare's increasing prosperity is reflected in the restored fortunes
of his family at Stratford, 'i'he prosecution of John Shakespeare for debt
ceased and in 1596 his application for a coat-of-arms, made at the time
he was bailiff, was at length granted. In 1597 the playwright purchased
New Place, one of the largest houses in Stratford. Here he established his
wife and two daughters, his son having died the year before. Until 1610
he apparently lived and worked in London, making only occasional visits
to Stratford, but in that year he seems to have returned to his birthplace.
He lived as a retired gentleman on friendly terms with the richest of his
neighbours and showed interest in local affairs which might affect his
income or his comfort, such as a bill for the improvement of the highways
in 1611, or a proposed enclosure of the open fields in 1614. His retirement
did not imply a complete break with London life; his plays were still
being produced, and he was providing new ones, although the last few
may have been written at Stratford. As late as 1613 he is known to have
bought a house in London at the Blackfriars, perhaps for purposes of
investment rather than residence. It is likely that his connection with the
king’s company ended when the Globe Theatre was burnt down during a
perfonnance of Henry VIII in 1613.
In March of 1616 Shakespeare made his will, leaving to his daughter
Susanna the bulk of his estate and to his wife “the second best bed with
147
WILLIAM G I L B E R
the furniture”, although she also legally enjoyed until her death a third
of his lands and houses. A month after his will was signed, on April 23,
1616, Shakespeare died and as a tithe-owner was buried in the chancel of
the parish church.
O O O
VOLUME 28
WILLIAM GILBERT
On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
GALILEO GALILEI
Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
WILLIAM HARVEY
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
On the Circulation of the Blood
On the Generation of Animals
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
WILLIAM GILBERT’, 1540-1603
WILLIAM GILBERT was the most distinguished man of science in
England during the reign of Elizabeth I and his principal work is his
treatise on magnetism, which is printed here. I’his work, which embodied
the results of many years’ research, was distinguished by its strict
adherence to the scientific method of investigation by experiment, and
by the originality of its matter. It contains an account of the author’s
experiments on magnets and magnetic bodies and on electrical attractions
and also his great conception that the earth is nothing but a large magnet
and that it is this which explains, not only the direction of the magnetic
needle north and south, but also the dipping of the inclination of the
needle. Gilbert was also the first advocate of Copernican views in
England, and he concluded that the fixed stars arc not all at the same
distance from the earth.
148
WILLIAM GILBERl'
Gilbert was born on May 24, 1540, at Colchester in Essex. He came
from an ancient Suffolk family and was the eldest of the five sons of
Hierome Gilbert, recorder at Colchester. After completing his preliminary
education at the town school, Gilbert in 1558 entered St. John’s College,
Cambridge, where he studied for eleven years. He took his bachelor’s
degree in 1560, was elected fellow the following year, and proceeded to
work for his M.A., which he received in 1564. It was about this time
that his interest in science apparently began to attract notice; he was
appointed mathematical examiner in 1565 and then turned to the study
of medicine, in which he received his doctorate four years later, when he
was also elected senior fellow at St. John’s College.
Shortly after receiving his degree, Gilbert left Cambridge and apparently
made extensive travels on the continent, particularly in Italy. It is
probable that he received the degree of Doctor of Physic from a
continental university, and he presumably then made the acquaintance
of some of the learned men with whom he was later in correspondence.
After his return to England he settled in London in 1573, where he
practised as a physician with “great success and applause”. Admitted to
the College of Physicians about 1576, Gilbert held the office of censor
from 1581 to 1590; he was treasurer from 1587 to 1592 and again from
1597 to 1599, when he succeeded to the presidency of the college. He
served on the committee appointed to superintend the preparation of the
Pharmacopoeia Londinensisy which was undertaken by the coUege in
1589, although it did not appear until 1618.
During these years that Gilbert was making a reputation as a physician,
he was also becoming known as a savant in chemistry, physics, and
cosmology. He appears to have studied these sciences from his youth.
His study of navigation is said to have resulted in the invention of two
instruments enabling sailors “to find out the latitude without seeing of
sun, moon, or stars”. But the main basis of his reputation as a scientist
was the publication in 1600, after eighteen years of reading, experiment,
and reflection, of his book on the magnet, De Magriete Magneticisque
Corporibus et de Magno Magnete Tellurc Physiologia No7^a, It was the
first important work in physical science to be published in England, and
almost immediately after its publication Gilbert was famous throughout
Europe. Kepler paid tribute to its influence upon his own physical
speculations. Galileo first turned his attention to magnetism after reading
Gilbert and said of him that he was “great to a degree that is enviable”.
149
GALILEO
Bacon, though he spoke disparagingly of Gilbert’s attempt “to raise a
general system upon the magnet”, praised him as an experimental
philosopher and seems to have taken whole paragraphs of Gilbert’s work
as his own.
At his London house, where he possessed a large collection of books,
globes, instalments, and minerals, Gilbert gathered about him men who
were interested in discussing scientific problems. The group, which held
regular monthly meetings and constituted a kind of society, is now
looked upon as precursor of the Royal Society. Gilbert presumably took
a leading part in these discussions, and he is known to have continued
his scientific investigations, but his only other book, a treatise dealing
with meteorological subjects, De Mundo Nostro Sublunari Philosophia
Nova, was edited after his death by his brother.
In 1601 Gilbert was appointed physician to Queen Elizabeth, and it
appears that he tlien moved to the court, l^pon the death of the Queen,
it was discovered that her only personal legacy was made to Gilbert for
the prosecution of his studies. He was immediately reappointed royal
physician by James I, but died shortly afterwards, probably of the
plague, on November 30, 1603, and was buried in the chancel of Holy
Trinity Church in Colchester. He bequeathed his scientific library and
instruments to the College of Physicians, but they were destroyed in the
great fire of London. He left his portrait, which is said to have been
painted for that purpose, to Oxford University. In it he is represented
as standing wearing his doctor’s robes and holding in his hand a globe
on wliich is written the word terrella; as its inscription the painting has,
Gilbert, the first investigator of the powers of the magnet.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
GALILEO, 1564-1642
THE direct services of permanent value which Galileo rendered to
astronomy arc virtually summed up in his telescopic discoveries. His
name is justly associated with a vast extension of the bounds of the
visible universe, and his telescopic observations arc a standing monument
to his ability. Within two years of their first discovery, he had constructed
approximately accurate tables of the revolutions of Jupiter’s satellites,
and he proposed their frequent eclipses as a means of determining
longitudes, not only on land but at sea. His observations on sunspots are
150
GALILEO
nota.bl6 for their accuracy and the deductions he drew from them with
regard to the rotation of the sun and the revolution of the earth.
Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa on February 15, 1564, the eldest of
seven children. His father, who belonged to a noble but impoverished
Florentine family, was a cloth merchant highly reputed for his skill in
mathematics and music. At the age of twelve or thirteen Galileo w'as
sent to school at the monastery of Vallombrosa, where he studied the
Latin classics and acquired a fair command of (ireek. He seems to have
been a novice for a short time, but his father then withdrew him from
the charge of the monks.
In 1581 Galileo was sent to the University of Pisa to study medicine.
His father apparently hoped to prevent him from following either
mathematics or music, whose unremunerative character he had experi-
enced. The young Galileo was already known for his proficiency in
music; his judgment in painting was highly esteemed, and Ludovico
Gigoli accredited him with the success of his paintings; but mathematics
soon had an overwhelming attraction for him. In his first year at the
university Galileo discovered the isochronism of the pendulum, to which
his attention had been drawn by a swinging lamp in the cathedral, and
he applied the principle in a machine for measuring the pulse known as
the pulsilogia. Although compelled to leave school in 1585 for want
of funds, Galileo continued his investigations. He shortly afterwards
published an essay describing his invention of the hydrostatic balance.
During 1587 and 1588 he delivered two papers before the Florentine
Academy on the site and dimensions of Dante’s Inferno. A treatise
written at this time on the centre of gravity in solids won him the title
of “the Archimedes of his time”.
Despite his growing fame, Galileo w'as unable to find a means of
earning his living, until 1589. He tried several times unsuccessfully to
obtain a teaching position, and he had even planned to seek his fortune
in the East before he was called to the honourable but not lucrative post
of mathematical lecturer at the University of Pisa. During the ensuing
two years, 1589-91, he conducted experiments on the motion of falling
bodies. His lectures on the import of his discoveries alienated the
Aristotelian members of the faculty, and he further aroused the anger of
the authorities by a burlesque in which he ridiculed the university regula-
tions. In 1591 Galieo found it prudent to resign, and shortly afterwards
he secured the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua.
151
GALILEO
Galileo taught at Padua for eighteen years, from 1592 to 1610, and
during that time established a European reputation as a scientist and
inventor. His lectures, which were attended by persons of the highest
distinction from all parts of Europe, proved so popular they were given
in a hall that held two thousand persons. He wrote numerous treatises,
which were circulated among his pupils, dealing with military archi-
tecture, gnomonics, the sphere, accelerated motion, and special problems
in mechanics. His more notable inventions at Padua included a machine
for raising water, a geometrical compass, and an air thermometer. But
perhaps his most famous discovery came in 1609, when, upon learning
that the Dutch were beginning to manufacture magnifying glasses, he
put together a telescope and turned it for the first time towards the
heavens. In his Siclereus Nuncius, published early in 1610, Galileo gave
the first results of this new method of investigation; he noted the
mountainous surface of the moon, the fact that the Milky Way consists
of stars, and the observation of four of Jupiter's satellites, which he
named the “Medicean Stars” in honour of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Almost immediately, Galileo was nominated philosopher and mathema-
tician extraordinary to the grand duke at a large salary and with
unlimited leisure for research.
Galileo did not actively defend the Gopernican doctrine until after he
had begun to use the telescope. Although he wrote to Kepler as early as
1597 that he had “become a convert to the opinions of Cop{*rnicus many
years ago”, he continued to teach the Ptolemaic system throughout his
stay at Padua. But with the discovery of the moons of Jupiter and the
phases of Venus he came to the conclusion that “all my life and being
henceforth depends” on the establishment of the new theory. Galileo’s
astronomical discoveries brought him great honour, and in 1611 he
travelled to Rome, where he gave a highly successful demonstration of
the telescope to the ecclesiastical authorities. But as soon as he tried to
maintain that the Gopernican theory’ could be reconciled with Scriptures,
he began to encounter opposition from the theologians.
The first ecclesiastical attack upon Galileo occurred in 1614 when
he was denounced from the pulpit in Florence for holding the new
astronomical doctrine. Galileo replied by issuing his Letter to the Grand
Duchess Christine of Lorraine, in which he strongly supported the words
of Cardinal Baronius that the “Holy Spirit intended to teach us in the
Bible how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.” This letter was at
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GALILEO
once laid before the Inquisition, and in 1615 Galileo was informed by
an ecclesiastical friend in Rome : “You can write as a mathematician
and hypothetically, as Copernicus is said to have done, and you can
write freely so long as you keep out of the sacristy.” But early in 1616
the Holy Office condemned two fundamental Copernican propositions
selected from Galileo’s work On the Sun Spots, and he was summoned
before Cardinal Bellannine and warned not to hold or defend the
Copernican theory. Dismayed by the slanders regarding him, Galileo
obtained from the Cardinal a certificate explaining that he had not been
made to abjure his opinions nor enjoined to perform salutary penance.
Galileo maintained silence until 1627. In that year he published II
Saggiatore, in which he contended that the new astronomical discoveries
were more in accord with the Copernican than the Ptolemaic system; he
added that, since the one theory was condemned by the Church and the
other by reason, a third system would have to be sought. The book was
dedicated to Urban VIII. It was well received by both ecclesiastical and
scientific authorities, and in the course of two months Galileo had six
audiences with the pope. Encouraged by this reception, he devoted the
next eight years to writing his Dialogue of the Two Principal Systems of
the World (1532). Upon its publication Galileo was denounced by the
ecclesiastical authorities and summoned for trial before the Holy Office.
He was accused on three charges : that he had broken his agreement of
1616, that he had taught the Copernican theory as a truth and not
a hypothesis, and that he inwardly believed the truth of a doctrine
condemned by the Church. In the trial of 1633 he was found guilty on
the first two charges, but on his assertion that it was never his intention
to ‘believe the truth of the Copernican doctrine after its condemnation,
he was denounced only as “vehemently suspected of heresy and
sentenced to punishment at the will of the court. Galileo submitted and
made the required recantation.
On being allowed to leave Rome, Galileo went to Siena and resided
for several months in the house of the archbishop. In December, 1633,
he was permitted to return to his villa at Arcetri, near Florence, where he
spent the remainder of his life in retirement according to the conditions
of his release. Here he completed the Dialogue of the Two New Sciences,
in which he turned back to the scientific investigations of his youth.
The work, which was printed by the Elzevirs at Leyden in 1638, was
considered by Galileo to be “superior to everything else of mine hitherto
153
WILLIAM HARVEY
published”. His last telescopic discovery — that of the moon’s diurnal
and monthly librations — was made in 1637, only a few months before
he became blind. But blindness was not allowed to interrupt his scientific
correspondence and investigation. He worked out the application of the
pendulum to the clock, which Huygens was to apply successfully several
years later, and was engaged in dictating to his disciples, Viviani and
Torricelli, his latest ideas on the theory of impact when he was seized
with fever. He died on January 8, 1642, and was buried in the chapel of
Santa Groce in Florence.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
WILLIAM HARVEY, 1578-1657
KNOWLEDGE of the circulation of the blood has been the basis of the
whole of modern rational medicine. Harvey said that the blood is a
carrier, always going round and round on the same beat. What it carried
and why, how and where it takes up its loads and how, where and why
it parts with them arc questions the answering of which has been the
main task of physiology in the centuries that have followed. Thus the
work of Harvey lies at the back of every important medical advance.
Harvey was born at Folkestone on April 1, 1578, the eldest of the
seven sons of Thomas Harvey, a prosperous Kentish yeoman. At the age
of ten he was sent to the King’s School at Canterbury and five years
later to Gonville and Gains College, Cambridge, where he took his
B.A. in 1597. To prepare himself for a medical career he went to the
University of Padua, then the most celebrated school of medicine. Harvey
was there while Galileo was achieving his first fame at Padua. He
followed the anatomy lectures of the great Fabricius ot Aquapendente
and in the spring of 1602 took his degree at Padua; later that same year
he was made a Doctor of Medicine at Cambridge.
Shortly afterwards, Harvey settled in London, married the daughter of
Dr. Lancelot Browne, Queen Elizabeth’s physician, and began to practise
medicine. In 1604 he became a candidate of the Royal College of
Physicians and was duly admitted a fellow three years later. Upon the
recommendation of the king and the president of the college, he was
appointed in 1609 assistant physician of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and
in the following year succeeded to the post of physician. His practice
prospered, and, although Aubrey, who knew Harvey, says that his
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WILLIAM HARVEY
anatomy was better than his therapy, it is known that he perfonned
difficult surgical operations and had many illustrious patients, among
them Francis Bacon and King James I, to whom he became physician
extraordinary.
Upon his appointment as the Lumleian lecturer at the College of
Physicians in 1615, Harvey began his lectures on anatomy in which he
made known his work on the motions of the heart and blood. In his
lectures he professed “to learn and teach anatomy, not from books, but
from dissections, not from the positions of the philosophers but from the
fabric of nature”; and during his lifetime he dissected more than eighty
kinds of animals. His teaching also showed his wide knowledge of books.
He knew all the anatomists from Vesalius to his own time; he had studied
Aristotle, whom he quotes more often than any other author, and Galen ;
he was especially fond of Virgil, had read Plautus, Horace, Caesar,
Cicero, Vitruvius, and St. Augustine, and was thoroughly familiar with
the Bible.
In 1628, after “nine years and more” of teaching, Harvey published
his work on the circulation of the blood, Excrcitatio Anatomica de Motu
Cordis ct Sanguinis in Animalibus. The book was dedicated to Charles I,
whom Harvey served as physician. It immediately attracted wide
attention, althougli at first, and particularly on the continent, it was
mostly of an adverse character. Harvey for the most part left the defence
of his work to his supporters, and he lived to see his teaching generally
accepted. His friend, Hobbes, declared that Harvey was “the only one I
know who has overcome public odium and established a new doctrine
during his own lifetime.”
After the publication of his work Harvey became more closely
associated with Charles I, and until 1646 his fortunes were involved with
those of the king. By the king’s command he relinquished his functions
at the College of Physicians in 1629 to accompany James Stuart, the
young Duke of Lennox, on his travels to the continent. Four years later
he went to Nuremberg and Rome with the Earl of Arundel, who had
been sent as an ambassador to the German emperor. As royal physician,
he several times attended the king on his journeys. Despite his close
connection with king and court, Harvey himself seems to have taken
little interest in politics. In 1641 he still attended the king not only with
the consent but also at the desire of parliament. But with the outbreak
of war between the king and parliament, Harvey became identified with
15.5
WILLIAM HARVEY
the royal cause. At the battle of Edgehill, Aubrey reports that he was
given charge of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York but was so
little concerned with the battle that “he withdrew with them under a
hedge and took out of his pocket a book and read.” Harvey went to
Oxford with the retreating royal forces in 1642 and remained there until
the surrender of that city in 1646. He then returned to London and for
the rest of his life lived theTe with his brothers, who were eminent
merchants.
During the hfteen years that Harvey was in close attendance upon the
king, he continued to pursue his medical investigations. In studying the
process of generation he enjoyed the interest and support of Charles 1,
who not only placed the royal deer parks at his disposal, but also watched
his demonstration of the growth of the chick with the same interest that
he had shown for the movements of the heart. Even the Civil War did
not completely interrupt his research. He notes that his “enemies
abstracted from my museum the fruits of many years of toil” with the
result that “many observations, particularly on the generation of insects,
have perished, with detriment, T venture to say, to the republic of
letters.” Despite this loss, he had collected a large number of observations
and had embodied the results of his investigations in a treatise. Finally,
in 1651 his friend and disciple, George Rnt, obtained the manuscripts
and with the author’s permission made public the work on generation,
Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium.
lliis was the last of Harvey's) labours. He had now reached his
seventy-third year and was honoured at home and abroad. His colh^gt'
at Cambridge voted a statue in his honour, and the College of Physicians
in 1654 elected him president, an office he declined bec ause of age. H(‘
had already served three times as censor (1613, 1625, 1629), and in
that capacity, together with three of his colleagues, had sup(‘rvised
practitioners, taken necessary proceedings against quacks, and inspected
apothecaries. The same year that he was offered the presidency he built
and equipped a library for the College, to which in 1656 he also made
over his property in Essex with' provision for a salary to the college
librarian and the endowment of an annual oration. This address, accord-
ing to Harvey’s orders, is to exhort the fellow “to search out and study
the secrets of nature by way of experiment, and also for the honour of
the profession to continue' mutual love and affection among them-
selves.”
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MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Although afflicted by the gout, Harvey enjoyed the active use of all
his faculties until his eightieth year. On June 3, 1657, he was attacked by
paralysis and though deprived of speech was able to send for his nephews
and distribute his personal things among them. He died the same evening
and was buried with great honour in Hempstead Church, Essex.
O O O
VOLUME 29
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
I'he History of Don Quixote de la Mancha
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTK
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, 1546-1616
Cervantes’ Don Quixote entitles him to rank with the greatest writers
of all times : “Children turn its leaves, young people read it, grown men
understand it, old folk praise it.” It has outlived all changes of literary
taste, and is even more popular today than it was three centuries ago.
However, there is a tendency in modern criticism to regard Don
Quixote as a symbolic, didactic or controversial work intended to bring
about radical reforms in Church and State. Such interpretations did not
occur to Cervantes’ contemporaries nor to Cervantes himself. There is
no reason for rejecting his plain statement that his main object was to
ridicule the romances of chivalry, which in their latest developments had
become a tissue of tiresome absurdities. It seems clear that his first
intention was merely to parody these extravagances in a short story; but
as he proceeded the immense possibilities of the subject became more
evident to him, and he ended by expanding his work into a brilliant
panorama of Spanish society as it existed during the sixteenth century.
Cervantes was born in the ancient university town of Alcala de
Henares, where he was baptized, on October 9, 1547, in the church of
Santa Maria la Mayor. His father was a travelling physician, and it is
doubtful whether the family was ever long enough in one place for
Cervantes to receive any formal education. According to his own
testimony he enjoyed reading from childhood and took especial delight
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MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
in the dramatic productions of the famous actor-managcr, Lope de
Rueda. At the age of twenty he made his first appearance as an author,
contributing several poems to a volume commemorating the death of
Isabel de Valois, the third wife of Philip 11.
Shortly after his debut as a writer, Cervantes was in Rome as a
member of the retinue of Cardinal Acquaviva. He soon left the Cardinal
to enlist as a private in the army which was being mustered to fight
against the Turks. He was assigned to the “Marquesa”, part of the
armada under Don John of Austria. When the fleet came into action at
Lepanto, Cervantes lay below, ill with fever. Despite the remonstrances
of his comrades, he insisted that he would “rather die for his god and
his king” than stay under cover. He received three gunshot wounds, two
in the chest and one which maimed his left hand for life; to Cervantes
the wounds were “stars lighting one to heaven and to fame”, and the
left hand was crippled “for the greater glory of the right”. After con-
valescing at Messina, he returned to the army, served three more years
in active service, and then was granted leave to return to Spain. He
received letters of recommendation from Don John and the Duke de
Sessa, viceroy of Sicily, in which he was described as “a soldier, as
deserving as he was unfortunate.”
The small galley carrying Cervantes back to Spain was attacked by
Barbary corsairs near Les Trois Maries, and he, his brother, and the
other Spaniards were taken as prisoners to Algiers. Cervantes became
the slave of a Greek renegade named Dali Mami, and, since the letters
found on him suggested that he was a man of some importance, his
ransom was posted at an unusually high figure. He found the life of a
captive “enough to sadden the merriest heart on earth” and made many
ingenious attempts to escape. Upon the failure of one of them he was
brought before the Dey of Algiers, Hassan Pasha, and “threatened with
torture and instant death”; but the Dey, struck “by his peculiar grace in
all things”, remitted the punishment and bought Cervantes for himself.
In 1577 he addressed a versified letter to the Spanish Secretary of State,
suggesting an expedition to seize Algiers; the project, although practicable,
was not attempted. In 1579, after another thwarted escape, Hassan Pasha
again spared his liSe, declaring : “So long as I have the maimed Spaniard
in my keeping, my Christians, my ships — aye, and the whole city — are
safe.” The Dey, however, was willing to release him for money, and
Cervantes finally obtained his freedom by the payment of the ransom;
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MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
his parents sent 250 ducats through the Trinitarian monks, and, when this
was insufficient, the Christian traders of Algiers contributed the balance.
After his release Cervantes returned to Spain, where he tried to support
himself by writing, particularly for the stage. Of the great volume of
plays he wrote, he later singled out only one for praise. La Confusa,
“which, with all respect to as many sword-and-cloak plays as have been
staged up to the present, may take a prominent place as being good
among the best.” His most serious effort at this time was the prose-
pastoral Galatea (1585), and, although it always remained his favourite
work, he later remarked that it “proposes something and concludes
nothing”. The Galatea won him a small measure of repute but brought
him no financial return.
The death of his father and his own marriage made it necessary for
him to “put aside the pen”. His wife’s dowry brought him nothing more
valuable than five vines, an orchard, some household furniture, four bee-
hives, forty-five hens and chickens, one cock, and a crucible. He went to
Seville as commissary to provide oil and wheat for the Armada and,
after its defeat, continued to act as commissary to the galleys. Although
he showed considerable zeal in the work, he soon became convinced that
there was no prospect of advancement. He appealed to the king for a
vacant post in the American colonies but was refused and given the
advice to “look for something nearer home”. In an effort to supplement
his income, he turned again to writing, and, in 1592, signed a contract to
write six plays at fifty ducats each, on the condition that no payment was
to be made unless each was “one of the best ever produced in Spain”.
No opportunity to test the contract arose, since Cervantes was thrown
into gaol. Although the reason for this imprisonment is not known, it
w^as probably due to disorderliness in his accounts, for shortly after his
release, he was in difficulty again with his superiors. When he proved
unable to submit receipts for all official moneys he had collected, though
no charge of dishonesty was proved, he was again committed to gaol.
Subsequently he was released in disgrace and dismissed from public service.
Don Quixote appeared during the years of extreme poverty that
succeeded his dismissal. From the remark in the prologue that “you may
suppose it engendered in some dismal prison”, it has been assumed that
its conception, if not some of its actual writing, took place during one of
his terms in gaol. The licence for its publication was obtained in 1804,
while Cervantes was living in Valladolid in a liny apartment with his
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wife and four or five female relatives. A few months after its publication
the following year, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza had become
proverbial types in Valladolid; and they were soon known throughout
Europe. The appearance in 1614 of a spurious second part, issued under
the name of Alonso Fernandez de Avellanada, goaded Cervantes to
lay aside his other writing and complete his master work, which he
accomplished by the end of 1615. During the decade between the two
parts of Quixote j Cervantes wrote his Exemplary Novels, the Journey to
Parnassus, and several comedies and intermezzos for the theatre.
Although Cervantes was known and celebrated throughout Europe, his
fame never brought him wealth, or even comfort. The members of the
special French embassy visiting Madrid in 1615 were amazed to learn
that Cervantes was “old, a soldier, a gentleman, and poor”. He died in
Madrid on the same day as William Shakespeare, April 23, 1616. He
was borne from his house with “his face uncovered”, according to the
rule of the 7'ertiaries of St. Francis, and buried in the church attached
to the convent of the Trinitarian nuns.
o o o
VOLUME 30
SIR FRANCIS BACON
Advancement of i.earning • Novum Organum • New Alantis
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
FRANCIS BACON, 1561-1626
FRANCIS BACON was the prophet and philosopher of a new and dazzling
conception of progress. In the Advancement of Learning, the broadest
statement in English of his grand scheme, he arraigned traditional and
obstructive methods of education and inquiry, outlined the current state
of knowledge in all fields, and proposed new lines of exploration. But his
prime interest was science, the mastery of nature for the use and benefit
of man. His inspiring vision and his inductive method were set forth in
the Novum Organum; after long wanderings in the desert of Aristotelian
160
FRANCIS BACON
logic, men might enter the promised land through experimental science.
Bacon’s aims and method were praised by many scientists of his century;
from many modern writers his ideas have received more criticism and
less credit than they deserve. His dream of co-operative research, illus-
trated in the New Atlantis, was fulfilled in the Royal Society.
Bacon was born on January 22, 1361, in York House, London. He was
the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Seal and
Chancellor. His mother, Lady Anne Cooke, enjoyed some renown as a
classicist and was sister-in-law to Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley.
At the age of twelve Bacon entered Trinity College, where he resid(‘d
for three years with his elder brother. He later claimed that it was at
Cambridge as a student not yet sixteen that “he first fell into the dislike
of the philosophy of Aristotle”, which he judged to be “barren of the
production of works for the benefit of the life of man”. On leaving tlie
university, he was sent to Paris in the retinue of the English ambassador
to complete his political education. While there he attempted to perfect a
new diplomatic code and, according to later anecdotes, became interested
for the first time in experimental ofjservation.
Recalled to England by the sudden death of his father in 1379, Bacon
returned to find that he had been left the “narrow portion” of a younger
son and had his livelihood to gain. He applied himself to the study of
law at Gray’s Inn and in 1382 was admitted to the bar. A “competitor
at the bottom of the ladder for patronage and countenance”, he passed
twenty-five years in the sliadow of Burghley, Essex, and Coke. In 1584
he wrote his first political memoir, the Letter of Advice to Queen
Elizabeth, but his efforts to win favour witli tht* Queen were unsuccessful.
His uncle, Lord Burghley, appears to have “taken his zeal for ambition”,
and the most he w'ould do was to help him obtain a seat in Parliament.
His most ambitious Parliamentary effort, opposing a royal demand in
1393, incurred the strong displeasure of both Elizabeth and Burghley.
Bacon’s only political success under Elizabeth came as a result of the
trial against the Earl of Essex. He had been the intimate and protege
of Essex, who had attempted to use his influence with the Queen on his
friend’s behalf. After one failure to obtain Bacon a place, tlie Earl
presented him with an estate worth £1,800; Bacon never lived within his
income, and once, in 1398, he was arrested and imprisoned for debt.
During the trial against Essex, Bacon came to take a leading role,
although he had little to do with the preliminary case. He was one of
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FRANCIS BACON
the Queen’s counsel and vigorously pressed the suit against his erstwhile
patron. After the execution he was charged with drafting the defence of
the Queen’s conduct, which appeared as the Declaration of the Practices
and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert, late Earl of Essex,
During these years Bacon was also engaged in scientific and literary
work that even at the time enhanced his reputation. In a long letter to
his uncle, written when he was thirty-one, he confessed, “I have as vast
contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends, for I have taken all
knowledge for my province.” In 1597 he published the first edition of his
Essays. Included with them was a short tract entitled Colours of Good
and Evil. This was the first published part of his ambitious project for
the “Great Instauration” of science to restore to man the command over
nature. In 1605 he published the Advancement of Learning, which was
to occupy the first part in his plan.
With the accession of James I, Bacon rapidly rose to power in the
political world. Writing in defence of the royal policies, he became one
of the leaders of the King’s cause against Parliament. Solicitor in 1607,
he was Attorney-General by 1613, Lord Keeper of the Seal in 1617, and
Chancellor the following year, when he was made Baron Vcrulam; in
1621 he was created Viscount St. Albans.
In defending the royal prerogative. Bacon was opposed to Sir Edward
Coke, the greatest lawyer of the time, who had long been his rival. Bacon
at first triumphed, and the King demoted and then removed Coke from
all his offices, although he still continued to lead the Parliamentary
forces. In 1621 Bacon became the object of Parliamentary attack, which
was directed not only against him but also against the King. He was
accused of receiving gifts, or bribes, from suitors in Chancery. When
confronted with a list of twenty-eight charges. Bacon decided ^hat defence
would be of little use. He submitted a statement, declaring ; “It
resteth therefore that, without fig-leaves, I do ingenuously confess and
acknowledge, that having understood the particulars of the charge, . . .
I find matter sufficient and full, both to move me to desert the defence,
and to move your lordships to condemn and censure me.” He admitted
receiving “gifts”, but maintained that his intentions were pure and that
his judgment had not been swayed by them; and none of the cases he
had decided was ever retried. Pointing out that it was common practice
for judges to accept gifts, he claimed he was “the justest chancellor that
had been in the five changes since Sir Nicholas Bacon’s time,’' although
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FRANCIS BACON
he also added that “it was the justest censure in Parliament that was
these two hundred years.” He was found guilty by the High Court of
Parliament which decided that he should pay a fine of £40,000, be
imprisoned in the tower at the King’s pleasure, and neither hold any
public office nor come “within the verge of the court”.
