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 HUNDRED GREATEST MEN 
 
 PORTRAITS 
 
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 ONE HUNDRED GREATEST MEN OF HISTORY 
 
 REPRODUCED FROM FINE AND RARE ENGRAVINGS 
 
 VOLUME Ni 
 Aistory 
 
 HISTORIANS, ORATORS, CRITICS 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 By Tue Very Reverenp A. P. STANLEY, Dean or Westminster 
 
 TAOINED OLN 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, AND RIVINGTON 
 CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET 
 
 1880 
 
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INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME V. 
 
 Every one knows the story, that when Sir Walter Ralegh was writing the 
 “ History of the World,” in the Tower of London, he overheard two boys 
 quarrelling over the facts of an incident that had happened the day before, 
 and said to himself, “If these two boys cannot agree on an event which 
 occurred almost before their own eyes, how can any one be profited by the 
 narrative which I am writing of events which occurred in ages long past ?” 
 Like to this is the story that Sir Robert Walpole, when someone in his 
 old age offered to read to him a volume of history, replied, “ Anything but 
 history ; I, by my long political experience, know that all history is lying.” 
 
 The sentiment expressed by these two celebrated men finds a response 
 in many minds, when they are invited to judge of the value of history. 
 It is a natural objection founded on the supposed impossibility of arriving 
 at the truth of past events. And to this has been added in modern times 
 the yet deeper prejudice that the narrative of human affairs, with its com- 
 plexities, uncertainties, and ambiguities, falls into the shade before the 
 steadfast, immovable, demonstrable march of scientific truth. 
 
 To both these objections the answer may be found in the primary 
 sense of the word “ History.” It means an inquiry, a sifting, a cross- 
 examination of previous events, with the endeavour of eliciting from them 
 their most vital and essential points. 
 
 First, even with regard to that more superficial difficulty suggested by 
 the two English statesmen, it may be truly said that the careful history 
 of the complex events of past times is more to be depended upon than the 
 conflicting statements of contemporaries and eye-witnesses, such as bred 
 in Sir Walter Ralegh and Sir Robert Walpole an incurable suspicion 
 of all history. At the time when events are taking place, rumours, 
 passions, prejudices, combine in obscuring both the facts themselves and 
 the minds by which those facts are received. It is only after years have 
 
 1943067 
 
il INTRODOCLTIONGLOSOLOMESY, 
 
 elapsed that the documents, the letters, the despatches, the rectifications of 
 contradictions, are fully brought to light; and thus the narratives of' careful 
 historians are almost always more trustworthy than any single narratives 
 of those who lived at the time. It is in this aspect of history that the 
 value of what may be called its antiquarian accessories comes most fully 
 to view. Traditions of personages unknown at the time, but handed on 
 from generation to generation, may in the century afterwards, for the 
 first time, appear above the surface and then become imbedded in the 
 solid substratum of the whole record. Legal documents, state papers, 
 which could not be seen by passing partisans, are revealed at Simancas 
 or the Vatican, or in the Venetian archives, to the careful inquirer; and in 
 this way truth is discovered and falsehood exposed by methods which 
 the aged statesman could not disclose nor the two boys in the street have 
 known. There is an ancient maxim, Quod non est in actis non fuit in factis 
 (‘‘ what cannot be proved by legal acts cannot have a place in historic facts”); 
 but it is equally true, Quod est in actis fuit in factis (“what is witnessed in 
 a legal act is the best proof of what has actually occurred in fact”). The 
 story of Edwy’s marriage with Elgiva, or of Tracy’s shipwreck on the 
 coast of Apulia, long discredited, has been corroborated beyond dispute 
 by finding signatures, under particular circumstances, attached to a 
 charter or a will. Geography also contributes its consolidating testimony. 
 When every living witness has perished, the mountain and the river still 
 remain to bear testimony to the accuracy of some narrative which, without 
 these dumb attestations, would have remained in doubt. There is nothing 
 so permanent, said a distinguished antiquarian scholar, as that which is 
 “writ in water;” a spring, a pool may carry conviction of the identity of a 
 locality and an event when every work of man around it has disappeared. 
 Secondly, it is in the power of a careful historian by this sifting 
 process to reproduce the events of the time as they would have appeared, 
 not merely to one or two bystanders, but to the general mind of the period. 
 The saying of the Duke of Wellington, that a battle is like a ball, in which 
 no one knows what is going on except in the particular part in which he is 
 engaged, may be true enough at the moment; but it is the privilege of the 
 military historian to make himself present in all the parts of the battle at 
 once, and thus to place the reader in the position not merely of one who is 
 engaged in a particular battalion, but of one who follows battalion from 
 battalion to every part of the field. It is this which makes Macaulay’s 
 
 *! 
 te ° 
 
INTRODOCTIONELTOSALOLUMELY. ill 
 
 —. 
 
 “ History of England” so pre-eminently attractive. We sometimes hear 
 the complaint brought against it that it cannot be true, because it is as 
 interesting as aromance. Rather we may reverse the complaint, and say, 
 that because it is as interesting as a romance, and because the events of the 
 time in which we live are more interesting than any romance to those who 
 enter into them keenly, therefore the probability is that an history so 
 exciting is true. Where, for example, as in the trial of the seven bishops, the 
 historian has reproduced the whole scene from a collection of innumerable 
 particulars in caricatures, gazettes, private letters, public pleadings, we have 
 a security that the event is placed before us, it may be, perhaps, as it would 
 have appeared to an active partisan, but still to a partisan who took in, as 
 far as was possible, all the streams of excitement with which the atmosphere 
 was at that time pervaded. 
 
 Thirdly, it is almost a necessary process of the sifting and critical 
 character of history that the faculty of discrimination, the sense of pro- 
 portion, so necessary to a right appreciation of all events, should be brought 
 into operation. The fury of party spirit, however much it may be prolonged 
 in ages subsequent to the events which called it forth, is at any rate brought 
 under some kind of control; and characters, like Joan of Are or Spinoza, 
 which were utterly beyond the reach of the contending factions of the time 
 to discern, assume, as before a divine judgment-seat, something of their true 
 value; and it is in this respect that history assumes one of its noblest 
 attributes, because it tends to keep alive in the human mind that detestation 
 of evil and that admiration of good which form the most secure guarantees 
 of the immortality of the human spirit. When Matthew Paris, the best 
 of early English chroniclers, questioned in his own mind whether it was 
 worth his while to attempt the history of his country, he was consoled by 
 the reflection of the sacred text, “The just shall be had in everlasting 
 remembrance.” It is because history keeps the just in everlasting 
 remembrance, separates the just from the unjust, and preserves the 
 balance between the complex shades of all the characters which hover in the 
 interval, that it has become an important element in religion itself. No 
 doubt the principle of religion in the human mind is independent of any 
 external facts, whether of science or history ; but the sense of solidity given 
 by history to the conception of those great spiritual qualities which are 
 of the essence of religion, is of itself an almost indispensable aid to the 
 continuance of religion in the heart of man. 
 
iv INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME V. 
 
 Fourthly, the careful and impartial investigation of facts, so far from 
 reducing history to a merely prosaic description or calendar of passing 
 events, brings it at once within the reach and demands the assistance of 
 the highest exercise of imagination. It was not without reason that the 
 ancients represented Clio, the genius of history, to be the first of the Muses. 
 In many branches of theology and of philosophy the first requirement is 
 to perceive likenesses in the midst of differences; but in history almost the 
 first requirement is to be able to see unlikenesses in the midst of similarities. 
 Nothing is more difficult than to form an adequate conception of the 
 vast differences which exist between our own epoch and those which 
 have gone before, and it is in the reproduction of these differences in all 
 their vividness that the imaginative quality of the historian is most 
 constantly demanded. No merely contemporaneous records, unless summed 
 up by the calm investigation and vivifymg imagination of later times, can 
 give an insight into the dark, perhaps inscrutable problem of the laws by 
 which the course of human events is regulated. The petty motives, the 
 small contradictions, which occupied the whole horizon of Sir Robert 
 Walpole in his declining age, and of the boys whom Sir Walter Ralegh saw 
 from his prison-window, prevent that wide judgment which alone can take 
 in the various and multiform elements which, from a more distant view, 
 can be perceived. It has been sometimes said that there are only two fields 
 of life in which the idea of an over-ruling Providence is forced upon the 
 mind of man: One is the contemplation of his own individual experiences. 
 That is autobiography ; the other is the progress of events on the largest 
 scale. ‘That is the philosophy of history. 
 
 Two gioups of instances may be given to illustrate this view of historic 
 philosophy. One is the succession of race to race, of religion to religion, of 
 genius to genius, which to the ancient local chronicler was almost impossible, 
 but which to the modern historian has become almost a new revelation, 
 almost a second nature. The earliest. glimpse of this truth appears in the 
 Book of Daniel; when empire after empire, each with its successive guardian 
 angel, passes before the mind of the prophet. It reached its full develop- 
 ment when in our time complete expression was given to it in Lessing’s 
 “ Education of the Human Race,” or in Hegel's “Philosophy of History.” 
 Comparative mythology, comparative religion, the detection of modern 
 elements in ancient history, and of ancient elements in modern history 
 the general survey of manners, as by Voltaire or Montesquieu, all pertain to 
 
LMTRODOGLIONGOsVOLOUMLE TY. Vv 
 
 this wider investigation of human concerns, and invest it with a philo- 
 sophie, if not a scientific aspect. 
 
 Another group is that which fixes the mind on what may be called 
 the dramatic and tragical aspect of the life of man. It is true that this 
 aspect will strike contemporary beholders, from the constraining power of 
 natural sympathy; but still, in order for such incidents to have their full 
 force, they must be elevated into a region beyond the obscuring influences 
 of local and personal passions. The failure of the Athenian expedition to 
 Syracuse, the murder of Julius Cesar, the death of Mary Queen of Scots or 
 Charles the First, have an effect on later days such as they could not have 
 produced amidst the disturbing excitements of the moment—that is to say, 
 the appeal to the purely sympathetic, compassionate, and, in the highest 
 sense of the word, philanthropic emotions of the heart, strikes only with full 
 force when the incidents loom through the shadows of the past without 
 entanglement in the small and trivial particularities of the moment. These 
 critical and catastrophic incidents give to history a richness from which 
 the milk of human kindness and the fire of human passion will always 
 be drawn in unfailing abundance. It is thus that the historical books 
 of the Old Testament were in former times included amongst the books 
 of the Prophets. It is thus that when historians have been not merely 
 chroniclers, but men of genius, their histories rise to the rank of finished 
 works of art. The collision of Asia with Europe as described by Herodotus, 
 is an epic. The vicissitudes of the Peloponnesian war as presented by 
 Thucydides, the lights and shadows of the reign of Tiberius and his suc- 
 cessors as presented by Tacitus, are tragedies. The narrative of the decline 
 and fall of the Roman Empire, by Gibbon, of the English Revolution, by 
 Macaulay, where every chapter, every sentence, almost every word, are 
 written with a view to the whole, might stand in the Palace of Art side 
 by side with the Parthenon or the Paradise Lost. The romances of Walter 
 Scott, with all their inaccuracies, are by reason of the marvellous insight of 
 their author into the characteristics of former times, ingredients of the best 
 kind of historical instruction. “Where have you learned the history of 
 England?” it was asked of the greatest statesman of the last century. 
 As Ralegh and Walpole began, so Lord Chatham’s reply shall end these 
 
 words—“ In the Plays of Shakespeare.” 
 A. P. STANLEY. 
 
elie © BR Orvis ide 
 
 IN THE 
 
 FIFTH VOLUME 
 
 HERODOTUS | MONTAIGNE 
 THUCYDIDES MONTESQUIEU 
 DEMOSTHENES VOLTAIRE 
 CICERO DIDEROT 
 TACITUS LESSING 
 PLUTARCH GIBBON 
 
HERODOTUS 
 
 484-406* B.C. 
 