Although the sentence was not fully carried out, Bacon never again
held public office. He devoted the last years of his life to the elaboration
of his “Instauratio Magna”. His eflforts, however, were limited almost
entirely to his own writings, and he appears to have had little knowledge
of the work of other scientists. He did not know William Gilbert,
physician to both Elizabeth and James 1, nor was he a member of the
scientific association that regularly gathered at Gilbert’s house. He was a
patient of William Harvey, yet seems not to have known of his investiga-
tions; Harvey in fact later remarked that Bacon “writes philosophy like
a lord chancellor”. Bacon’s last works, except for the New Atlantis ^
written betw^een 1614 and 1617, were fitted into his over-all project. The
Novum Or^anum (1620) was to serve as the second of the six parts of
his plan. In 1623 under the title Dc Augmentis Scicniiarum he brought
out a Latin translation of the Advancement of Learning, containing many
additions designed to fill out the other parts of his system. When death
overtook him, on April 9, 1626, he was still engaged in that task.
O O O
VOLUME 31
RENE DESCARTES
Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Discourse on the M ethod
Meditations on First Philosophy
Objections Against the Meditations and Replies
The Geometry
BENEDICT DE SPINOZA
Ethics
163
RENE DESCAR I’ES
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
RENE DESCARTES, 1596-1650
THE place of honour as father of iiioclern philosophy is usually given to
Descartes : certainly many of his contemporaries regarded him as the
founder of a new philosophy. Like Bacon and others before him,
Descartes was dissatisfied with the state of knowledge in his time.
Mathematics was the only study that seemed to be well-founded. And
he thought that the difference was due to a difference in method.
Descartes resolved, accordingly, to introduce something essentially like
the mathematical method into philosophy. The first requisite was a sure
starting point, an Archimedean fulcrum, as Descartes called it. In order
to discover it he adopted from Augustine the instrument of “methodical
doubt”, rejecting everything that was open to doubt until lie could
discover something indubitable. Like Augustine, he found that though
everything else could be doubted, the reality of the doubt itself could
not. “It is easy to suppose that there is no God, no heaven, no bodies,
and that we have no hands, no feet, no body; but we cannot in the same
way conceive that we who doubt these things are not; for there is a
contradiction in thinking that that which thinks does not exist when it
thinks. Hence the conclusion I think, therefore / am is the first and most
certain of all that occurs to one who philosophizes in an orderly way.”
I’his conclusion, however, is only accepted because it is “clear and
distinct”. Hence the general rule that “whateviT I apprehend very clearly
and distinctly is true”.
Among such very clear and distinct ideas lie includes that of God, the
axioms of geometry and such already familiar “eternal truths” as ex
nihilo nihil fit, etc., which he also calls innate ideas, in ti e sense that
they are not derived from experience, but are evolved, in due course, by
the immanent power of thought itself.
Descartes by birth belonged to the lesser nobility; both of his parents
came from high legal families. He was born at La Haye, in Tourainc,
on March 31, 1596. Although a younger son, he derived an income,
sufficient to make him independent throughout his life, from the property
left him by his mother.
While still a boy Descartes was sent to the Jesuit School at La Fleche,
founded by Henry IV and “one of the most celebrated schools in
Europe”. He appears to have been at La Fleche from 1606 to 1615,
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RENE DESCARTES
following the Jesuit programme of studies which aimed at reconciling
the classical learning of the Renaissance with the scholastic philosophy
of the Middle Ages. Suffering from poor health, he was entrusted to the
special care of Father Dinet, afterwards the confessor to Louis XIII and
Louis XIV. He was excused from morning duties and allowed to stay in
bed, a habit he retained to the end of his life. After completing the full
curriculum of languages and humane letters, logic, ethics, mathematics,
physics, and metaphysics, Descartes later declared, “I found myself
embarrassed with so many doubts and errors, that it seemed to me that
the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing
discovery of my own ignorance.’’ Mathematics alone appeared to be an
exception “because of the certainty of its demonstrations and the evidence
of its reasoning”. He completed his education at the University of
Poitiers, where he took his degree in law on November 10, 1616.
Descartes spent the remainder of his youth in travelling, “resolved no
longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself, or of the
great book of the world”. Like many young Frenchmen of the time, he
enlisted as a gentleman volunteer in the amiy of Prince Maurice of
Nassau in Holland. He was still interested in mathematics, and at Breda
became a friend of Isaac Beeckman, mathematician and rector of the
college at Dort. Beeckman, after their mt'eting, noted in his diary,
“Mathematical physicists are scarce, and I myself had never had any
conversation on that topic with anybody but him.” Their discussions,
according to Descartes, turned his mind to purely theoretical probk*ms,
and when he left Holland early in 1619 to seek more active military
service in Germany, he had already completed an Essay on Ali^ebra and
a Compendium on Music, dedicated to his friend.
Descartes dated his life as a philosopher from 1619. Early in that year,
after his study of algebra and geometry had yielded what he considered
an “entirely new science”, he wrote to his Dutch friend : “My project
is unbelievably ambitious, but I cannot help feeling that I am sighting I
know not what light in the chaos of present-day geometry, and I trust
that it will help me in dispelling that most opaque darkness.” In the
autumn, after the army had gone into winter (|uarters, he retired to
a village near Ulm on the Danube to devote himself to study and
speculation. “On November 10, 1619,” he wrote, “when I was filled with
enthusiasm, I discovered the foundations of the wonderful science.” The
discovery was followed by a series of three dreams which left Descartes
165
RENE DESCARTES
the impression that “the Spirit of Tnjth had opened to him the treasures
of all the sciences”.
The experience of November 10 did not immediately alter his way of
life. Some time previously he had remarked, “As comedians put on a
mask to hide their timidity, so I go forward masked preparing to mount
the stage of the world, which up to now I have known only as a
spectator”; and for the next nine years he continued to live as a soldier
and a “gentil-homme” while preparing to apply his newly discovered
method to all knowledge. In 1622 he was back in France, frequenting
the society of the leading scientists and philosophers. Through his friends
and correspondence he was already known and esteemed for his scientific
abilities, although he had not as yet published anything. He appears to
have been reluctant to make his work public until his researches in
physics promised to yield practical results, and he felt he could no longer
“keep them concealed without greatly sinning against the law which
obliges us to procure, as far as in us lies, the general good of all
mankind”. At the same time he had occasion to discuss his research with
Cardinal Benjlle, who was so impressed that he declared Descartes was
morally obliged to make his thought known to the world. Feeling that
he could not find in Paris the leisure and quiet he needed for writing,
Descartes retired to Holland.
From 1629 until 1649 Descartes lived in Holland, leaving only for five
short visits, three to France, one to England, and another to Denmark.
He disliked dwelling for long in the same place and during that time
changed his residence twenty-four times, concerned only, it would appear,
to be in the neighbourhood of a university and a Catholic church. Most
of his more important works were written and published in Holland. He
wrote the Rulr.s for the Direction of the Mind during the «irst year, and
by 1633 had all but completed his Treatise on the World, when the
condemnation of Galileo caused him to abandon all thought of publishing
it. In 1637 he brought out the Discourse on Method with the three
“Essays” accompanying it, the Dioptric, Meteors, and Geometry.
Through Mersenne, who acted aS his personal secretary in Paris, he
circulated a manuscript of his Meditations and obtained objections to
its arguments; the nork was published with his answers to the objections
in 1641.
Descartes' philosophy became a source of controversy in Holland even
l^efore the appearance of his works, as a result of the teaching of his
166
BENEDICT DE SPINOZA
friends in the universities. Cartcsianism was attacked as subversive of
religion, and at one time Descartes was summoned before the magistrates
of Utrecht, although the matter went no further because of the inter-
vention of influential friends.
Among his friends and admirers was Princess Elizabeth, daughter of
Emperor Frederick V, then in exile in Holland. Although she was only
nineteen when the Discourse appeared, she was interested in philosophical
discussion, and Descartes, in dedicating the Principles of Philosophy
(1644) to her, declared that hers was “the only mind, as far as my
experience goes, to which both metaphysics and mathematics are easy”.
Queen Christina of Sweden also became interested in the “new
philosophy”, and, through the French Ambassador, Descartes carried on
a correspondence with her on ethical subjects, part of which was
reworded and published as the Treatise on the Passions of the Soul
(1650). Late in 1649 she persuaded Descartes to go to the Swedish court.
He was charged with the task of drawing up a statute for a proposed
academy of science and teaching philosophy to the Queen. The lessons
in philosophy were scheduled to be given three times a week at five in
the morning. Descartes contracted an inflammation of the lungs and died
after a very brief illness, on February 11, 1650.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
BENEDICT DE SPINOZA, 1632 1677
Spinoza's philosophy marks the culmination of the various tendencies
of the Renaissance. He vindicated the autonomy of reason against every
kind of authority, subordinating even the Scriptures to it. He was the
complete rationalist, the prince of rationalists. He attempted to inter-
connect the whole of reality in one organic cosmos which suftVred no
cleavage into a natural and supernatural realm, or into a work-day and
a Sabbath vista.
Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza was born in Amsterdam on the 24th of
November, 1632, the son of a Jewish family which had emigrated from
Portugal in the last decade of the sixteenth century to have the benefit
of Dutch religious toleration. His father seems to have been of some
prominence in the local Jewish community, and young Baruch was
presumably educated in the Jewish schools. Whatever may be the value
of the various reports as to the course of his education, there can be no
doubt that he early acquired unorthodox opinions, for in July, 1656,
167
BENEDICT DE SPINOZA
after some controversy, the details of which are far from clear, he was
solemnly excommunicated by the Jewish authorities for “abominable
heresies which he practises and teaches”. Cut off from his own people,
his parents dead, Spinoza was thrown on his own resources.
The next four years Spinoza spent in or near Amsterdam, associating
with members of the Collegiant, Mennonite, and Remonstrant sects, and
devoting himself to the study of Latin, Greek, and other “humane
sciences”. Probably it was also during these years that he acquired or at
least perfected the trade of lens-grinder, which provided him with a
means of support throughout the rest of his life. Leaving Amsterdam in
1660, he retired to Rijnsburg, a small village near Leyden and head-
c|uart(^rs of the Collegiant group, where, according to his first biographer,
“removed from all the obstacles which he could only overcome by flight,
he devoted himself entirely to philosophy”.
During his three years at Rijnsburg Spinoza wrote the Short Treatise
on Gody Man and his Well-Being, the Treatise on the Improvement of
the Understanding, Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy Geometrically
Demonstrated with appended Metaphysical Thoughts, and seems to have
begun work on what eventually became the Ethics, The exposition of
Descartes’ Principles was undertaken for the instruction of a group of
students, who had formed a sort of philosophical club in Amsterdam, and
it was far from representing Spinoza’s own views, as, indeed, the preface
to the published work stated. Spinoza allowed it to be published, how-
ever, hoping that “perhaps on this occasion there will be found some who
hold the first places in my country, who will desire to see the other things
which I have written and which I acknowledge as my own, and they will
make it their business that I should be able to publish them without any
risk of trouble”.
His n'putation was already growing. He had been visited by and was
corresponding with Henry Oldenburg, one of th(‘ first two secretaries of
the Royal Society of London, and through him with Robert Boyle;
through the years he became acquainted with numerous other prominent
personages of both the political aiijd intellectual worlds, among them
Christian Huygens. Possibly in order to be closer to some of these friends,
he moved to Voorburg, near The Hague, in 1663. Although the publica-
tion of his version of Descartes aroused considerable interest, it did not
produce the consequences he had desired, since publication of his other
works did not follow. While continuing to work on the Ethics, he began.
168
BENEDICT DE SPINOZA
in 1665, the composition of the Theological-Political Treatise, which was
published anonymously in 1670. Spinoza was moved to write this book
partly by a desire to assert “the liberty of philosophizing and of saying
what we think”, which “cannot be destroyed unless the peace and piety
of the state is therewith also destroyed”.
Condemnations of the Treatise immediately flew thick and fast, and in
many Spinoza’s name was mentioned. In the disorders consequent upon
the French invasion of 1672, Jan dc Witt, former Grand Pensionary of
Holland and powerful friend and protector of Spinoza, was murdered by
an angry mob. Spinoza, whose Theological Political Treatise had been
denounced as “forged in hell by a renegade Jew and the devil, and issued
with the knowledge of Mr. Jan de Witt”, was so aroused by this event
that he was with difficulty restrained from public denunciation of the
murderers. The Prince of Conde, commanding the French Army at
Utrecht, invited Spinoza to visit him, and Spinoza went, but with what
motives this visit was requested or why paid is far from certain. In any
case the effort was wasted for Conde had been called away, and Spinoza
returned to ''rhe Hague, where he found himself an object of popular
suspicion. The same year, 1673, he was offered a professorship at the
ITniversity of Heidelberg, but he gracefully declined, declaring that he
held back, “not in the hope of some better fortune, but from love of
tranquillity, which I believe I can obtain in some measure l:)y refraining
from public lectures”.
The remainder of his life was spent quietly at Uie Hague, where he
had settled in 1670. He completed his Plthics and sought to publish it,
ljut was discouraged by the complaints aroused by the mere rumour of
its being on the press. Subsequently he l)egan his Political Treatise, which
remained unfinished, and planned a Hebrew grammar. In 1676, already
seriously ill with the consumption which was to kill him, be received a
visit from Leibnitz, with whom he had already corresponded on problems
of optics, and they conversed “often and at great length”. Four months
later, on a quiet Sunday afternoon in February, 1677, while the “people
of the house” were at church, he died in the presence of an Amsterdam
physician-friend. His funeral was “attended by many illustrious person-
ages and followed by six coaches”. He was forty-four. He left a small
library, his clothes, a little furniture, some finished lenses (which “sold
pretty dear”), and his manuscripts, which were published the same year
by his friends. ^
169
JOHN MILTON
VOLUME 32
JOHN MILTON
English Minor Poems
On the Morning of Christ's
Nativity and The Hymn
A Paraphrase on Psalm 114
Psalm 136
The Passion
On Time
Upon the Circumcision
At a Solemn Musick
An Epitaph on the Marchioness
of Winchester
On the Lord Gen. Fairfax at
the Siege of Colchester
Song on May Morning
On Shakespeare, 1630
On the University Carrier
Another on the Same
fj A lie gro
Arcades
Lycidas
Comus
On the Death of a Fair Infant
At a Vacation Exercise
The Fifth Ode of Horace, Lib. I
Sonnets, 1, VIDXIX
On the New Forcers of Con-
science under the Long Par-
liament
11 Penseroso
To the Lord General Cromwell
Mar 1652
To Sir Henry Vane the
Younger
To Mr. Cyriack Skinner upon
his Blindness
Psalms, I -VI II, LXXX-LXXXVIlJ
Paradise Lost
Samson Agonistes
Areopagitica
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
JOHN MILTON, 1608 1674
MILTON, the supreme classical artist in English (and modern European)
poetry, wrote as the conscious heir of the ancients. He recreates the large
conventions and endless details of the classical epics; his images blend the
general with the particular, the vague with the concrete; and his rich
bold style is, like th it of Homer and Virgil, elevated above common
speech, though its ornate stylization includes both simplicity and complex
density of suggestion and overtone. The use of blank verse for a long
poem was a radical novelty, and Milton’s handling of it in Paradise Lost
170
JOHN MILTON
added new worlds to English prosody, providing a sharp contrast with
the baroque beauty of his earlier ode “On the Morning of Christ’s
Nativity”. Samson Agonistes shows still further development of style
beyond that of Paradise Lost. It is the only English drama on the Greek
model that can stand with those of the ancients, being in part in ruggedly
irregular (but not free) verse, that comes close to the rhythms and
intonations of speech.
Of Milton’s prose works the most popular and eloquent is the
Areopagitica, which was a remonstrance addressed to parliament and
attacking the whole system of licensing and censorship of the press.
John Milton was bom in Bread Street, London, on December 9, 1608.
“My father,” he wrote, “destined me, while yet a little boy for the study
of humane letters . . . Both at the grammar school and also under other
masters at home, he caused me to be instructed daily.” At the age of
seventeen he was admitted to Cambridge. Here his first years were
darkened by unpopularity and a quarrel with the college authorities, but
he worked diligently and by the time he received his Master of Arts
degree in 1632, his unusual powers had won him recognition and esteem.
At Cambridge he decided to abandon his original plan of entering the
service of the Church, giving as his reason that he preferred “blameless
silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with
servitude and forswearing”.
Milton’s literary gifts were apparent early. On the Morning of Christ's
Nativity was written while the poet was still at Cambridge. U Allegro and
its companion piece, II Penseroso’, two masques, Arcades and Comus;
and LycidaSj an elegy for a college friend drowned at sea, were the fruit
of six years of study, chiefly of the classics, that followed the termination
of his university career. These years, passed quietly with his father in the
rural setting of a small Buckinghamshire village, were succeeded by
fifteen months of travel in France and Italy where he was widely
received. He made a special vi.sit to Galileo, “grown old, a prisoner to
the Inquisition for thinking in Astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan
and Dominican licensers thought”.
Even in the pastoral setting of Lycidas there were unmistakable
stirrings of Milton’s concern with the problems of Church reform. When,
in 1641, this became one of the crucial issues in the rising tide of civil
war, Milton emerged from his life of study and teaching. Renouncing
his poetry for militant prose, he scourged those who favoured Episcopacy,
171
JOHN MILTON
holding them responsible for arresting the course of the Reformation.
His attack was framed in a series of pamphlets, the most elaborate of
these being a treatise entitled The Reason of Church Government urged
against Prelaty.
In 1643, when he was thirty-five, Milton married Mary Powell, the
seventeen-year-old daughter of a Cavalier family. After a few weeks she
returned to her home and seemed to have no intention of continuing the
relationship. Two years later, however, she came back, and their married
life was resumed. There were three daughters of this union and a son
who died in infancy. Mary Powell herself died in childbirth in 1654.
In the same year that his wife left him, Milton wrote his famous
treatise, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Restored to the good
of both sexes from the Bondage of Canon Law and other Mistakes,
asserting that marriage being a “private matter” could be dissolved in
cases of incompatibility. This incendiary tract and another on the same
subject happened to have been published without a licence immediately
after the enactment of a new ordinance requiring the licensing of all
works. Accordingly, proceedings against Milton were instituted. His
answer was Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing,
publislied the following year, without a licence.
With the fall of the Stuarts in 1649, Milton mobilized his energies in
the service of Cromwell and the Commonwealth. In answer to Eikon
Basilike, a work of disputed authorship purporting to be the last medita-
tions of Charles I,^ he wrote Eikon oklaste^, a point by point refutation.
Published the same year was a pamphlet entitled Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates, proving that it is lawful and hath been held so in all ages,
for any ivho have the power, to call to account a Tyrant or wicked King,
and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to death, if 'he ordinary
Magistrate have neglected or denied to do it. This was probably instru-
mental in Milton’s appointment as Latin Secretary to the Council of
State, a position he retained until 1660 The poet continued to defend
the Commonwealth against the attacks of continental writers in a series
of Latin tractates. This controversy 'raged for four years with an extra-
ordinary degree of violence and personal vituperation; Milton’s participa-
tion against the advice of physicians brought him to total blindness.
Turning once more to domestic affairs, Milton focused his attention on
church reform, advocating the complete separation of Church and State
and mutual tolerance between Protestant sects. In 1660, on the eve of
172
JOHN M 1 L r O N
the Restoration and with full awareness that his was one of the last voices
to be raised against the “readmitting of kingship”, Milton published The
Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth and a number
of other pamphlets outlining a plan for a permanent parliament.
1 he Restoration put an end to Milton’s public life and forced him to
go into hiding. Just why he was not executed with the other prominent
supporters of the Commonwealth is not clear. At the age of fifty-two,
after nineteen years of stormy political activity, he again turned to the
studious and literary pursuits of his youth. To this last period of his life
belong his greatest poetic achievements : Paradise Lost (1667); its sequel.
Paradise Regained (1671); and finally Samwn Agonistes (1671). His prose
writings of these last years include a miscellany of scholarly and historical
works and De Doctrina Christiana, the final statement of his religious
position, which by a scries of mischances was not published until 1825.
Underlying this vigorous literary activity was the loneliness of Milton’s
personal life. Totally blind at the time of Mary Powell’s death, he lived
in helpless dependence on his motherless daughters, who grew up
resenting him and careless of his comfort and wishes. This bleak home
life was interrupted briefly in 1656 by the poet’s marriage to Katherine
Woodcock, who died in childbirth less than a year later. In 1663 he
married Elizabeth Minshull, tlien but twenty-five. She seems to have
brightened his last decade, which was passed in quiet study tempered
with music and the company of friends. Weakened by the gout and other
maladies, he died on November 8, 1674, and was buried beside his father
in the church of St. Giles Cripplcgate.
o o o
VOLUME 33
BLAISE PASCAL
7 he Provincial Letters
Pensees
Preface to the Treatise on the Vacuum
New Experiments Concerning the Vacuum
Account of the Great Experiment Concerning the Equilibrium
of Fluids
173
BLAISE I’ASGAL
Treatises on the Equilibrium of Liquids and on the Weight
of the Mass of the Air
On Geometrical Demonstration
Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle
Correspondence with Fermat on the Theory of Probabilities
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
BLAISE PASCAL, 1623-1662
pascal's Provincial Letters, written in defence of Arnauld against the
Jesuits, are the first example of French prose which is at once considerable
in bulk, varied and important in matter, perfectly finished in form. They
owe not a little to Descartes, for Pascal’s indebtedness to his predecessor
is unquestionable from the literary side, whatever may be the case with
the scientific.
In the better known Pensees, the subjects dealt with by Pascal concern
more or less all the great problems of thought on what may be called
the theological side of metaphysics — the sufficiency of reason, the
trustworthiness of experience, the admissibility of revelation, free will,
foreknowledge, and the rest. Speaking generally, the tendency of the
Pensees is towards the combating of scepticism by a deeper scepticism,
or, as Pascal himself calls it, Pyrrhonism, which occasionally goes the
length of denying the possibility of any natural theology. Pascal explains
all the contradictions and difficulties' of human life and thought by the
doctrines of the Fall, and relies on faith and revelation alone to justify
each other.
As for Pascal’s scientific treatises, whether wc look at his pure
mathematical or at his physical researches, we sec the strongest marks of
a great original genius creating new ideas, seizing upon, mastering and
pursuing farther everything that was fresh and unfamiliar in his time.
We can still point to much in exact science that is absolutely his, and we
can indicate infinitely more which is. due to his inspiration.
Pascal was born at Clermont Ferrand in Auvergne, June 19, 1623.
His father, fitienne Pascal, had been trained as a lawyer in Paris and
held the post of President of the Court of Aids at Clermont. His mother,
the pious Antoinette Begon, died in 1626, leaving to her husband the
care of Gilberte, Blaise, and the baby, Jacqueline.
174
BLAISE PASCAL
In 1631 fitienne Pascal sold his post, moved to Paris, and set about
the education of his son. His method, according to Gilberte, ‘Vas to keep
the child always in advance of his work”. The boy was first to learn
to think for himself, stimulated by the observations, questions, and
conversation of his father. Later, after he had mastered Greek and Latin,
he was to be allowed to study geometry. But at the age of twelve the
boy began geometry by himself and is supposed to have achieved the
equivalent of Euclid’s first thirty-two theorems before his father noticed
his precocity.
The elder Pascal always associated with men of eminence in science
and the arts, and in his company the young Pascal was introduced to
Father Mersenne’s circle and became acquainted with Desargucs, Fermat,
and Roberval. Following a geometrical method of Desargues, Pascal
completed before he was sixteen a work on conic sections that was widely
circulated, though never published, which, according to his own account,
embraced the work of Apollonius. Though his health was seriously
affected by the intensity of his intellectual work, a few years later he
achieved a still greater reputation by his invention of the first calculating
machine.
Although the Pascal family had been regular and respectful in their
religious practice, religion was not especially important in their lives until
1646 when they became acquainted with Jansenism. Pascal, then only
tw^enty- three, had his attention directed to religious and theological
questions, and he seems to have been influential in converting his whole
family to the Jansenist version of Catholicism. His sister, Jacqueline,
decided to renounce the world, and on the death of her father in 1651
she entered the Jansenist convent of Port Royal.
Pascal himself continued his scientific and mathematical researches.
I’he same year that he began to think about Jansenism he performed
his variations on lorricelli’s experiment, which resulted in his New
Experiments concerning the Vacuum (1647). This in turn led to his
investigation of the action of fluids under pressure of air which estab-
lished his reputation as one of the founders of hydrodynamics. By 1651
he had appart'iitly completed most of the work for his Great Experiment
concerning the Equilibrmm of Fluids, although it was not published until
1663. Upon the death of his father, he laid aside to some extent his
scientific researches, frequent'd polite society with his friends, the young
Due de Roannez and the Chevalier de Mere, shared their interests, and
175
BLAISE PASCAL
read Epictetus and Montaigne. Puzzling over a problem posed by de
Mere concerning the division of stakes in a game of chance, he began to
investigate the theory of probability. His results appeared in 1654 in the
correspondence with Fennat and in the Treatise on the Arithmetical
T riangle.
By 1654 Pascal felt “an extreme aversion for the beguilements of the
world”. 'I'he contrast between his life and that of Jacqueline, whom he
visited the same year at Port Royal, intensified his dissatisfaction. His
growing decision to retire from the world was confirmed on November
23, 1654, when he experienced what is known as his “second conversion”.
"I he written memorial of that experience, which he wore thereafter as a
kind of amulet, records that from ten-thirty until twelve-thirty that night
he kiu‘w “the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of
philosophers and scientists”, and that he resolved “total submission to
Jesus Christ and to my director”. The following January he went into
retreat at Port Royal, and, although he did not actually become one of
its famous solitaries, he was henceforth id(‘ntificd with its interests.
Pascal’s talents were soon employed by the Jansenists. In 1655 Antoine
Arnauld, tlie official theologian of Port Royal, was condemned by the
Sorbonne, and it was considered expedient to enlist opinion for the
Jansenists against their Jesuit adversaries. Perhaps at the suggestion
of Arnauld himself, Pascal began his Provincial Letters, which, from
January, 1656, to April, 1657, captivated Paris by their style as well as
their pole.mic. lie was also asked to work upon a manual of geometry
for use in the Port Royal schools,^ and it is probably in connection with
this that he wrote his essay On Geometrical Demonstration.
Afflicted with ill health since infancy, Pascal’s suffering had become so
acute in 1658 that any sustained effort became increasi»-gly difficult. In
one attempt to distract his mind from a persistent toothache, he turned to
the problem of the cycloid, which had occupied his friend, Roberval, as
well as many other mathematicians of the time. Before publishing his
results, he proposed his theorems for public competition. Wallis and
Lalouere among others accepted*, the challenge, but only Pascal was able
to provide the complete solution.
Although he c^'asidered geometry the “highest exercise of the mind”,
as he wrote Fermat, “it is only a trade . . . and I am steeped in studies
so far from that mentality that scarcely do I remember that there is any
such”. After the cure of his niece at Port Royal in 1656, which was
176
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
known as the Miracle of the Holy Thorn, Pascal began reading and
collecting material for what he planned to be an Apology for the
Christian Religion. He put down his thoughts “upon the first scrap of
paper that came to hand ... a few words and very often parts of words
only”. These fragments, found after his death, compose what has come
to be known as his Pcnsees, which were first edited by the Jansenists in
1670 and constantly re-edited thereafter.
As death approached, Pascal’s life became more austere. He gave his
possessions to the poor and continually strove for complete detachment
from those he loved. “It is unjust that anyone should attach himself to
me . . . for I am not an end and aim of anyone,” he wrote on a paper
he kept always about him to fix his re.solve. In June, 1662, he gave shelter
to a poor family which developed small-pox. Rather than dispossess
them, he moved to the house of Gilbcrte, where he was seized with a
violent illness which lingered for two months. He died on August 19, at
the age of thirty- nine.
O O O
VOLUME 34
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Optics
CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS
Treatise on Light
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
SIR ISAAC NEWTON, 1642-1727
newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematical known for
short as the Principia and translated here with the English title
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, was his great work and
established his fame. Some little time elapsed before il was fully accepted
on the continent but for more than 200 years it reigned supreme, and
all theories of cosmogony were based on the principles laid down by
177
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
Newton. His mechanics guided astronomers and men of science in their
search for natural science. And if in later years Einstein carried us some
steps further and picked up some few more of the jewels which Newton
sought on the shore, Newton’s laws remain, included it may be, in a more
comprehensive statement of the truth.
Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, on Christmas Day,
1642. His father, a small farmer, died a few months before his birth, and
when in 1645 his mother married the rector of North Witham, Newton
was left with his maternal grandmother at Woolsthorpe. After having
acquired the rudiments of education at small schools close by, Newton
was sent at the age of twelve to the grammar school at Grantham, where
he lived in the house of an apothecary- By his own account, Newton was
at first an indifferent scholar until a successful fight with another boy
aroused a spirit of emulation and led to his becoming first in the school.
He displayed very early a taste and aptitude for mechanical contrivances;
he made windmills, water-clocks, kites, and sun-dials, and he is said to
have invented a four-wheel carriage which was to be moved by the
rider.
After the death of her second husband in 1656, Newton’s mother
returned to Woolsthorpe and removed her eldest son from school so that
he might prepare himself to manage the farm. But it was soon evident
that his interests were not in farming, and upon the advice of his uncle,
the rector of Burton Goggles, he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge,
where he matriculated in 1661 as one of the boys who performed menial
services in return for their expenses. Although there is no record of his
formal progress as a student, Newton is known to have read widely in
mathematics and mechanics. His first reading at Cambridge was in the
optical works of Kepler. He turned to Euclid because i^e was bothered
by his inability to comprehend certain diagrams in a book on astrology
he had bought at a fair; finding its propositions self-evident, he put it
aside as “a trifling book”, until his teacher, Isaac Barrow, induced him to
take up the book again. It appears to have been the study of Descartes’
Geometry which inspired him to do original mathematical work. In a
small commonplace book kept by Newton as an undergraduate, there arc
several articles ov angular sections and the squaring of curves, several
calculations about musical notes, geometrical problems from Vieta and
Van Schooten, annotations out of Wallis’ Arithmetic of Infinities,
together with observations on refraction, on the grinding of spherical
178
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
optic glasses, on the errors of lenses, and on the extraction of all kinds
of roots. It was around the time of his taking the Bachelor’s degree, in
1665, that Newton discovered the binomial theorem and made the first
notes on his discovery of the “method of fluxions”.
When the Great Plague spread from London to Cambridge in 1665,
college was dismissed, and Newton retired to the farm in Lincolnshire,
where he conducted experiments in optics and chemistry and continued
his mathematical speculations. From this forced retirement in 1666 he
dated his discovery of the gravitational theory : “In the same year I
began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon, . . .
compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her orb with the force
of gravity at the surface of the earth and found them to answer pretty
nearly.” At about the same time his work on optics led to his explanation
of the composition of white light. Of the work he accomplished in these
years Newton later remarked : “All this was in the two years of 1665 and
1666, for in those years I was in the prime of my age for invention and
minded Mathematics and Philosophy more than at any time since.”
On the reopening of Trinity College in 1667, Newton was elected a
fellow, and two years later, a little before his twenty-seventh birthday, he
was appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics, succeeding his friend
and teacher, Dr. Barrow. Newton had already built a reflecting telescope
in 1668; the second telescope of his making he presented to the Royal
Society in December, 1671. Two months later, as a fellow of the Society,
he communicated his discovery on light and thereby started a controversy
which was to run for many years and to involve Hooke, Lucas, Linus,
and others. Newton, who always found controversy distasteful, “blamed
my own imprudence for parting with so substantial a blessing as my quiet
to run after a shadow”. His papers on optics, the most important of
which were communicated to the Royal Society between 1672 and 1676,
were collected in the Optics (1704).
It was not until 1684 that Newton began to think of making known
his work on gravity. Hooke, Halley, and Sir Christopher Wren had
independently come to some notion of the law of gravity but were not
having any success in explaining the orbits of the planets. In that year
Halley consulted Newton on the problem and was astonished to find that
he had already solved it. Newton submitted to him four theorems and
seven problems, which proved to be the nucleus of his major work. In
some seventeen or eighteen months during 1685 and 1686 he wrote in
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SIR ISAAC NEWTON
Latin the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Newton
thought for some time of suppressing the third book, and it was only
Halley’s insistence that preserved it. Halley also took upon himself the
cost of publishing the work in 1687 after the Royal Society proved unable
to meet its cost. The book caused great excitement throughout Europe,
and in 1600 Huygens, at that time the most famous scientist, came to
England to make the personal acquaintance of Newton.
While working upon the Principles, Newton had begun to take a more
prominent part in university affairs. For his opposition to the attempt of
James II to repudiate the oath of allegiance and supremacy at the
university, Newton was elected parliamentary member for Cambridge.
On his return to the university, he suffered a serious illness which
incapacitated him for most of 1692 and 1693 and caused considerable
concern to his friends and fellow-workers. After his recovery, he left the
university to work for the government. Through his friends Locke, Wren,
and Lord Halifax, Newton was made Warden of the Mint in 1695
and four years later, Master of the Mint, a position he held until his
death.
For the last thirty years of his life Newton produced little original
mathematical work. He kept his interest and his skill in the subject; in
1696 he solved overnight a problem offered by Bernoulli in a competition
for which six months had been allowed, and again in 1716 he worked
out in a few hours a problem which Leibnitz had proposed in orde'r to
“feel the pulse of the English analysts”. He was much occupied, to his
own distress, with two mathcma4^ical controversies, one regarding the
astronomical observations of the astronomer royal, and the other with
Leibnitz regarding the invention of calculus. He also worked on revisions
for a second edition of the Principles, which appeared in 1713.
Newton’s scientific work brought him great fame. He was a popular
visitor at the Court and was knighted in 1705. Many honours came to
him from the continent, he was in correspondence with all the leading
men of science, and visitors became so frequent as to prove a serious
discomfort. Despite his fame, N.ewton maintained his modesty. Shortly
before his death, he remarked : “I do not know what I may appear to
the world, but t(' myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on
the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother
pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth
lay all undiscovered before me.”
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CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS
From an early period of his life Newton had been much interested in
theological studies and before 1690 had begun to study the prophecies.
In that year he wrote, in the form of a letter to Locke, an Historical
Account of Two Notable Corruptions of the Scriptures, regarding two
passages on the Trinity. He left in manuscript Observations on the
Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse and other works of exegesis.
After 1725 Newton’s health was much impaired, and his duties at the
Mint were discharged by a deputy. In February, 1727, he presided for
the last time at the Royal Society, of which he had been president since
1703, and died on March 20, in his eighty-fifth year. He was buried in
Westminster Abbey after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS, 1629-1695
CHRISTIAAN HUYGENs’ researches in physical optics constitute his
chief title-deed to immortality. He developed the wave theory of light
which had already been adopted by Hooke in 1665; he assumed that all
the points of a wave front originate secondary waves, the aggregate
effect of which is to n’constitute the primary disturbance at the
subsequent stages of its advance, thus accomplishing its propagation; so
that each primary wave front is the envelope of an indefinite number of
secondary undulations. This resolution of the original wave is the well-
known “Principle of Huygens”, and by its means he was able to prove
the fundamental laws of optics and to assign the correct construction
for the direction of the extraordinary ray in uniaxial crystals. These
investigations, together with his experiments on polarization, an* recorded
in his Treatise on Lioht.
The family into which Christiaan Huygens was born, on April 14,
1629, at The Hague, was one of the most eminent in both the political
and literary development of the Dutch Renaissance. The father of the
scientist, Gonstantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuylichem, was secretary of state
for three successive Princes of Orange; he carried out many diplomatic
mission.s, particularly to England where he was knighted in 1621. While
there he became the friend of Donne, whose poetry he began translating
into Dutch. As one of the leaders of the Amsterdam school, he was the
intimate friend of Vondel, the Dutch national poet, and was himself
Holland’s foremost classical poet.
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CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS
Sir Constantijn, who was a distinguished Latinist, a musician, and a
mathematician, took upon himself the preliminary instruction of his sons,
Christiaan, the second son, was trained as a boy in languages, drawing,
and music. At thirteen he began the study of mechanics, which together
with mathematics soon became his chief interest. But before devoting his
entire attention to these subjects he was sent to Leyden to study law with
Vinnius, who later dedicated his famous commentary on the Institutes
to him. In 1646 Huygens transferred to Breda, where his father directed
the new university, and two years later he took his degree in law. In
both places he continued his pursuit of mathematics, particularly with
Van Schooten, who included some of Huygens’ notes in his edition of
Descartes’ Geometry.
At seventeen Huygens communicated his first mathematical discovery
to Mersenne, who introduced him to the learned world as “the Dutch
Archimedes”, and soon after, he was in correspondence with the leading
scientists of Europe. Descartes, on being shown a mathematical paper of
Huygens, declared his conhdence that “he will excel in this science
wherein I see hardly anyone who knows anything”. Although Descartes
frequented Sir Constantijn’s house, it does not appear that he ever met
his son. I'hey exchanged letters, Descartes called Huygens “a son of his
own blood”, and when Huygens was travelling in Denmark in 1649 with
the Count of Nassau, he regretted that time and weather did not permit
his crossing over to Sweden to visit Descartes, who was then living there
at the invitation of Queen Christina.
At the age of twenty-one Huygens published his first works on
mathematics, dealing with the quadrature of conic sections, and in 1654
he made the closest approximation so far obtained of the area of the
circle. Two years later he sent to Van Schooten his woik on probability,
which while recognizing the priority of Pascal’s and Fermat’s treatment,
constituted the first treatise on the subject when published in a volume
of Van Schooten’s mathematical writings. At the same time Huygens was
working with his elder brother on astronomy. They found a new method
of grinding and polishing lenses- which overcame the defects of spherical
and chromatic aberration and enabled them to construct an improved
telescope. Huygtn’s first observations yielded the discovery of the Orion
nebula and of a new satellite to Saturn as well as a truer description of
the rings about that planet. The need for an exact measure of time in
observing the heavens led Huygens to the invention of the pendulum-
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CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS
clock, which was presented to the states-general in 1657 and was followed
a year later by a description of the requisite mechanism.
Huygen’s reputation now became international. As early as 1655 the
University of Angers had distinguished him with an honorary degree of
doctor of laws. In 1663, on the occasion of a visit to England, he was
elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Two years later, on the establish-
ment of the French Royal Academy of Sciences, Colbert invited him to
be its first foreign resident, and for the next fifteen years Huygens made
his home in France. He received a handsome pension from Louis XIV
and lived at Paris in the Bibliotheque du Roi. Although Huygens disliked
the world of rank, wealth, and fashion, he did not live the life of a
recluse in Paris; he even wrote some verses to the celebrated Ninon
de Lenclos. Yet the greater part of his efforts, despite delicate health,
were spent in intense scientific research. His treatises on “Dioptrics” and
the concussion of clastic bodies were hailed not only for their discoveries,
but also for the style in which they were presented, and Newton claimed
that among modern writers he had most closely approximated the style
of the ancients. His greatest work, the Horologium oscillatorium (1673),
dealt with the problems raised by the pendulum-clock, and contained
original discoveries sufficient for several important treatises.
Twice during his residence in Paris, Huygens returned to Holland in
the hope that his native air would restore his health, and in 1681,
perhaps because of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he severed his
connections and left France. Upon his return to Holland, Huygens took
up again the study of optics, physics, and astronomy. He had always
been interested in useful inventions and, in addition to the pendulum-
clock, had already improved the air pump and the barometer, provided
the first idea of the micrometer, and introduced the use of a spiral hand
for a watch-spring. In Holland he turned again to the construction of
telescopes. Using lenses of long focal distance mounted on poles, he
produced what were called “serial telescopes”. He also succeeded in
constructing an almost perfectly achromatic eye-piece, still known by his
name. His researches in optics finally led him to publish in 1690 his
Treatise on Light, which had been written in French in 1678 while at
Paris. In response to the need for some means of representing the solar
system, Huygens constructed a “planetary machine” capable of showing
the motions of the planets. It was apparently also at this time that he
wrote the imaginative work found among his posthumous papers called
183
JOHN LOCKE
CosmotheoroSj and translated into English under the title, "The celestial
worlds discovered, or conjectures concerning the inhabitants, plants, and
productions of the worlds in the planets”
Worn out by his great and varied activity and the burden of an
enormous correspondence, Huygens died at The Hague, on June 8, 1695,
at the age of sixty-six.
O O O
VOLUME 35
JOHN LOCKE
A Letter Concerning Toleration
Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
GEORGE BERKELEY
1 he Principles of Human Knowledge
DAVID HUME
An Elnquiry Concerning Human Understanding
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
JOHN LOCKE, 1632 1704
THE Essay Concerning Human Understanding eml)odies Locke’s phil-
osophy. It was the hrst extensive attempt to estimate critically the
certainty and the adequacy of human knowledge when «.onf rented with
(Jod and the Universe. Excluding from his enquiry “the physical
consideration of the mind” he sought to make a faithful report, based
on an introspective study of consciousness, as to how far a human
understanding of the universe can reach. It was Locke’s distinction to
present to the modern world in his own “historical plain method”,
perhaps the largest assortment ever made by any individual of facts
characteristic of human understanding : his mission was to initiate modern
criticism of the foundations and limits of our knowledge.
Locke was born on August 29, 1632, the eldest child of a respectable
Somerset family of Puritan sympathies. His father was a lawyer, small
184
JOHN LOCKE
landowner, and captain of a volunteer regiment in the parliamentary
army. Locke’s early education was carefully tended by his father at their
rural home at Beluton, near Bristol; and it w'as probably through the
influence of the elder Locke’s parliamentary patrons that he obtained a
place at Westminster School, where he remained from his fourteenth to
his twentieth year. In 1652 he won a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford.
At the time Locke entered Oxford, Cromwell was chancellor, and the
Puritans were in control. The curriculum however was still the traditional
one of grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, and moral philosophy. Locke
later declared that he “had lost a great deal of time at the commence-
ment of his studies, because the only philosophy then known at Oxford
was the “Peripatetic”, and his friend. Lady Masham, reported that he
often told her that “he had so small satisfaction there from his studies . . .
that this discouragement kept him from being any very hard student”.
Nevertheless, after taking his bachelor’s degree in 1656, he remained at
Oxford to obtain his master’s degree and then became successively
lecturer in Greek, reader in rhetoric, and finally in 1664 censor of moral
philosophy. But such activity did not fully occupy his attention. The
reading of Descartes, which gave him “a relish of philosophical things”,
and the founding at Oxford of the Royal Society led him to begin
experimenting in chemistry and meteorology. Soon afterwards he began
the study of medicine and by 1666 he was engaged in occasional practice,
although he never took a doctor’s degree.
The commonplace books kept between his twenty-eighth and thirty-
fourth year show that it was also at Oxford that Locke became interested
in political questions. His citations are concerned with such topics as the
cc^nstitution of society, the relation of Church and State, and the
importance of religious toleration. In 1665 he interrupted his medical
studies to serve on a diplomatic mission to Brandenburg. On his return
he considered going to Spain as secretary of the embassy, although he
eventually declined the oflfer. In 1667 he abandoned the academic life
for the political world of London and “the society of great wits and
ambitious politicians”. This action came about largely as a result of an
accidental meeting and ensuing friendship with Lord Ashley, Chancellor
of the Exchequer, who persuaded Locke to enter his household as
personal physician, general adviser, and confidant. For the next sixteen
years Locke served his patron in various capacities. He saved Ashley’s
life by operating on an “imposthume in the breast”, prescribed for the
185
JOHN LOCKE
servants, helped to arrange the marriage of the eldest son, and drew up
the “Fundamental Constitutions of the Government of Carolina”, a
colony of which Ashley was a “lord protector”. When Ashley was made
first Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Chancellor in 1672, Locke became
“secretary of presentations” and secretary of the council of trade.
Locke’s many practical duties in London did not prevent him from
pursuing his scientific and philosophical interests. His medical studies
provided the basis for a close friendship with Sydenham, and Locke
sometimes accompanied him on his professional calls. He kept up his
early interest in chemistry with his friend, Robert Boyle, and upon the
latter’s death, edited his General History of the Air, He frequently held
infonnal gatherings for the discussions of questions in science and
theology. On one such occasion, when meeting with “five or six friends”,
a question arose concerning the “limits of human understanding”. Locke
undertook to provide an answer, and what was thus “begun by chance,
was continued by entreaty, written by incoherent parcels, after long
intervals of neglect resumed again as humour and occasions permitted”,
and published after almost twenty years as An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding.
Locke’s fortunes were closely linked with those of Shaftesbury, and
when the Earl fell from power in 1675, Locke withdrew from public life.
He went to France, where he remained four years, during which he
sought to restore his health, which had never been good, and to work
upon his Essay. At Montpellier he was the neighbour of the Earl of
Pembroke, later also the patron 'of Berkeley, to whom he dedicated his
work. When Shaftes]:)ury again arose to power in 1679, Locke returned
to England and resumed his former activities. Although he seems to have
played little part in Shaftesbury’s plotting with Monmouth against the
King which led to the Earl’s exile and death, he fell under royal
suspicion, and in 1683 he found it safer to seek refuge in Holland.
Fearing arrest at the insistence of the English government, he lived at
first in Amsterdam under the assumed name of Dr. Van der Linden. He
rapidly formed congenial associations, especially among the Remonstrants,
with whom Spinoza had also lived, and settled down to complete the
Essay. In 1687 he made his first appearance as an author by publishing
an abstract of it in the Bibliotheque Universelle of his friend, Le Glerc.
It seems likely that he was involved to some extent in planning the
Revolution of 1688. He had friends among the English refugees, he was
186
GEORGE BERKELEY
known to William of Orange, and he returned to England in 1689 in the
same ship which carried William’s wife, Princess Mary.
Although Locke was offered several responsible positions in the new
r%ime, he preferred to devote himself to his writings and accepted only
the comparatively light task of commissioner of appeals. Within four
years he completed his most important works. The Letter Concerning
Toleration, which had been written and published in Latin in Holland,
appeared in English the year of his return. In 1690 the Two Treatises
on Civil Government and the Essay appeared, and three years later the
Thoughts on Education.
Prompted by ill health and dissatisfaction with the course of public
affairs, Locke retired in 1691 to Oates Manor in Essex, the home of
Lady Masham, daughter of Ralph Gudworth, the Cambridge Platonist.
He continued to work at the Essay and in 1694 published a second
edition; a third and a fourth edition were also brought out during his
lifetime. The Essay and Letter Concerning Toleration involved him in a
long series of controversies regarding the religious implications of his
teaching. The Second and Third Letter Concerning Toleration, the
pamphlets interchanged with Bishop Stillingfleet of Worcester, and the
Reasonableness of Christianity belong to these years, as docs the series of
letters to Isaac Newton. He continued to be occupied with political
problems and expressed his views on currency reform in his Observations
on Silver Money and Further Considerations on Raising the Value of
Money. LJpon the establishment of commission on trade and plantations,
Locke reluctantly accepted a post as one of the commissioners. This
office absorbed all the time his health permitted him to spend in London
from 1696 to 1700, when constant illness compelled his resignation.
Locke’s last years were spent quietly in retirement at Oates. He
occupied himself with biblical studies and wrote a commentary on St.
Paul’s Epistles. He was in the midst of writing a Fourth Letter on
Toleration when he died on October 28, 1704. He was buried near Oates
by the parish church of High Laver.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
GEORGE BERKELEY, 1685-1753
THE philosopher (xeorge Berkeley set himself the task of opposing the
mechanistic methods of explanation generally accepted in his time in
consequence of the fashion set by the great pioneers of modern science.
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GEORGE BERKELEY
He feared that that way lay materialism and atheism. But it was Locke’s
Essay Concerning Human Understanding that served him chiefly as the
text of his criticism, especially in his Principles of Human Knowledge
and the Three Dialogues,
Locke had maintained that our ideas of primary qualities resemble
their external objects, whereas those of secondary qualities have no
corresponding objects. Berkeley objected that both kinds of ideas arc
equally dependent on the mind and there is no more need of justification
to assume the objective existence of primary than of secondary qualities.
Moreover, it is absurd to suppose that an idea can resemble anything
that is not an idea. And if it is superfluous to assume the objective
existence of primary qualities corresponding to certain ideas of sensation,
it is even more unnecessary to assume, with Locke, the independent
existence of material substances of which, strictly speaking, we have no
idea at all. For Berkeley the ideas are the objects of knowledge, and
there is nothing beyond them.
The net result of Berkeley’s speculations is an idealist philosophy
according to which the only realities are God, other spirits or minds
which He has created, and the innumerable ideas which He has produced
and arranged for us to apprehend in certain sequences arbitrarily decreed
by Him.
Berkeley, the eldest son of an English settler in Ireland, w^as born on
March 12, 1685, probably at Dysert Castle, near Thomastown in County
Kilkenny. At the age of eleven he was enrolled in Kilkenny school and
because of his precocity was assigned to the second class. At fifteen he
entered Trinity College, Dublin. He gained a scholarship in 1702, took
his bachelor’s degree two years later, and upon completing his master’s
degree in 1707, he obtained a junior fellowship, alter passing the
examination with great distinction. In 1709 he was ordained deacon in
the Anglican church.
The Common Place Book he kepi during these early years at Trinity
College reveal that Berkeley first became interested in philosophy through
the influence of Newton, Boylej and Locke. In 1705 he had formed a
society to discuss the “new philosophy”, and his notes indicate that he
was soon convinced that he had discovered a “new principle” which
enabled him to overcome the difficulties he encountered in Locke. His
first publications were two short mathematical treatises, which appeared
in 1707. His own philosophical doctrine was applied for the first time
188
GEORGE BERKELEY
in An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) and given full
statement a year later in his Treatise Concerninfi the Principles of
Human Knowledge. His concern with moral and social problems became
evident at this time in a series of sermons he delivered in the college
chapel, which were subsequently published as A Discourse on Passive
Obedience.
In 1713 Berkeley obtained a leave of absence from his academic
responsibilities and went to England. He intended to arrange for the
publication of his Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, written
in answer to objections against his Principles, and also to “make acquaint-
ance with men of merit”. In London his charm and wit were instantly
appreciated. Swift introduced him at court and recorded the event in his
journal : “That Mr. Berkeley is a very ingenious man, and I have
mentioned him to all the Ministers, and I will favour him as much as I
can.” Pope made him the gift of “a very ingenious new poem”, Steele
invited him to write for his paper, the Guardian, and Addison entertained
him with wine at the premiere of his Cato.
Most of the time between 1714 and 1721 Berkeley spent in travel on
the continent. Swift secured him an appointment as Chaplain to Lord
Peterborough, special ambassador for the coronation of the King of
Sicily, and he spent the greater part of 1714 in France and Italy. His
return at the end of that year coincided with the fall from power of his
friends, and, being unable to obtain an appointment to his liking, he
accepted another opportunity to travel on the continent, this time as
tutor to the son of the Bishop of Clogher, who had presided at his
ordination. Berkeley held this position from 1716 until 1721. He spent
most of the time in Italy where, in addition to his tutorial work, he
explored antiquities and art treasures and devoted considerable attention
to the observation of natural phenomena. On one occasion he climbed
Vesuvius while it was t'rupting, and his notes on the event were later
published in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society.
Berkeley returned to England in 1721 to find the country in the midst
of the social crisis caused by the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. He
f)ublished his view of the affair in the Essay towards prc7wnting the
Ruin of Great Britain, in which he proposed extensive sumptuary laws,
encouragement of the arts, and return to a simpler life. Soon afterwards,
he conceived his project for the encouragement of religion among the
American natives by the establishment of a college in Bermuda. To his
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GEORGE BERKELEY
friend, Lord Percival, to whom he had dedicated the Theory of Vision,
he sent his verses prophesying, “Westward the course of Empire takes its
way,” and in a letter declared his determination “to spend the rest of
my days in the island of Bermuda”. In 1723 Esther Vanhomrigh, Swift’s
“Vanessa”, somewhat mysteriously left him half of her property, amount-
ing to four thousand pounds, although Berkeley claimed that she was “a
perfect stranger”. A year later he was appointed to the rich Deanery of
Derry. 7'he resulting improvement of his fortunes made it possible for
him to pursue his Bermuda project with greater vigour. In 1724 he
returned to London and published his pamphlet entitled A Proposal for
the Better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations and for
Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity. In addition to obtain-
ing many private subscriptions for his plan, he persuaded Parliament to
promise a grant of twenty thousand pounds, and obtained a royal charter
for his projected college.
In 1728 he married the daughter of the chief justice of Ireland and
with three companions departed for America. The group settled first at
Newport, Rhode Island, with the aim of buying lands and stock to supply
the college at Bermuda and of encouraging commerce between the island
and the mainland. But with Berkeley away from London, Parliament
showed no inclination to forward the promised grant, and in 1731 it
became clear that the project was a failure. During the rest of his sojourn
in America, Berkeley devoted himself to study, preached occasionally, and
wrote his Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher. On his departure he left
his farm, house, and library to Yale. Although his own plans had failed, he
continued to follow with lively interest the progress of education in America
and on several later occasions donated books to Yale and Harvard.
For the last last eighteen years of his life Berkeley was Bishop of Cloyne
in Ireland. The year he became bishop he published his Analyst (1734),
in which he criticized Newtonian mathematics and suggested certain
corrections. Between 1735 and 1737 he published a series of papers
entitled The Querist, which dealt with the welfare of Ireland. The
plague years of 1740 and 1741 led him to publish his Siris, or a Chain
of Philosophical Reflexions and Enquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-
Water (1744). He had encountered the medicinal use of tar-water while
in America, and in this work he endeavoured to account for its allegedly
universal curative powers by means of certain neo-Platonic doctrines,
which he had studied during his stay in Rhode Island.
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DAVID HUME
Berkeley’s health, which had begun to fail, was seriously affected by
the death of his eldest son in 1750. He had long wanted to retire to
Oxford and now in order to be with his younger son, who was studying
there, he took the extraordinary step of resigning his bishopric. The
King refused to accept his resignation and declared that he might live
where he chose but he must die a bishop. Berkeley moved to Oxford in
1752. He died there the following year on January 14 and was buried in
Christ Church.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
DAVID HUME, 1711-1776
DAVID HUME pursued the problems and methods of Locke to their
extreme conclusion, in the sense that he showed that the kind of
empiricism which Locke had advocated leads to positivism in science
and scepticism in philosophy. It is one of the ironies of history that the
book which Berkeley wrote in order to prevent or to cure scepticism
actually infected Hume with it. Berkeley had contended that there is not
sufficient evidence for assuming material substances or material causality,
as we have no ideas of either; but he defended both the substantial
nature and causal power of Spirits. In his Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding Hume argued that the same reasons which led Berkeley
to reject material substances and material causes are also valid against the
assumption of mental substances and mental causes.
Hume was born at Edinburgh on April 26, 1711, the younger son in a
good but not wealthy family. His father, “who passed for a man of
parts”, died when Hume was still a child, and he was brought up by his
mother at the family estate of Nincwells, near Berwick. About 1723
he entered the University of Edinburgh, and, according to his Auto-
biography, “passed through the ordinary course of education with
success”. His letters show that when he returned to Ninewells about three
years later he had acquired a fair knowledge of Latin, slight acquaintance
with Greek, and a literary taste inclining to “books of reasoning and
philosophy, and to poetry and the polite authors”. His studious disposition
led his family to believe that law was the proper profession for him, but
he “found an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of
philosophy and general learning; and w^hile they fancied I was poring
upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was
secretly devouring”.
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DAVID HUME
A too “ardent application” to his studies threatened his health, and in
1734, determined to try a complete change of scene and occupation,
Hume entered a business house in Bristol. In a few months he found “the
scene totally unsuitable”, and he set out for France, resolved “to make
a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain un-
impaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible,
except the improvement of my talents in literature”. He visited Paris,
resided for a time at Rheirns, and then settled at La Fleche, where Des-
cartes had gone to school. During his three years in P'rance he wrote the
Treatise of Human Nature, and in 1737 returned to London to attend to
its publication. It appeared in three volumes during 1739-40. Contrary to
his expectations, his first effort “fell dead-born from the press without
reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.”
Upon the failure of his book Hume retired to Ninewells and devoted
himself to study, mainly in politics and economics. In 1741 he published
the first volume of his Essays, Moral and Political, which enjoyed such
success that a second edition was brought out the following year. At that
time he also issued a second volume of essays. He continued to look
about for a position that would secure him independence, and in 1744
tried hard to obtain the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh. Failing
in this attempt, he accepted the post of tutor to the Marquis of Annan-
dale, who had been declared a lunatic by the court. Upon his dismissal
a year later, Hume accepted the office of secretary to General St. Glair,
a distant relative, who was engaged in an “expedition which was at first
meant against Canada, but ended in an incursion on the coast of France”.
After the failure of this venture he accompanied the general on a
“military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin” on which he
“wore the uniform of an officer and was introduced at these courts as
aide-de-camp to the general”. He remarks that these two years (1746-48),
“almost the only interruption which my studies have received during the
course of my life”, enabled him to return to Scotland “master of near a
thousand pounds”.
During his absence from England in 1748 his Philosophical Essays was
published. Afterwards entitled An Enquiry concerning Human Under-
standing, it Was a re-casting of the first part of the T rcatise by which he
hoped to gain a larger audience. But the first reception of the work was
little more favourable than that accorded to the Treatise. In 1751 he
re-cast the third book of the Treatise and published it as An Enquiry
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DAVID HUME
concerning the Principles of Morals. That same year he was again
unsuccessful in his attempt to obtain a professor’s chair at Edinburgh,
this time as the successor to his friend, Adam Smith, in the chair of logic.
1 he following year, despite accusations of heresy, he received the post of
librarian at the Advocates’ Library, which though small in salary provided
excellent facilities for literary work.
During his years as librarian Hume attained his greatest success as a
man of letters. He continued his essays and in 1757 brought out the
Four Dissertations, one of which was devoted to the Natural History of
Religion. I’he Dialogues concerning Natural Religion were also com-
pleted, but on the advice of friends publication was postponed until after
his death. Most of his efforts, however, were devoted to the writing of
history, to which he may have turned his attention because of the success
of his political and economic essays. Adam Smith had recommended that
he begin with Henry VII, but he chose to start with the period of
James I, ‘an epoch when, I thought, the misrepresentations of faction
began chiefly to take place”. Although Hume was disappointed })y the
reception of the first volume^, which appeared in 1753, his History of
England was well received, and within a few years it brought the author
a larger revenue than had ever before been obtained in his country from
literature. The work was completed by 1761, although Hume continued
to revise it throughout most of the remainder of his life, excising from it
all the “villainous seditious Whig strokes” and “plaguy prejudices of
Whiggism” that he could detect.
Although “not only independent but opulent . . . and determined
never more to set foot out of” his native country, Hume in 1763,
accepted an invitation to go to Paris as acting secretary of the embassy.
For three years he enjoyed Parisian society. Meeting with men and
women of all ranks and stations, he noted “the more I resiled from their
excessive civilities, the more I was loaded with them”. He returned home,
convinced “there is a real satisfaction in living at Paris”. Rousseau
accompanied him, persuaded by Hume to seek shelter in England. The
association was of short duration; it ended in a violent and sensational
quarrel for which Rousseau seems to have been largely to blame. Hume,
after serving as under secretary at the Foreign Office for a year (1767™68),
retired to Edinburgh, where he built himself a new house, and settled
down “with the prospect of enjoying long my ease, and of seeing the
increase of my reputation”.
193
JONATHAN SWIFT
In the spring of 1775 Hume was stricken with a troublesome though
not painful illness. Preparing himself for “a speedy dissolution”, he wrote
a short autobiography, in which he drew his own character. “I am,” he
wrote, “or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of
myself; which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments), I was, I
say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, and of an open,
social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible
of enmity; and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love for
literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstand-
ing my frequent disappointments.”
A visit to Bath in 1776 seemed at first to relieve his sickness, but on
the return journey more alarming symptoms developed, his strength
rapidly sank, and, little more than a month later, he died in Edinburgh
on August 25, 1776.