 {Wield ViRishidla, 10M) leslie ik(OuEy Nd 
 
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 THE earliest of Greek historians, in the proper sense of the term, was a 
 native of Halicarnassus, a Doric colony in Caria, which, at the time of his 
 birth, was governed by Artemisia, a vassal queen of the great king of 
 Persia. His father was named Lyxes; his mother, Dryo, was sister of 
 Panyasis, one of the revivers of epic poetry, and the author of an 
 “‘ Hereacleas,” which was highly esteemed by the ancients. It is supposed 
 that the poet superintended the education of his nephew, and inspired 
 him with that love of the beautiful and the true, that desire to know and to 
 see, which is the essential quality of a good historian. Probably Herodotus 
 commenced, in early life, that series of visits to distant lands in the course of 
 which he amassed those precious materials that were afterwards so artisti- 
 cally worked up in his immortal history. Nothing positive is recorded, 
 however, of the studies which occupied his early years, or of the circum- 
 stances which favoured the development of his genius. When he was about 
 thirty years of age a rebellion broke out at Halicarnassus. Panyasis was put 
 to death by Lygdamis, grandson of Artemisia, and Herodotus was compelled 
 to flee to Samos, which became his second country. There he found devoted 
 and powerful allies, who assisted him in freeing his compatriots from the 
 
2 JIERODOTOS 
 
 yoke of Lygdamis; but after he had satisfied his vengeance, he experienced 
 so many disappointments, that he quitted Greece Proper, and fixed his 
 residence at Thurii, near the ancient Sybaris, in Lucania, where he spent the 
 remainder of his days. -Several ancient authors, indeed, call him “the 
 Thurian,” on account of his prolonged residence in that city. 
 
 The passion to know, to see, and to relate, appears to have taken 
 possession of the mind of Herodotus in his youthful days. First of all he 
 visited Egypt, and ascended the Nile as far as Elephantis, and passed 
 through Libra, Phoenicia, Babylon, and probably Persia. He also travelled 
 in Macedonia, Thrace, and Scythia, beyond the Danube and the Borysthenes. 
 He penetrated to the extremity of the Pontus Euxinus, and sojourned for 
 some time in every place which contained anything likely to gratify his 
 insatiable curiosity. It is needless to say that if the great historian visited 
 the countries of the East, the Greek cities of Asia, and the northern 
 extremities of the Hellenic world, he did not neglect to make himself 
 acquainted thoroughly, and in detail, with all the localities of European 
 Greece—with the cities, temples, and battle-fields of the continent and of 
 the isles. Tradition has it that on the conclusion of these voyages he placed 
 in order the information he had acquired, and that when he had completed 
 this great work he read it to the Greeks who were assembled for the 
 Olympian Games. His auditors were so charmed with the recital that they 
 gave the name of one of the Nine Muses to each of the nine books into 
 which his history is divided. It is added that Thucydides, then fifteen years 
 of age, who was present at this reading, could not help shedding tears of 
 admiration, and that Herodotus, noticing his tears, predicted for the young 
 man a brilliant future. Criticism has proved this pretty story to be a mere 
 invention; but another statement, which carries with it a greater appearance 
 of truth, is that when thirty-eight years old Herodotus went to Athens on 
 the occasion of the grand Panathenian festivals, and there read in public 
 fragments of his work, still incomplete, but certain portions of which were 
 already in the state in which they have been handed down to us. The 
 audience received the work with enthusiastic applause, and awarded to the 
 incomparable narrator a prize of ten talents, besides bestowing upon him 
 by acclamation the title of “ Father of History.” 
 
 Up to that period the narration of past events had been undertaken 
 only by the logographers, or chroniclers, who merely described what had 
 
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HERODOTUS 3 
 
 occurred in their own or in foreign countries, people by people, and town by 
 town, without any connexion. Herodotus made an immense advance in 
 historical composition, by giving unity to a multitude of apparently discon- 
 nected occurrences which had taken place in Europe and in Asia. The link 
 connecting the whole he sought for and found, not like the more advanced 
 of the chroniclers in the traditional series of genealogies, but in an idea—the 
 idea, as profound as it is true, as dramatic as it is popular, of the old quarrel 
 between the East and the West. 
 
 Herodotus raised prose narrative to the height of poetry. Ancients 
 and moderns have alike been struck, in various points of view, by the 
 analogy between the work of Homer and that of the Father of History. 
 Homer sang; Herodotus wrote; but both were animated with the same 
 inspiration, with the same thought, at once national and poetic, for they 
 both addressed themselves to Greece in order to glorify her in her past, to 
 delight and to instruct her people. 
 
 The veracity of Herodotus has been sometimes questioned, even by 
 the ancients, but the researches of modern travellers, and the discoveries of 
 science, show that his detractors were not unfrequently in the wrong. As to 
 his style, the most able critics of antiquity proclaim its perfection, not 
 because it is entirely free from irregularities of construction, but because the 
 phraseology is always simple, clear, harmonious, and brilliant, displaying all 
 those qualities which are most calculated to captivate the mind. The author 
 used the Ionian dialect in the composition of his History, which comprises 
 the most remarkable occurrences within a period of 240 years, from the 
 reign of Cyrus, the first king of Persia, to that of Xerxes, when the historian 
 was living. 
 
 That which charms the readers of Herodotus is, as a foreign critic has 
 justly observed, that childlike simplicity of heart which is ever the companion 
 of an incorruptible love of truth, and that happy and winning style which 
 cannot be attained by any art or pathetic excitement, and is found only 
 where manners are true to nature; for while other pleasing discourses of men 
 roll along like torrents, and noisily hurry through their short existence, the 
 silver stream of his words flows on without concern, sure of its immortal 
 source, everywhere pure and transparent, whether it be shallow or deep; 
 and the fear of ridicule, which sways the whole world, affects not the sublime 
 simplicity of his mind. 
 
HERODOTUS 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 HERODOTUS BORN. 
 
 LEAVES HALICARNASSUS . : . : : . AGE 
 READS PART OF HIS HISTORY AT OLYMPIA . : ~ 
 IN EGYPT : : : : : : ‘ : me 
 READS HIS HISTORY AT THE PANATHEN AA  . “ 3 
 
 WITH SAMIANS OVERTHROWS TYRANT OF HALL 
 CARNACSUSMEMEMr - 5 |. |) 
 
 GOES TO THURII . : : : : : : ‘ _ 
 AT ATHENS . : : ; : : : : r “ 
 STILL WRITING HIS HISTORY . : ; : : 9 
 
HHRODOTUS: HIS WORKS 
 
 ABSTRACT OF CONTENTS FROM THE HISTORY. 
 
 First Book: CLuIio. 
 
 Causes of the War between Greece and Persia. Conquests of Crcesus. 
 Visit of Solon to the Court of Croesus. State of Athens under Pisis- 
 tratus. Early History of Sparta. Account of Cyrus. Reduction of 
 Asiatic Greeks. Description of Babylon, &c. 
 
 SEcoND Book: EvuTERPE. 
 
 Accession of Cambyses; he invades Egypt. Description of Egypt. Con- 
 nection of the Religions of Egypt and Greece. Cheops, his Pyramid. 
 Invasion of Sennacherib. Egyptian Mysteries, &c. 
 
 Tutrp Book: THALIA. 
 
 Causes of Quarrel between Persia and Egypt. Invasion of Egypt. Severities 
 of Cambyses towards the Egyptians. Darius obtains the Kingdom. 
 Persian Expedition against Samos. Revolt and Reduction of Babylon, &c. 
 
 FourtH Book: MELPOMENE. 
 
 Description of Scythia. Hatred of Foreign Customs. March of Darius 
 through Scythia. Customs of the Libyans, &c. 
 
 Firra Book : TERPSICHORE. 
 
 Customs of the Thracians. Submission of Macedonia. Recent History of 
 Sparta. “Recent History of Athens. Defeat of the Greeks. Persians 
 recover the Hellespont, &c. 
 
8 HERODOTUS: HIS WORKS 
 
 Srxto Book: Erato. 
 
 Miletus threatened by the Persians. Fall of Miletus. Phoenicians Ravage 
 the Chersonese. Submission of Atgina and the Islands. Account 
 of Miltiades. Persians land at Marathon. Division among Athenian 
 Generals. Battle of Marathon. Return of the Expedition to Asia, &c. 
 
 SEVENTH Book: POLYMNIA. 
 
 Preparations of Darius against Greece. Death of Darius. Preparations of 
 Xerxes. Xerxes reaches Sardis. Reviews his Troops. Alarm of the 
 Greeks. Themistocles. Pass of Thermopylae. Death of Leonidas. 
 Passage of the Persians, &c. 
 
 E1autuH Book: URANIA. 
 
 The Greek Fleet at Artemisium. Proceedings of Themistocles. Terrible 
 Storm. Discomfiture of the Persians. Persian Fleet at Phalerum. 
 Battle of Salamis. Exploit of Aristides. Xerxes’ March to the Helles- 
 pont. Honours paid to Themistocles, &c. 
 
 NintoH Book: CALLIOPE. 
 
 Mardonius marches against Athens. Warned by the Argives Retreats. 
 Battle of Plateea. Mardonius Slain. Siege of Thebes. Battle of 
 Mycalé. Persians retreat to Sardis. Athenians return, bringing the 
 Shore Cables of Xerxes’ Bridges, &c. 
 
THUCYDIDES 
 
 471*-402 B.C. 
 
 GREATEST GREEK HISTORIAN 
 
 THUCYDIDES was a native of Halimus, a demos of Attica, dependent upon 
 the phyle Leontis. He was related to Cimon, son of Miltiades, the hero of 
 Marathon, and was also allied to the kings of Thrace, Cimon having married 
 one of them—Olorus. The father of Thucydides was likewise named Olorus, 
 and the future historian married, at an early age, a very rich lady of Scapte 
 Hyle, who was the owner of gold mines in that part of Thrace which is 
 opposite to the island of Thasus. Thucydides was educated in philosophy 
 by Anaxagoras, and in eloquence by Antiphon. 
 
 It is recorded that when Herodotus read fragments of his History at 
 the Olympian Games (B.C. 456) the applause he elicited aroused the enthu- 
 siasm of Thucydides, then fifteen years of age, who at once resolved to 
 follow in the footsteps of the Father of History. As to the authenticity of 
 this story critics are divided in opinion. At all events a long time elapsed 
 before he gave outward proofs of his vocation, for up to the mature age of 
 forty-five, Thucydides was known only as one of the most wealthy per- 
 sonages of his day. His enormous riches, indeed, gave rise to all kinds of 
 suspicions, and finally were the cause of his losing the popular favour. 
 
 In the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war he was entrusted with a 
 
THUCYDIDES: 
 
 & 
 
 military command in Thrace, and resided at Thasus. At that period 
 Thrace was partly under the dominion of Athens. Amphipolis, besieged 
 by Brasidas, implored the assistance of Thucydides, who, if his political 
 adversaries are to be believed, was so very slow in getting his troops 
 together, that he was unable to prevent the capture of Amphipolis, and 
 only succeeded, with the utmost difficulty, im saving Hion, where he had 
 taken refuge, and whither Brasidas went to besiege him. Thucydides, on 
 the contrary, maintains that his conduct was without reproach; that he 
 sacrificed a considerable part of his private fortune in equipping the troops 
 and hastening the expedition ; and that if he were unable to save Amphi- 
 polis it was owing to the circumstance that Brasidas, dreading his approach, 
 bribed some of the principal citizens to surrender the place, as soon as he 
 knew the Athenian general was encamped near Eion, and this, of course, 
 rendered useless the succour which the latter brought to the besieged city. 
 
 However this may be, the demagogue Cleon accused Thucydides, and 
 easily procured the condemnation of a man whose military capacity appeared 
 doubtful, and whose immense wealth made him an object of suspicion. 
 Thucydides was accordingly sent into banishment. 
 
 The majority of his biographers assert that he withdrew to Thasus, and 
 there undertook the composition of his “ History of the Peloponnesian War,” 
 which has given immortality to his name; but in point of fact Thasus 
 remained for thirteen years longer under the dominion of Athens, and con- 
 sequently he could not have resided there after his banishment. It is 
 probable that Thucydides passed those thirteen years in the Peloponnesus 
 itself, that is to say in the enemy’s country. He says himself that he was 
 thoroughly conversant with the affairs of Lacedamonia, “on account of his 
 exile”; and as a conscientious and veracious historian he must have made it 
 his duty to visit the scene of the events which he intended to narrate. 
 At great expense he collected for his History a mass of documents and 
 authorities which could not have been so complete if they had not been 
 gathered on the spot. 
 
 Thucydides passed the latter years of his life at Scapte Hyle, where 
 he possessed extensive domains. It was there that he gave the finishing 
 touch to his book, which he brought down only to the twenty-second year 
 of the Peloponnesian war, from which period it was continued by 
 Theopompus and Xenophon. 
 
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 ——— 
 
LIBRARY. 
 OF THE 
 UDIVERSITY OF ILLINGT3 
 
THUCYDIDES 3 
 
 Thucydides obtained permission to return to Athens when Thrasibulus 
 restored the democratic government and proclaimed an amnesty. A special 
 decree was, however, necessary for the recall of Thucydides, who as a 
 descendant of the Pisistratidse, was excluded from the operation of the 
 general pardon. The decree was granted at the instance of Oenobius, to 
 whom, on account of this good action, a statue was erected in the 
 Akropolis. It is far from certain whether Thucydides ever took advantage 
 of this decree and revisited his native land. He came to a tragic end, being 
 assassinated by robbers, most probably at Scapte Hyle. 
 
 Thucydides excelled in the two great points which form a just his- 
 torian, truth and eloquence. The voice of antiquity is unanimous in lauding 
 his veracity ; never is the slightest doubt raised in this respect. He was 
 uninfluenced by fear or flattery, and, as he himself says, his only thought in 
 writing was for posterity. It is not the historian, but the history itself, that 
 seems to speak. He wanted no opportunities of knowing the truth, and he 
 does not appear to have misrepresented it ; for though some have fancied 
 him to be a little malevolent towards his country, because the usage he had 
 received would have made most men so, yet he has not written anything 
 that discovers such a passion. His manner of writing is coherent, perspi- 
 cuous, and persuasive, yet close, strong, and pithy. The ancients have 
 spoken of him in the highest terms; and if Herodotus, as his senior, 
 obtained the title of “The Father of History” it is generally admitted 
 that Thucydides is the better historian. Plutarch says that Thucydides 
 “aims always at this, to make his auditor a spectator, and to excite in his 
 reader the same passions with those who were beholders.” Then, enume- 
 rating some examples, “these things,” he says, “are so described, and so 
 evidently set before our eyes, that the mind of the reader is no less affected, 
 than if he had been present in the actions.” Confiding in-the consciousness 
 of his genius, Thucydides did not fear to predict that his work would go 
 down to the remotest ages as a monument ever profitable to all; and the 
 succeeding ages have confirmed his prophecy. Nothing now remains of the 
 masterpieces of the great painters of his time, and we possess but a few 
 fragments of the works of the illustrious sculptors and architects who were 
 contemporary with him, but the work of Thucydides himself still exists, 
 and can never perish, so that in future ages men will always admire Pericles, 
 Brasidas, Nicias, Alcibiades, Antiphon, and the other great men whose 
 characters he has drawn. 
 
DEMOSTHENES 
 
 385-322 B.C. 
 
 GREATEST ORATOR OF THE WORLD 
 
 THE greatest of the orators of antiquity was a native of the demos of 
 Peeania near Athens, being the son of an armourer, who had acquired, by 
 the exercise of his calling, a handsome fortune. ‘The father, at his death, 
 entrusted his son to the guardianship of two of his cousins and one of his 
 friends. These guardians, unfaithful to their trust, recklessly squandered 
 nearly the whole of the property. It appears nevertheless that Demosthenes 
 received an excellent education. According to a tradition handed down 
 by Plutarch, and generally adopted, it was while listening to the eloquence 
 of Callistratus, one of the glories of the Athenian bar, that Demosthenes 
 first felt within him a strong desire to become an orator. On coming of age 
 he summoned his guardians before the public tribunals, and pleaded against 
 them with such success that one of them was condemned to pay him ten 
 talents. 
 
 This was the first time Demosthenes distinguished himself by his 
 eloquence, but these attempts revealed to him his shortcomings as an orator. 
 He had to contend with serious physical defects, and the means he employed 
 to remedy them have been frequently cited as an example of rare energy and 
 
2 DEMOSTHENES 
 
 perseverance. He had an impediment in his speech, which for a long time 
 would not suffer him to pronounce the letter R. Moreover he had a weak 
 voice, a short breath, and a very uncouth and ungracious manner; yet by 
 dint of resolution and infinite pains he overcame all these defects. He accus- 
 tomed himself to climb up steep and craggy places to facilitate his breathing 
 and strengthen his voice ; he declaimed with pebbles in his mouth to remedy 
 the imperfection in his speech; he placed a looking-glass before him to 
 correct the awkwardness of his gesture; and he learned of the best actors the 
 proper graces of action and pronunciation, which he thought of so much con- 
 sequence that he made the whole art of oratory in a manner to consist of 
 them. But whatever stress he laid upon the exterior part of speaking, 
 he was also very careful about the matter and style, forming the latter upon 
 the model of Thucydides, whose history for that purpose he transcribed 
 eight several times. So intent was he upon his study that he would often 
 retire into a cave of the earth, and shave half his head, so that he could 
 not with decency appear abroad till his hair was grown again. He also 
 accustomed himself to harangue on the sea-shore, where the agitation of the 
 waves gave him an idea of the motions in a popular assembly, and served 
 to prepare and fortify him against them. Doubtless it was this energetic 
 application to study which led those who envied his success to say that 
 his orations “smelt of the lamp ;” but he could truly retort that his lamp 
 did not shine on the same kind of works as theirs. 
 
 _ An interval of several years elapsed before he reappeared in the . 
 tribune, but this time his eloquence achieved the most signal and the most 
 brilliant success. His orations laid the foundation of his reputation, which 
 became so great that in 355 B.c. he was raised to the dignity of a member 
 of the council. He was now about to enter into the most brilliant phase of 
 his career, when he showed himself to be at once an ardent patriot, a 
 consummate statesman, and an irresistible orator. 
 
 He exerted all his influence and all his eloquence to thwart the 
 ambitious designs of Philip, king of Macedonia, who, meditating the subju- 
 gation of Greece, developed his plan of aggrandisement and made slow but 
 sure progress towards the attainment of his object, by employing, in turn, 
 deceit, power, and corruption. Demosthenes was the first to divine the real 
 character of Philip’s policy ;. he watched its gradual development ; and when 
 he thought the opportune moment had arrived, his voice, echoing from the 
 
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LIBRARY 
 OF THE 
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DEMOSTHENES 3 
 
 tribune of Athens to every corner of Greece, denounced the ambitious 
 projects of the tyrant. Each new undertaking and every fresh invasion 
 was the signal for a renewed outburst of fervid eloquence on the part of 
 Demosthenes; and, for more than fifteen years, Philip was unable to take a 
 step in advance without finding himself confronted by this unyielding adver- 
 sary, whom he feared more than all the fleets and armies of the Athenians. 
 It was against the King of Macedonia that he directed those marvellous 
 orations which are known under the name of the “ Philippics,” or 
 “Qlynthiacs”; and he succeeded at last in forming against that monarch 
 a league, at the head of which were Athens and Thebes. 
 
 The orator was himself present at the battle of Chzeronea, which 
 placed Greece at the mercy of Philip. On the death of that king the hopes 
 of Demosthenes revived, and at his instigation the Greek cities again formed 
 a league against Macedonia. Alexander repressed this renewed attempt at 
 independence by the destruction of Thebes, but he pardoned Athens and her 
 patriotic orator. In the years which followed these events the city resounded 
 with accusations of venality. Aischines, the representative of the Macedo- 
 nian party, indirectly brought a charge against Demosthenes by attacking 
 Ctesiphon, who had promoted the decree under which Demosthenes had 
 been crowned for his patriotism. This gave rise to the famous discourse 
 “Of the Crown.” Being compelled to justify himself for having given to 
 his country advice which only brought about disasters, the. grand orator 
 triumphed over his base adversary by opposing to the materialist doctrine 
 of interest the sublime philosophy of duty, of honour, and of devotion to 
 one’s country. He was less successful when the same antipathies obliged 
 him to exile himself from Athens in consequence of a charge— apparently 
 calumnious—of having accepted a bribe from the governor of Babylon. 
 
 After Alexander’s death Demosthenes was restored, his entry into 
 Athens being marked with every demonstration of joy. He became the 
 soul of a new league which was formed among the Greek cities against the 
 Macedonians. The confederacy was broken up, however, by Antipater, and 
 Demosthenes retired to theisland of Calauria off the coast of Argolis, where, 
 being still pursued by the satellites of Antipater, he terminated his life by 
 poisoning himself in the Temple of Neptune. 
 
 The orations of Demosthenes, of which sixty-one have been preserved, 
 are the most sublime monuments of human eloquence and patriotism. 
 
381 
 366 
 364 
 396 
 355 
 
 352 
 349 
 346 
 344. 
 343 
 341 
 338 
 330 
 324 
 322 
 
 DEMOSTHENES 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 DATE OF BIRTH. 
 
 ADMITTED TO CITIZENSHIP . 
 ACCUSES HIS GUARDIAN 
 
 BEGINS CAREER AS STATESMAN . 
 
 “IN ANDROTIONEM,” “IN LEPTINEM,” “IN ZENO- 
 THEMIM” 
 
 ‘PHICIEE Geis 
 
 SOLYNTHIACS ail eit 
 
 AMBASSADOR TO PHILIP 
 
 obo LEE PIG RE : : 
 
 AMBASSADOR TO PELOPONNESUS 
 
 “PHILLIP PIO Asia Vane 
 
 AT CHATRONEIA 
 
 “DE CORONA” : - : : : : : 
 PROSECUTED FOR RECEIVING BRIBES FROM HARPALUS 
 DIED AT CALAURIA 
 
 15 
 Ly, 
 25 
 
 26 
 29 
 32 
 35 
 37 
 38 
 40 
 43 
 51 
 57 
 59 
 
CICERO 
 
 106-43 B.C. 
 
 GREATEST CRITIC OF ANTIQUITY 
 
 History, says Coleridge, is resolvable into a series of biographies of a few 
 earnest and powerful men. For the large results of human action, which 
 are the proper subject of history, are traceable ultimately, not to the masses 
 that play their noisy bustling part upon the stage of life, but to a few com- 
 manding minds that move them. In some cases this control is exercised by 
 one who takes no part in the actions he has inspired; in others, by men who 
 themselves act with those they lead. To the latter class belongs M. Tullius 
 Cicero, the great Roman orator, perhaps, with one decisive exception, the 
 greatest master in all time of the art of eloquent speech. For more than 
 thirty years he was one of the most conspicuous figures in the political and 
 forensic fields of the Roman republic, holding public office for more than 
 twenty years, and wielding so powerful an influence that each political party 
 coveted to have him on its side, and felt its strength augmented or impaired 
 by his accession or withdrawal. His lot was cast in the last age of the great 
 Republic; a turbulent time, full of harsh discords and brutal deeds, the out- 
 come and the evidence of conflicting personal ambitions and rivalries, which 
 rushed in to fill the place left almost void of the old pure patriotism. 
 
2 CERI 
 
 Among his eminent contemporaries were Sylla, Pompey, Cesar, Cato, 
 Antony, Brutus, and Cassius. 
 
 The orator was the eldest son of M. Tullius Cicero and his wife Helvia, 
 both of honourable descent, and was born at the family seat near Arpinum,— 
 the birthplace likewise of Caius Marius—January 3, B.c. 106. His father 
 spared no pains to give him the best education then to be had, especially 
 with a view to fitting him for the public service. Neither his health nor his 
 tastes qualified him for a soldier’s life; he therefore chose, as the next best 
 path to advancement, the profession of the law. He applied himself to a 
 wide variety of studies under the most eminent teachers, and attended 
 diligently the pleadings in the law courts and the public speeches of the 
 magistrates. He cultivated poetical composition and produced several 
 original works and translations; but this was merely boyish play and was 
 soon dropped. He served one campaign in the Social War, under Cn. 
 Pompeius Strabo, father of Pompey the Great, and then he had done with 
 soldiering. 
 