O O O
VOLUME 36
JONATHAN SWIFT
Gulliveys Travels
LAURENCE STERNE
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy ^ Gent.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
JONAl’HAN SWIFT, 1667-1745
OF the many English writers whose work shows traces of the journalism
of the day the most emphatic and the ablest is Jonathan Swift. He was
a man of subtle wit and wide reatling. Yet the greater part of his output
was devoted to deriding the claims of the intellect. Swift’s life was one
of disappointed ambition. As ’a political writer he was courted by Whigs
and Tories in turn; he had hopes of an English prebend; and the final
award of the Heanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin, was less than he thought
he deserved. Such disappointments, along with recurring ill health, made
his temper somewhat morose, and awareness of this has led critics to see
in his writings a misanthropy which is not there. Especially is this the
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JONATHAN SWIFT
case where criticism of Gulliver^ s T ravels — the work which means Swift
to the world at large — is concerned. Yet to call him the “master of
hatred” on the strength of his claim (in a letter to Pope) to hate “all
nations, professions and communities” is absurd, for in this he is only
expressing his dislike of hysteria. To accuse him of “savage disgust”
because he borrows man’s less agreeable physical functions to symbolize
man’s moral shortcomings is to forget that this has been the allowed
method of satire in all ages. Nobody loved an ironist, least of all one who
makes the reader so acutely aware of his failings. Swift is aware of this.
That he does not see himself as a Houyhnhnm and the rest of mankind
as Yahoos is evident from the fourth book of Gulliver's Travels, where
(julliver’s ambiguous position is in some measure a representation of
Swift’s own. Of Swift’s prose style Johnson allows only “that he
understands himself; and his readers understand him”. Johnson prefers
Addison, for reasons which he makes clear, but Swift is the greater
master. In Addison’s style there is always a hint of calculation intervening
between the thought and the utUTance. Swift’s words flow direct from
Swift’s mind. His invention — as any reader of Gulliver's Travels will
confirm — is inexhaustible : he could write brilliantly on any subject.
Shortly after the death, in 1658, of Thomas Swift, Vicar of Goodrich,
his five sons migrated to Ireland in hope of restoring the family fortunes,
lost through their father’s support of the losing side during the Civil War.
I'he eldest son, Godwin, gained wealth and, when his younger brother
died, leaving a widow and two children without any source of income,
he became their support. The second of these children was Jonathan
Swift, born in Dublin on November 30, 1667. At the age of six, he was
sent to Kilkenny Grammar School and later to Trinity College by his
Uncle Godwin. Swift attributed the fact that he was “stopped of his
degree for dullness and insufficiency” to his uncle’s ill-treatment of him,
which, as he put it, caused him to become so “discouraged and sunk in
spirits” that he neglected his studies. P>y a special provision, he obtained
his degree from this institution in February 1685.
In 1689, his uncle having died insolvent, Swift went to England and
entered the employment of the essayist and diplomat. Sir William
lemple, in his retirement at Moor Park. After “growing into some
confidence” with his employer and obtaining an M.A. degree from
Oxford, his lack of advancement rankled. He left Temple, took orders
in Ireland, and was appointed to the parish ot Kilroot near Belfast. Two
195
JONATHAN SWIFT
years later he resigned and returned to Moor Park, where he remained
until his patron’s death.
Swift’s ten years’ connection with lemplc had acquainted him with
men and affairs and afforded him the opportunity for extensive reading
and writing. “He writ and burnt, and writ again upon almost all manner
of subjects,” even composing Pindaric poems in the manner of Cowley
which elicited Dryden’s comment : “Cousin Swift, you will never be a
poet.” Before Temple’s death, Swift had written two satires, The Battle
of the Books and The Tale of a Tub, which, however, were not published
until 1704.
After Temple’s death. Swift found another patron in the Lord Justice
of Ireland, Lord Berkeley, but again he was disappointed in his hope of
preferment and forced to content himself with the income from three
small parishes. The only one which had a church was Larocor with its
congregation of fifteen pex)ple, “most of them gentle and all of them
simple”. Here Swift established himself. To Larocor he invited Esther
Johnson, the “Stella” to whom he addressed his Journal, and her com-
panion, Rebecca Dingley. Esther Johnson had been a dependant of Sir
William Temple, and Swift had taught her to read and write when they
resided at Moor Park together; she had been eight, he, twenty- two.
Swift’s life in Ireland did not absorb his energies or satisfy his
ambitions. He travelled often to London where he frequented the
coffee houses and made the acquaintance of Addison, Steele, Pope, and
Congreve. Like them, his sympathies were with the Whig party and his
first political pamphlet, published in 1701, was actually attributed to
various Whig leaders. Swift’s discovery that the Whigs did not intend to
use their power to aid the Church was the occasion for a letter and three
tracts, the most famous being the Argument to prove th.'t the abolishing
of Christianity in England may, as things now stand, be attended with
some inconveniences (1708).
In 1710, the Tory, Robert Harley, became Chancellor of the Exchequer
and shrewdly welcomed Swift “with the greatest respect and kindness
imaginable”. Soon afterwards ‘Swift became the editor of the 'Lory
w’eckly, the Examiner, His pen made him a power in the State; he
warned Harley “never to appear cold” to him; at the Court, he boasted
to Stella, “I am so proud I make all the lords come up to me.” With
the accession of George I, the Tory Ministry fell, and Swift retired
to the deanery of St. Patrick’s in Dublin, bestowed on him by Queen
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JONATHAN SWIFT
Anne instead of the English appointment he would have preferred as
recompense for his services.
While in London Swift entered deeply into the literary life of the
time. He invented Sir Isaac Bickerstaff, who predicted and announced
the death of the almanac-maker and astrologer, John Partridge, so
convincingly that the man was obliged to issue a special almanac to
assure his clients that he was still alive. At the time his political activity
was at its height, Swift was treasurer of a socii'ty of wits and statesmen,
known as the Brothers; a contributor to the Taller, Spectator, and
Intelligencer; joint founder with Pope and Arbuthnot of the Scriblerus
Club. To this period belong a miscellany of works in prose and verse
and his Journal to Stella, a series of daily letters to the two ladies in
Ireland, minutely recording his busy life and his inmost thoughts with an
admixture of tenderness, humour and playfulness.
In 1714 Swift returned to Ireland, where, to his discomfort, he was
later follow^ed by Esther Vanhomrigh, a young girl he had come to
know in London. Although he undoubtedly preferred the company of
Stella, his relations to both ladies remained ambiguous; it is not known
whether he ever married Stella or whether he ever saw her except in
the presence of Mrs. Dingley. The history of his attachment to Miss
Vanhomrigh is preserved in the poem, Cadenus (Decanus) and Vanessa,
and in their correspondence, later edited by Sir Walter Scott. At length
Vanessa, in 1723, took the despairing step of writing to Stella, or to
Swift, demanding to know whether they were married. Swift returned
the letter and left Vanessa for ever without uttering a word. Witliin a
few weeks Vanessa was dead. Stella died five years later.
Swift hated the Irish and always considered himself an “Englishman
dropped in Indand”, but, as a “fighter for human liberty”, he was
outraged by the results of English misrule. Once again he took up his
pen to combat the Whigs, this time on behalf of the Irish. Gradually
there collected around him the nucleus of an Irish party which gained
popular support as a result of the six famous Drapicr Letters (1724),
wherein Swift protested against the scandalous patent accorded to
William Wood for supplying Ireland with a coinage of copper halfpence.
His Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from
Being a Burden to their Parents or the Country (1729), by the expedient
of eating them, further aroused the national spirit. Swift became revered
as a leading Irish patriot, a reputation he felt he in no way deserved
197
LAURENCE STERNE
“because what 1 do is owing to perfect rage and resentment, and the
mortifying sight of slavery, folly, and baseness about me, among which
I am forced to live”. A product of the period of his Irish banishment
was Travels Into Several Reryiote Nations of the World by Lemuel
Gulliver, published in 1726.
During his last years Swift suffered acute physical torture from an
ailment that had long plagued him with giddiness and deafness. In
March 1742, it bt'came necessary to appoint guardians of his person and
estate. After a paralytic stroke in September of the same year, he sank
into complete mental apathy, which lasted until his death on October 19,
1745. In his will he made provision for his intennent in St. Patrick’s in
the same coffin as Stella “as privately as possible and at twelve o’clock
at night”, for the disposition of his fortune to found a lunatic asylum
in Dublin, for the Latin inscription on his black marble tombstone “in
large letters, deeply cut and strongly gilded”, commemorating his release
from the “savage indignation” that could no longer “lacerate his heart”.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
LAURENCE STERNE, 1713-1768
THE development of the English novel in the eighteenth century was
rapid and diverse. Throughout its development up to 1760, however, it
had retained basically the same framework of a more or less chronological
sequence of events leading to an outcome foreseen by the writer. It
remained for Laurence Sterne to complete the process by radically
altering the framework in the first impressionistic novel. Tristram Shandy
presents life not as a scries of cause and effect but as a flux of
irrelevances without relationship except in the consciousness of the
person experiencing them. 'Lhe coherence of events thus depends solely
on the associations they set up in the minds of Sterne’s characters; and
since, according to Locke, the association of ideas is irrational, the
pattern of events must be equally so. In his brilliant explorations of
absentmindedness Sterne found *the means to both pathos and comedy,
but it is in comedy (as when the birth of the hero results from an
association of id* is in his father’s mind) that the technique is seen at its
most effective.
The Treaty of Utrecht having been concluded, Roger Sterne with his
British regiment landed in Clonmel, Ireland, where his wife joined him.
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LAURENCE STERNE
A few days later, on November 24, 1713, their son, Laurence, was born.
My birthday,*’ Laurence Sterne records in the short autobiographical
sketch written for his daughter, “was ominous to my poor father, who
was the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke and
sent adrift into the wide world with a wife and two children.”
Until Roger Sterne’s death in 1731, the Sterne family “decamped
bag and baggage * every time new orders were issued to his regiment.
Children were born and died, one on an expedition from Bristol to
Hampshire, another in the barracks at Dublin, two others at Carrick-
fergus. “My father’s children were not made to last long,” Sterne
comments. At the siege of Gibraltar, Roger Sterne was run through the
body in a duel “about a goose”. Although he survived, it impaired his
constitution; he contracted the “country fever, which made a child of
him” and one day “he sat down in an armchair and breathed his last”.
Sterne’s memoir is permeated with a tender regard for the “little smart
man” who was his father; for his patience in the face of fatigue and
disappointments “of which it pleased God to give him full measure”;
and for the innocence of his intentions, which caused him to suspect no
one, “so that you might have cheated him ten times in a day, if nine
had not been sufficient for your purpose”. Sterne appears to have had
little affection for his mother and implies that his father married her
because he was in debt to her stepfather. She seems to have been
perpetually in need of money after her husband’s death, and Sterne
found irksome the continual demands she made upon him.
“By God’s care of me, my cousin Sterne became a father to me
and sent me to the University.” This was in 1732. At Jesus Colh'ge,
Cambridge, where his great-grandfather, the Cavalier Archbishop of
York, had once been Master, Sterne took both B.A. and M.A. degrees,
as well as holy orders. Through the good offices of his uncle, a clergyman
with strong Whig tendencies, he obtained the parish of Sutton-in-the-
Forest immediately after his ordination and other preferments later.
Eventually, uncle and nephew quarrelled; Sterne refused to “write
paragraphs in the newspapers” furthering the Whig cause, which he
considered “dirty work”.
In 1741 he married Elizabeth Lumley, wooing her in a series of
elaborate love letters, overflowing with “sensibility”. After theii marriage,
Sterne resided at Sutton and for the next twenty years was occupied with
the fairly light duties of an eighteenth-century English cleric. He made
199
LAURENCE STERNE
frequent jaunts to Skelton Castle to visit the Rabelaisian friend of
his Cambridge days, John Hall-Stevenson, the “Eugenius” of Tristram
Shandy and the author of Crazy Talcs and other perverse fables and
verse, Sterne ranged with enjoyment in Hall-Stevcnson’s extraordinary
library of obscure learning and his name came to be associated with the
“Demoniacs” of Skelton Castle, a society founded by its “ingenius” master.
Sterne was forty-six before his metamorphosis into a writer, and by the
time he was fifty-five he was dead. Before 1759 his literary efforts had
been sparse : a few political pamphlets for his uncle, two sermons,
and other random pieces. In writing a political allegory on a local
ecclesiastical intrigue, Sterne seems to have discovered his talent as a
humourist.
In 1759, Sterne began work on Tristram Shandy. He described it as a
“picture of himself” and wrote at it with feverish exuberance so that the
first two volumes were ready for publication by January 1760. They
enjoyed an immediate and sensational reception, and in March 1760
Sterne went to London. Reporting the progress of his triumph, he wrote :
“My rooms are filling every hour with great people of first rank who
strive who shall most honour me.” His literary renown resulted in his
being presented with the curacy of Coxwold, which Sterne described as
“a sweet retirement” and named Shandy Hall.
In the next two years he produced four more volumes of Tristram,
completing them rapidly in a few months and going up to London to
be entertained and feted. But the strain caused a flare-up of a chronic
lung condition, and it was decide^d he should avoid the rigours of the
English winter by a sojourn in the South of France.
Tired and ill upon his arrival, he was warned by the French doctors
that he had not long to live, but soon after he was up and about with “a
fortnight of dinners and suppers on my hands ... I Shandy it more than
ever,” he wrote to a friend, “and verily believe that by mere Shandyism
... I fence as much against infinnities, as I do by the benefits of air
and climate.” In the summer of 1762 his wife and daughter joined him
and, somewhat against his will, he spent the next two years in loulouse
and elsewhere in the South, returning alone to England in 1764. By
January of the following year the seventh and eighth vohjmes of Tristram
were finished.
In 1761, a volume of Sterne’s sermons had appeared as The Sermons
of Mr. Yorick, rather ordinary in themselves but remarkable in their
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HENRY FIELDING
contrast to the author’s other writings. In 1766 a second and more
unorthodox series of Mr. Yorick’s sermons appeared, which sought to
‘‘avoid all commonplace cant” and to add a fillip of Shandyism to the
interpretation of the parables.
It was in the winter of 1767, when he brought the ninth volume of
Tristram to London, that he met Mrs. Draper, a young and attractive
Anglo-Indian matron with a pathetic history. So violent and widely
publicized was the “sentimental” relationship that developed that Mrs.
Sterne heard of it in France, and Mr. Draper ordered his wife back to
India immediately. From the 13th of April until the 4th of August,
Sterne kept his Journal to hliza in which he recorded his sufferings
separated from his “Bramine”.
Out of a second trip to the continent in 1765 was spun the Sentimental
Journey through France and Italy. It was finished by February of 1768,
but Yorick had “worn out both his spirits and his body with the
Sentimental Journey'\ as he wrote a friend. “’Tis true that an author
must feel himself, or his reader will not — but I have tom my whole
frame into pieces by my feelings.” In what proved to be his last letter
to his daught(*r, he speaks of “this vile influenza” which soon turned to
pleurisy. He was bled and blistered, to no avail. On March 18, in the
course of a dinner party at which a number of Sterne’s friends were
present, a footman was dispatched to inquire after his health. It is in
the words of this man that the writer’s last moments are recorded : “I
went into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten minutes; but
in five he said, 'Now it is come/ He put up his hand, as if to stop a blow,
and died in a minute.”
O O O
VOLUME 37
HENRY FIELDING
The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling
BIOGRAPHICAI. NOTE
HENRY FIELDING, 1707-1754
DEFOE, Richardson and Fielding are the three great figures of the
eighteenth-century novel in England. The most significant quality of
their work is a degree of realism previously unknown in English prose
201
HENRY FIELDING
fiction. Of the three it is Fielding, the conscious disciple of Cervantes,
who, in Tom Jones, most successfully combines fiction with an epic
quality. Indeed Fielding’s description of the somewhat episodic Joseph
Andrews as the “comic epic poem in prose” better fits Tom Jones, which
shows him more clearly as the conscious artist. The introductory chapters
prefixed to each book not only endow the novel with a critical rationale
but they constitute an important technical advance for in them the
author himself appears as the shaping spirit of the story. Hitherto
authors (even Richardson) had commended their stories by claiming
historical acc\iracy; Fielding asserts the right of the author to manipulate
his narrative in the interests of artistic truth.
Henry Fielding was the eldest of six children born to General Edmund
Fielding and Sarah Gould, daughter of a judge of the King’s Bench. A
year after the death of Henry’s mother in 1718, Edmund Fielding
married again. The Goulds were concerned about the estate and care of
the children of their line. There was much quarrelling and finally a long
process of litigation. The boy Henry was in school at Eton and escaped
much of the confusion, but it is recorded that during one of the crises
he ran away from Eton to his grandmother’s house and that several times
while he was staying there he was threatened with seiz.ure by his father’s
servants.
Fielding left Eton when he was eighteen and for a year or more
appears to have roamed about accompanied by a valet. In the latter part
of 1723 he was living in Lyme and making every effort, including an
atteinj)t at abduction, to marry a Miss Sarah Andrew, a fifteen-year-old
heiress. The young woman’s guardians frustrated Fielding’s plans, and
he consoled himself by translating part of Juvenal’s Sixth Satire as “All
the Revenge 'Faken by an Injured Lover”.
When he came down to London, Fielding improved his accpjaintance
with his cousin, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and solicited her aid for
his first comedy, J^oue in Several Masques. It was produced in February
1728, but had no chance of a run because The Beggar's Opera had
opened some two weeks before. Fielding published it with a dedication
to his famous cousin and a preface boasting “that none ever appeared so
early upon the stage”.
Within a month after the adventure of his first play. Fielding was
enrolled as a student at the University of Leyden, where he appears to
have pursued his interest in classical literature. His studies were ended
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HENRY FIELDING
after a year and a half because, though his father had promised an
allowance, as Fielding put it, “any man might pay it who would”. Back
in London, as against being a “hackney coachman”, he chose being a
“hackney writer”. Within five years he turned out some fifteen plays in
every kind of comic vein. They brought him a lively fame; one of them,
Tom Thumb j won renown for having made Swift laugh for the second
time in his life.
In 1734 Fielding married Charlotte Gradock of Salisbury. He was
singularly devoted to her throughout the ten years of their married life,
speaking of her as “one from whom I draw all the solid comfort of my
life”. Many of his friends commented on the extraordinary intensity of
his grief on the occasion of her death.
Fielding seems to have retired to the country for a while after his
marriage. But in 1736 he was back in London as manager of the
Haymarket Thi'atre, w4iere a newly formed company of comedians
enacted his political satires. These plays attacking the Walpole ministry
were too successful. Walpole secured the passage of the Licensing Act of
1737, which closed the Haymarket Theatre. Fielding did not contest the
ordinance; ho merely commented : “I left off writing for the stage when
I ought to have begun.”
At the age of thirty and with a family dependent upon him. Fielding
enrolled as a law student in the Middle Temple. His application to study
was so unusual that he was called to the Bar in less than half the ordinary
period of prol)ation. During the period of his legal studies, he met some
of his financial ol)ligations by editing a newspaper. The Champion, in
which he renewed his quarrel with Walpole.
Fielding’s life in the nine years after his admission to tht‘ Bar was
harrassed by debts and ill health, and complicated by his return to active
journalism on the occasion of the Jacobite insurrection and the continuing
animosities that raged as an aftermath of his early literary activity. He
tried diligently to travel the Western Circuit, attend sessions of court
and establish himself as a lawyer. It was in this period that he published
three of his four novels : Joseph Andrews (1742), Jonathan Wild (1743)
and Tom Jones (1749).
In 1749 Fielding was appointed Justice of the Peace of Middlesex and
Westminster. The office had fallen into considerable disrepute; the justice
received his fees from the litigants whose cases he heard. Fielding had to
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HENRY FIELDING
defend himself against charges of venality even though “on the contrary,
by composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars,
and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly
would not have another, I reduced an income of above five hundred
pounds of the dirtiest money upon earth to little more than three
liundred pounds, a considerable portion of which remained with my
clerk”. Fielding discharged the many and tiresome duties of magistrate
with great conscientiousness. He deepened the conception of the office by
his long investigations into riots and robberies and by his determination
to effect reforms in the penal code, in crime prevention, and in police
efficiency. Returning to writing in this new role of legal and social
refonner, he published painstaking legal pamphlets and, as a way of
agitating for social reconstruction, started another newspaper. The
Covent Garden Journal. His final novel, Amelia, was written as a vehicle
for exposing “some of the most glaring evils . . . which at pn'sent infect
the country”.
By 1753, Fielding’s health was “reduc(‘d to the last extremity”.
He resigned his magistracy, tried various specifics, including Bishop
Berkeley’s famous tar-water, and finally resorted to a warmer climate as
his only hope of life. The protracted discomforts of his long and curious
voyage to Portugal are narrated at length in the posthumous tract,
Journal of a Voya/^e to Lisbon. In his forty-eighth year, two months after
his arrival in Portugal, Fielding died. He was buried in the English
cemetery at Tasbon.
060
VOLUME 38
C CHARLES DE SECOND AT, Baron de Montesquieu
The Spirit of Laws
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
A Discourse on Political Economy
The Social Contract
204
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU, 1689-1755
Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws represents the reflections of a singularly
clear, original and comprehensive mind, corrected by forty years’ study
of men and books, arranged in accordance with a long deliberated plan
and couched in language of remarkable freshness and idiosyncracy. It
consists of thirty-one books which in some editions are grouped in eight
parts. Speaking summarily, the first part, containing eight books, deals
with laws in general and with forms of government; the second, contain-
ing five, with military arrangements, with taxation, etc.; the third,
containing six, with manners and customs, and their dependence on
climatic conditions; the fourth, containing four, with economic matters;
and the fifth, containing three, with religion. The last five books, forming
a kind a supplement, deal specially with Roman, French and feudal
law.
Montesquieu was baptized Charles Louis de la Brede, taking his name
from the estate which had Ix'en part of his mother’s dowry when she
married Jacques de Secondat. Born at La Brede, about ten miles from
Bordeaux, Montesquieu, like Montaigne, was of Gascon origin, and, like
the essayist, he was as an infant placed under the care of a poor man’s
wife, so that he might know the poor were his brothers. In 1700 he was
sent to the college of the Orations at Juilly, near Meaux, where he
studied classical letters, history, and the sciences. "Fhe family had long
been associated with the law, and Montesquieu completed his education
by preparing for the bar. After the death ot his father, he placed himself
under the protection of his uncle, the Baron de Montesquieu, and became
a counsellor to the Bordeaux Parliament. At his behest he married the
heiress of a Huguenot military family in 1715. The following year his
uncle died, leaving him his name, his important judicial office of
President of the Bordeaux Parliament, and his whole fortune.
Although holding the presidency and acting as a professional jurist,
Montesquieu appears to have taken more interest in literature and
the vogue of scientific experimentation. He became a member of the
Bordeaux Academy of Sciences and between 1717 and 1723 submitted
numerous papers on such diverse subjects as the policy of the Romans
in matters of religion, the causes of intoxication, intennittent fever, the
echo, the transparency and weight of bodies, the movement of the sea.
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BARON DE MONTESQUIEU
fossil remains, and the flower of the vine. In 1721 he published
anonymously at Amsterdam his first extensive literary work, the Persian
Letters, which, purporting to be exchanged between two Persians travel-
ling in Europe, satirized the follies of French society. Within a year the
book had gone through four authorized and numerous pirated editions.
His reputation as a wit established, he began to frequent the court and
the literary society of the capital. In 1725 he was named to the French
Academy, but the King opposed his election, invoking the obsolete rule
requiring residence in Paris. The following year Montesquieu sold the
life- tenure of his office in Bordeaux, with the provision that upon his
death it revert to his son. He moved to Paris to devote himself to
literature and in 1728 obtained membership in the Academy.
Almost immediately afterwards he set out on a tour of Europe to
observe men, their customs, and their social and legal institutions,
apparently with the project in mind of writing The Spirit of Laws. He
accompanied the Earl of Waldograve to Vienna, visited Italy for almost
a year and with Lord Chesterfield returned to England in 1729 by way
of Piedmont and the Rhine. During his eighteen months in England he
met many notables, including Pope, Walpole, and Swift, and gained a
wide acquaintance with English life. Although disliking some traits of
the English, he greatly admired their institutions, and on returning to his
estate at La Brede he might have seemed to outward appearance to be
settling down as a squire. He altered his park in the English fashion, made
sedulous inquiries into his own genealogy, arranged an entail, asserted,
though not harshly, his seignorial rights, kept the poachers in awe, and
generally reorganized his estate.
His principal occupation at La Brede, however, was the preparation
of his literary works. In his great study (some sixty feet long by forty
wide) he was constantly dictating, making abstracts, revising essays, and
in other ways preparing his main book. He may have thought it wise to
soften the transition from the Persian Letters to The Spirit of Laws by
interposing a work graver than the foimer and less elaborate than the
latter. The Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence
of the Romans appeared in 1734. Although the book was eagerly read,
the salons, thinking only of the author’s reputation as a wit, claimed that
the Persian Letters .ujd the new book were respectively the “grandeur et
decadence” of M. de Montesquieu.
The Spirit of Laws was not formally begun until about 1743, and
206
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Montesquieu worked upon it four years before it was completed. He
submitted the finished manuscript to a group of friends, including
Helvetius, Fontenelle, and Crebillon the Younger. Although they
unanimously advised against publication, Montesquieu brought out the
work in Geneva in 1748. In France the book met with an unfriendly
reception from both the supporters and the opponents of the regime.
But in the rest of Europe, and particularly in England, it received the
highest praise. The English increased their purchase of the wine made at
La Brede, and Montesquieu noted that “the success of my book in that
country contributed to the success of my wine, although I think that the
success of my wine has done still more for the success of my book”.
In revising the final proofs of the book, Montesquieu is reported to
have remarked : “This work has nearly killed me, and now I shall rest
and labour no more.” Although he spent most of his remaining eight
years in the country, he still visited Paris, and on one such occasion he
procured the release of an admirer who had been imprisoned at the
instigation of Voltaire. The romance of Arsacc ct Jsm^nie, a short
incomplete treatise on Taste, and many of his Pensccs were composed
after the appearance of The Spirit of Laws.
At the end of 1 754 he went to Paris with the intention of closing his
house in the city so that he might retire permanently to La BrMe. While
there he was stricken with a fever. He died within a fortnight, on
February 10, 1755, and was buried in the Church of St. Sulpice.
Memorial services were held for him by the Frencli Academy, the
Prussian Academy, and the British Royal Society; Frederick the Great
paid tribute to him to D’Alembert, and at the instance of Lord Chester-
field the London Evcniri}^ Post lamented his death as the loss of “a friend
to mankind”.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, 1712 1778
ROUSSEAU may be said to hold, as an influence, a place almost
unrivalled in literary history. The defects of all sentimental history are
noticeable in him, but they are palliated by his wonderful feeling, and
by the passionate sincerity even of his insincere passages. In politics,
however, he was a sincere, and, as far as in him lay, a convinced
republican. He saw that under the French monarchy the actual result
was the greatest misery of the greatest number, and he did not look much
207
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
further. The Social Contract is for the political student one of the most
curious and interesting books existing. Historically it is null; logically it
is full of gaping flaws; but its mixture of real eloquence and apparent
cogency is exactly what always carries a multitude with it.
The Rousseau family, which had fled from France at the time of the
religious wars, had been in Geneva for more than a century when Jean
Jacques was born, on June 28, 1712. His mother died in childbirth. His
father, a watchmaker, taught him to read when he was five or six and
before he was ten they had read together the “romances” his mother had
left; from them he later declared, “1 date my uninterrupted self-
consciousness . . . and my odd, romantic notions of human life.” He
also read history, particularly Plutarch, who “became my favourite
author . . . cured me a little of my taste for romance . . . and formed in
me the free and republican spirit”. When he was about ten, his father,
as the result of a quarrel, had to leave Geneva, and Rousseau was put in
the care of an uncle, who entrusted his education to the pastor of
Boissy.
At the age of twelve or thirteen, when Rousseau had completed his
elementary education, he was placed as an apprentice, first to a notary
and, when that proved unsuccessful, to an engraver. In 1728 he
abandoned his master, left the town, and began the series of adventures
and wanderings, which are recorded in the first six books of his
Confessions. After a few days he appealed for charity to a Catholic
priest in Savoy, who recommended him to a Madame de Warens, known
for her good works. Aided by heiv he went to Turin and presented
himself to a hospice, where he was provided with food and lodging for
nine days while being instructed in the Catholic faith. Although he later
remarked that his renunciation of Protestantism was “at N ttom the act
of a bandit”, Rousseau continued to regard himself as a Catholic until
1754. After serving a few months as a lackey, he re-visited Annecy and
appealed to Madame de Warens, who took him into her house and after
some years became his mistress.
During the nine or ten years that he was with Madame de Warens,
Rousseau made several efforts to fit himself for an occupation. For a
while he considered the priesthood and studied with the priests of
St. Lazarc. Then, thinking that he was better fitted for music, he took
lessons from the choir-master of the cathedral; although not very
proficient, he never afterwards lost interest in music, and it was several
208
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
times his sole source of support. The only systematic studying he did
during these years was at the rural retreat of Les Charmettes, where,
prompted by Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters, he undertook to make a
survey of all the sciences. In a more or less desultory manner he read the
seventeenth-century philosophers and worked at mathematics, astronomy,
anatomy, the Latin poets, history, and theology. His life with Madame
de Warens was interrupted by frequent wanderings. On one occasion he
returned to find that his place in the household had been taken by
another. Rousseau then accepted the position of a tutor with a noble
family of Lyons. After a few months he found that teaching was not to
his liking, and in 1741 he went to Paris.
Rousseau’s plans for establishing himself in the capital rested upon a
new system of musical notation which he had developed. Although he
succeeded in presenting it before the Academy of Sciences, it won no
adherents. He was compelled to accept the post of secretary to the
French Ambassador at Venice, which he obtained through one of the
leading families he had become acquainted with at Paris. Returning to
the city in 1745, he copied music for a living, cultivated the society of
the literary circles, and through Diderot became a contributor on music
to the Encyclopedic. His opera, Le\ Muses j^alantes, which was privately
produced, won him some measure of fame. At about the same time, he
began to live with Therese le Vasseur, a plain and ignorant servant girl
at his hotel. He remained with her throughout his life, and according to
his account, which is sometimes questioned, she bore him five children,
all of whom were consigned at birth to the foundling hospital.
While at Venice in 1743 Rousseau planned a book on “political
institutions” which would “set the seal upon my reputation’'; but it was
not until 1749 that he actually began to write upon politics. In that year
he entered the contest held by the Academy of Dijon for the best essay
on the subject : “Has the progress of tlie arts and sciences contributed
more to the corruption or purification of morals?” Rousseau’s essay,
attacking civilization as corrupting the goodness of nature, won him the
prize and immediate literary fame. The salons honoured him, the office
of the receiver-general provided him with a lucrative post, another of
his operas was presented at court, and he had the opportunity of
obtaining a royal pension, although after some hesitation he turned it
down. Diderot asked him for an article on politics, and he wrote the
Discourse on Political Economy, which first appeared in the Encyclopedic
209
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
in 1755. In the same year he published the Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality, which also had been written for a Dijon Academy contest.