 At length, in B.c. 81, when Sylla had overthrown not only the Marian 
 party but the constitution itself, and had assumed the dictatorship, Cicero 
 made his first appearance as a pleader. By his second oration, in defence of 
 Sextus Roscius against a charge of parricide, he won high distinction, and 
 also ran the risk of the dictator's displeasure. He soon after left Rome, and 
 continued his studies at Athens, in Asia Minor, and at Rhodes for two 
 years. After the death of Sylla he returned to Rome, and in 75 entered 
 upon his official career as queestor in Sicily. By his justice and integrity in 
 this capacity he endeared himself to the people. At the request of the 
 Sicilians he undertook in 70 the impeachment of Verres, who, as praetor in 
 the island, had been guilty of scandalous extortion and cruelty. So gross 
 was the case, and so overwhelming the evidence, that Hortensius, the 
 advocate of Verres, threw up his brief, and the defendant went into exile. 
 Meanwhile, Cicero had been elected edile. In the year of his preetorship 
 (66) he delivered the great speech (pro lege Manilia), which secured for 
 Pompey the command in the Mithridatic war, and the virtual dictatorship of 
 the East. The object of his highest ambition was attained in 64, when he 
 was chosen one of the consuls for the ensuing year. At this election one of 
 his competitors was Catiline; and in order to exclude the latter the 
 senatorial and popular parties joined their forces in supporting Cicero. The 
 
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CICERO 3 
 
 orator now allied himself with the aristocratic party, and step by step 
 alienated his former friends. His consulship was rendered memorable by 
 his discovery and frustration of the conspiracy of Catiline. The decisive 
 energy which he displayed in this emergency was hardly paralleled on any 
 subsequent occasion. ‘The service which he had rendered was nothing less 
 than the salvation of the republic, for which he was abundantly honoured, 
 and received the title of “father of his country.” But his vanity showed 
 itself offensively in continual boasting; and this, with other causes, con- 
 tributed to the decline of his popularity. Early in 58 proceedings were 
 begun by Clodius, as Ceesar’s tool, to bring about the banishment of Cicero. 
 The friends he had trusted in left him to his fate, and by the advice of Cato 
 he quitted Rome and Italy to wait for better times. But his courage failed 
 him, and he poured forth unmanly lamentations. Rome, with its Senate- 
 house and its forum, was his world. 
 
 “ Hence banished is banished from the world, 
 And world’s exile is death.” 
 
 A bill, however, was passed the next year for his recall; and his return 
 along the Appian Way was a kind of triumph. Liberal compensation was 
 awarded to him for the loss of his property and the destruction of his houses. 
 He now confined himself mostly to professional pursuits, and avoided 
 entangling himself in political affairs. In 53 he was admitted to the College 
 of Augurs, and the next year he reluctantly accepted the post of governor 
 of Cilicia. When he returned to Rome at the beginning of 49 the second 
 civil war was on the point of breaking out between Cesar and Pompey. 
 After much hesitation Cicero joined Pompey in the East. The next year, 
 however, Ceesar, victor at Pharsalia, became master of the Roman world, and 
 Cicero turned his back on the vanquished; but he did not venture to show 
 himself at Rome until the autumn of 47, when Cesar visited him in his 
 retreat at Brundisium, and gave him permission to return. 
 
 Cicero now shut himself up with his books, and busied himself with the 
 composition of his works on philosophy and rhetoric. But domestic troubles 
 pressed upon him in his seclusion. He had now reached his sixty-first year, 
 and after more than thirty years of married life he divorced his wife 
 Terentia. The reasons for this step are not clearly known, but are con- 
 ceivable. Almost immediately afterwards he married his young and wealthy 
 
4 CIGZKOG 
 
 ward Publilia. He was embarrassed with debt at the time. Soon after this 
 second marriage his only daughter, Tullia, deeply beloved, died in childbed. 
 This was the sharpest sorrow of his life. He had but just before parted 
 with his only son, and before the year closed he had divorced his young 
 wife, in whom he did not find the sympathy and consolation he needed. 
 From public failures and private distresses he turned the more earnestly 
 to his books and his philosophy. 
 
 During this period he appeared to be the intimate friend of Cesar; 
 but when Cesar had fallen by the hands of Brutus and his fellow con- 
 spirators (Ides of March, 44), Cicero openly applauded the deed, and 
 took the part of the republicans. There is no evidence that he was privy 
 to the conspiracy, but it is hardly possible to believe that he knew nothing 
 of it. He fled from Rome, but soon returned, and, rising to the height of 
 the great occasion, he displayed, in opposition to Antony, a vigour and 
 an energy long unusual with him. In rapid succession he now delivered 
 the series of fourteen orations against Antony, which he named after the 
 ‘ Philippics” of Demosthenes, and which rank among the most powerful 
 of his speeches. This magnificent effort cost him his life. Antony could 
 not forgive him; and when a proscription was planned by the Triumvirs, 
 Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, Antony demanded the life of Cicero. As 
 soon as the tidings reached him at his Tusculan villa, he fled, hoping to 
 escape by sea; but he was overtaken in a wood by night, and, forbidding his 
 attendants to resist, his head and hands were struck off by the pursuers 
 (December 7, 43). They were sent to Rome, and with unpardonable 
 brutality were exposed, by command of Antony, on the rostra, the scene 
 of the orator’s living triumphs. 
 
 The character of Cicero has been depicted by panegyrists, and by 
 calumniators. As usual, the truth probably lies between the extreme views. 
 As a man he was distinguished by steadfast integrity and justice, “ faithful 
 among the faithless” of the time. Learned, philosophic, and genial, he won 
 a host of friends, and was singularly free from envy and jealousy of rivals. 
 As a statesman, indeed, he failed to fulfil the promise of his early manhood, 
 chiefly for want of the robustness of character which was needed to cope with 
 the difficulties and dangers of the evil times on which he had fallen. As an 
 author, both by his orations and his writings on speculative and political 
 philosophy, he takes a very high place, and has reaped the admiration and 
 
CICERO 5 
 
 love of thoughtful students through generation after generation. He does not, 
 indeed, bear the palm of the originator or discoverer in philosophy, but the 
 merit of lucid expositor. He loved Plato chiefly, and founded his dialogues 
 “The Republic” and “The Laws” on the great works of Plato bearing the 
 same titles. In other treatises. or dialogues, the “ De Officiis,” “ Academica,” 
 “ De Finibus,” “ Tusculanz Disputationes,” “‘ De Natura Deorum,” &c., he sets 
 forth and discusses the doctrines of various Greek philosophers on the most 
 concerning questions of human existence. Last, not least, among his writings 
 are to be named his “ Familiar Letters,” of which about eight hundred are 
 extant, half of them being addressed to his lifelong friend Atticus. “These,” 
 says Middleton, his admiring English biographer, “ may justly be called the 
 memoirs of the times, for they contain not only a distinct account of every 
 memorable event, but lay open the springs and motives whence each of them 
 proceeded.” His works as a whole form the most authentic monuments of 
 the events of his age. Moreover, in addition to their intrinsic worth, philo- 
 sophical, historical, and biographical, they possess the charm of consummate 
 literary style, and present to us the Latin language at its highest pitch of 
 development. 
 
CICEHRO 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 106 BORN AT ARPINUM. 
 
 91 RECEIVES THE TOGA 
 
 87-84 “DE INVENTIONE RHETORICA . 
 81 BEGINS TO PLEAD 
 
 79-77 TRAVELS AND STUDIES; AT ATHENS, ASIA MINOR, 
 RHODES 
 
 75 QUAUSTOR IN SICILY 
 
 70 “IN VERREM ACTIO” 
 
 63 CONSUL; DEFEATS CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE 
 62 “PRO P. CORNELIO SULLA” 
 
 58 RETIRES TO THESSALONICA . 
 
 54 “PRO CRASSO;” “PRO AAMILIO SCAURO” 
 
 51 PROCONSUL OF CILICIA; “DE REPUBLICA” 
 
 45 DEATH OF DAUGHTER TULLIA 
 
 43 PHILIPPIC I. TO IV.; PUT TO DEATH 
 
CICERO: HIS WORKS 
 
 WORKS OF CICERO CLASSIFIED. 
 [FROM SMITH’S DICTIONARY. | 
 
 I. PHILOSOPHICAL. 
 
 A. Puitosopuy oF Taste: On Rhetoric, Oratory, &. 
 B. PorrricAL Putmosopuy: Republic, Laws, Jurisprudence, &c. 
 C. Puitosopuy oF Morats: De Offcus, Virtue, Cato, Old Age, Friend- 
 
 ship, &c. 
 D. SPECULATIVE PuiLosopHy: De Finibus, Tusculum Disputations, Tim- 
 
 meus, Protagoras, &c. 
 E. TuHEroLtocy: Nature of God, Divination, Fate, &c. 
 II. SPEECHES. 
 
 Quincrius, Roscius, VARENUS, VERRES, MANLIUS, CATILINE, &c. 
 
 II. CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 Famintiar Lerrers; Episttes to Arricus; LETTERS To A BROTHER; 
 LETTERS To BRUTUS. 
 
 IV. POLITICAL, HISTORICAL, AND MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Translations from Homer, Poems upon his own Life, Elegiac and 
 Epigrammatic Fragments, History of his own Consulate, Adaptation 
 
 of Economy of Xenophon, &c. 
 
ne 
 
 ‘ey 
 
PACTLUS 
 
 Aeros lelcs 
 
 GREATEST OF THE HISTORIANS 
 
 Carus CorNELIvus Tacitus is supposed to have been a native of Interamna 
 (Terni), in Umbria, and it has been assumed, with every appearance of 
 probability, that he was the son of Cornelius Tacitus, a procurator appointed 
 by the Emperor to manage the Imperial revenue and govern a province 
 in Belgic Gaul. In his youth he cultivated poetry, as we learn from his 
 correspondence with the younger Pliny; and it has been conjectured that he 
 sat at the feet of Quintilian, though on this point there is no direct evidence. 
 It is not known, indeed, where he was educated, but it is clear that he did 
 not imbibe the smallest tincture of that frivolous science, and that vicious 
 eloquence which in his time debased the Roman genius. His character, most 
 probably, was formed upon the plan adopted in the time of the republic ; 
 and, with the help of a sound scheme of home discipline, and the best 
 domestic example, he grew up, in a course of virtue, to that vigour of mind 
 which gives such animation to his writings. 
 
 His first ambition was to distinguish himself at the bar. At an early 
 age he married the daughter of Agricola, and this matrimonial alliance is a 
 sufficient proof that he occupied a position of considerable rank in Rome. 
 
2 "TACITUS 
 
 He himself informs us that he began his career of civil preferment during 
 the reign of Vespasian. ‘ Vespasian,” he says, “began my fortune; Titus 
 increased it ; Domitian completed it.” 
 
 Under Domitian he was Preetor, and also a Senator. In the seventh 
 year of that tyrant’s reign Tacitus and his wife left the city of Rome, and 
 absented themselves for more than four years. Some writers, willing to 
 exalt the virtue of Tacitus, and to aggravate the injustice of Domitian, assert 
 that Tacitus was sent into banishment. This, however, is mere conjecture, 
 without a shadow of probability to support it. 
 
 In the reign of Nerva he was raised to the dignity of Consul. It was 
 at this period that he delivered the funeral oration on the celebrated 
 Virginius Rufus, who had twice been offered by his legions in Germany the 
 title of Emperor, before and after the death of Nero, and who had on both 
 occasions refused it. In honour of Virginius the Senate decreed that the 
 rites of sepulture should be performed at the public expense. Tacitus 
 delivered the funeral oration from the rostrum, and the applause of such 
 an orator, Pliny says, was sufficient to crown the glory of a well-spent life. 
 This discourse unfortunately has not been preserved. 
 
 Tacitus had, it appears, already written the “ Dialogue on the Causes 
 of the Decline of Eloquence”; and at the close of Nerva’s reign he composed 
 the “ Life of Agricola,” his father-in-law, which is regarded as the master- 
 piece of historical panegyrics. ‘To Englishmen this life is peculiarly 
 interesting, as Britain was the scene of the great exploits of Agricola, who 
 carried the Roman eagles even to the base of the Grampian mountains. 
 
 To the same period belongs the famous treatise “On the Manners and 
 the Peoples of Germany,” which throws much light on the primitive customs 
 of the Teutonic race. About the time when this work appeared Tacitus 
 gained a great oratorical success by preferring, along with Pliny, on behalf of 
 the province of Africa, a charge against the proconsul Marius Priscus. 
 
 The “ Life of Agricola” and the “Manners of the Germans” had 
 already appeared when Tacitus wrote his “ Histories.” Of this grand work, 
 which gave an account of contemporary events from the reign of Galba to 
 the death of Domitian, we possess only the first four books, and the 
 beginning of the fifth, but we can form an estimate of the loss history has 
 sustained if we reflect that the portions now extant only comprise one year 
 and a few months. 
 
od 
 
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 aA 
 
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 re 
 
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 LIBRARY ~ a 
 OF THE 
 LAIVERSITY OF ILLING'S 
 it 
 
TAGLLOS 5 
 
 The “ Annals” followed, including a period of fifty-four years. The 
 style of these “ Annals” differs from that of the “ Histories,” which required 
 stately periods, pomp of expression, and harmonious sentences. The 
 “ Annals” are written in a strain more subdued and temperate; every 
 phrase is a maxim; the narrative goes on with rapidity; the author is 
 sparing of words and prodigal of sentiment; the characters are drawn with 
 a profound knowledge of human nature, and when we see them figuring 
 on the stage of public business, we perceive the internal spring of their 
 actions; we see their motives at work, and, of course, are prepared to judge 
 of their conduct. 
 
 His “ Pleadings,” his collection of “ Witty Sayings,” and his “ Poems” 
 are lost. 
 
 Of the life of Tacitus we really know scarcely anything, and even the 
 date of his death has not been ascertained. With respect to his private life 
 nothing has been recorded; we only know that he was on terms of the 
 closest friendship with Pliny the younger. There is every reason to believe, 
 however, that Tacitus was a celebrity at Rome, as well as his friend, and on 
 this point a charming anecdote has been preserved. Tacitus being present 
 one day at the games of the circus, he entered into conversation with a 
 Roman knight, who asked him whether he was an Italian or a provincial. 
 “JT am not altogether unknown to you,” replied Tacitus, “and it is to 
 literature that I owe this advantage.” “Then you are either Tacitus 
 or Pliny,” rejoined the stranger. 
 
 The commentators assume that he must have left issue, because they 
 find that M. Claudius Tacitus, who was created Emperor in A.D. 275, deduced 
 his pedigree from the historian. We are told, besides, that the Emperor 
 ordered the statue of Tacitus, and a complete collection of his works, to be 
 placed in the public archives, with a special direction that twelve copies 
 should be made every year at the public expense; but when the mutilated 
 state in which the author’s works have come down to posterity is considered, 
 there is reason to believe that the orders of this Emperor, who reigned only 
 six months, were never executed. 
 
 Grammatically considered, the language of Tacitus has grave defects, 
 but in style, that is to say, colour, movement, harmony of expression, poetry, 
 and soul—the life of all eloquence—there is hardly any author, either in 
 prose or verse, who is superior to Tacitus. Racine has not equalled him in 
 
4 | PACTEUS 
 
 his description of the death of Britannicus, while Virgil’s episode of the 
 death of Priam and the desolation of Troy can at most only be compared 
 with the picture of the death of Galba and the revolution of Rome. It is 
 this deep and true pathos which makes the historical narrative and the 
 philosophy of Tacitus rise superior to the rapid and vigorous declamation 
 
 of Sallust. 
 
61 
 88 
 96 
 97 
 98 
 99 
 LUT 
 
 AP ia (@ IEE UE fe 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 DATE OF BIRTH. 
 PRASTOR . 
 
 “VITA AGRICOLA” 
 CONSUL SUFFECTUS 
 “ HISTORLA” 
 
 CONDUCTS PROSECUTION OF MARIUS. 
 
 DATE OF DEATH 
 
 AGE 
 
BOOK 
 
 th. 
 
 Il. 
 
 III. 
 
 Ve 
 
 WA 
 
 XI. 
 
 Ea NeN ATE SOT aAT@ ERs 
 
 ABSTRACT OF CONTENTS. 
 
 The Family of Augustus. Character of Tiberius. Accession of 
 Tiberius. Sedition in Pannonia. Disturbances in Germany. Policy 
 
 of Tiberius, &e. 
 
 Commotions in Parthia. Defeat of the Germans. War in Africa. 
 Death of Germanicus, &e. 
 
 Agrippina returns to Rome. Accusation of Lepida. Nero, son 
 of Germanicus. Insurrection in Gaul. Tiberius on the Luxury 
 of the Times, &c. 
 
 Corrupt Practices of Sejanus. Drusus poisoned. End of African 
 War. Insurrection in Thrace.. Tiberius retires to Campania. 
 Increased power of Sejanus, &c. 
 
 . Agrippina and her son accused. Tiberius accuses his grand- 
 
 children. A counterfeit Drusus in Greece. 
 
 Remarkable Letter of Tiberius. Death of Agrippma.  Intrigues 
 among the Parthians. Fire at Rome. Death of Tiberius, &c. 
 
 . Asiaticus and Poppeea accused. Acts of Claudius as Censor. 
 
 Marriage of Messalina and Silius. Messalina denounced and 
 executed, &c. 
 
 Agrippina chosen Empress. Successes in Parthia. War in Britain. 
 Caractacus brought to Rome. Nero and Britannicus. Claudius 
 
 poisoned, &e. 
 
8 ANNALS OF TACITUS 
 
 “BOOK 
 XIII. Nero succeeds to the Empire. Britannicus poisoned. Agrippina 
 accused. 
 
 XIV. Influence of Poppa. Attempt to drown Agrippina. Nero's 
 remorse. Nero appears on the Stage. The Britons under 
 Boadicea. Seneca calumniated. Sylla and Plautus assassinated. 
 Octavia put to death, Wc. 
 
 XV. Armenia invaded by Vologeses. Roman Legions besieged. Nero’s 
 daughter Augusta. Great fire at Rome. Christians accused. 
 Last moments of Seneca, &c. 
 
 XVI. Nero performs on the Stage. Character of C. Petronius. Thrasea 
 accused. Senate intimidated. Thrasea prepares to die. 
 
PLUTARCH 
 
 ail. Sia TPA 
 
 PATHER OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Turis great philosopher and historian of antiquity was a native of Cheronea, 
 in Beeotia, but he was far from partaking of the proverbial dulness of the 
 people of that country. He belonged to a good family, members of which 
 occupied those high municipal offices that he himself in turn filled when he 
 went back to settle at Cheeronea after his long travels. He held it to be a 
 point of honour to give to the place of his birth some of the celebrity he 
 had himself acquired. “Born in a little town,” he used to say, with simple 
 pride, “I love to live there in order that it should not become still smaller.” 
 Plutarch prosecuted his studies at Athens, under Ammonius of 
 Alexandria, in whose house he dwelt. His preliminary education having 
 been completed, he set out upon his travels, first visiting Egypt, where he 
 began to accumulate his vast stores of historical and mythological lore. In 
 his treatise of “Isis and Osiris” he has described the principal ideas he 
 entertained of the Egyptian religion, and this work possesses for us a 
 singular interest. From this period Plutarch systematically wrote down 
 descriptions of what he saw, diligently examined public and private records, 
 and composed collections of memoirs which eventually were of the greatest 
 use to the historian and the moralist. On his return to Greece he visited 
 
2 PLUIARGIA 
 
 the principal academies, and resided for some time at Sparta for the 
 express purpose of studying on the spot the mechanism of its ancient 
 government and of its legislation. Wherever he went he gathered facts 
 and notable sayings, consulting, for the purpose, books, statues, medals, 
 inscriptions, and paintings. ‘“ He appears,” says one of his ancient bio- 
 graphers, “to have had his memory always engaged in collecting informa- 
 tion, and his judgment ceaselessly occupied in discerning what it was 
 necessary to reject or to retain.” Applying the same attention to the study 
 of the positive sciences, and then to medicine, to the laws of health, and to 
 other matters of a practical kind, and being eager, above all things, to 
 become acquainted with the history and the developments of the philo- 
 sophical sects, Plutarch remained ignorant of nothing that was known in 
 his time. 
 
 This laborious preparation gives us a sufficiently lofty idea of the 
 multifarious study and research necessary to be pursued by those who 
 wished to follow the profession of a sophist, for that was the profession to 
 which Plutarch aspired, and which he practised for a long time in Rome. 
 
 Before repairing to that great capital, he was sent by his fellow-citizens 
 on a mission to the proconsul of Achaia—a circumstance which attests the 
 public esteem he was already beginning to enjoy. It was long believed, on 
 the authority of Suidas, that he was the tutor of Trajan, who, on being 
 raised to the Imperial purple, appointed him consul, and heaped honours and 
 wealth upon him. This is, however, a mere invention. It is probable that 
 Plutarch’s residence in Rome, which extended over more than a quarter of a 
 century, was interrupted by frequent visits to Greece. During his long stay 
 in the Eternal City he did not find time, according to his own admission, to 
 acquire a knowledge of the Latin tongue. He learnt, indeed, the names of 
 ordinary objects, but it was not till late in life that he applied himself to the 
 study of Latin literature. Many celebrated Greeks attended his courses of 
 philosophy, and not a few of his auditors belonged to the Roman aristocracy, 
 Plutarch spoke fluently, being aided by notes carefully prepared beforehand, 
 which in his old age he edited, and gave to his thoughts the form in which 
 they have descended to us. In the same way he has preserved in his 
 “Table Talk” the substance of familiar conversations which he held, chiefly 
 at Rome, with men of rank and talent; so that it is possible to follow the 
 development of his ideas and his doctrines during that long space of time. 
 
Ay 
 My 
 
 + 
 
Llon, sat 
 
 Oh THE 
 LiAiVERSITY OF ILLINGD3 
 
PLUTARCH 3 
 
 From various passages in his works it appears that while at Rome he 
 was also entrusted by his fellow-citizens with some kind of public office, like 
 that of the modern chargé @affaires, and it is to be regretted that he has not 
 more fully explained the nature and the duties of this post. 
 
 The period at which he returned to establish himself at Cheronea is 
 uncertain. He was there elected archon, and then he filled the humble post 
 of inspector of buildings. His renown was at this time spread all over 
 Greece. Athens accorded to him the right of citizenship; Corinth and Elis 
 invited him to their grand civic feasts; he was priest of the Oracle of Apollo 
 at Delphi. Foreigners who visited the principal cities of Greece went to 
 see him, and accounted it an honour to be received at his house. His home 
 was that of a sage, and he lived in tranquillity in the midst of his family. 
 In this quiet retirement Plutarch, reposing at the close of an extremely 
 laborious life, put in order his voluminous notes and documents, and com- 
 posed the works which have made his name immortal—the “ Moralia,” or 
 Ethical works, and the famous “ Parallel Lives.” The “ Moralia” consist of 
 the lectures and improvisations which, according to the fashion of the time, 
 he delivered wherever he went. They possess great and varied merits, but 
 are inferior to the “ Lives,” which contain an account of forty-six Greeks and 
 Romans, arranged in pairs. Some scholars have underrated the value of 
 Plutarch’s “ Lives,” and have charged him with inaccuracy and plagiarism. 
 In spite, however, of certain reserves that criticism might make, the 
 ‘ Parallel Lives” is assuredly one of the most excellent books which honour 
 humanity. In it are found a remarkable moral elevation, a rare knowledge 
 of the human heart, immense erudition, and marvellous skill of narration. It 
 has been, in modern times, the book of antiquity which has had the most 
 powerful attractions for statesmen, moralists, and dramatic authors, that is to 
 say, for the men who want to know the human heart in order to make use of 
 it, to direct it, or to depict it. Shakspeare has taken from Plutarch the 
 subjects of three of his plays; and an able scholar of our own day has truly 
 remarked that Plutarch’s “ Lives” is, and will remain, in spite of all the fault 
 that can be found with it by plodding collectors of facts and small critics, 
 the book of those who can nobly think, and dare, and do. It is a mirror 
 in which all men may look at themselves. 
 