Shortly after his first literary success Rousseau began to apply to
himself his teachings on the simple life, and in 1756 he retired to the
country near Paris to live at the Hennitage, which had been set up for
him by Madame d’fipinay. Here he wrote La Nouvelle Heloise and
became involved in an obscure and bitter quarrel with Diderot and
Frederick Melchior Grimm, the lover of Madame d’fipinay. He left the
Hennitage in 1758 and settled at Montlouis, where he wrote both Emile,
on Education, and the Social Contract, which were published in 1762.
Rousseau’s quarrel with Diderot and Grimm embittered his relations
with all of the Encyclopaedists. He angered them still more by his attack
upon D’Alembert and Voltaire for their defence of theatrical representa-
tions. By his views on politics and religion he incurred the enmity of the
French authorities. Emile, shortly after its appearance, was condemned
by the parliament of Paris, and Rousseau learned that he would be
arrested if he did not go into exile.
The first years of his exile were passed in Neuchatel, which then
belonged to Prussia, His controversial writings with those who condemned
him continually embroiled him in public disputes, and he was hnally
compelled to flee again. He went first to the territory of Berne, but the
same fate awaited him there. Finally in 1766 he accepted the invitation
of Hume and accompanied him to England, leaving Theresc to follow
later in the com|)any of Boswell. At first he enjoyed some popularity; he
met the great men of the day and 'received a pension from the King.
But he soon quarrelled with Hume, and in 1767 he fled back to France,
where he had learned he would be unmolested. After wandering about
for some time, he settled in Paris in 1770, resumed his former occupation
of music-copying, and completed his Confessions and other auto-
biographical works. He could not rid himself, however, of his suspicions
of secret enemies, which had tormented him since his quarrel with
Diderot, and in 1778 he gladly accepted the offer of a cottage at
Ermenonville. He died suddenly dp July 2 in circumstances that gave
rise to rumours of suicide, although later inquiries failed to bear them out.
O O O
210
ADAM SMITH
VOLUME 39
ADAM SMITH
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
ADAM SMITH, 1723-1790
ADAM smith’s Wealth of Nations is one of the great books of classical
political economy. It is a work in which wisdom, learning and the power
of analysis are found to an extraordinary degree. Smith gave the world
a new view of the advantages of trade as a mechanism for working out
the division of labour, and a new philosophy of commerce. But he saw
in commerce, as well as internal trade, a means to welfare, not merely
to the aggrandizement of the state. Money, from the commercial point
of view, he held to be merely an instrument, a wheel of trade. The real
source of a country’s trade, he said, is its labour, and its wealth or well-
being could be increased only by making its labour more effective. These
were Smith’s fundamental principles. Although the Wealth of Nations
is the most influential brief ever fonnulated for unimpeded trade, its
greatest importance lies not in that circumstance, but in the gemeral
picture, at once simple and comprehensive, which it gives of the economic
life of a nation.
Adam Smith was born on or shortly l^efore June 3, 1723, in the small
town of Kirkcaldy, ten miles from Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth. His
father, who had been comptroller of the customs, died five months before
the child’s birth, and his mother devoted most of the remaining sixty-one
years of her life to caring for her son. His childhood was uneventful
except for one incident. In 1726, while visiting his mother’s family, he
was kidnapped by gypsies; the prompt action of his uncle soon effected
his rescue.
After finishing his term at the Kirkcaldy grammar school. Smith at
the age of fourteen entered the University of Glasgow. Although his
favourite studies were mathematics and natural philosophy, he came
strongly under the influence of Francis Hutcheson, who, as professor of
moral philosophy, taught a “benevolent theory” of morals which had as
its end the “greatest happiness for the greatest number”. It was probably
211
/
ADAM S M rr H
the result of Hutcheson’s teaching that Smith, on going to Balliol College,
Oxford, in 1740, devoted much of his study to moral philosophy. He
remained at Oxford for six years without once returning home, and,
though he found much of which he did not approve, he used the
occasion to read extensively in the classics, French and Italian literature,
as well as in morals and politics. Smith left Oxford in 1746 without
completing the term of his fellowship, probably because of his unwilling-
ness to take ordination, as was expected of appointees to the scholarship
he held.
After a two-year stay with his mother at Kirkcaldy, where he continued
his studies, Smith went to Edinburgh. There, under the patronage of
Lord Karnes and the Philosophical Society, he gave a series of public
lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres. In 1751 he was called to the
University of Glasgow, first as Professor of Logic, and after a few months
as Professor of Moral Philosophy. This position he occupied for twelve
years, and he later declared it was “by far the most useful, and therefore
by far the happiest and most honourable period” of his life. His course
of lectures was divided into four parts: natural theology, ethics, juris-
prudence, which he handled historically in the manner of Montesquieu,
and a study of “those political regulations which are founded upon
expediency, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power,
and the prosperity of the state”.
Smith was highly successful as a lecturer, and the inHuenct* of even
his first lectures is .evident upon the work of Hugh Blair, the rhetorician,
and William Robertson, the historian. From 1751 he was an intimate
friend and something of an adviser to Hume. He also came to hold an
important place in the town as well as the university. Though Glasgow^
was a provincial centre, numbering no more than 23,000 ini ibitants, the
rising trade of the Clyde already gave promise of the town’s future
industrial and commercial prominence. Smith numbered many friends
among its principal merchants and financiers. According to Sir James
Steuart, the “last of the mercantilists”, and Smith’s rival for favour, it
was Smith who converted Glasgow’s business leaders to a policy of
free trade. Speaking to the Glasgow Economic Society, founded by his
friend, the eminent merchant, Andrew Cochrane, Smith in 1755 claimed
credit for the novel system of economic liberty then beginning to attract
supporters.
Smith first appeared as an author in 1755 with two articles in the
212
ADAM SMITH
Edinburgh Review, which gave his views on the EncyclopMie, Rousseau’s
picture of savage life, and Johnson’s Dictionary, In 1759 he published
his Theory of Moral Sentiments, embodying the second portion of his
university course. Two years later a second edition was called for, and
he added an appendix, entitled “Considerations concerning the first
Formation of Languages”. The following year he was awarded the
honorary degree of doctor of laws by the Academic Senate of Glasgow.
In 1763 Smith gave up his university post to accept the offer of a life-
time pension by Charles 1 bwnshend in return for acting as tutor to his
young step-sons on a tour of France. They spent some eighteen months
at Toulouse, at that time the seat of a parliament, made a visit of two
months to Geneva, where Smith met Voltaire, and then settled for
almost a year in Paris. Smith, who was a minor celebrity in his own right,
frequented the most fashionable salons and associated with Turgot,
D’Alembert, Helvetius, Mannontel, and Rochefoucauld. He also enjoyed
close relations with the proponents of laissez-faire among the Physiocrats,
notably Quesnay and Dupont de Nemours. In 1766 the assassination in
the streets of Paris of the Duke’s younger brother, also in Smith’s charge,
brought to a close his continental sojourn.
For the next seven years Smith lived with his mother at Kirkcaldy,
engaged in close study most of the time, interrupted only by occasional
visits to Edinburgh and London. He was occupied with his Inquiry into
the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which there is some
reason for believing he had begun at Toulouse. In 1773 he took his
manuscript to Ixmdon. In ill health and unsure of his future, he named
1 lume his executor with instructions to publish in event of his death his
“juvenile” essay, A History of Astronomical Systems, That Were in
Fashion Down to the Time of Descartes] this was apparently part of his
earlier project of a “connected history of liberal sciences and elegant
arts”. For the next five years he spent almost all his time in London and
lived oil terms of intimacy with many of the leading figures of the day,
including Gibbon, Burke and Reynolds. His close knowledp of colonial
affairs is said to reflect his frequent conversations with Benjamin
Franklin, and Smith himself proposed a plan of imperial federation
designed to satisfy the grievances of the colonies. In 1776 the Wealth of
Nations was published. Hume, in a congratulatory letter, declared,
''Euge! belle! dear Mr. Smith, I am much pleased with your perfonn-
ance”. Within six months the first edition was exhausted, and during
213
EDWARD GIBBON
Smith’s life-time the book went through five editions. Pitt is reported as
saying, “We are all your scholars,” when the author entered a room in
which Pitt was seated with his fellow cabinet members, and the work
seems to have had considerable influence on the budget drawn up by
Lord North in 1777 and 1778.
The only other work published by Smith, except for revisions of his
two earlier books, was his letter on the death of Hume in 1776. Because
of its unqualified praise of Hume’s moral qualities, the letter aroused a
storm of controversy throughout the British Isles, and Boswell among
others denounced it as a piece of “daring effrontery”. In 1778 Smith was
named a commissioner of the customs of Scotland, and for the remainder
of his life he dwelt with his mother and a cousin in Edinburgh. He
enjoyed an eminent place in society, his “Sunday suppers” were long
celebrated, and with Joseph Black, James Hutton, Adam Ferguson, and
Dugald Stewart he formed one of the leading clubs of the city.
After the death of his mother in 1784, Smith’s health began to decline.
In preparation for his death he ordered the destruction of his manu-
scripts, except for a few selected essays. Among the papers so destroyed
were probably the lectures on natural religion and jurisprudence which
formed part of his course at Glasgow, and also his lectures on rhetoric;
a copy of student notes has since l)een discovered on the course on
jurisprudence, Lectures on justice. Police Revenue and ArmSy which he
gave some time between 1762 and 1764. After a painful illness Smith
died, on July 17, 1790, and was buried at Ganongate.
O O O
VOLUMES 40 and 41
EDWARD GIBBON
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
EDWARD GIBBON, 1737-1794
gibbon’s literary ait, the sustained excellence of his style, his piquant
epigrams and his brilliant irony, would not perhaps secure for his
Decline and Fall the immortality it seems likely to enjoy and its
undisputed claim to be one of the great lK)oks of the western world.
214
EDWARD GIBBON
were it not also marked by ecumenical grasp, extraordinary accuracy
and striking acuteness of judgment. It is needless to say that in many
points his statements and conclusions must now be corrected. He was
never content with second-hand accounts when the primary sources were
accessible, but since he wrote, new authorities have been discovered or
rendered accessible and in the vast region which Gibbon surveyed there
is hardly a section which has not been submitted to the microscopic
examination of specialists. Nevertheless, though outdated as a textl)ook,
the Decline and Fall remains one of the monuments of English historical
writing by reason of its unique style and majestic grasp of an immense
field.
Edward Gibbon was the eldest of seven children born to Edward
Gibbon and Julia Porten, and their only child to survive infancy. He
attributed his survival to the affectionate care of his aunt, Catherine
Porten, “the true mother of my mind as well as my health”. It was she
who encouraged him in his “invincible love of reading” which he pursued
widely in his grandfather’s library until his “indiscriminate appetite
subsided by degrees in the historic line”.
Gibbon’s early schooling had been irregular and frequently interrupted
by illness. Then, suddenly, as he approached his sixteenth year, “his
disorders wonderfully vanished”. Shortly afterwards his father sent him
to Oxford. Here he received neither instruction nor companionship,
finding the boys frivolous, the dons indolent, and his fourteen months at
the university “the most idle and unprofitable” of his whole life.
In the course of his solitary literary rambles during these fourteen
months, Gibbon became converted to Catholicism. He wrote to his father
of the step, and the elder Giblx)n, with the impetuosity that seems to
have characterized his dealings with his son, sent the sixtecn-year-old
youth to Lausanne. Here under the tutelage of the Calvinist minister,
M. Pavilliard, young Gibbon repudiated his Catholicism and followed a
carefully supervised programme of studies with particular emphasis on
the French and Latin classics and on the mastery of these languages.
At the age of twenty, (jibbon fell in love with Suzanne Curchod, who
found his unpreposse.ssing appearance “spirituelle ct singuliere” and
reciprocated his affections. His request for his father’s permission to
marry her met with refusal. He quietly acceded : “Without his consent,”
he wrote, “I was destitute and helpless. I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as
a son.”
215
EDWARD GIBBON
The Seven Years’ War had already been in progress for a year, when,
in 1758, Giblx)n returned to England, more French than English in his
outlook. From 1759 until the war ended in 1763, he served as a captain
under his father in the Hampshire Militia. He assessed the value of this
experience as making him “an Englishman and a soldier” and as giving
him insight into military organization and tactics, “so that the Captain
of the Hampshire Grenadiers has not been useless to the historian of the
Roman Empire”.
Upon his release from the militia. Gibbon decided to embark on a
long-projected tour of Europe. In 1761 he completed, in French, his
first work, Essay on the Study of Literature, in defence of classical
studies. This had given him some status abroad and when, in 1763, he
visited Paris, his essay “entitled” him to a “favourable reception”. But
it was Rome that moved him to an unwonted enthusiasm, that seemed
to give a new form and vividness to all he had read and studied. Here,
according to a celebrated passage of the Memoirs : “On the fifteenth of
October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the
barefooted friars were singing Vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, the idea
of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.”
But it was not until 1772, two years after the death of his father, that
Gibbon settled in London and submitted himself to the rigours of his
life work. In the interim, he made several sallies into the field of polite
letters, dividing his time between the family home at Buriton and the
fashionable clubs of London. His membership in Johnson’s literary club
was an annoyance to Boswell, who described him as “an ugly, affected,
disgusting fellow”.
Gibbon was elected to the House of Commons in 1774. Although he
held his seat during the stormy years of the American R< solution, he
did not speak once. Like his stint in the Hampshire militia, his eight
sessions in parliament he considered not wasted; they comprised “a school
of civic prudence, the first and most essential virtue of a historian”.
The first volume of the Decline and Fall, published in 1776, was
immediately acclaimed as a classic* and attacked for its discussion of
Christianity. Volumes II and III, which followed shortly afterwards,
were more quietly rec eived.
Since 1779 Gibbon had been serving on the Board of Trade, a sinecure
which added to his income. The Board existed in a state of “perpetual
virtual adjournment” and “unbroken sitting vacation” until it was
216
EDWARD GIBBON
dissolved as a result of the campaign conducted against it by Edmund
Burke in 1782. Shortly afterwards, the historian also lost his seat in
parliament. As it now became impossible for him to maintain himself in
London, he arranged to live in Lausanne with his life-long friend, George
Deyvcrdun.
At Lausanne, in the comfort of his well-appointed bachelor quarters,
the last three volumes reached rapid completion. In a famous passage of
his autobiography, he commemorates his deliverance from his labours :
“It was on the night of the 27th June, 1787, between the hours of eleven
and twelve, that I wrote the last line of the last page in a summer-house
in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a
bcrccau, or covered walk of acacias ... I will not dissemble the first
emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps the
establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober
melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an
everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever
might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be
short and precarious.” For Gibbon it had always been reading and study
that “.supplied each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of indepen-
dent and rational pleasure”, just as his library had been “the foundation”
of his works and the “best comfort” of his life.
In the “autumnal felicity” that followed in the wake of the completion
of the Decline and Fall, Gibbon began work on his autobiography. But
the mood was shattered by the deatli of Deyverdun in 1789, and in 1793
Gibbon returned to London. He had been suffering for some time from
dropsy and the gout and upon his return, underwent a number of
operations. Gibbon died on January 16, 1794.
O O O
VOLUME 42
IMMANUEL KANT
The Critique of Pure Reason
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
The Critique of Practical Reason
217
IMMANUEL KANT
Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of
Ethics with a Note on Conscience
General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals
The Science of Right
The Critique of Judgement
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
IMMANUEL KANT, 1724-1804
KANT is the founder of the “critical” philosophy or of “transcendental-
ism”. 7’he stress which Descartes had laid on thought, or subjective
experience, in basing his whole system on the cogito ergo sum, quite
naturally resulted in a divorce between ideas, on the one hand, and the
external world on the other. Kant attempted a new way of bringing
thought and reality into touch once more. Kant himself liked to stress
the “critical” character of his philosophy as the new element which he
contributed; and consequently called his three great works critiques. He
described all his predecessors as “dogmatic” philosophers, because they
did not begin their philosophy with a critical examination of human
capacity for knowledge.
Kant was born at Konigsberg in East Prussia on April 22, 1724. His
father, a saddler in the city, was descended from a Scottish immigrant;
his mother was German. Both parents were devoted followers of the
Pietist branch of the Liitheran Ghut'ch, and it was largely through the
influence of their pastor that Kant, who was the fourth of eleven children
but the eldest surviving son, olnained an education.
In his eighth year Kant entered the Collegium Fn*dericianum, which
his pastor directed. It was a “Latin School”, and during the eight and a
half years that he was there, Kant acquired a love for the Latin classics,
especially for Lucretius. In 1740 he enrolled in the University of
Konigsberg as a theological student. Though he attended course in
theology, and even preached on one or two occasions, he was principally
attracted to mathematics and physics. Given access to the library of his
professor in these st.bjects, he read Newton and Leibniz and in 1744
started his first book, dealing with the problem of kinetic forces. By that
time he had decided to pursue an academic career, but on failing to
obtain the post of under-tutor in one of the schools attached to the
218
IMMANUEL KANT
university, he was compelled for financial reasons to withdraw and seek a
position as a family tutor.
During the nine years that Kant was a tutor (1 746-1 755), he was
employed by three different families. In this position he was introduced
to the influential society of the city, acquired social grace, and made his
farthest travels from his native city, which took him to Arnsdorf, about
sixty miles from Konigsberg. In 1755, aided by a relative, he was able
to complete his degree at the university and assume the role of Privot-
docent, or lecturer. The three dissertations he presented for this post
dealt respectively with fire, the first principles of metaphysical knowledge,
and “the advantages to natural philosophy of a metaphysic connected
with geometry”. With the opening of the winter term he began his
lectures. At first he restricted himself to mathematics and physics, and
that year and the next he published several scientific works, dealing with
the different races of men, the nature of winds, the causes of earth-
quakes, and the general theory of the heavens. But he soon branched
into other subjects, including logic, metaphysics, and moral philosophy.
He even lectured on fireworks and fortifications, and gave every summer
for thirty years a popular course on physical geography. Kant enjoyed
great success as a lecturer; his style, which differed markedly from that
of his books, was humorous and vivid, enlivened by many examples
drawn from his wide reading in English and French literature, and in
books of travel and geography, as well as in science and philosophy.
During his fifteen years as a Privat-docent, Kant’s fame as writer and
lecturer steadily increased. 7'hough he failed twice to obtain a professor-
ship at Konigsberg, he continued to refuse- appointments elsewhere. The
only academic preferment he received during this lengthy probation was
the post of under-librarian, which he was given in 1766. Finally in 1770
he obtained the chair of logic and metaphysics. In later years he served
six times as dean of the philosophical faculty and twice as rector.
Kant’s inaugural dissertation as professor. On the Form and Principles
of the Sensible and Intelligible World, indicated the direction of his
philosophical interests. In submitting it to a friend that same year, he
wrote : “For about a year I flatter myself that I have attained that
conception which I have no fear that I shall ever change, though I may
expand it, by means of which all kinds of metaphysical questions can be
tested according to sure and every criteria, and by means of which it can
be decided with certainty how far their solution is possible.” But it was
219
IMMANUEL KANT
not until 1781 that the Critique of Pure Reason appeared, although he
declared that the actual writing took but four or five months. In the
same letter he also noted his intention to investigate “pure moral
philosophy” and to systematize his metaphysics of morals, which was first
accomplished in 1785 with the publication of the Fundamental Principles
of the Metaphysic of Morals, The Critique of Practical Reason was
brought out in 1788 and the Critique of Judgement two years later.
The “critical philosophy” was soon being taught in every important
German-speaking university, and young men flocked to Konigsberg as a
shrine of philosophy. In some cases the Prussian Government even under-
took the expense of their support. Kant came to be consulted as an oracle
on all kinds of questions, including such subjects as the lawfulness of
vaccination. Such homage did not interrupt Kant’s regular habits.
Scarcely five feet tall, with a deformed chest, and suflering from weak
health, he maintained throughout his life a severe regimen. It was
arranged with such regularity that people set their clocks according to
his daily walk along the street named for him the Philosopher’s Walk.
Until old age prevented him, he is said to have missed this regular
appearance only on the occasion when Rousseau’s ^mile so engrossed
him that for several days he stayed at home.
As early as 1789 Kant’s health began to decline seriously. He still had
many literary projects, but found it impossible to write more than a few
hours a day. In 1792 with the appearance of his work, On Religion
Within the Limits^ of Reason Alone, he became involved in a dispute
with the Prussian authorities on the right to express religious opinions,
and at the request of the government he remained silent for some years
on the subject. In 1795 he published his treatise on Perpetual Peace. In
1797, after a career of forty-two years, he delivered his last lecture and
retired from the university. The following year, by way of asserting his
right to resume theological discussions, he wrote on the conflict of the
faculties in the university. This proved to be Kant’s last book; the large
work, at which he laboured until his death, on the connection between
physics and metaphysics was found *.to be only repetition of his already
published works. After a gradual decline, which was painful to himself
and his friends, he died on February 12, 1804.
O O O
220
ALEXANDER HAMIL'I'ON
VOLUME 43
AMERICAN STATE PAPERS
The Declaration of Independence
Articles of Confederation
The Constitution of the United States of America
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
JAMES MADISON
JOHN JAY
The Federalist
JOHN STUART MILL
On Liberty
Reprcseritative Government
Utilitarianism
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 1757-1804
JAMES MADISON, 1751-1836
JOHN JAY, 1745 1829
THE task for the Federalist authors was marked out for them the day
the new Constitution for the United States was made known to the
people of New York State. On the same day it was published, and
immediately beside it in the papers, appeared an attack upon the
Constitution, signed by Cato, who was known to be Governor Clinton.
Thereafter, many of the most powerful figures in New York political life,
writing under the name of renowned Romans, came out in opposition to
the new instrument of government.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON, although only thirty years old and an
immigrant, was the natural leader for the New York supporters of the
new Constitution. Born illegitimately, of Scottish and French Huguenot
stock, on the British Island of Nevis in the West Indies, his youthful
221
JAMES MADISON
talents at writing and commerce were so unusual that friends took up a
collection and sent him to America in 1772 to complete his education.
He used his writing talents to defend the cause of the Colonies during
the events leading up to the Revolution, so successfully, in fact, that two
of his pamphlets were thought to be the work of Jay. With a thirst for
military glory that was to remain with him throughout his life, he took
part in the New York campaign as an artillery captain and won a place
on Washington’s staff. Washington employed him, however, for his
power with the j)en, and for four years he was the General’s private
secretary. In this position he became acquainted with many of the most
influential men in the states and learned at first hand the weakness of
the Confederation. As early as 1780 he was writing to men of influence
and urging the calling of a convention to form a new government. As a
lawyer in New York City, he took a prominent part in the events that
finally resulted in the Constitutional Convention. One of the three New
York delegates to the Convention, he argued for the establishment of a
strong national government based on the British model. He was the only
New York member to sign the Constitution.
In the New York fight for ratification Hamilton at first took it upon
himself to answer Clinton. Under the name of Caesar he wrote two
articles, bitterly personal and scornful of Cato’s appeal to the “majesty
of the multitude”. But persuaded that such tactics would not win support
for the new Constitution, he abandoned them. His next effort, written
while returning on a Hudson sloop from legal duties in Albany, appeared
under the signature of Publius. It was the first number of the Federalist.
From late October 1787 until the following April a continuing stream of
articles from the pen of Publius poured forth, sometimes as many as four
in one week. They were printed by the newspapers throughout the states
and issued in book form even before all the numbers had appeared in
the papers. Although the articles appeared under the signature of Publius
which Hamilton had used once before, they were soon known to be the
work of several men. Their genesis as a joint work, however, is uncertain.
Madison later reported that both, Hamilton and Jay were agreed upon
the work when Hamilton asked him to make a third in the undertaking.
The combination w^as the strongest to be found in New York for an
intellectual defence of the new Constitution.
JAMES MADISON was a representative of the Southern aristocracy,
the eldest son of a Virginia planter. He gained his first political experi-
22 ?
JOHN JAY
ence during the Revolution as a delegate to the Continental Congress,
he became acquainted with Hamilton and Jay and with them was part
of the group seeking to strengthen the national government. He was
active in promoting the developments that led to the Constitutional
Convention and, in the months immediately preceding the meeting,
devoted his efforts to preparing for the establishment of a new govern-
ment. He wrote an essay on the “Vices of the Political System of the
United States”, made an extensive study of ancient and modern con-
federacies, and drew up an outline for a new system of government. This
was the basis for the Virginia plan which at Philadelphia led to the
formation of the Constitution. With James Wilson of Pennsylvania, he
shared the honours of being most responsible for its final form. September
1787 found him in New York serving for the second time as the Virginia
Delegate to the Continental Congress.
JOHN JAY, at the time the Federalist appeared, enjoyed the greatest
prestige of any of the three men. By some he was considered as second
only to Washington in service to his country. The oldest of the three,
he came from a well-to-do New York merchant family of Huguenot
extraction, fie served on the Continental Congress from its inception in
1774 and was later its president. In his own state he took a leading part
in the Revolutionary political developments. He was the author of the
first New York Constitution and, after its establishment, its first Chief
Justice. His greatest fame at the time, however, came to him as a result
of his role as a diplomat. His first venture into European diplomacy was
to obtain a treaty with Spain. That proving a failure, he was sent on to
Paris to act with John Adams and Franklin in negotiating the terms of
peace with Creat Britain. Described by Adams as “the Washington of
the negotiations”, he was instrumental in obtaining recognition of the
independence of the United States which ended the Revolutionary War.
He was rewarded for his role by being made the Secretary of Foreign
Affairs for the Continental Congress, a post he continued to fill until
Jefferson took over as Secretary of State under the new government.
Because of his strongly national views, he was turned down as a delegate
to the Constitutional Convention.
All three Federalist collaborators, in addition to their wide practical
experience, were men of high intellectual culture, along very similar
lines. Each began his schooling under a Christian minister and completed
it with a college education. Hamilton and Jay attended King’s College
223
JOHN JAY
(now Columbia), Madison the College of New Jersey (now Princeton).
They followed the standard curriculum of the time : the liberal arts
programme divided between the trivium and quadrivium and based on
the ancient classics with considerable practice in scholastic disputation.
The w'hole programme was infused with religion and politics which were
the primary ends of the programme. The emphasis upon religion and
politics is illustrated by the commencement exercises held at New Jersey
while Madison was there in 1770. Among the many disputations there
was a Latin syllogistic debate on the thesis : “Omnes Homines, Jure
Naturae, liberi sunt” (all men by the law of nature are free), and another
in English on the topic : “The Different Religious Professions in any
State if Maintained in their Liberty Serve it by Supplying the Place of
a Censor Morum.” Both Madison and Jay after completing their under-
graduate course went on to do graduate work, thus being among the first
graduate students in America. Jay received his master’s degree in 1767
with a discourse on “The Usefulness of the Passions” and a debate on
“Whether a man ought to engage in War without being persuaded of
the justness of his Cause.” Madison remained an extra year at New
Jersey, reading particularly in theology and Hebrew. Hamilton’s college
work was interrupted by the war, but he continued after the war to
perfect himself in law, as had his two other collaborators. Hamilton,
unlike them, depended upon the practice of law for his living, and, while
not holding down a political office, earned the reputation of being the
most brilliant lawyer in New York. Madison never practised law, nor did
Jay except for the few years before hp embarked upon his public life.
The actual writing of the Federalist and the authorship of the
particular papers have been a matter of long and sometimes bitter
dispute. They were done in a great hurry, and, as Madison later
remarked, they often went directly from the writer to the printer without
being seen by the other collaborators. One reason that Jay did so few
is thought to be that he suffered from a serious illness soon after the
series was begun. Hamilton was the busiest of the three men at the time.
He was carrying on a full legal practice, attending the sessions of the
state supreme court, and campaigning for election to the Continental
Congress. Madison was called home before the papers were completed
to take part in the battle for ratification in Virginia, which looked as
bad for the Federalist cause as it did in New York.
The intellectual defence of the Constitution was put to practical use
224
JOHN JAY
by the three collaborators in their state ratifying conventions. Madison
led the Federalist forces in Virginia, and Hamilton and Jay in New York.
Against what seemed hopeless odds, they won their fight, but not, in fact,
until the new Constitution had already been ratified by the required nine
states. Virginia was the tenth state to ratify and New York the eleventh,
a month later.
The partnership which resulted in the Federalist was dissolved in the
efforts to translate the Constitution from a paper document into a
functioning government. Although all three men had expressed dis-
satisfaction with the Constitution as not providing sufficiently strong
national government, Madison parted company with Hamilton and Jay
over the measures which they advocated for securing the supremacy of
the national government.
Hamilton, as the first Secretary of the 'Freasury, had the task of
placing the new government on a sound financial basis. He initiated this
work by a series of three reports submitted to Congress. The first, on
public credit, called for the full assumption by the national government
ol the war d('l)ts of the old Confederation and the states. The second
provided for the estal)lishnient of a national bank. The third, on manu-
factures, called for government protection of manufactures by means of
duties. Although this last proposal was defeated by Congress, it has been
called the “first great revolt from Adam Smith”.
Madison, elected a member of the House of Representatives, became
the leader of the opposition in Congress against Hamilton’s proposals.
He led the move for a Bill of Rights, the lack of which had been one of
the main issues in the fight for ratification. With his friend, Jefferson,
who had Ix^en appointed the first Secretary of State, he advised the
President that Hamilton’s measures could not be reconciled with the
Constitution. JJifference over the interpretation of the Constitution was
intensified by the conflict over foreign affairs that arose with the outbreak
of war between England and Revolutionary France. Hamilton, in a series
of letters published in the papers under the signature of Pacificus,
defended England and the American policy of neutrality. Madison, at
the instigation of Jefferson, countered with a series of letters signed
I lelvidius.
Jay’s activities during the opening years of the new government further
embittered the relations of the former collaborators. As the first Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, he passed down decisions strongly support-
225
JOHN JAY
ing Hamilton’s view of the national government. The decision in his
greatest case, Chisolm vs. Georgia, caused a revolt in Congress over its
emphasis on the supremacy of the national government over that of the
states. This resulted in the passing of the eleventh amendment in the
Constitution, asserting the sovereign irresponsibility of the states as
regards private suits by citizens of another state. However, the greatest
cause of division proved to be the treaty he negotiated with England
which has since gone under his name. It was so bitterly attacked by the
Jefferson and Madison groups, known as “Republicans”, that in many
places Jay was burnt in effigy. In defence of the treaty, Hamilton wrote
his Camillus letters. Although Jefferson again appealed to Madison as the
only one able to cope with Hamilton in debate, Madison did not respond.
The three Federalist authors, although divided by partisan strife, were
brought together once again in Washington’s Farewell Address. Washing-
ton appealed to all three for advice, and their suggestions, with most
from Hamilton, went into the final draft of the message.
Hamilton's last years were rent by political strife. After retiring to the
private practice of law, he continued to be the active leader of the
Federalist Party. His influence was so great during the Adams administra-
tion that Cabinet members often consulted with him about official policy,
even behind the President’s [jack. This led to a break between the two
men. Hamilton made the break irreparable by writing a pamphlet
attacking Adams, which split the Federalist Party and led to its dis-
integration. His partisan battles reached a climax when he was challenged
to a duel by Aaron Burr, then Vice-President, with whom Hamilton had
long been in political competition in the municipal, state, and national
field. Hamilton died as a result of a shot received from Burr’s pistol.
Jay, following the negotiation of the treaty with England, served two
terms as governor of New York. His administration is noted among other
things for the law commanding the gradual abolition of slavery in New
York. (All tfiree men look<.*d upon slavery as a tragedy for America. Jay
and Hamilton were active in the New York Society for the Manumis.sion
of Slaves, while Madison took a leading part in the movement for the
colonisation of Negroes.) Jay, after completing his terms as governor,
retired from public life to his farm in Bedford. He was often consulted
for the early history of the Repuljlic, his occasional reminiscences, among
other things, furnished Cooper with the material for his novel, The Spy,
Known for his knowledge of the Bible, he was often asked by ministers
226
JOHN STUART MILL
for his interpretation of the prophecies and for the last years of his life
was president of the American Bible Society.
Madison was Jefferson’s Secretary of State for two terms and, as the
chosen successor, followed him in the Presidency. He served for two
terms and then, in 1817, retired to his home in Montpelier. His last years
were spent in agricultural and literary pursuits. With Jefferson he gave
much of his attention to the University of Virginia. At Jefferson’s request,
for instance, he prepared a list of theological works for the library,
including, in addition to the Refonnation theologians, the great Schol-
astics, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Bellannine. One of their last acts was to
prescribe the curriculum in political philosophy with Locke and Sidney
for political theory and the Federalist for the Constitution. He devoted
much time to the preparation of liis papers on Constitutional questions
and to the editing of his monumental series of notes on the debates at
the Federal Convention, the publication of which confirmed his fame as
“Father of the Constitution'’.
BIOGRAPHICAT. NOTE
JOHN STUART MILL, 1806 1873
I HE influence which John Stuart Mill’s books exercised upon con-
temporary English thought can scarcely be overestimated. In political
philosophy his greatest work was done as an advocate of liberty. In the
treatise On Liberty he shows that political liberty alone is insufficient,
that social tyranny may be more grinding than legal tyranny. And he
showed consistently that any despotism, however benevolent, must in fact
cramp and destroy the development of any people. He was torn all his
life between his passion for individual liberty and initiative and his sense
of the benefits of social control. In the field of political economy Mill
was at the end of the line of classical economists which began with Adam
Smith. The title of his chief work. Principles of Political Economy, with
some of their Applications to Social Philosophy, though open to criticism
indicated a less narrow and formal conception of the field of the science
than had been common among his predecessors. It is an admirably lucid,
and even elegant, exposition of Ricardian economics, the Malthusian
theory being of course incorporated with these. In philosophy Mill’s chief
work was to systematize and expound the utilitarianism of his father and
of Benthani. He may in fact be regarded as the final exponent of that
227
JOHN SrUAR]' MILL
empirical school of philosophy which owed its impulse to John Locke,
and is generally spoken of as being typically English. Its fundamental
characteristic is the emphasis laid upon human reason; that is, upon the
duty incumbent upon all thinkers to investigate for themselves rather
than to accept the authority of others.
Mill, in his Autobiography, declared that his intellectual development
was due primarily to the influence of two people : his father, James Mill,
and his wife.
James Mill elaborated for his son a comprehensive educational pro-
gramme, modelled upon the theories of Helvctius and Bentham. It was
encyclopaedic in scope and equipped Mill by the time he was thirteen
with the equivalent of a thorough university education. The father acted
as the boy's tutor and constant companion, allowing Mill to work in the
same room with him and even to interrupt him as he was writing his
History of India or his articles for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Mill
later described the result as one that “made me appear as a ‘made’ or
manufactured man, having had a certain impress of opinion stamped
upon me which I could only reproduce”.
I'he education began with (ireek and arithmetic at the age of three.
By the time he was eight Mill had read through the whole of Herodotus,
six dialogues of Plato, and considerable history. Before he was twelve he
had studied Euclid and algebra, the (Jreek and Latin poets, and some
English poetry. His interest in history continued, and he even attempted
writing an account of Roman government. At twelve he was introduced
to logic in Aristotle’s Organon and the Latin scholastic manuals on the
subject. The last year under his father’s direct supervision, his thirteenth,
was devoted to political economy; the son’s notes later served the elder
Mill in his Elements of Political Economy. He furthered his education by
a period of studies with his father’s friends, reading law with Austin and
economics with Ricardo, and completed it by himself with Bentham’s
treatise on legislation, which he felt gave him “a creed, a doctrine, a
philosophy ... a religion” and made a “different being of him”.
Although Mill never actually severed relations with his father, he
experienced, at the age of twenty, a “crisis” in his mental history. It
occurred to him to pose the question : “Suppose that all your objects in
life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which
you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very
instant : would this be a great joy and happiness to you ?” He reported
228
JOHN STUART MILL
that “an irrepressible self-consciousncss distinctly answered, ‘No’,” and
he was overcome by a depression which lasted for several years. The first
break in his “gloom” came while reading Marmontel’s M^moires : “I . . .
came to the passage which relates his father’s death, the distressed position
of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy,
felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them — would
supply the place of all that they had lost.” He w'as moved to tears by the
scene, and from this moment his “burden grew lighter”.
From the time he was seventeen. Mill supported himself by working
for the East India Company, where his father was an official. Although
he began nominally as a clerk, he was soon promoted to assistant-
examiner, and for twenty years, from his father’s death in 1836, until the
Company’s activities were taken over by the British Government, he had
charge of the relations with the Indian states, which gave him wide
practical experience in the problems of government. In addition to his
regular employment, he took part in many activities tending to prepare
public opinion for legislative reform. He, his father and their friends
formed the group known as “philosophical radicals”, which made a
major contribution to the debates leading to the Reform Bill of 1832.
Mill was active in exposing what he considered departures from sound
principle in parliament and the courts of justice* He wrote often for the
newspapers friendly to the “radical” cause, helped to found and edit the
Westminster Review as a “radical” organ, and participated in several
reading and debating societies, devoted to the discussion of the con-
temporary int(‘llectual and social problems.
I’hcse activities did not prevent him from pursuing his own intellectual
interests. He edited Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence. He studied
logic and science with the aim of reconciling syllogistic logic with the
methods of inductive science, and published his System of Logic (1843).
At the same time he pushed his inquiries in the field of economics. These
first took the form of E.ssays on Some Unsettled Questions in Political
Economy and were later given systematic treatment in the Principles of
Political Economy (1848).
The development and productivity of these years he attributed to his
relationship with Mrs. Harriet Taylor, who became his wife in 1851. Mill
had known her for twenty years, since shortly after his “crisis”, and he
could never praise too highly her influence upon his work. Although he
published less during the seven years of his married life than at any other
229
JAMES BOSWELL
was sitting in the back parlour of Mr. Davies’ bookstore, when Johnson
came unexpectedly into the shop. Davies perceived him through the glass
door and pointed him out to Boswell “in the manner of Horatio, when
he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father’s ghost”. Boswell at
this first encounter was thoroughly snubbed, but with “characteristical”
resilience, bolstered by lorn Davies’ assurance : “Don’t be uneasy : I can
see he likes you very well,” he called on Johnson eight days later. On
this occasion Johnson pressed him to stay ; on the thirteenth of June he
said, “Gome to me as often as you can”; on the twenty-fifth of June,
Boswell gave the great man a little sketch of his own life, and Johnson
exclaimed with warmth, “Give me your hand; 1 have taken a liking to
you.” In August, when Boswell set out for Utrecht, Johnson accompanied
him as far as Harwich.
After a winter divided between study of the law and the company of
“many beautiful and amiable ladies”, Boswell embarked on a two-year
tour of the continent, where he forced his acquaintance on such leading
figures as Voltaire and Rousseau and proceeded to “Boswellize” them,
drawing them out on various subjects. Desiring “something more than
just the common course”, he determined to visit Corsica, which appealed
to him because it was a nation “actually fighting for liberty”, where the
inhabitants lived in a “state of nature”. From Rousseau, he obtained a
letter of introduction to the leader of the Corsican insurgents, Pascal
Paoli, whose society he cultivated with that minute and skillful care
which he was afterwards to bestow upon Johnson.
Corsica was a turning point; “I got upon a rock in Corsica and
jumped into the middle of life,” Boswell later wrote to Paoli. He
returned to England as “Corsica Boswell” and, in the full regalia of a
Corsican chieftain, obtained an interview with William Pitt on behalf of
that “oppressed nation”. Politically his advocacy was a failure; “We
cannot be so foolish,” said Lord Holland, “as to go to war because Mr.
Boswell has been to Corsica.” An immediate success, however, was his
Account of Corsica, Journal of a Tour to that Island, and Memoirs of
Pascal Paoli (1768), which won even the grudging praise of Gray : “Any
fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us
what he heard and s;.w with veracity.’^ But Johnson was tired of Corsica;
“Empty your head of Corsica,” he directed Boswell.
In accordance with the tenns of the agreement with his father, Boswell
returned to Edinburgh and in July 1766 was admitted to the Scottish
232
JAMES BOSWELL
bar. “What strength of mind you have had was Boswell’s comment on
his early legal work. He had hoped, too, that the “character to support”,
which his successful authorship of Account of Corsica had given him,
w^ould furnish the incentive to “a better course of life”. But the long list
of encounters with “little charmers” and heiresses, which fill his letters
to Temple at this time, attest to his failure. Despite his reluctance to
“resign his liberty for life to one w'oman”, he married his cousin Margaret
Montgomerie in 1769.
For two years after his marriage he continued to practise law in
Edinburgh but in 1772 he was again in London with his biographical
notebook. Upon Johnson’s recommendation he was elected to the Club.
In August of 1773, the Great Lexicographer, then well over sixty,
suddenly consented to Boswell’s constantly urged project of a tour
through Scotland. Boswell carefully planned the expedition down to the
last detail and in every way extended himself to entertain his friend. “It
is very convenient to travel with him,” Johnson wrote Mr. Thrale, “for
there is no house where he is not received with kindness and respect. He
has better faculties than I imagined.” There was no qualification in
Boswell’s appreciation of the uncouth old man, whom his father described
as “an auld dominie, who keepit a schule and ca’d it an academy”, and
his wife called a bear. He wrote in the day-by-day account of their
travels, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides : “Had I not Dr. Johnson to
contemplate, I should have sunk into dejection but his firmness supported
me. T looked at him as a man, whose head is turning giddy at sea, looks
at a rock.”
The yt'ars following the tour to the Hebrides were increasingly a story
of quarrels with his father, financial worries, alcoholism, and melancholia,
the “black dog” of hypochondria, as Boswell described it. Signing himself
“The Hypochondriack”, he contributed a series of some seventy essays
on various moral and religious subjects to the London Magazine. On
June 30, 1784, Boswell and Johnson dined at Sir Joshua Reynolds’ and
rode home together. Boswell recalled the old man’s “fare you well” and
how, without looking back, he had “sprung away with a kind of
pathetick briskness”. He had not accompanied Johnson into the house
“from an apprehension that my spirits would sink”, and, although
Johnson did not die until December, Boswell never saw him again.
During the years after Johnson’s death, Boswell attempted unsuccess-
fully to enter parliament and to build up a law practice in England,
233
ANTOINE LAVOISIER
nourishing “the delusion” for the rest of his life “that practice may come
at any time”. Painstakingly he laboured on his biography of Johnson,
“arranging a prodigious multiplicity of materials, supplying omissions,
searching for papers buried in different masses”. After the death of his
wife in 1789, he sank further into melancholia and alcoholism, always
vowing reform. Neither the critics’ universal praise of his Tour to the
Hebrides (1785) and The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), nor the “several
matrimonial schemes” he entertained from time to time, could keep him
his “fluttering self” for long. He died in London, of a complication of
disorders, on May 19, 1795, and was buried in Auchinleck.
O O O
VOLUME 45
ANTOINE LAURENT LAVOISIER
Elements of Chemistry
JEAN BAPTIST JOSEPH FOURIER
Analytical Theory of Heat
[Preliminary Discourse, Ch. 1-2]
MICHAEL FARADAY
Experimental Researches in Electricity
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
AN'l'OINE LAVOISIER, 1743-1794
THE outstanding features of Lavoisier’s work were the use of the balance
and the clearness with which he interpreted quantitative results, a
clearness founded on his conviction that no ponderable matter disappears
in any chemical change. The spread of this and of Lavoisier's other
important doctrines — notably his oxygen theory — was greatly facilitated
by the defined and i<»gical form in which he presented them in his
Elements of Chemistry, and eventually they were adopted universally.
Lavoisier was born in Paris on August 26, 1743. His father was
attorney to the Parliament of Paris. His mother was the daughter of the
234
ANTOINE LAVOISIER
secretary to the Vice-Admiral of France and heiress to a considerable
fortune.
After completing his elementary education Lavoisier was sent to the
College Mazarin. His early ambitions were literary rather than scientific,
and in 1760 he won second prize in a rhetorical contest. Although on
leaving the college he went on to prepare for law, and received his
Licentiate in 1764, he devoted himself to science, studying, with well-
known teachers of the time, mathematics, astronomy, botany, mineralogy,
geology, and chemistry. He also began to conduct experiments and
observations of his own. One of the earliest was in meteorology; he made
barometrical observations several times daily and engaged others in the
same pursuit with the aim of discovering the laws governing the weather.
His zeal for investigation was so great that at the age of nineteen he
decided to cut himself ofT from all social activity; he gave ill health as
an excuse and for several months lived in retirement on a diet of milk.
His formal career as a scientist began in 1763 when he was invited by
Guettard, his teacher in geology, to collaborate in preparing the first
mineralogical atlas of France. Lavoisier’s part of the project consisted
largely of collecting data; he kept elaborate notebooks, which indicate
that he was not only amassing material but analysing and developing
ideas for later research. While engaged in this work, he entered the
contest held by the French Academy of Science for the best essay on
methods for lighting the streets of a large city at night. I'he essays were
divided into two groups, practical and scientific, and while the prize was
given to entries in the first group, Lavoisier alone was singled out from
the second for special mention and a gold medal from the King. The
work with Guettard also yielded material which LavoisiiT worked up in
the form of memoircs to be presented to the Academy of Science. In
1768, after he had presented four such papers, two on hydrometry and
two on gypsum, he was elected a member of the Academy. His youth
excited comment, and, as a friend of the family remarked, at the age of
twenty-five he had obtained “a position which is usually won, with great
difficulty, by men past their fiftieth year ’.
Desirous of securing a larger income for research, Lavoisier, shortly
after his nomination to the Academy, bought an interest in the Ferme,
an association of financiers who had the privilege of collecting the
national taxes in return for a fixed annual sum paid in advance to the
Government. His friends at the Academy did not entirely approve of this
235
ANTOINE LAVOISIER
association, but it did provide him with the money he sought, and it also
made him acquainted with Fanner-General Paulze, whose daughter he
married in 1771.
Lavoisier entered further into public life when the Government took
over the manufacture of gunpowder. Upon his suggestion, Turgot,
Minister of the Treasury, cancelled the private production of gunpowder
and established the Re^ie des poudres, a four-man administrative com-
mittee headed by Lavoisier. With this appointment he was assigned a
house at the Arsenal, where with his own funds he established a fully-
equipped laboratory, which he made available to all scientists interested
in his work. As his scientific fame increased the laboratory became a
meeting place for prominent scientists, and among his guests he numbered
Priestley, Franklin, Watt, Tennant, and Arthur Young. Lavoisier always
retained an interest in younger scientists, providing financial assistance
for many and making laboratory assistants of others, among whom was
the Dupont who later went to America and founded the munitions firm.
Although occupied with many practical concerns in connection with
the Fcrmc and the Regie des poudreSy Lavoisier r(\served six hours a day,
from six to nine in the morning and from seven to ten at night, for his
scientific work, and one full day each week for experiments. His wife,
who was fourteen at the time of her marriage, became an active partner
in his research. She assisted in the laboratory, learned English so as to
translate the technical works of Priestley and Cavendish, and drew the
illustration for the Traite Elemenlaire de Chimie (17h9). Lavoisier also
engaged in many philanthropic works, starting a model farm to
demonstrate the advantages of scientific agriculture, and planning the
establishment of savings banks, insurance societies, canals, and work-
houses for improving the conditions of the community.
When the Revolution occurred, Lavoisier had long been a national
figure. He was Director of the Academy of Sciences, deputy of the
States-General of 1789, and a prominent member of the club founded to
promote the cause of constitutional monarchy. For some years after 1789
Lavoisier continued to work as secretary and treasurer of the commission
to secure uniformity of weights and measures. In 1791 he was made a
member of the comnussion on arts and professions; his report for this
commission. Reflexions sur Vinstruction puhlique (1793), presented a
detailed scheme for public free education. But almost from the beginning
of the Revolution, Lavoisier had been under suspicion because of his
236
JOSEPH FOURIER
association with the Ferme and Regie dcs poudrcs, and from early 1791
he was subjected to vitriolic attack from Marat. In 1794 he and the
other farmcrs-general were placed on trial by the revolutionary Tribunal
and condemned to death. Lavoisier and his father-in-law were guillotined
on May 8, 1794, at the Place de la Revolution and their bodies thrown
into nameless graves in the cemetery of La Madeleine.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
JOSEPH FOURIER, 1768-1830
Fourier’s Theory of Heat marked an epoch in the history of
mathematical physics. The transference of licat in the interior of a
solid body formed one of the earliest subjects of mathematical and
experimental treatment in the theory of heat. The law assumed by
Fourier was of the simplest possible type, but the mathematical applica-
tion, except in the simplest cases, was so difficult as to require the
development of a new mathematical method. Fourier succeeded in show-
ing how, by his method of analysis, the solution of any given problem
with regard to the flow of heat by conduction in any material could be
explained in terms of a physical constant, the thermal conductivity of
the material, and that the rCsSults obtained by experiment agreed in a
qualitative manner with those predicted by his theory. But the experi-
mental determination of the actual values of these constants presented
formidable difficulties which were not surmounted till a later date.
Fourier was born at Auxerre on March 21, 1768, the son of a poor
tailor. An orphan at eight, he was recommended by a friend to the
Bishop of Aux('rre, who obtained admission for him in the local military
school conducted by the Benedictines of Saint-Maur. He quickly dis-
tinguished himself as a student and showed distinct literary ability; at
twelve he was writing sermons which were often used with great effect
in Paris. At the age of thirteen mathematics began to attract him
strongly. I’he prescribed hours of study did not suffice; he arose at night,
concealed himself behind a screen, and by the light of candle-ends
carefully collected during the day, pursued his mathematical studies.
When he was twenty-one he delivered his first memoir before the Academy
of Sciences on the resolution of numerical equations of all degrees.
Educated by monks in a military school, Fourier seems to have con-
sidered that only the army or the church could provide a career. With
237
JOSEPH FOURIER
a strong recommendation from Legendre he applied for admission to the
artillery. He was refused with the statement, “Fourier, not being of noble
birth, cannot enter the artillery, not even if he is a second Newton.” He
then entered the Benedictine Order, where he remained as a novice from
1787 to 1789. Upon the outbreak of the Revolution he left the convent,
although this did not result in any break with the Benedictines, since
they immediately appointed him to the principal chair of mathematics
at their school in Auxerre. When his colleagues became ill, he took their
place, and besides teaching mathematics he also lectured on rhetoric,
history, and philosophy.
At Auxerre, Fourier embraced the cause of the Revolution, joined the
peoples’ party, and served as publicist, recruiting agent, and member of
the Citizens’ Committee of Surveillance; in this last function he exercised
such moderation that he was himself in danger from the Terror. When,
in 1794, the Normal School was instituted at Paris to train a specially
selected group of new teachers, Fourier was among the fifteen hundred
that were chosen, and, although he began as a student, he was soon made
a “master of conference”. The school failed after a short time, but
Fourier had so impressed the authorities that when the Polytechnic
School was founded, he was appointed to its faculty, first as “superinten-
dent of lectures on fortification” and then as “lecturer on analysis”.
Napoleon sometimes attended the sessions at the Polytechnic School,
and when he organized the expedition to Egypt in 1798, Fourier was
asked to be a part of it, although he was not informed of the role he was
expected to play. Fourier was in Egypt for three years, engaged in the
most varied activities : organizing factories for the army, constructing
machines, leading scientific expeditions, and executing numerous admin-
istrative tasks. He acted as the representative of the gene al-in-chief,
receiving complaints from the Egyptian populace, and for one period
was virtually governor of half of Egypt. On the death of General Kleber
he w^as called upon to present a eulogv before the French Army. As
secretary of the Institute of Cairo he instigated the collection of materials
for the famous Description of Egypt. In collaboration with Napoleon
he wrote the historical introduction to this work, which established his
literary reputation anO eventually won him membership in the French
Academy.
On his return to France in 1802 Fourier was appointed prefect of the
Departement of Isere and for the next thirteen years lived at Grenoble.
238
JOSEPH FOURIER
He composed the disputes between the different parties and brought
order out of the confusion left by the Revolution in his province. As part
of a general policy of public improvements, he initiated an extensive
road-building project and undertook the reclamation of marsh-lands
which had been the source of infection for thirty-seven communes. In
recognition of his services he was created Baron of the Empire in 1808.
His many administrative duties as prefect of Isere did not interrupt his
work as a mathematician and man of letters. He conducted investigations
into the motions of heat in solid bodies with the aim of reducing them
to mathematical formulation, and in 1807 submitted his first paper on
the subject to the Academy of Sciences. To induce the author to extend
and improve his researches the Academy assigned as the problem for its
prize competition of 1812, “The mathematical theory of the laws of the
propagation of heat and the comparison of the results of this theory with
exact experiment.” The judges were Laplace, Lagrange, and Legendre,
and they awarded the prize to Fourier for his memoir in two parts,
Theoric des Mouvements de la chaleur dans les corps solides. The first
part was re-published in 1822 as the Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur,
F’ourier continued to hold his position as prefect until the Revolution
of 1814, but Napoleon’s return from Elba proved to be his political
downfall. As Napoleon was approaching Grenoble, Fourier went to Lyons
to notify the Bourbons that the city would undoubtedly capitulate. They
refused to believe him and made him responsible for the safety of the
city. Upon his return to CJrenoble, which had surrendered, he was taken
prisoner and brought before the Emperor, Napoleon confronted him :
“You also have declared war against me? * . . It only grieves me to .see
among my enemies an Egyptian, a man who has eaten along with me
the bread of the bivouac, an old friend. How, moreover, could you have
forgotten. Monsieur Fourier, that I have made you what you are?”
Fourier’s loyalty was re-established, although he did not share Napoleon’s
confidence of victory. The end of the Hundred Days and the Restoration
found him deprived of political office, in disgrace, and almost penniless.
A friend and former pupil who was prefect of Paris made it po.ssiblc
for him to become Director of the Bureau of Statistics, which he
remained until his death. His political past, however, did not prevent
renewed recognition of his scientific abilities. In 1816 he was proposed
for membership in the Academy of Sciences, and although Louis XVIII
refused his consent at that time, he became a meml^er the following year.
239
MICHAEL FARADAY
He was made permanent secretary of the Division of Mathematical
Sciences in 1822, member of the French Academy in 1826, and a year
later succeeded Laplace as President of the Council for Improving the
Polytechnic School. In 1828 he became a member of the government
commission established for the encouragement of literature.
He died on May 16, 1830, of aneurism of the heart, which had been
aggravated by his habit of wrapping himself in all seasons like “an
Egyptian mummy” and living in airless rooms at an excessively high
temperature.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
MICHAEL FARADAY, 1791-1867
IT might almost be said of Michael Faraday that he ushered in the
modern era of electricity in industry. Yet he scorned to work for manu-
facturers and left to others the work and the reward of adapting his
discoveries to practical use. By discovering the principle of electro-
magnetism and the induction of electric currents he paved the way for
the invention of dynamics and other electrical machines in use today.
Faraday was horn on September 22, 1791, in Newington, Surrey, the
son of a blacksmith. When he was five, the family moved to London,
and he grew up in such poverty that, as he later recalled, the loaf of
bread his mother gave him had to last a week. “My education,” he wrote,
“was of the most ordinary description, consisting of little more than the
rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic at a common day school.
My hours out of school were passed at home and in the streets.”
At the age of twelve he became an errandboy for a bookseller and
bookbinder, and a year later he was accepted because oi exemplary
conduct as an apprentice without fee. His scientific education began
while he was engaged in binding books. As he later wrote to a friend : “It
was in those books, in the hours after uork, that I found the beginning
of iny philosophy. There were two that especially helped me, the
Encyclopaedia Britannicay from which I gained my first notions of
electricity, and Mrs. Marcct's Conversations on Chemistry, which gave
me my foundation in that science.” With what money he could spare he
bought materials for experiments, and by 1812 was conducting investiga-
tions in electrolytic decomposition. In the spring of that year, through
the generosity of a customer, he was able to attend a series of four
240
MICHAEL FARADAY
lectures by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. He took careful
notes, v^rote them out in fuller form, and bound them into a book. He
sent the notes to Davy with a request for employment at the Royal
Institution in any capacity connected with science. Davy advised him
not to give up a skilled trade for something in which there was neither
security, money, nor opportunity for advancement, but a few months
later, on the dismissal of a laboratory assistant, he offered the post to
Faraday. He became Davy’s assistant in March 1813 and in October of
that year accompanied him on a tour of the universities and laboratories
of France, Italy, and Switzerland, which lasted until April 1815.
Upon his return to England and the Institution, Faraday continued as
Davy’s assistant and began research of his own. In 1816 he made his first
contribution in the form of an analysis of caustic lime from Tuscany,
which was published in the Quarterly Journal of Science, From that time
he wrote an increasing number of notes and memoirs. In 1821 he began
work upon electromagnetism; he first collected and repeated all the
known experiments, published an account of them in the Annals of
Philosophy, and proceeded to make his own investigations. His experi-
ments were meticulously recorded in numbered paragraphs, and in 1831
he started the first section of his Experimental Researches in Electricity,
which was to occupy him intermittently for the next twenty-three years.
First published in the form of monographs in the “Transactions of the
Royal Society”, they were later brought out in three volumes (1844,
1847, 1855).
Faraday was occupied durin g these years with many things in addition
to researcli in electricity. I'u^uing ihe^aTenueiii nivcsn^auuus
begun as Davy’s assistant, he made a special study of chlorine, discovered
two new chlorides of carbon, initiated experiments on the diffusion of
gases, and was among the first to succeed in their liquefaction. Many of
his discoveries had industrial applications, some of which he investigated,
such as the alloys of steel and the manufacture of glass. He was called
upon to act as a consultant on many works of public concern, and for
thirty years he was adviser to Trinity House on the supervision of the
lighthouses of England. In 1823 he was elected to the Royal Society over
Davy’s strong opposition, which, however, Faraday did not permit to
interfere with their friendship. In 1833 he was made the Fullerian
professor of chemistry for life, and although he was not obliged to
lecture, he frequently did so in order to increase the stability and
241
MICHAEL FARADAY
influence of the Institution. His celebrated Chemical History of a Candle
was one of the series of Christmas lectures for children which he had
started at the Institution. He received honorary degrees and scientific
tributes from all parts of the world, and both the Royal Society and the
Royal Institution tried in vain to persuade him to accept the presidency.
As he told his friend Tyndall in refusing the Royal Society’s offer, “I
must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last.”
After he had become famous for his discoveries, Faraday’s services
were eagerly sought by industry and commerce. For a few years he did
a little “professional business”, as he called it, and in 1830 received more
than a thousand pounds in return. It is estimated that this work might
easily have yielded five thousand pounds in 1832, but he then felt, as he
later told Tyndall, that he had to decide whether to make wealth or
science the pursuit of his life. He chose science and lived and died a
poor man.
Faraday married in 1821, “an event”, he wrote, “which more than
any other contributed to my earthly happiness and healthful state of
mind”. The marriage was childless, but Faraday’s lodgings in the Royal
Institution were always full of his wife’s nieces and nephews, for he
enjoyed the company of children and liked to take part in their games.
Faraday’s parents belonged to the small dissident Presbyterian sect known
as Sandemanians, and Faraday himself attended their meetings from
childhood; he made a formal declaration of faith at thirty and for two
different periods discharged the office of elder,
Faraday’s last years were spent in seriously declining health. As early
as 1841, as a result of overwork, he had sufl’ered a serious breakdown
and was compelled to take a complete rest for a period of several years.
Although he was back in the laboratory by 1843 and for fifteen years
engaged in some of his most important research, his health was never
completely restored. When at length he found his memory failing and his
powers declining, he yielded to others whatever parts of his work he could
no longer accomplish according to his own standard of efficiency. Queen
Victoria, in 1858, provided him with a house at Hampton Court which
had rooms so arranged that he had no stairs to climb. In 1862 he
delivered his last lerrure and performed his last experiment. He died on
August 25, 1867.
O O O
242
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
VOLUME 46
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
T he Philosoph y of Right • T he Philosophy of History
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, 1770-1831
HEGEL is the founder of logical Idealism or Panlogism. He rejected the
unknown “thing-in-itsclf” of Kant and the equally unknown “identity”
or Absolute which, according to Schelling, manifests itself in Nature and
mind. He denied the opaqueness of ultimate reality and insisted that
the entire universe “can be penetrated by thought”. Mind and Nature
are not merely manifestations or expressions of an otherwise unknown
Absolute; they are the Absolute itself. Moreover, mind and Nature,
according to Hegel, are not two distinct or parallel realities but integral
components of one process of self-revelation. Mind needs for its own
development an objective world, or Nature, on which to exercise itself;
but this objective world is itself mental, something that is at once appear-
ance and reality — “the real is rational and the rational is real”. The
development of this rational reality is a kind of dialectic proceeding by
the method of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, or position, negation, and
reconciliation. Some thought occurs; it is opposed by another thought,
which also turns out to be inadequate; but what is true in each, the
thesis and the antithesis, is harmonized and made mutually supplementary
in another thought, which synthesizes them; e.g., “becoming” is such a
synthesis of “being” and “not-being”. The whole world, according to
Hegel, is made up of such opposites which are reconciled, and this
conception by Hegel of the cosmic process as a rational dialectic stimu-
lated new views of history, and, consequently, a new interest in it.