PLUTARCH’S LIVES 
 
 GREEK AND ROMAN HEROES COMPARED. 
 
 . Theseus and Romulus. 
 
 . Lycurgus and Numa. 
 
 . Solon and Publicola. 
 
 . Themistocles and Camillus. 
 
 . Pericles and Fabius Maximus. 
 . Alcibiades and Coriolanus. 
 
 . Timoleon and Paulus Aimilius. 
 . Pelopidas and Marcellus. 
 
 . Aristides and Cato the Censor. 
 . Philopemen and T. Q. Fla- 
 
 minius. 
 
 . Pyrrhus and Caius Marius. 
 . Lysander and Sylla. 
 . Cimon and Lucullus. 
 
 . Nicias and Marcus Crassus. 
 
 XV 
 XVI. 
 XVII. 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XOX, 
 
 SOME 
 XXII. 
 XOX TLL 
 YORU 
 OY, 
 OV: 
 
 Eumenes and Sertorius. 
 
 Agesilaus and Pompey. 
 
 Alexander and Julius Cesar. 
 
 Phocion and Cato the 
 Younger. 
 
 Agis, Cleomenes, and Tibe- 
 
 rius and Caius Gracchus. 
 Demosthenes and Cicero. 
 Demetrius and Antony. 
 Dion and Brutus. 
 Artaxerxes. 
 Aratus. 
 Galba. 
 Otho. 
 
MONTAIGN E 
 
 1533-1592 
 
 THE MODERN ESSAY 
 
 For the clear manifestation and further discovery of truth, it cannot but be 
 desirable that every mood natural to the human mind should be well repre- 
 sented in literature. In all fields of inquiry we have knowledge, belief, 
 opinion, and doubt; and it is well that in books, besides the exposition of 
 the things we know, believe, or opine, room should be found for the 
 statement of honest doubt. There are, indeed, men and societies of men 
 with whom it is a settled axiom that “doubt is devil-born.” If this were 
 true, the only wise course, if a possible one, would be war to the death 
 against it. As well strike at Hamlet’s ghost ; 
 
 “For it is as the air invulnerable, 
 
 And our vain blows malicious mockery.” 
 Without going so far as to accept the paradoxical suggestion that a church 
 should be founded for the doubters, it is clearly the part of a wise and fair- 
 minded man to lend an ear not only to the man who says “I know,” and to 
 him who says “I believe,” but also to him who says “ I doubt.” 
 
 Outside the circle of systematic philosophies, Montaigne is the greatest 
 representative of the doubting habit of mind or of Scepticism. He was the 
 first writer of his age to adopt it, and he more than any other contributed 
 to make it current in his own country. By translations his work soon 
 
2 MONTAIGNE 
 
 became known in other lands; and his reputation has widened and grown 
 stronger with the lapse of time. At the present day his name is one of the 
 few great ones ever on the world’s large tongue; the facts of his biography 
 are the subject of ever-renewed investigations; and his writings rank with 
 the greatest treasures of cultivated minds in all nations. His countrymen 
 have coined a special term to designate the study of his life and works— 
 Montaignologie. 
 
 Michel, seigneur de Montaigne, was born at the family seat, the 
 chateau of Montaigne in Périgord, in 1533. The sixty years of his life 
 covered one of the great periods of French and European history. At the 
 time of his birth Luther was just completing his German Bible, having 
 struck the first note of the Reformation fifteen years before; Calvin was 
 about to begin preaching; and the Society of Jesus already existed in 
 embryo in the brain of Loyola. In his manhood France was in the 
 paroxysm of her religious wars, the climax of horrors being reached on 
 the day of St. Bartholomew. 
 
 The family name was Eyquem, from which some have conjectured that 
 it might be of Flemish or even of English origin. The father of Michel was 
 a noble, but not rich. The child was put out to nurse in a village, was 
 habituated to a rude diet, and thus making acquaintance with the life of 
 poor men became capable of a sympathy with their toils and sufferings which 
 he never lost. He was taught Latin from his cradle, and heard no other 
 language till he was six years old, when he was sent to the College of 
 Guienne, at Bordeaux. Here he remained seven years, and then applied 
 himself to the study of law. At the age of twenty-four he was appointed 
 one of the judges of the parliament of Bordeaux. This position he held 
 for thirteen years; but the period is almost a blank in his biography. He 
 made several visits to Paris and the court, thus enlarging his experience of 
 men, became acquainted with L’Hépital, and formed a friendship with 
 Etienne de la Boétie, which was too soon terminated by the death of the 
 latter. 
 
 On succeeding to the seigneurie (1570), he resigned his office of judge, 
 appeared again at court, and was appointed Gentleman-in-ordinary of the 
 Bedchamber. He had married the year before, less, he says, to please 
 himself than his friends and the world. He now spent twelve years in 
 strict retirement in his chateau, busy with his thoughts, his books, and his 
 pen; managing his estate; and keeping up social intercourse with his 
 neighbours, by whom he was held in high esteem for his practical wisdom 
 
ny) 
 
 f ‘ 
 vi) 
 iH 
 
LIBRARY 
 GF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINT'S 
 
MONTAIGNE 3 
 
 and complete integrity. He began the composition of his famous “ Essays ” 
 in 1572, the year of the Bartholomew massacre; and they were published in 
 1580. For the sake of his health, which, though seldom good after middle 
 age, he would never entrust to a doctor's direction, he spent about two years 
 in travelling in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. At Rome he was presented 
 to Pope Gregory XIII., who gave him the freedom of the city. The private 
 record which he made of this visit to Italy, after being lost sight of for 
 two centuries, was discovered and published in 1774. During his absence 
 in Italy he was elected mayor of Bordeaux; and being re-elected at the 
 close of his term, held the office for four years. He then returned to his 
 country seat. But in consequence of the war of the League and an outbreak 
 of the plague he was driven away (1586), and for a time led an unsettled life. 
 While at Paris (1588) he was visited by a young lady, Marie de Gournay, 
 who from reading his “ Essays” had apparently fallen in love with him. She 
 was accompanied by her mother. Thus began a romantic and lifelong 
 friendship, Montaigne accepting her enthusiastic homage as that of an 
 adopted daughter. The same year Montaigne, with. several friends, men of 
 note, was at Blois at the time of the meeting of the States-General and the 
 murder of the two Guises. While there he conducted the negotiation of an 
 arrangement between the Duke of Guise and Henry of Navarre. In 1589 
 his friendship with Pierre Charron began. 
 
 But the end was now approaching. Montaigne was subject to several 
 painful diseases, which he bore with determined stoicism, adhering stoutly 
 to his inherited repugnance to drugs and doctors. In the autumn of 1592 
 he was attacked with quinsy, and lost his voice A small party of his 
 neighbours gathered about his bed, and mass was said. The dying man, so far 
 as his strength allowed, showed his participation in the act of worship, and 
 so participating died (September 13, 1592). Marie de Gournay, with her 
 mother, made the difficult and dangerous journey across a large part of 
 France, to mingle her sorrow and sympathy with those of the widow and 
 only daughter of her friend in his own home. His remains were ultimately 
 interred at Bordeaux, where a monument was erected which is still to be 
 seen. The chateau of Montaigne, still standing, is a place of pilgrimage for 
 many admiring students of all countries. 
 
 Five editions of Montaigne’s ‘“‘ Essays” appeared in his lifetime, and 
 another, under the care of Marie de Gournay, in 1595. From 1580 to 1650 
 thirty-one editions are counted. Between 1659 and 1724 no new issue was 
 
4 MONTAIGNE 
 
 called for ; but since that time new editions have continually succeeded each 
 other. The “Essays” have been translated into almost all European lan- 
 guages. An English translation by Florio appeared in 1603; and this is 
 especially interesting as one of the only two books known to have been in 
 Shakspeare’s library. His copy, bearing his autograph, is in the British 
 Museum; and it has for companion, by a surprising chance, the copy of the 
 same work which belonged to Ben Jonson, bearing his autograph. Another 
 English version of a far higher character appeared in 1685. Its author was 
 Charles Cotton, now best known as the friend of Izaak Walton. Written in 
 racy English, and in a pithy style akin to that of Montaigne himself, it has 
 passed through many editions, and is still a favourite. 
 
 Montaigne is facile princeps among egotists. There are egotisms and 
 egotisms. Milton was an egotist, of a very high and noble kind. Montaigne 
 takes his place in a lower rank. Although it is idle to quarrel with facts, in 
 literature or in life, the wish may be forgiven that he had not dealt out to 
 us with so much relish and with so lavish a hand his personal confidences 
 on all manner of ignoble matters. Something must be allowed for the 
 coarse character and free customs of the age; and it must be remembered 
 that a bookish woman was then a rara avis. After all abatements on the 
 score of refinement, the “ Essays” remain one of the richest, most sincere, 
 and most fascinating of books. When the king told Montaigne that he 
 liked his book, Montaigne replied—‘“ Then your Majesty must needs like 
 me; my book is myself.” He wrote not to please the town, not with the fear 
 of “irresponsible reviewers” before his eyes, not by critical rule, but to please 
 himself. Although he pours out before us abundant fruits of varied reading, 
 chiefly of the wiser ancients, the real and resistless charm of his book is the 
 frank revelation made in it of himself. The portrait, exposing follies and 
 frailties as freely as their opposites, has attracted the admiring esteem of the 
 wiser readers generation after generation. Speaking mainly out of his own 
 experience he seems to be the spokesman of “the collective experience of 
 humanity.” His book has been called “the breviary of free-thinkers.” It 
 may be this, but it is much more besides. It must not be forgotten, that 
 while Montaigne saw and insisted on the feebleness of human reason and the 
 exceedingly narrow limits of human knowledge, he accepted, as Locke did, 
 the authority of divine revelation, and lived and died “a good Catholic.” 
 
 The biography of Montaigne by Mr. Bayle St. John forms a serviceable 
 introduction to his works. 
 
MONTAIGNE 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 1533 BORN IN PERIGORD. 
 1539-46 STUDIED AT BORDEAUX 
 
 1554 
 1569 
 1580 
 1581 
 
 1586 
 
 1588 
 
 1592 
 
 COUNSELLOR TO PARLIAMENT OF BORDEAUX 
 
 MARRIED : : : 
 
 “ESSAYS”; VISITED GERMANY AND ITALY 
 
 “JOURNAL DU VOYAGE DE MICHEL DE MON- 
 TAIGNE,” ETC. ‘ : d : 
 
 DRIVEN FROM HIS CHATEAU BY WAR OF THE 
 LEAGUE : : : 
 
 MEDIATED BETWEEN HENRY OF NAVARRE AND 
 DUKE OF GUISE. 
 
 DIED AT MONTAIGNE, PERIGORD 
 
 AcE 6-13 
 
 99 
 
 21 
 36 
 
 AT 
 
MONTAIGNE: HIS WORKS 
 
 LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL ESSAYS. 
 
 On Sorrow. 
 
 On Idleness. 
 
 On Liars. 
 
 On Constancy. 
 
 On Prognostications. 
 
 On Fear. 
 
 Philosophy Teaches us how to Die. 
 
 On Pedantry. 
 
 On Wearing Clothes. 
 
 On Friendship. 
 
 On Cannibals. 
 
 On Democritus and Heraclitus. 
 On Age. 
 
 On Conscience. 
 
 On Prayers. 
 
 On Honours and Rewards. 
 
 On Age. 
 
 On Books. 
 
 On Cruelty. 
 
 On Human Ignorance. 
 
 On Posts. 
 
 On Bad Means employed to a Good 
 End. 
 
 On not Counterfeiting Sickness. 
 
 On Thumbs. 
 
 On Three Good Women. 
 
 On the Resemblance of Children to 
 their Fathers. 
 