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is a theory in which the fundamental
principles of law, morality and social institutions (political and municipal)
are said to be connected stages in the logical evolution of rational will.
It is animated by the idea that whatever is real is rational and whatever
is rational is real. His theory was not a mere formulation of the Prussian
State. It is inspired by an overpowering sense of the value of organization
— a sense that liberty can never be dissevered from order, that a vital
243
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
intcr-conncction between all the parts of the body politic is the source of
all good.
The Lectures on the Philosophy of History is the most popular of all
Hegel’s works. The history of the world is a scene of judgment where
one people and one alone holds for a while the sceptre, as the unconscious
instrument of the universal spirit, till another rises in its place with a
fuller measure of liberty --a larger superiority to the bonds of natural
and artificial circumstance. Three main periods — the Oriental, the
Classical and the Germanic — in which respectively the single despot,
the dominant order, and the man as man possess freedom — constitute
the history of the world.
Hegel was born at Stuttgart on August 27, 1770, the oldest child of
a minor state official. His achievement at the local grammar school and
gymnasium was not remarkable. A journal from that time contains
evidence of interest in history, Greek and Latin literature, and theology,
and he then began his lifelong habit of making copious extracts from his
reading which he annotated and arranged alphabetically. At the age of
eighteen he entered the LTniversity of Tubingen as a student of theology.
But he showed little aptitude for theology; his sermons were a failure,
and he found more congenial reading in the classics. The certificate
which he received in 1793 commende^d his excellent talents but declared
that his industry and knowledge w(‘re mediocre, his speaking poor, and
that he was particularly deficient in philosophy. He seems to have
profited most from the companionship of his friends, notably Holderlin
and Schelling, with whom he read Kiint and Plato.
On leaving Tubingen, Hegel became a tutor in a private family, as
had Kant and Fichte before him. He held such a position first at Bern
(1793-1796) and then at Frankfurt (1797-1800). From the years when
he was a tutor there remains a large number of manuscripts, in various
stages of completion and of varying importance, but all indicative of a
great deal of study. During his residence in Switzerland he wrote a life
of Jesus, a critique of positive* religion, and several studies in the history
of religion. Later his attention turned to questions of economics and
government, and he left writings on the reform of the Prussian land
laws, a commentar) on James Steuart’s Political Economy, and other
studies of similar character which have since been published. In 1800 he
produced a sketch which is generally regarded as the first systematic
statement of his philosophy.
244
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
In 1799 his father died, and a small inheritance offered Hegel a brief
period of independence. He wrote to Schelling, who was already on the
way to fame, asking him to suggest a suitable town for a brief period of
studious withdrawal, specifying, among other requirements, “a good
beer”. Expressing his joy at the recent successes of his friend in the
academic world, he confessed that he too had ambitions : “The ideal of
my youth has necessarily taken a reflective form and been transfonned
into a system. Now I am asking myself, while still busy with this task,
how can I return to influencing the life of mankind?” Schelling’s answer
must have been enthusiastic, for Hegel abandoned his plans for a quiet
vacation and joined him at Jena almost immediately. Here he became a
Privat-docent at the university, after he had presented as his qualifying
dissertation a treatise On the Orbits of the Planets, In the winter of 1801
his lectures, delivered in the late afternoon and attended by eleven
students, dealt with logic and metaphysics; succeeding scries in later
years, somewhat better attended, were devoted to a “system of specula-
tive philosophy”, the history of philosophy, pure mathematics, and other
topics. Before Schelling’s departure from Jena, in 1803, he and Hegel
collaborated in the publication of the Journal of Critical Philosophy.
Although Hegel appeared at first as a follower of Schclling, his own
views rapidly became distinct and he set about preparing a systematic
exposition. In the preface to his first important work, The Phenomen-
ology of Spirit, he went to some length to make a kind of disavowal of
Schelling’s position. It was while he was engaged in the details of
publication of this work that his academic career was brought abruptly
to a close by the Napoleonic campaign culminating in the battle of Jena
in the autumn of 1806. In a letter written to a friend on the day before
the battle, after expressing anxiety regarding the fate of his manuscripts
then on the way to the printer, he spoke of seeing Napoleon : “I saw
the Emperor — that world-soul — ride through the town to reconnoitre.
It is indeed a strange feeling to see such a person, who here, from a single
point, sitting on his horse, reaches over and masters the world !
The Phenomenology of Spirit appeared in 1807 despite the war, but
Hegel himself was at a loose end. For a time (1807—1808) he edited the
Bamberger Z,eitungy but finding journalism distasteful, he accepted a
position as headmaster of the Ac gidien- gymnasium at Nuremberg, where
he remained until 1816. In 1811 he married. Two volumes of his Science
of Logic were published in 1812, and a third in 1816, and he was offered
245
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
professorships at Erlangen, Heidelberg, and Berlin. He accepted the
invitation to Heidelberg, but after the publication of his Encyclopaedia
of the Philosophical Sciences in 1817, the offer of Berlin was renewed
and accepted, and he occupied the chair vacant since the death of Fichte.
The thirteen years of Hegel’s professorship at the University of Berlin
(1818-1831) brought him to the summit of his career and made him the
recognized leader of philosophic thought in Germany. With every year
his personal prestige and following increased, until his name was linked
with that of Goethe by his more enthusiastic disciples. In 1821 he
published The Philosophy of Eighty the last of the large works published
in his lifetime. His lectures on aesthetics, the philosophy of religion, the
philosophy of history, and the history of philosophy were constantly
revised and improved and finally published after his death. In 1830 he
became rector of the university and was decorated by Frederick William
III of Prussia.
On the 7th of November, 1831, Hegel finished the preface to a second
edition of his Logic. In closing he recalled the legend that Plato revised
the Republic seven times, and remarked that, despite this illustrious
example, “the writer must content himself with what he has been allowed
to achieve under the pressure of circumstances, the unavoidable waste
caused by the extent and many sidedness of the interests of the time, and
the haunting doubt whether, amid the loud clamour of the day and the
deafening babble of opinion . . . there is left any room for sympathy of
pure thought”. Seven days later he died of cholera, and was buried, as
he had wished, between Fichte and Solger.
O O O
VOLUME 47
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Faust
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, 1749-1832
THE supreme work of Goethe’s latter years is Faust, Gennany’s greatest
contribution to the literature of the world. Although Part I was published
in 1808, Part II was not completed until shortly before Goethe died and
246
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
was published in 1832. In Part I is set out Faust’s Despair, his pact with
Mephistopheles and his love for Gretchen; Part II covers the magician’s
life at court, the winning of Helen of Troy and Faust’s purification and
salvation.
Goethe was bom on August 28, 1749, at Frankfurt-on-Main. His father
was a lawyer of independent meaas and an imperial councillor; his
mother was the daughter of the mayor of Frankfurt. The first sixteen
years of his life were spent almost entirely at home, where he gained
some acquaintance with the Bible and the classics, Italian, Hebrew,
English, music, and drawing.
In 1765 Goethe began his preparation for the law by attending the
University of Leipzig. However, it was literature rather than law that
occupied him. Moved by his love for a young woman, he began to turn
“everything which rejoiced or troubled me into a picture or a poem”. A
serious breakdown of his health in 1768 cut short his stay at Leipzig.
After a long period of convalescence, much of which was devoted to the
study of Paracelsus, alchemy, and “natural magic”, Goethe went to
Strasbourg, where in 1771 he completed his legal training.
While at Strasbourg, Goethe became acquainted with Herder, who, he
later remarked, “tore down the curtain which had covered the poverty
of German literature”. Together they studied Gothic architecture, read
Homer, Shakespeare, Ossian, and folk-song, and discussed a new German
literature. When Goethe returned to Frankfurt in 1771, he had schemes
for dramas and various literary works but no strong desire to practise
law. That same year he began his first important work, the drama
celebrating the sixteenth-century robber-knight, Gotz von Berlichingen.
After a period of several months spent at the imperial courts at Wetzlar,
where he knew and loved Lotte Buff, Goethe produced his novel, the
Sorrows of Young Wert her (1774), written “as by a somnambulist” in
four weeks’ time. Both the Werther and the Gotz, published a year
previously, had an enormous success and inaugurated the literary move-
ment known as Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress). They found many
imitators throughout Europe; even the clothes that Werner wore became
the fashion; and for a long time thereafter Goethe was known only as
the “author of Werther”.
Goethe once remarked : “I am like a snake, 1 slough my skin and
start afresh.” In 1775, in the midst of his literary triumph, he accepted
the invitation of Duke Karl August and moved to the court at Weimar,
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JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
which was to remain his home for the rest of his life. He was reproached
by his friends for abandoning his literary talents, and he soon became so
involved with duties of state that for the next ten years he spent little
time in writing. He was not long in Weimar before he was entrusted
with almost all the offices of the tiny State. As councillor of legation, he
attended the privy council and the trial of prisoners. He also had charge
of the war and finance commissions as well as the administration of
roads, mines, and forests. In 1782 he was raised to the nobility by the
emperor and a short time later became president of the chamber.
Partly in connection with his new duties at Weimar, Goethe revived
the interest in science that he had first shown at Strasbourg. He took up
again the study of anatomy and in 1784 discovered that the inter-
maxillary bone exists in man in a rudimentary form, thus contributing
to the development of the evolutionary doctrine. His experiments with
the structure and growth of plants provided him with the material later
incorporated in his Metamorphoses of Plants. He also began his work
in optics.
Although eminently successful in carrying out his practical duties,
Goethe came to regret them as a “terrible disease” which kept him from
writing, and “grievously disturbed my creative power”. In 1786, deter-
mined to escape them for a time, he set out for Italy, disguised as a
merchant under the name of Moller. For twenty-two months he remained
in Italy and felt that he “found himself again as an artist”. Under the
influence of what he regarded as the classical spirit, he resolved, “I will
occupy myself only with lasting conditions, such as we see in the Greek
statues.” With that inspiration he re-worked and completed many of the
books he had begun previously, including 1 phi genie avf Tavris, Torquato
Tasso, and Egmont.
After his return to Weimar in 1788, Goethe found it impossible to
resume his fonner life. “My outer man,” he wrote, “could not accustom
itself to the change.” His Italian sojourn had separat(‘d him from
Charlotte von Stein, whom he had loved for twelve years, and to the
scandal of Weimar he took into his*, house Christine Vulpius, a young
fack>ry worker, whom he finally married in 1806. His new classic dramas
attracted little attention, and Gennany seemed to like only the Sturm
und Drang literature, which he felt had left far behind. Schiller had
then begun his rise to literary fame, and Goethe at the time felt Schiller
was in every way his opposite. He was delighted, however, when Schiller
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JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
invited him in 1794 to contribute to a new review he was starting. Shortly
afterwards, their meeting occurred, inaugurating a friendship which was
to last until the younger poet’s death in 1805.
Largely under Schiller’s influence, Goethe returned to literature with
renewed interest. Together they wrote the Xenian, attacking tlie literary
foibles of their time. Goethe, to some extent, inspired the plays of
Schiller, which he produced as the director of the ducal theatre. He
wrote Wilhelm Meistcr's Apprenticeship (1796), the epic idyll, Hermann
and Dorothea, and a number of poems. He was also persuaded to resume
work upon the Faust legend, which he had begun to dramatize as early
as 1774. He had published a fragment of it in 1790. At the constant
urging of Schiller he now completed the first part, which was published
in 1808. It immediately won an enthusiastic reception, even from those
most opposed to the classicism of the Weimar school.
After Schiller’s death Goethe ceased to take any active part in the
literary movements of his day, although he continued to direct the
Weimar theatre until 1817 and was the recognized doyen of German
literature. Nor was he much involved with the great political events of
his time. He tended to regard Napoleon as the defender of civilization
against the Slavs, and in the interview between the two men at Erfurt in
1808 the poet reciprocated the admiration of the French conqueror, who
began the meeting by exclaiming : *^Vous etes un homme,^^ Goethe still
continued to produce a great volume of literary work of all kinds. In
1810 he brought out his Theory of Colour. The following year he
began his autobiography, under the title of Poetry and Truth. Wilhelm
Meister's Travel Years first appeared in 1821.
In 1824 Goethe returned to work on the second part of Faust, and
by 1832 the poem was completed. Although often interrupted the
composition of Faust had taken Goethe almost sixty years. Shortly after
its completion, on March 31, Goethe died. He was buried beside Karl
August in the ducal vault at Weimar, to which the remains of Schiller
were also removed.
O O O
VOLUME 48
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick ; or^ The Whale
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HERMAN MELVILLE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
HERMAN MELVILLE, 1819-1891
Melville’s greatest work, Moby Dick, is regarded by some as the
greatest novel written in English. It may be read with complete enjoy-
ment as a stirring tale of external voyage, but inwardly it is lined with
metaphysical speculation regarding “the nature of ultimate reality”. Like
Henry James, Melville was inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne but his
fiction is more robust than either Hawthorne’s or James’s, although he
shared with the latter a final preoccupation with the problem of evil.
Melville’s philosophical conclusions are not clear-cut, but it is apparent
that he tended to be pessimistic about the cosmos and the heart of man.
The author of Moby Dick was born in New York in 1819, descended
from Scottish stock on his father’s side and from Dutch Calvinist on his
mother’s. His father, an importer of French dry-goods, had built a
prosperous business which flourished until the depression of the late
twenties. Mr. Melville moved to Albany to re-establish himself but died
in 1832, his mind deranged by worry and overwork. The necessity of
contributing to the support of his family compelled Herman to leave
school at the age of fifteen to clerk for his uncles.
In 1837 Melville shipped on a merchantman bound for Liverpool,
taking this course probably, as did the hero of his partly autobiographical
novel, Redburn, because of “sad disappointments in several plans I had
sketched for my future life, the necessity of doing something for myself,
united to a naturally roving disposition'”. Upon his return from this first
voyage, Melville taught at schools in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and
Greenbush, New York. But in 1841 he went to sea again, this time on
the whaler, Acushnet. He jumped ship at Nukuhiva in the Marquesas
Islands and spent a few weeks with the cannibals of the Taipi valley.
For a year he roved the Pacific and finally boarded at Honolulu the
man-of-war. United States.
In a letter written to Hawthorne in 1851, Melville dated his life from
his twenty-fifth year, the year of his*, discharge from the United States.
“Until I was twenty-five,” he wrote, “I had no development at all. Three
weeks have scarcely p.issed, at any time between then and now, that I
have not unfolded within myself.” His first novels were drawn from his
experience in the South Seas. Typee was published in London and New
York in 1846, and Omoo appeared the following year. They brought
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HERMAN MELVILLE
Melville considerable literary fame, along with censure for his exaltation
of the savage and his criticism of missionaries.
In 1847 Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of Chief
Justice Lemuel Shaw of Boston, to whom he had dedicated Typee, He
and his new wife settled in New York, where, as the protege of Evert
Duyckinck, who had reviewed his novels for the Literary World, he was
prominent in the city’s literary life. In Duyckinck’s extensive library,
Melville discovered Shakespeare, whose writings had been unavailable to
him among the books he had “picked up by chance here and there” in
ships’ libraries and second-hand bookstores.
“Those deep faraway things . . . those occasional flashings-forth of the
intuitive I’ruth . . . those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality,”
that Melville found in Shakespeare, were to enter into the writing of his
next novel, Mardi, published in 1849. I'his work, an allegorical romance
in a Polynesian setting, was accorded the same unenthusiastic reception
that was to be given all the books in which he tried to “get a living by
the truth”. Rather than “go to the Soup Societies”, as he put it, Melville
turned again to straight narrative in Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket
(1850), serni-autobiographical talcs of life aboard a merchantman and a
man-of-war. Both were favourably received. “But I hope I shall never
write such a book again,” he wrote Duyckinck, “tho’ when a poor devil
writes with duns all around him . . . like the devils about St. Anthony —
what can you expect of that poor devil? What but a beggardly Redburn !
And when he attempts anything higher — God help him ! . . . Witness
Mardir
Melville was irritated at the persistence of his fame as “a man who
lived among the cannibals” and became increasingly restive under “the
petitionings and remonstrances of literary friends of all sorts”. In 1850,
after a trip to England to arrange for the publication of White-Jacket,
he settled on a fann in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, hoping to eke out the
meagre income from his books by small-scale farming.
The same year Plawthorne moved to nearby Lenox. Melville had
written an essay in praise of Hawthorne, placing him beside Shakespeare
“in his great power of blackness . . . that appeals to that Galvinistic sense
of Innate Depravity and Original Sin”. Hawthorne, on his side, had
recognized Melville as “no common man and said of his writing that
“no man ever put the reality before his reader more unflinchingly . The
two writers became friends and often walked together, talking about
251
HERMAN MELVILLE
time and eternity, things of this world and the next, and books, and
publishers, and all possible and impossible matters”.
It was to Hawthorne that Melville dedicated Moby Dick (1851),
writing to him of the “hell-fire in which the whole book is broiled”. This
work, he felt, marked the end of that process of “unfolding within” begun
when he was twenty-five : “I feel that 1 am now come to the inmost leaf
of the bud, and that shortly the flower must fall to the mould.” Melville
was filled with “a sense of unspeakable security” because Hawthorne
understood this book. “It’s a long stage, and no inn in sight, and night
coming, and the body cold. But with you for a passenger, I am content
and can be happy,” he wrote to the elder author. In the same letter he
describes his own sensations : “I have written a wicked book, and feel
spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and
dine with you and all the gods in old Rome’s Pantheon. It is a strange
feeling — no hopefulness is in it, no despair.”
At the same high tension, he finished his next novel, Pierre, published
the following year. The reviews were universally unfavourable; even
Duyckinck complained that Melville had let his mind run “riot amid
remote analogies”, Melville attempted, without success, to secure a
consular appointment in 1853. The same year a fire at the warehouse of
his publishers destroyed not only his books but also the plates from which
they had been printed; they were not reprinted during his lifetime.
Unable to find other means of earning his livelihood, he was obliged to
continue writing; he completed two novels and a book of short stories
by 1857.
Low in spirits and broken in health, Melville travelled to Europe in
1856. On his way to the Holy Land, he visited Hawthorne, then Consul
at Liverpool. The two, according to Hawthorne’s account, sat among
the .sandhills, and Melville, as was his wont, “began to reason of
Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken,
and informed me that he ‘had pretty much made up his mind to be
annihilated’; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and,
I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange
how he persists ... in wandering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal
and monotonous as ti e sandhills amid which we were sitting. He can
neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief”.
The last thirty-three years of Melville’s life were spent in almost
complete obscurity. From 1857 to 1860 he lectured throughout the East
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CHARLES DARWIN
and Middle West on such subjects as “The South Sea”, “Travel”,
“Statuary in Rome”. Once again, in middle age, he sought the solace of
the sea, voyaging to San Francisco aboard his brother’s clipper ship. In
1866 he was appointed a customs inspector in New York, a position he
held until 1885. Now and then a student or an enterprising literary man
would visit him in his retirement and would return to report that he was
only interested in talking philosophy or religion. Three volumes of short
poems and an epic on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land form the bulk of
his writings during this period. Billy Budd, a somewhat more tranquil
novel, was finished just before his death and published posthumously
in 1924.
Herman Melville died in New York on September 28, 1891. Only one
newspaper carried an obituary notice, and this was but a few lines.
O O O
VOLUME 49
CHARLES DARWIN
1 he Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHARLES DARWIN, 1809-1882
Darwin’s Origin of Species is probably the most famous of all scientific
works even today, and in fact was immeosely popular as soon as it was
published — the whole edition of 1 ,250 copies was exhausted on the day
of issue. From the point of view of the history of science, the significance
of Darwin’s theory lies in the new and vast extension it gave to the field
in which causes intelligible to the human mind can be sought as
explanations of phenomena. Thus evolution is co-ordinated in the history
of thought with the Newtonian theory of gravitation, with physical and
chemical theories of physiology and with the uniformitarian theory of
geology. The first four chapters explain the operation of artificial selec-
tion by man and of natural selection in consequence of the struggle for
existence. The fifth chapter deals with the laws of variation and causes
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CHARLES DARWIN
of modification other than natural selection. The five succeeding chapters
consider difficulties in the way of a belief in evolution generally as well
as in natural selection. The three remaining chapters (omitting the final
recapitulation) deal with the evidence for evolution. The theory which
suggested a cause of evolution is thus given the foremost place and the
evidence for the existence of evolution considered last. The evidence had
never been thought out and marshalled in a manner which bears any
comparison with that of Darwin, and the work would have been epoch-
making had it consisted of the later chapters alone.
The Descent of Mon and Selection in Relation to Sex both fulfilled
Darwin’s statement in the Origin that “light would be thrown on the
origin of man and his history”, and collected the evidence in support of
his hypothesis of sexual selection which he had briefly described in an
earlier essay.
In evaluating the qualities that accounted for his “success as a man of
science”, Charles Darwin in his modest autobiography, written “because
it might possibly interest my children”, traces from his early youth, “the
strongest desire to understand and explain” whatever he observed. HLs
childhood fantasies were concerned with fabulous discoveries in natural
history; to his schoolmates he boasted that he could produce variously
coloured flowers of the same plant by watering them with certain
coloured fluids.
His father, a highly successful physician, was somewhat puzzled by the
singular interests of his second son as well as by his undistinguished
career in the classical curriculum of Dr. Butler’s day school; he accord-
ingly decided to send him to Edinburgh to study medicine. At Edinburgh
Darwin collected animals in tidal pools, trawled for oysters with New-
haven fishennen to obtain specimens, and made two small discoveries
which he incorporated in papers read before the Plinian Society. He put
forth no very “strenuous effort” to learn medicine.
With some asperity, Dr. Darwin proposed the vocation of clergyman
as an alternative. The life of a country clergyman appealed to young
Darwin, and, after quieting his doubts concerning his belief in “all the
dogmas of the Church”, he began this new career at Cambridge. He
proved unable, however, to repress his scientific interests and developed
into an ardent entomologist, particularly devoted to collecting beetles;
he had the satisfaction of seeing one of his rare specimens published in
Stephen’s Illustrations of British Insects : As at Edinburgh, he enjoyed
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CHARLES DARWIN
many stimulating associations with men of science. It was a professor of
botany at Cambridge, J. S. Henslow, who arranged for his appointment
as naturalist on the government ship, H.M.S. Beagle.
From 1831 to 1836 the Beagle voyaged in Southern waters. Lyell’s
researches into the changes wrought by natural processes, set forth in
Principles of Geology, gave direction to Darwin’s own observations of the
geological structure of the Cape Verde Islands. He also made extensive
examinations of coral reefs and noted the relations of animals on the
mainland to those of the adjacent islands, as well as the relation of living
animals to the fossil remains of the same species.
Darwin described the voyage of the Beagle as “by far the most
important event in my life”. Besides making him one of the best qualified
naturalists of his day, it developed in him the “habit of energetic industry
and of concentrated attention”. This new purposefulness on the part of his
son was succinctly noted by Dr. Daruin, who remarked upon first seeing
him after the voyage : “Why, the shape of his head is quite altered.”
After his return, Darwin settled in London and began the task of
organizing and recording his observations. He became a close friend of
Lyell, the leading English geologist, and later of Hooker, an outstanding
botanist. In 1839 he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and towards
the end of 1842, because of Darwin’s chronic ill health, the family moved
to Down, where he lived in seclusion for the rest of his days. During the
six years in London, he prepared his Journal from the notes of the
voyage and published his carefully documented study of Coral Reefs.
The next eight years were spent in the laborious classification of
barnacles for his four-volume work on that subject. “I have been struck,”
he wrote to Hooker, “with the variability of every part in some slight
degree of every species.’' After this period of detailed work with a single
species, Darwin felt prepared to attack the problem of the modification
of species which he had been pondering for many years.
A number of facts had come to light during the voyage of the Beagle
that Darwin felt “could only be explained on the supposition that species
gradually become modified”. Later, after his return to England, he had
collected all the material he could find which “tore in any way on the
variation of plants and animals under domestication”. He soon perceived
“that selection was the keystone of man’s success. But how selection could
be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some
time a mystery”. One day, while reading Malthus on Population, it
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CHARLES DARWIN
suddenly occurred to him how, in the struggle for existence which he
had everywhere observed, “favourable variations would tend to be pre-
served and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the
formation of a new species. Here then I had at last a theory by which
to work”.
He confided this theory to Hooker and Lyell, who urged him to write
out his views for publication. But Darwin worked deliberately; he was
only half through his projected book when, in the summer of 1858, he
received an essay from A. R. Wallace at Ternate in the Moluccas,
containing exactly the same theory as his own. Darwin submitted his
dilemma to Hooker and Lyell, to whom he wrote : “Your words have
come true with a vengeance — that 1 should be forestalled." It was their
decision to publish an abstract of his theory from a letter of the previous
year together with Wallace’s essay, the joint work being entitled : On
the Tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetuation of
Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.
A year later, on November 24, 1859, The Orlj^in of Species appeared.
A storm of controversy arose over the book, reacliing its height at a
meeting of the British Association at Oxford, where the celebrated duel
between T. H. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce took place. Darwin, who
could not sleep when he answered an antagonist harshly, took Lyell’s
advice and saved both “lime and temper" by avoiding the fray.
In his work, however, he stayed close to his thesis. He expanded the
material of the first chapter of the Origin into a book. Variation of
Plants and Animals under Domestication (1868). The Expression of the
Emotions (1872) offered a natural explanation of phenomena which
appeared to be a difficulty in the way of the acceptance of evolution. His
last works were concerned with the form, movement, and fertilization
of plants.
Darwin’s existence at Down was peculiarly adapted to preserve his
energy and give direct order to his activity. Because of his continual
ill health, his wife took pains “to shield him from every avoidable
annoyance’’. He observed the same* routine for nearly forty years, his
days being carefully parcelled into intervals of exercise and light reading
in such proportions that he could utilize to his fullest capacity the four
hours he devoted to work. His scientific reading and experimentation, as
well, were organized with the most rigorous economy. Even the phases
of his intellectual life non-essential to his work became, as he put it,
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KARL MARX
“atrophied”, a fact which he regretted as “a loss of happiness”. Such
non-scientific reading as he did was purely for relaxation, and he thought
that “a law ought to be passed” against unhappy endings to novels.
With his wife and seven children his manner was so unusually “affec-
tionate and delightful” that his son, Francis, marvelled that he could
preserve it “with such an undemonstrative race as we are”. When he
died on April 19, 1882, his family wanted him to be buried at Down;
public feeling decreed that he should be interred in Westminster Abbey,
where he was laid beside Sir Isaac Newton.
O O O
VOLUME 50
KARL MARX
Capital
KARL MARX and FRIEDRICH ENGELS
Manifesto of the Communist Party
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
KARL MARX, 1818-1883
KARL MARX, the Father of Communism, was the chief eixponent, with
Lenin, of Communist theory. His Das Kapital (Capital) and the Manifest
dcr Kommunisten (The Communist Manifesto), written in collaboration
with Friedrich Engels, arc the two great classics of Communist doctrine.
The starting point of Marx’s theory of Socialism is his doctrine of the
class struggle. This provides the clue to the two doctrines directly
associated with his name — the materialist conception of history and the
theory of surplus value. The former of these, though it underlies all his
thinking, is nowhere systematically expounded in his books. The latter is
the main theme of Capital.
The Communist Manifesto, on the other hand, was a concise exposition
of the working class movement in modern society according to the views
of Marx and Engels, to which was added a critical survey of the existing
socialist and communist literature, and an explanation of the attitude of
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KARL MARX
the Communists towards the advanced opposition parties in the different
countries of the world.
On his father’s side, Marx was descended from a family of eminent
rabbis. His father, a prosperous lawyer, holding an official post in the
Prussian services, adopted Lutheranism for himself and his family in
1824. His mother was a simple woman of Hungarian origin, who never
learned to speak or read German.
Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in the ancient city of Trier in the
Rhineland, where he completed his early schooling. At seventeen he was
sent to the University of Bonn to study law, but appears to have devoted
most of his time to “wild frolics”, and the following year, after engaging
in a duel, he was transferred to the University of Berlin, which had the
reputation of being a “workshop” rather than a “tavern”. Instead of
applying himself to the study of the law, Marx read the Latin, English,
and Italian classics and began to “wrestle with philosophy”, as he wrote
to his family. At nineteen he became the youngest member of the “Doktor
Klub”, a group of “young Hegelians” who gathered to discuss the rival
interpretations of Hegel’s religious and philosophic views. 7'hey criticized
religious orthodoxy along the lines suggested by Feuerbach’s Essence of
Christianity and adopted positions on political questions “at the extreme
left wing of the republican movement”. The triumph of conservatism in
governmental and educational circles led Marx to hasten the completion
of his university work. He finished a dissertation On the Difference
between the Natural Philosophies of Democritus and the Epicureans,
submitted it to the University of Jena, then notorious for its readiness to
grant diplomas, and received his doctoral degree in 1841.
Convinced that an academic career was closed because of the con-
servative reaction, Marx turned to journalism. In October 1842, he
became an editor of the liberal paper of Cologne, the Rheinischc Zeitun^.
In its pages he defended the wine-growing peasants of the Moselle against
the wood-theft laws enacted by the Rhenish diet, and expressed his
growing awareness of economic issues. 7Te paper was suppressed, and he
came reluctantly to the view that '.“physical force must be overthrown
with physical force, and theory will be a physical force as soon as the
masses understand t*/’. I'he experience on the Rhcinische Zeitung, he
later testified, led him “to move from pure politics to socialism”.
After the suppression of the paper Marx married his boyhood sweet-
heart, the aristocratic Jenny von Westphalen, and went to Paris to further
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KARL MARX
his knowledge of economics and socialism. He was soon associated with
Louis Blanc, Proudhon, Heine, and the other German emigres and
French socialists whose efforts made Paris the intellectual centre of
the Socialist movement. With the well-known literary leader of
Radical Hegelianism, Arnold Ruge, he edited the Deutsch-franzdsischc
Jahrbucher, which in its first and only issue contained articles by
Feuerbach, Bakunin, and Engels, as well as two l)y Marx, one on the
Jewish question and the other on Hegel’s philosophy of law. Marx’s
journalistic efforts in Paris were then devoted chiefly to the radical
magazine, the Vorivcirts.
While in Paris Marx met Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), with whom
he began a lifelong friendship and collaboration. Engels, the son of a
cotton manufacturer of Barmen, Germany, was then working in one of
his father’s factories in England, where he associated with the Owenites
and Chartists and had the opportunity, denied to Marx, of studying at
close range the organization of modern manufacture and its impact upon
the workers. His Position of the Workinti Classes in England (1844) was
written from this experience.
In 1845 the entire staff of the Vorwdrts received orders, instigated by
the Prussian Government, to leave France, and Marx went to Brussels,
where he was soon joined by Engels. By this time he had sketched his
theoi'y of history, and with Engels as his collaborator, began to work it
out in detail. Together they wrote the German Ideology, which, however,
was not published until 1932. They acquired a local German weekly,
the Briisseller Deutsche Zeitung, and “commenced political agitation”,
as Engels later wrote, by joining a communistic society, the League of
the Just, which had branches in Brussels, l.ondon, Paris, and several
Swiss towns. This group had become the League of the Communists,
when it met in London in 1847, and Marx and Engels were assigned the
task of stating its aims. They produced the Communist Manifesto;
Engels wrote a first draft which was rewritten by Marx.
Shortly after its publication, the February Revolution of 1848 broke
out in France. Marx and Engels, expelled from Belgium, paid a brief
visit to that country before going to Cologne to aid the revolution there.
They founded a daily newspaper, the Neue Rhcinische Zeitung, as “An
Organ of Democracy”, and were able to carry on their campaign for
revolution for almost a year before the paper was suppressed. Marx was
prosecuted for high treason and, though acquitted by the jury, he was
259
KARL MARX
forced to leave Prussian territory. He turned again to France, but was
soon presented with the choice of either settling in Brittany or leaving
France; he preferred to go to England for “the next dance”.
Marx passed the last thirty-four years of his life in England, living
with his family in the slums of Soho, almost completely dependent upon
the small sums Engels could send him. In 1852 he became a political
correspondent for the New York Tribune, but his articles never brought
more than two pounds and usually not that much. Most of his time was
spent in poring ovf*r books and newspapers in the British Museum or
writing at home. While suffering from the loss of three of his six children,
and from poverty, liver attacks, carbuncles, and boils — “Plagued like
Job, though not so Godfearing,” he wrote to Engels — Marx produced
the Critique of Political Economy fl859) and the first volume of
Capital (1867).
In 1864 Marx again became active in the field of politics. He organized
the Inteniational Working Men’s Association (the First International)
and served as actual head of its general council. While its first years were
more than usually successful, the anarchist agitation of Bakunin, the
Franco- Prussian war, and the Paris Commune created conditions that
made it impossible to maintain a centralized federation. At the instigation
of Marx the general council was moved to the United States and, in
1 876, formally dissolved in a conference at Philadelphia.
Marx regarded his main work as finishing the Capital. He wrote to a
friend : “I laugh ,at the so-called ‘practical’ men and their wisdom. If
one wants to be an ox one can easily turn one’s back on human
suffering and look after one’s own skin. But I should have regarded
myself as really impractical had I died without finishing my book, at
least in manuscript.” He was unable, however, to complete tlje work, and
Engels brought out the second and third volumes after his death.
With an improvement in fortune in his last years Marx sought relief
for his seriously declining health at various European spas, but returned
to England without any marked improvement. When the news of his
wife’s death was brought to him as hfe lay ill with pleurisy, he murmured :
“The Moor” — so he was called by his children — “is dead too.” He
died fifteen months l.^ter, on March 14, 1883, in London, and was buried
at Highgate Cemetery.
O O O
260
LEO TOLSTOY
VOLUME 51
COUNT LEO TOLSTOY
War and Peace
BIOGRAPHICAI. NOTE
T.EO TOLSTOY, 1828-1910
Tolstoy’s War and Peace is one of the world’s masterpieces of
literature and indeed has a considerable claim to being the world’s
greatest novel. Together with his Anna Karenina it marks the highest
point reached in its development by the realistic novel. In these novels
literary realism attains its goal : an adequacy of the verbal pattern to
the living reality which ultimately produces the feeling, familiar to
readers of Tolstoy, that his characters are to be classified with people in
flesh and blood, not with other characters in fiction. The countless
characters that fill the stage are seen not from the outside only but from
the inside. 'J"he women in this respect are particularly remarkable in
War and Peace, and among them most of all Natasha, who is the centre
of the novel, the embodiment of its philosophy, the quintessence of
spontaneous, nature-wise mankind.
Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828, at the
family estate of Yasnaya Polyana, in the province of Tula. His mother
died when he was three and his father six years later. Placed in the care
of his aunts, he passed many of his early years at Kazan, where, in 1844,
he entered the university. He cared little for the university and in 1847
withdrew because of “ill health and domestic circumstances”. He had,
however, done a great deal of reading, of French, English, and Russian
novels, the New 'Festament, Voltaire, and Hegel. The author exercising
the greatest influence upon him at this time was Rousseau; he read his
complete works and for some time wore about his neck a medallion of
Rousseau.
Immediately upon leaving the university, Tolstoy returned to his estate
and, perhaps inspired by his enthusiasm for Rousseau, prepared to devote
himself to agriculture and to improving the condition of his serfs. His
first attempt at social reform proved disappointing, and after six months
he withdrew to Moscow and St. Petersburg, where he gave himself over
261
LEO TOLSTOY
to the irregular life characteristic of his class and time. In 1851, deter-
mined to “escape my debts and, more than anything else, my habits”,
he enlisted in the Army as a gentleman- volunteer, and went to the
Caucasus. While at Tiflis, preparing for his examinations as a cadet, he
wrote the first portion of the trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth,
in which he celebrated the happiness of “being with Nature, seeing her,
communing with her”. He also began The Cossacks with the intention of
showing thatfculture is the enemy of happiness./Although continuing his
army life, he gradually came to realize that “a military career is not for
me, and the sooner I get out of it and devote myself entirely to literature
the better”. fHis Sevastopol Sketches (1855) were so successful that Tsar
Nicholas issued special orders that he should be removed from a post
of danger^
Returning to St. Petersl)urg, I’olstoy was received with great favour in
both the official and literary circles of the capital. He soon became
interested in the popular progressive movement of the time, and in 1857
he decided to go abroad and study the educational and municipal .systems
of other countries. That year, and again in 1860, he travelled in Europe
At Yasnaya Polyana in 1861 he liberated his .serfs and opened a school,
established on the principle that “everything which savours of compulsion
is harmful”. He started a magazine to promote his notions on education
and at the same time served as an official arbitrator for grievances
between the nobles and the recently emancipated serfs. By the end of
1862 he was so exhausted that he discontinued his activities and retired
to the steppes to drink koumis for his health.
Tolstoy had been contemplating marriage for some tinu*, and in 1862
he married Sophie Behrs, sixteen years his junior, and the daughter of a
fashionable Mo.scow doctor. 'I'heir early married life at Yasn.iya Polyana
was tran(|uil. Family cares occupied the Countess, and in the course of
her life she bore thirteen children, nine of whom survived infancy. Yet
she also acted as a copyist for her husband, who after their marriage
turned again to writing. He was soon at work upon “a novel of the
1810\s and ’20’s” which absorbed 'all his time and effort. He went
frequently to Mo.scow, “studying letters, diaries, and traditions” and
“accumulated a whfjfe library” of historical material on the period. He
interviewed survivors of the battles of that time and travelled to Borodino
to draw up a map of the battleground. Finally, in 1869, after his work
had undergone several changes in conception and he had “spent five
262
LEO TOLSTOY
years of uninterrupted and exceptionally strenuous labour under the best
conditions of life”, he published War and Peace. Its appearance immedi-
ately established Tolstoy’s reputation, and in the judgment of Turgenev,
the acknowledged doyen of Russian letters, gave him “first place among
all our contemporary writers”.
I'he years immediately following the completion of War and Peace
were passed in a great variety of occupations, none of which Tolstoy
found satisfying. He tried busying himself with the affairs of his estate,
undertook the learning of Greek to read the ancient classics, turned again
to education, wrote a series of elementary school books, and served as
school inspector. With much urging from his wife and friends, he
completed Anna Karenina, which appeared serially between 1875 and
1877. Disturbed by what he considered his unreflective and prosperous
existence, Tolstoy became increasingly interested in religion. At first he
turned to the orthodox faith of the people. Unable to find rest there, he
began a detailed examination of religions, and out of his reading,
particularly of the Gospels, gradually evolved his own personal doctrine.
Following his conversion, Tolstoy adopted a new mode of life. He
dressed like a peasant, devoted much of his time to manual work, learned
shoemaking, and followed a vegetarian diet. With the exception of his
youngest daughter, Alexandra, Tolstoy’s family remained hostile to his
teaching. The breach between him and his wife grew steadily wider. In
1879 he wrote the Kreutzer Sonata in which he attacked the normal
state of marriage and extolled a life of celibacy and chastity. In 1881 he
divided his estate among his heirs and, a few years later, despite the
opposition of his wife, announced that he would forgo royalties on all the
works published after his conversion.
Tolstoy made no attempt at first to propagate his religious teaching,
although it attracted many followers. After a visit to the Moscow slums
in 1881, he became concerned with social conditions, and he subsequently
aided the suflerers of the famine by sponsoring two hundred and fifty
relief kitchens. After his meeting and intimacy with Chertkov, “Tolstoy-
ism” began to develop as an organized sect. 1 blstoy’s writings became
almost exclusively preoccupied with religious problems. In addition to
numerous pamphlets and plays, he wrote What is Art? (1896), in which
he explained his new aesthetic theories, and Hadji-Murad (1904), which
became the favourite work of his old age. Although his activities were
looked upon with increasing suspicion by the official authorities, Tolstoy
263
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
escaped official censure until 1901, when he was excommunicated by the
Orthodox Church. His followers were frequently subjected to persecution,
and many were either banished or imprisoned.
Tolstoy’s last years were embittered by mounting hostility within his
own household. Although his personal life was ascetic, he felt the
ambiguity of his position as a preacher of poverty living on his great
estate. Finally at the age of eighty- two, with the aid of his daughter,
Alexandra, he fled from home. His health broke down a few days later,
and he was removed from the train to the station-master’s hut at
Astopovo, where he died, on November 7, 1910. He was buried at
Yasnaya Polyana, in the first public funeral to be held in Russia without
religious rites.
O O O
VOLUME 52
FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY
The Brothers Karamazov
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, 1821-1881
THK two novelists now unquestionably classed as the greatest of their
age were Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and both produced their greatest
work between 1864 and 1880. In Dostoevsky’s case this period saw the
publication of his four great novels — Crime and Punishment, The Idiot,
The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov , which is the greatest of the
four. In these books Dostoevsky gave his full measure as one of the most
outstanding novelists of any period, and as a personality of exceptionally
deep significance. For psychological imagination, for power of dramatic
construction, for the conviction and reality of his characters he has
no equals.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on October 30, 1821, in an
apartment attached to the Hospital of the Poor in Moscow, where his
father was an attending physician. Following the death of his mother in
1837, he moved to St. Petersburg and was accepted into the School of
Military Engineers. A classmate reported that he “always held himself
264
FYODOR DOSl'OEVSKY
aloof, never took part in his comrades’ amusements, and usually sat
in a corner with a book”. His morbid self-consciousness was further
aggravated by his father, who had retired to a disorderly life on his
estate and refused to provide his son with a regular allowance. On one
occasion, Dostoevsky sent his father a letter reviling him for his neglect;
before the elder Dostoevsky was able to reply he was murdered by his
serfs. It is a family tradition that the first of his epileptic seizures, from
which Fyodor was to suffer throughout his life, occurred at this time.
Following his examinations at the Engineering School, Dostoevsky was
made a second lieutenant. In 1844, however, without “money to buy
civilian clothes”, he resigned his commission to devote himself to litera-
ture. With the appearance of his first novel, Poor Folk, in 1846, he came
to be regarded as the most promising of the younger novelists. Through
the critic, Belinsky, he met “a lot of important people” and received a
“comprehensive lesson on how to live in the literary world”. His success,
however, was short-lived. The few novels following Poor Folk were
badly reviewed, and Dostoevsky began to avoid Belinsky’s salon, where
he was subjected to systematic ridicule, particularly from I'urgenev who,
on previous occasions, had been “more than friendly”.
He continued to associate, however, with another group of advanced
young men who, led by Petrashevski, met to study the French socialists
and to discuss social and political reforms in Russia. In the wave of
reaction that followed 1848, the members of the “Petrashevski circle”
were arrt^sted, and, after a severe investigation culminating in a mock
execution, Dostoevsky was sent to the penal colony at Omsk. In prison,
he reported, he lived like a “person buried underground”. He had not
“one single being within reach with whom I could exchange a cordial
word. I endured cold, hunger, sickness, I suffered from the hard labours
and the hatred of my companions, who bore me a grudge for being a
well-born person”. The ordeal aggravated Dostoevsky’s epilepsy, but “the
escape into myself . . . did bear its fruits”. In 1854 he was ordered to
Semipalitinsk to complete his punishment, as a soldier. Five years later,
through the offices of friends, his sentence was lifted.
Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky published The House
of the Dead and The Insulted and the Injured. At the same time,
together with his brother, Mikhail, he founded a successful journal called
The Times. In 1863, however, it was suppressed by the government as
the result of a misunderstanding. The Dostoevskys were allowed to revive
265
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
their publication under another name, The Epoch, but the new review
failed to gain public attention. In 1864 Mikhail died, and, after a year
or more of struggle, Dostoevsky discontinued the journal. He found
himself burdened with debts and with the obligation of supporting his
brother’s family.
The failure of The Epoch coincided with an intense personal crisis for
Dostoevsky which left its mark on all his later work. While in Siberia,
he had married Maria Dmitrievna Isaev, the widow of an intelligent
though dissolute schoolmaster. The marriage brought neither of them
happiness; and, shortly after his return to St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky
became intimate with Polina Suslova, a young woman of a sensual and
aggressive nature, who appears to have seriously aflFected his work and to
have provoked his neurotic passion for gambling. During an absence from
Russia with Polina, Dostoevsky’s wife was taken ill, and her death, three
months before that of his brother, moved him to write the confession
known as Letters from the Underworld or Notes from Underground (1864).
During the following years, Dostoevsky suffered constantly from
epilepsy, poverty, and the anxiety that accompanied his gambling.
Because of his financial obligations, he signed minous contracts with
publishers which forced him to write at abnormal speed such works as
Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Gambler (1867). While at work
on the latter novel, he engaged a secretary, Anna Grigorievna Snitkin,
whom he married the same year. His success as a novelist enabled him
to satisfy some of his creditors, but “this so enraged the others” that he
was forced to leave St. Petersburg' to escape indictment. Despite his
complaint that he would “always be a foreigner in a foreign land”, and
the fear that he was “losing the capacity to write at all”, the four years
he lived abroad were among the most productive of his lik\ At Geneva
and Vevey, he wrote The Idiot (1868-69); at Dresden, The Eternal
Husband (1870), and The Possessed (1871).
While in exile, Dostoevsky conceived the idea of editing “something in
the shape of a paper” so that he “could for once say the last word” on
his convictions. He carried out his -plan in 1876 with the publication of
An Author's Diary, in which he extended the doctrine of national and
democratic Christianity he had initiated in The Times. As a result of
this activity, he became influential as a journalist and spent his last years
in comparatively favourable circumstances. In 1877 he suspended his
publication to compose a vast cycle called The Life of a Great Sinner,
266
WILLIAM JAMES
which was to deal with the existence of God, “the problem that has
consciously and unconsciously tormented me all my life”. The Brothers
Karamazov, the sole part of the work that he completed, was published
in 1880.
In that year, his contemporary fame reached its peak with an invitation
from The Society of the Friends of Russian Literature to speak at the
unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow. At the moment he
finished speaking, he reported, even Turgenev, whose “western” ideas
had long been the source of personal antagonism, “rushed up to cover
me with kisses . . . protesting over and over again that I had done great
things”.
Dostoevsky died on January 28 of the following year. His funeral was
the occasion of a public demonstration.
O O O
VOLUME 53
WILLIAM JAMES
T he Principles of Psychology
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
WILLIAM JAMES, 1842-1910
WILLIAM James’s The Principles of Psychology is one of the classics
of the subject; it is of course dated now, but it is dated as Galileo’s work
was in physics and Darwin’s in biology, because it was the originative
matrix of the great variety of new developments which are the current
vogue.
The work was intended as a textbook of psycliology, but it grew under
James’s hand and did not appear until 1891. When it did appear, it was
not a textbook but a monumental work in two volumes from which the
textbook was condensed the following year. The Principles was at once
recognized as both definitive and innovating in its field. It established
the “functional point of view” in psychology. It assimilated mental science
to the biological disciplines and treated also thinking and knowledge in
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WILLIAM JAMES
the aspect of instruments in the struggle to live. It made at one and the
same time the fullest use of principles of psychophysics and defended,
without embracing, free will.
The founder of the James dynasty in America, William James, emi-
grated from Ireland in 1789. Upon his death, he left a fortune which
enabled his heirs to become financially independent upon coming of age.
For the most part this seems to have resulted in “an extravagant,
unregulated cluster, with free-living ancestors, handsome dead cousins,
lurid uncles, beautiful vanished aunts, persons, all busts and curls”, but
it also made possible the careers of Henry James senior and his two sons,
William and Henry. It was difficult for the James children to explain
their father’s life of religious activity, dissociated from any established
church; “Say I’m a philosopher, say Tm a seeker for truth, say I’m a
lover of my kind, say I’m an author of books if you like, or best of all,
just say I’m a student,” the elder Henry suggested.
William and Henry were born in New York within fifteen months of
each other and always maintained a warm intimate relationship. Even
as a boy, William manifested the extraordinary personal and intellectual
gifts which were to s(‘t him apart in later life. Henry records that
“occasions waited on William, had always done so” and entered his
intelligence “as with the action of colouring matter dropped into water”.
Because of the elder Henry’s restless wanderings on the continent and
his desire to have his sons “6c something, something unconnected with
specific doing, something free and uncommitted”, the boys received
schooling irregularly in London, Pafis, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Geneva, and
Bonn. This type of education was admirably suited to the temperament
of young Henry, whose assimilation to the career of writing, except for a
brief detour into the study of law% was immediate and comp’t te.
William, on the other hand, only gradually and after many false starts,
was able to find an adequate outlet for his manifold talents. He suc-
cessively studied art, chemistry, anatomy, and physiology; accompanied
Louis Agassiz on an expedition to Brazil; and took a medical degree at
Harvard in 1869, though he seems to have had no intention of practising.
This uncertainty in the professional sphere was accompanied by a severe
mental depression. He seems, like his father, to have suffered an acute
spiritual crisis. As the senior Henry found a satisfactory explanation of
God’s relation to man in the religious teachings of Swedenborg, so
William was delivered from the deterministic universe of Mill, Bain, and
268
WILLIAM JAMES
Spencer by Renouvier’s discussion of free will. “My first act of free will,”
he proclaimed, “shall be to believe in free will.”
In 1872 William was appointed instructor in physiology at Harvard.
“The appointment to teach physiology is a perfect god-send to me just
now,” he wrote to his brother, Henry, “an external motive to work —
dealing with men instead of my own mind, and a diversion from those
introspective studies which had bred a sort of philosophical hypochondria
in me of late.” In 1875 he gave a course on “The Relation between
Physiology and Psychology” and set up the first laboratory in America
for experimenting in this field.
In the summer of 1878 James married Alice Gibbens, a Boston school
teacher. In the same year he signed a contract to produce a textbook in
psychology by 1880, which appeared as the two- volume Principles of
Psychology in 1891. After publication of the Principles, James lost interest
in this “nasty little subject; all one cares to know lies outside it”.
The publication of tht* Principles brought in its wake a flood of invita-
tions to lecture before various groups throughout the country. Many of
these were collected in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular
Philosophy (1897), Human Immortality (1898), and Talks to Teachers on
Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's TdeaU (1899).
James had been concerned with religion from an empirical point of
view as early as 1869, when he had noted in a review the “anomalous”
and “discreditable” attitude of a so-called enlightened society toward
psychical phenomena. To ascertain the appropriate “stall or pigeonhole”
for these “wild facts”, he helped organize the American Society for
Psychical Research in 1884. Tw^o years later he was invited to give the
Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion at the L^niversity of Edinburgh.
On a vacation climb in the Adirondacks in 1898, James underwent a
variety of religious experience : “It seemed as if the Gods of all the
nature-mythologies were holding an indescribable meeting in my breast
with the moral Gods of the inner life . . . Doubtless in more ways than
one, things in the Edinburgh lectures will be traceable to it,” he wrote to
his wife. The climb, however, overtaxed his heart, which would not have
impaired his health if he had not essayed the Adirondacks the following
summer and lost his way. Fhere followed two years of complete collapse.
Thus the GiflFord Lectures were not finished until 1902, when they were
also published in l>ook form as The Varieties of Religious Experience,
James, forced to limit his teaching, now turned his energies toward
269
WILLIAM JAMES
philosophy. Thirty years before, a Harvard colleague, Charles Peirce, had
founded Pragmatism, which James interpreted in a series of lectures,
collected as Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
in 1907. His replies to the criticisms this invoked appeared as The
Meaning of Truth (1909). “Does Consciousness Exist”, “The Thing and
its Relations”, and other studies were published posthumously as Essays
in Radical Empiricism, The same essential position was stated less
technically in A Pluralistic Universe (1909).
James started “rounding out” his philosophical system but was forced
to leave it “an arch built only on one side” to be published after his
death as Some Principles of Philosophy, In the spring of 1910 it seemed
advisable for him to go to Europe for his health. Too much “sitting up
and talking” with friends more than ofl’set any benefits he might have
received, and despairing of any relief, he turned homeward. He died two
days after his return at his country home in Chocorua, New Hampshire.
O O O
VOLUME 54
SIGMUND FREUD
The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis
Selected Papers on Hysteria (Chapter 1-10)
The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
The Future Prospects of Psycho- Analytic Therapy
Observations on ^'Wild^^ Psycho-Analysis
The Interpretation of Dreams
On Narcissism
Instincts and their Vicissitudes
Repression
The Unconscious
A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
270
SIGMUND FREUD
The Ego and the Id
Inhibitions^ Symptoms, and Anxiety
Thoughts for the Times on War and Death
Civilization and its Discontents
New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
SIGMUND FREUD, 1856-1939
THE name of Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, is the greatest and
most widely known in the history of psychology. From an early age he
had an intense interest in chemical psychology and in 1894 he took the
decisive step of replacing hypnosis as a means of resuscitating buried
memories by the method of free association, which is the kernel of the
psychoanalytic method. This led him to make important discoveries
concerning the structure and nature of the various psychoneuroses and
to extend these discoveries to the normal mind. The three most funda-
mental of these were : (1) the dynamic influence of this on consciousness;
(2) the fact that the splitting of the mind into layers is due to an intra-
physical conflict between various sets of forces, to one of which he gave
the name of “repression” ; and (3) the existence and importance of infant
sexuality. He came to see in the unconscious conflicts over the young
child’s sexual attitude towards its parents, which together with the
accompanying jealousy and hostility he refers to as the Oedipus conflict,
not only the central factor in the neuroses, but a fundamental contribu-
tion to the formation of character in general.
Freud was born on May 6, 1856, at Freiburg in what is now Czecho-
slovakia. When he was four, the family moved to Vienna, and his father
continued his trade as a small merchant. While following the usual
course of studies at the Gymnasium, where for seven years he was first
in his class, Freud was attracted by Darwin’s theories to the study of
science. Although he had no “particular predilection for the career of a
physician”, Freud later noted that “it was upon hearing Goethe’s beauti-
ful essay On Nature . . . just before I left school that I decided to
become a medical student”. In 1873 he entered the university of Vienna,
where, he records in his autobiographical sketch, he experienced the
effects of anti-Semitic prejudice.
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SIGMUND FREUD
While pursuing his medical studies, Freud began experimental investiga-
tion by studying the nervous system of the fish in the physiological
laboratory of Ernst Briicke. After taking his medical degree in 1881,
financial reasons compelled him to become an interne at the General
Hospital. With the little spare time he had as an interne, he pursued
research at the Institute of Cerebral Anatomy on the subject of nervous
diseases. The publication of several monographs on cerebral paralysis in
children won him the post of lecturer in neuropathology at the university,
and in 1885 he was awarded a travelling fellowship to advance his
studies. Having become interested the previous year in Breuer’s treatment
of hysteria by hypnosis, during which the patient was induced to recollect
his past, Freud now chose to pursue such investigation under Charcot,
the neurologist, at the Sorbonne. Freud studied with him about a year
and was strengthened in his determination to take the then revolutionary
step of investigating hysteria from a psychological point of view. Before
returning home in 1886, he spent a few months at a children's clinic
in Berlin and made extensive observations of the nervous disorders of
children.
Upon his return to Vienna, Freud married and, to provide for a
rapidly increasing family, established himself as a specialist in nervous
diseases. In the first years of his practice his principal technique “a-side
from haphazard psycho-therapeutic methods” was hypnotic suggestion.
He resumed his friendship with Breuer and in collaboration with him
published in 1895 the Studies in Hysteria, The partnership was dissolved
after the book was completed, and' soon afterwards Freud took the
decisive step of replacing hypnotism by the method of “free association”.
Largely as a result of his extensive clinical practice, he turned to the
analysis of dreams, and in 1900 provided the first statenent of his
doctrine in the Interpretation of Dreams,
Except for his brief collaboration with Breuer, Freud for more than a
decade “stood completely isolated” frr;?Ti the medical world, and his
theories, when not completely ignored, were the object of ridicule. It
was not until 1902 that several young doctors began to gather around
him with the intention of learning and practising psychoanalysis, and
from this group grev, the Viennese Psycho-Analytic Society. Although
his Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904) received more favourable
public notice, the opposition to his theories increased as soon as he began
publishing his views on the sexual life of children. His work, however,
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SIGMUND FREUD
soon began to receive international attention from the medical profession.
The Burgholzli Clinic in Zurich in 1906 was the first institution outside
Austria to adopt the method of psychoanalysis. By 1908 Freud had
colleagues throughout Europe, including Adler, Brill, Ferenczi, Ernest
Jones, Jung, Sadger, and Stekel, and in that year the first International
Congress of Psycho-Analysis was held at Salzburg. In the following year,
at the invitation of Clark University, Freud visited the United States and
gave five lectures on his discoveries, which were later published as the
Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis. With the establishment of
the International Psycho-Analytic Association in 1910 Freud devoted his
efforts with increasing success to the development of the psychoanalytic
movement. Disagreement later led to a severance of relations between
Freud and several of his closest associates, including Adler, Stekel, Rank,
and Jung, but Freud was the acknowledged founder of psychoanalysis
and the leader of the movement.
After 1912 Freud gave most of his time to directing the Psycho-
Analytic Society, editing its various journals, and writing many mono-
graphs. Although his clinical practice was not as extensive as in previous
years, he still remained active as an analyst, and his records of the case-
histories of his patients cover almost fifty years. At the University of
Vienna during the two winter sessions between 1915 and 1917, he again
explained his theories before a general public, as he had in the United
States, in lectures afterwards published as the General Introduction to
Psycho-Analysis.
Until the end of World War I Freud was mainly occupied with special
problems concerning the unconscious, and it was not until 1920 that he
began to deal with the more general problems raised by his studies,
particularly with the factors making for what he called repression. In
1920 he published Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and three years later
the Ego and the Id. As early as 1913 Freud had attempted in Totem
and Taboo “to make use of the newly discovered findings of analysis in
order to investigate the origin of religions and morality”. He now
“returned to the cultural problems which had fascinated me long
before”, and published The Future of an Illusion (1927), Civilization and
its Discontents (1929), and Moses and Monotheism (1939), which was his
last book.
With the award of the Goethe Prize in 1930, when he was also given
the freedom of the city of Vienna, Freud reached what he described as
273
SIGMUND FREUD
“the climax of my life as a citizen”. But soon afterwards, Freud notes,
“the boundaries of our country narrowed, and the nation would know of
us no more”. Upon the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938, Freud’s books
were burned, the Psychoanalytische Verlag, directed by his son, was
destroyed, and his passport confiscated. For years Freud had lived in
virtual seclusion, largely because of the development of a cancer of the
mouth which caused him great pain. He was finally allowed to leave
Austria in 1938 after the payment of a large ransom. With his wife, a
nephew, and his daughter, Anna, he went to England, where another of
his sons lived. He died on Septeinl^er 23, 1939, in Hampstead, London.
O O O
274
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Loeb)
Varnuin Memorial Library,
Jeffersonville, Vermont (Scott
Buchanan)
Virginia Military Institute, Lex-
ington, Virginia (R. C. Kramer)
Virginia Poly technical Institute,
Blacksburg, Virginia (Paul
Mellon)
Wa})ash College, Crawfordsville,
Indiana (Pierre F. Goodrich)
Warren Library Association, War-
ren, Pennsylvania (Mctzger-
Wright Company, Warren,
Pennsylvania)
Weber College, Ogden, Utah
(C. C. Anderson Company, Og-
den, Utah)
Wharton County High School,
Wharton, Texas (Mrs. Clive
Runnells)
OTHER INSTITUTIONS
Chicago Lying - In Hospital,
Chicago, Illinois (Claire D.
Swift)
Commonwealth Edison Company
Library, Chicago, Illinois
(Charles Y. Freeman)
Whitman College, Walla Walla,
W ashington ("Fhe Bon Marche,
Walla Walla, W ashington)
Whitworth College, Spokane,
W ashington (The Bon Marche,
Spokane, Washington)
Wilson College, Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania (Mrs. Thomas A.
Mellon)
Winchester Foundation, Winches-
ter, Indiana (Pierre F. Good-
rich)
Woodland High School, Wood-
land, California
Yakima Valley Junior College,
Yakima, Washington (Barnes-
Woodin Company, Yakima,
Washington)
\'ale University, New Haven,
Connecticut
Young Men's and Young Women's
Hebrew Association, Neiv York,
New York (John Langeloth
Loch)
OR ORGANIZATIONS
Minneapolis Star & Tribune
Library, Minneapolis, Minne-
sota (John Cowles)
The Washington Post Library,
Washington, D.C.
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