MONTESQULIEU 
 
 1689—1755 
 
 WEE PEEEOSOPEY OF HISTORY 
 
 THE eighteenth century has been as gravely disparaged by some thinkers, 
 men of a noble type that must be heeded, as the Middle Ages by others ; 
 and equally vigorous pleas in defence and honour have been urged in both 
 cases. The cause of the eighteenth century must be considered as still sub 
 judice. Whatever the ultimate judgment as to its character, its products, and 
 its tendencies may be—and we may hope that in this, as in so many 
 instances, the poet’s saying will be fulfilled— 
 
 “And after praise and blame cometh the truth”— 
 
 one fact is clear, that it has left the world the richer by some noble monu- 
 mental works of human intellect. It has given us no “ Hamlet” or “ Lear,” 
 no “ Paradise Lost,” nor any works of creative imagination to rank with or 
 near these. Its labours were mostly in the region of facts, and its chief 
 literary monuments are to be found in the fields of history, philosophy, 
 science, and politics. Among these Montesquieu’s masterpiece, the “ Esprit 
 des Lois,” holds a high place. 
 
 Charles de Secondat, Baron de Bréde et de Montesquieu, was born of 
 a noble family at the Chateau de la Bréde, near Bordeaux, January 18th, 
 1689. It was at the crisis of the English Revolution ; France was suffering 
 from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, effected four years earlier ; 
 
re) 
 
 MONTESQUIEU 
 
 and five years later Voltaire, and with him potentially a whole new world, 
 was born. The young noble’s great abilities were early apparent, he devoted 
 himself passionately to study, and was efficiently aided by his father. 
 Destined for the profession of the law, he accumulated a large mass of 
 extracts from the Civil Law, which proved to be the first part of his 
 preparation for his great work. He began at the same time to think for 
 himself on some deep and difficult subjects; and at the age of twenty wrote 
 a tract to show that the idolatry of the heathen—he already loved Socrates 
 and Plato, Cicero, Plutarch and Seneca—did not deserve eternal punishment. 
 From prudential motives this piece was either not published or quickly sup- 
 pressed. In 1714 he became a judge in the parliament of Bordeaux, the 
 very court in which a century and a half before Montaigne had held the 
 same office; and in 1716 he succeeded his uncle as president. Physical 
 science was at this time engaging his attention—a further step in his 
 necessary culture and training. 
 
 In 1721 he astonished his countrymen with a small book entitled 
 “ Lettres Persanes,” in which, under the guise of a travelled Persian and a 
 mask of mirth, he satirised their follies and vices, their levity, vanity, extra- 
 vagance, and quarrelsomeness, hitting hard and sparing no one. For the 
 sake of contrast he held up the example of England, under the guise of a 
 virtuous race of Troglodytes. The book appeared anonymously, but its 
 authorship was not long concealed. Its success was immense. Montesquieu 
 himself records that publishers, eager for other the like profitable surprises, 
 would catch hold of authors as they passed, and beg them to write some 
 more “ Persian Letters.” This sparkling work was translated into English 
 by Qzell, in 1730. Its method was adopted by Goldsmith in his “ Letters 
 from a Citizen of the World.” 
 
 Montesquieu did not relish the law as a profession, his thought moving 
 in awider sphere. “After leaving college,” he says, “they gave me law books, 
 but I was in search of the spirit.” Having held his judicial office for ten 
 years, he sold it and retired. In the following year he was a candidate for 
 a seat in the French Academy; but Cardinal Fleury, then first minister, 
 told him that the king, Louis XV., would never consent to the admission of 
 the writer of the “ Persian Letters.” Determined not to let slip the honour 
 of election, he altered—so states Voltaire—the offensive passages in the 
 “ Letters,” had a new edition rapidly printed off, and presented a copy 
 himself to the minister, who then took the trouble to read it. (The story 
 
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MONTESQUIEU 3 
 
 is differently told by D’Alembert in his “Eloge.”) The way was now 
 opened, and in January 1728 Montesquieu was received as one of the 
 Forty. 
 
 For the enlargement of his knowledge he now spent several years in 
 foreign travel, visiting first the Imperial Court, then Hungary, Italy, Switzer- 
 land, Germany, Holland, and England. At Vienna he met Prince Eugene; 
 at Venice the notorious Law, projector of the Mississippi scheme; and at 
 Rome he associated with Cardinal Polignac. Accompanying Lord Ches- 
 terfield to England, he was presented to Queen Caroline, who delighted in 
 the society of the wise and learned, and was the friend of Butler and 
 Berkeley. He made acquaintance also with many eminent men, studied 
 the principles and the working of the English government, and was chosen 
 a fellow of the Royal Society. His travels were followed by a studious 
 retirement of two years; and he then gave to the world his weighty work, 
 the ‘“ Considérations sur les Causes de la Grandeur des Romains et de leur 
 Décadence” (1733). Henceforth he devoted himself to the preparation of 
 the magnum opus which he had long meditated. Like Milton, he was in no 
 hurry to publish, but was content to wait the slow furnishing of his mind 
 and the ripening of his faculties. After entering upon his task, the growing 
 sense of its vastness almost paralysed him, and he several times dropped and 
 resumed it. When he had at length completed it, he sought the opinion of 
 his friend Helvetius. This opinion was unfavourable ; and Helvetius, sup- 
 ported by another friend, Saurin, strongly advised the author not to publish it. 
 It would, he said, be the ruin of his reputation. He did not however alter a 
 word ; and in 1748 the “ Esprit des Lois” appeared in two quarto volumes, 
 printed at Geneva. It found an audience immediately, ran through twenty- 
 two editions within eighteen months, and was famous over all Europe. 
 
 The purpose of the “ Esprit des Lois” was not to set forth what 
 governments ought to be; but to find in nature and in history the explana- 
 tion of existing maxims and institutions of various nations; to show how 
 diversities in physical and moral circumstances have contributed to produce 
 diversities in government and municipal institutions. Its special interest is 
 in its exposition of relations between sets of phenomena apparently un- 
 related to each other. To its author pertains the distinction of being the 
 first fully to apprehend and luminously exhibit the inward natural con- 
 nexions between history, philosophy, politics, and jurisprudence. Fore- 
 shadows indeed of these connexions had been seen; but the originality of 
 
4 MONTESQUIEU 
 
 Montesquieu’s views justified the proud motto on his title page—Prolem sine 
 matre creatam. The work is pervaded by an earnest love of freedom, which 
 in its sobriety is akin to English rather than to French aspirations. Many 
 hostile attacks were made on the book; but only one of these, involving a 
 charge of atheism, provoked any reply. The author published a “ Défense 
 de l’Esprit des Lois”; and the Sorbonne, which had a sharp eye on the 
 original work, refrained from the condemnation which it was about to issue. 
 The influence of the “ Esprit des Lois,” which was translated into English 
 by Nugent in 1750, is believed to have been more powerful in Great Britain 
 than in France. It is distinctly traceable in the “ Wealth of Nations,” which 
 appeared about thirty years later, of which Gibbon said—“ The strong ray 
 of philosophic light on this subject which broke over Scotland in our times 
 was but a reflection, though with a far steadier and more concentrated force, 
 from the scattered but brilliant sparks kindled by the genius of Montesquieu.” 
 Mackintosh, in his “ Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and 
 Nations,” pronounces a noble (not a blind) eulogy on the book, and says that 
 he never names the author without reverence. It was a favourite handbook 
 of the lovers of “ regulated liberty,” as distinguished from the fanatics of the 
 Revolution. Voltaire, though no friendly critic, recognised its literary 
 quality, and said—“ Le genre humain avait perdu ses titres ; Montesquieu les 
 a retrouvés et les lui a rendus.” 
 
 The sudden blaze of reputation did not turn the head of so sober and 
 wise a man as Montesquieu. His few remaining years were spent partly 
 at his country seat and partly at Paris. He was a welcome guest in culti- 
 vated society; and was beloved by the country people around his home. 
 His private character and life were irreproachable. He married in 1715, 
 and had two daughters and a son. His eyesight, never strong, almost 
 entirely failed him in his later years. His health too gradually broke 
 up; and during a visit to Paris in 1755 he had a severe illness, and died 
 there on the 10th of February of that year. In _ his last illness he was 
 annoyed by attempts on the part of the Jesuits to convert him; but, while 
 avowing his regard for religion, he would have nothing to do with them. 
 
 In addition to the works above named, Montesquieu wrote and appended 
 to the “ Considérations,” a “Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate,” a powerful 
 sketch of the Dictator and of the Roman people cowed by his tyranny; a 
 miniature classical romance entitled “ Le Temple de Gnide”; and a “ Histoire 
 physique du Monde ancien et moderne.” The last was an early work. 
 
1689 
 1714 
 1716 
 1721 
 1725 
 1728 
 
 MONTESQUIEU 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 BORN AT CHATEAU DE LA BREDE. 
 COUNSELLOR TO PARLIAMENT OF BORDEAUX 
 PRESIDENT A MORTIER 
 
 “LETTRES PERSANES” 
 
 “LE TEMPLE DU GUIDE” 
 
 RECEIVED AT FRENCH ACADEMY 
 
 1729-31 VISITED ENGLAND; ELECTED F.R.S. 
 
 1734 
 1748 
 1755 
 
 “CONSIDERATIONS SUR LES ROMAINS,” ETC. 
 ‘“BSPRIT DES LOIS ” 
 DIED AT PARIS 
 
 40-42 
 
VII. 
 
 MONTESQUIEU: HIS WORKS 
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SPIRIT OF LAWS. 
 
 Of Laws in General. 
 
 . Of Laws directly derived from the Nature of Government. 
 
 . Of the Principles of the three kinds of Government, Democracy, 
 
 Aristocracy, Monarchy. 
 
 . That the Laws of Education ought to be in relation to the Principles 
 
 of Government. 
 
 . That the Laws given by the Legislator ought to be in relation to the 
 
 Principles of Government. 
 
 . Consequences of the Principles of different Governments, with respect 
 
 to the Simplicity of Civil and Criminal Laws, the Form of Judg- 
 ments, and the inflicting of Punishments. 
 
 Consequences of the different Principles of the three Governments 
 with respect to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury, and the Condition of 
 Women. 
 
 . Of the Corruption of the Principles of the three Governments. 
 
 . Of Laws in the Relation they bear to a Defensive force. 
 
 . Of Laws in the Relation they bear to Offensive Force. 
 
 . Of the Laws which establish Political Liberty, with regard to the 
 
 Constitution. 
 
MONTESQUIEU: HIS WORKS 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 SUB 
 
 . Of the Laws that form Political Liberty in relation to the Subject. 
 . Of the Relation which the Levying of Taxes and the Greatness of 
 
 the Public Revenues bear to Liberty. 
 
 . Of Laws in relation to the Nature of the Climate. 
 
 . In what manner the Laws of Civil Slavery relate to the Nature of 
 
 the Climate. 
 
 . How the Laws of Domestic Slavery bear a Relation to the Nature 
 
 of the Climate. 
 How the Laws of Political Servitude bear a Relation to the Nature 
 of the Climate. 
 
 Of Laws in the relation they bear to the Nature of the Soil. 
 
 Of Laws in relation to the Principles which form the general Spirit, 
 the Morals and Customs of a Nation. 
 
 . Of Laws in relation to Commerce, considered in its Nature and 
 
 Distinctions. 
 
VOLTAIRE 
 
 1694-1778 
 
 GREATEST CRITIC OF MODERN TIMES 
 
 “ WHEN the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in 
 men’s minds, the name of Voltaire will stand for as much as the names of 
 the great decisive movements in the EHuropean advance, like the revival of 
 learning or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of this 
 extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and most prodigious 
 era. The peculiarities of his individual genius changed the mind and 
 spiritual conformation of the West with as far-spreading and invincible an 
 effect as if the work had been wholly done, as it was actually aided, by the 
 sweep of deep-lying, collective forces. A new type of belief and of its 
 shadow, disbelief, was stamped by the impression of his character and work 
 into the intelligence and feeling of his own and following times. We may 
 think of Voltairism somewhat as we think of the Catholicism of the 
 Renaissance or Calvinism. It was one of the cardinal liberations of the 
 growing race, one of the emphatic manifestations of some portions of the 
 minds of men, which an immediately foregoing system and creed had either 
 ignored or outraged.”—Morley. 
 
 Voltaire, or to give him the name of his family and youth, Francois 
 Arouet, was the second son of a wealthy notary, and was allied to the nobility 
 
2 VOLLALTRE 
 
 by his mother. He was born at Chatenay, near Sceaux—endowed with a 
 most surprising intelligence, but an extremely feeble constitution. His first 
 instructors were the Jesuit fathers of the College Louis-le-Grand, who 
 remarking the bent of his genius, and being often witness of his witty 
 penetration, predicted that he would become the Corypheus of Deism. He 
 was encouraged in these early predispositions by the privately-avowed 
 unbelief of a friend of his father’s, the Abbé Chateauneuf, who became a kind 
 of patron to the young Arouet, and introduced him to those circles in Paris 
 where the hypocrisy of the Court and religious orthodoxy alike were held in 
 great contempt. 
 
 Launching out into literature, he became speedily noted for his 
 scathing wit. Unjustly accused of the authorship of a satire against 
 Louis XIV., he found himself for some months a prisoner in the Bastile, but 
 devoted his confinement to writing his first play, “Cidipus,” which was 
 brought out in 1718. His father tried to draw him from literature and Paris 
 by getting him an appointment with the French Ambassador to the Hague, 
 but he soon returned to his former life, and in 1726 was imprisoned a second 
 time for having offended the powerful Chevalier de Rohan. On his release 
 he was ordered to leave France. He came to England, where there was 
 more freedom of tongue and pen, acquired the language with remarkable 
 facility, and entered into friendly relations with Bolingbroke, Tindal, and 
 Collins, and learned to admire Newton, Locke, and Pope. In 1735 he 
 published his “ Letters on the English,” which were publicly burned in 
 Paris. 
 
 In 1755 the storm which he had raised in France had so far subsided 
 as to enable him to return, but not to Paris. He settled at Cirey, with 
 Madame du Chatelet, varying the monotony of his residence in a solitary 
 chateau by visits to Frederick the Great of Prussia, being once charged with 
 an affair of diplomacy. In 1750 his connection with Madame du Chatelet 
 came to an end by reason of her death, and he accepted the invitation to 
 reside at the Court of Frederick. But after three years of amicable relations 
 a misunderstanding with Maupertius, succeeded by a quarrel between Voltaire 
 and the Great Frederick, caused him abruptly to leave. 
 
 During his residence at Cirey and Berlin he had composed his “ History 
 of Charles XII. of Sweden,” finished “ Si¢cle de Louis XIV.,” and written 
 “La Pucelle,” and many tragedies, and occupied himself with the physical 
 
LIBRARY 
 GF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLING'S 
 
VOLTAIRE 3 
 
 sciences. With Madame du Chatelet he had studied Newton and Leibnitz, 
 wrote a popular exposition of the discoveries of Newton, became a candidate 
 for the prize of the Academy, and published a memoir in which he ranged 
 himself on the side of Descartes and Newton against Leibnitz and 
 Bernouilli. | 
 
 But if ever a man was called, not to science, metaphysics, theology, or 
 poetry even, but to literature alone, that man was Voltaire. Literature is 
 really an art of form, as distinguished from those efforts of the intellect 
 which strive to increase knowledge. “ Voltaire is the very first man in the 
 world,” says a contemporary of his day, “ at writing down what other people 
 have thought”; and after Euler had borne away the prize at the Academy, 
 and death had removed the scientific Madame du Chatelet, Voltaire suc- 
 cumbed to the dictates of his own reason, and the advice of friends, and 
 devoted himself to literature alone. 
 
 After leaving Prussia he spent some months in Alsace, for the publica- 
 tion of his “ Essay on Manners” had added another barrier to his return to 
 Paris. At last he settled at Ferney, a small village near Geneva, and for the 
 next twenty years gazed upon the busy world from this retired spot. 
 Madame Denis, his niece, presided over his house, and having a yearly 
 income of about £10,000 he exercised the duties of hospitality in a princely 
 manner, and was never without guests, being visited by the great, the 
 learned, and the curious of all countries. But he was not simply the 
 charming and irresistible host, all these years, he was the indefatigable 
 worker, seeming to sustain a feeble body by the energy of his soul. At 
 Ferney were written some of his most important works, “On the Natural 
 Law,” “ History of Russia,” “ Philosophical Dictionary,” many tragedies and 
 romances, and much matter contributed for the Encyclopeedia of Diderot. 
 He interested himself in many cases of oppression and injustice: he protected 
 the innocent and unfortunate, using his wealth and influence in their behalf. 
 Every one knows the story of his efforts in behalf of Admiral Byng, of the 
 Protestant Calas, the Count Lally, etc. The two words which sum up his 
 teachings and writings are, toleration and humanity. For sixty years he 
 struggled to convert the world to an acceptance of his doctrine, and he lived 
 long enough to see in Russia, Denmark, and Poland, in Prussia, and a good 
 part of Germany, a firm footing given to liberty of conscience and freedom 
 
 of thought. 
 
4 VOLTALIRE 
 
 In his eighty-fourth year he yielded to the importunities of friends 
 and journeyed to Paris, where he was received in triumph, féted, and 
 crowned in the theatre. But the excitement proved too strong for the 
 feeble old man, and shortly after his arrival he died. His body remained 
 in the Abbey of Sellieres until the Revolution, when it was deposited in the 
 Pantheon. , 
 
 “Voltaire’s ascendancy,” says Morley, “sprung from no appeal to those 
 parts of human nature in which ascetic practice has its foundation. Full 
 exercise and play for every part was the key of all his teaching. He had not 
 Greek serenity and composure of spirit, but he had Greek exultation in every 
 known form of intellectual activity, and this audacious curiosity he made 
 general. Voltairism was primarily and directly altogether an intellectual 
 movement for this reason, that it was primarily and directly a reaction 
 against the subordination of the intellectual to the moral side of men, 
 carried to an excess that was at length fraught with fatal mischief.” 
 
 While regretting the lengths to which Voltaire allowed his hatred of 
 the hypocrisies of the day and generation to carry him, we must claim for 
 him the highest honours, in regard to his sincere and vehement abhorrence 
 of the military spirit, for his repeated protests against bloodshed. Bossuet 
 had already brought his rhetoric to bear; Voltaire, with Montesquieu, in 
 a grandly comprehensive and philosophic manner, boldly attacked the 
 subject. It is said his “ Essay on Manners” is one of the foundations of 
 modern history. He was one of the few historians who combine in one 
 the three kinds of persons who write history: the analyst, the states- 
 man, and the philosopher. He strove always to separate history from 
 geography, statistics, and anecdote, and give it an independent character. 
 He rested his theory on two principles : first, that laws, customs, and arts 
 are the real things to be treated of; and, secondly, that trifling details 
 embarrass the mind for nothing. “I would rather have details,” he said, 
 “about Racine, Molicre, Bossuet, and Descartes, than I would about the 
 battle of Steinkirk. A picture by Poussin, a fine tragedy, a truth established, 
 are all of them a thousand times more precious than the annals of a Court, 
 or the narratives of a campaign.” 
 
 Voltaire’s greatest quality, as well as his great fault, is clearly set forth 
 in the latest work of M. Taine, “The Ancient Régime,” and this judgment 
 may be accepted as the final decision in a difficult case. 
 
VOLTALIRE, 
 
 On 
 
 “ An entire philosophy, ten volumes of theology, an abstract science, a 
 special library, an important branch of erudition, of human experience and 
 invention, is thus reduced in his hands to a phrase or to a stanza. From the 
 enormous mass of riven or compact scoriz he extracts whatever is essential, 
 a grain of gold or of copper as a specimen of the rest, presenting this to us 
 in its most convenient and most manageable form, in a simile, in a metaphor, 
 in an epigram that becomes a proverb. In this no ancient or modern writer 
 approaches him ; in simplification and in popularisation he has not his equal 
 in the world. Without departing from the usual conventional tone, and as 
 if in sport, he puts into little portable phrases the greatest discoveries and 
 hypotheses of the human mind, the theories of Descartes, Malebranche, 
 Leibnitz, Locke, and Newton, the diverse religions of antiquity and of 
 modern times, every known system of physics, physiology, geology, morality, 
 natural law, and political economy, in short all the generalised conceptions, 
 in every order of knowledge to which humanity had attained in the eighteenth 
 century. His tendency in this direction is so strong as to carry him too far ; 
 he belittles great things by rendering them accessible. Religion, legend, 
 ancient popular poesy, the spontaneous creations of instinct, the vague 
 visions of primitive times, are not thus to be converted into small current 
 coin; they are not subjects of amusing and lively conversation. A piquant 
 witticism is not an expression of all this, but simply a travesty.” 
 
 Carlyle has declared that Voltaire is the Eighteenth Century. It may 
 also be said that he is France. Without him, indeed, France would be what 
 England would be without Shakspeare and Cromwell. 
 
Vi Oo lee See ale 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS ULEE 
 
 1694 BIRTH OF VOLTAIRE AT CHATENAY. 
 
 1717 IMPRISONED IN THE BASTILLE . : : ; See AGH 2s 
 1718 LIBERATED; “ GEDIPE ” ; Oey) 
 1722 VISITED ROUSSEAU AT BRUSSELS . (oun Timoe 
 1724 “ HENRIADE ” On ei, 
 1726 AGAIN IMPRISONED AND LIBERATED a ees) 
 1726-9 RESIDED IN ENGLAND . ea S005 
 1730 “HISTORY OF CHARLES XII.” . ; , Panes 6 
 1731 “LETTRES PHILOSOPHIQUES” . ; Bo ni 
 1734 RESIDED AT CIREY WITH MADAME DE CHATELET ae a eA 
 1736 CORRESPONDENCE WITH FREDERICK OF PRUSSIA. ,, 42 
 1740 VISITED FREDERICK AT CLEVES toe aed G 
 1746 ADMITTED TO THE ACADEMY . : , nS 
 1750 RESIDED WITH FREDERICK AT POTSDAM » 56 
 1755 “LA PUCELLE” . : => 61 
 1756 “ESSAI SUR LES MURS” . . : eo 0662 
 1760 SETTLED AT FERNEY . : » 66 
 1764 “ DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE eat See eonre 7 () 
 1778 VISITED PARIS; DIED THERE . ; , eee he 
 
EXTRACT FROM VOLTAIRE 
 
 Bs gee en ee ©) B®) WLS Sexe LEV 
 
 At periods have given birth to heroes and politicians, all nations have 
 been subject to revolutions, and all histories are almost alike with regard to 
 a writer who intends to frame a narration of events; but a person who 
 thinks, and, what is more rare, a person possessed of taste, reckons but four 
 ages in the history of the world. 
 
 The first of these ages which shines with true glory is that of Philip 
 and Alexander, or that of Pericles, Demosthenes, Aristotle, Plato, Apelles, 
 Phidias, Praxiteles, and this honour was confined within the limits of 
 Greece, the rest of the globe being overspread with ignorance and 
 barbarism. 
 
 The second age is that of Julius Cesar and Augustus, which is 
 likewise denoted by the names of Lucretius, Cicero, Livy, Virgil, Horace, 
 Ovid, Varro, Vitruvius. 
 
 The third is that which followed the taking of Constantinople by 
 Mahomet II. The Medicean family invited to Florence the polite arts 
 which the Turks were driving out of Greece, their ancient seat. Italy then 
 shone with superior glory. The sciences rose then to new life. The Italians 
 honoured them with the name of Virtue, as the Greeks had distinguished 
 them by that of Wisdom. Then appeared a tendency in all things toward 
 perfection. M. Angelo, Raphael, Titian, Tasso and Ariosto flourished; 
 engraving was invented; true architecture re-appeared in greater beauty 
 and splendour than when Rome was in its triumphant state. 
 
8 EXTRACT FROM VOLTAIRE 
 
 Lastly, the fourth age is called the age of Louis XIV., and of the four 
 this is, perhaps, the one which comes nearest to perfection. Enriched with 
 the discoveries of the other three, it made in its way more progress than all 
 these together. The arts, indeed, were not carried to a greater height than 
 under the Medicean family, under Augustus, or under Alexander, but the 
 rational faculties of man were much more cultivated and improved. True 
 philosophy was not known till this era, and the revolution effected in our 
 arts, our genius, manners and government, diffused so bright a glory over 
 France as will distinguish it to the latest posterity. This happy influence 
 has spread into England, carried taste into Germany, and the sciences even 
 to Russia, and has given new life to Italy, which was in a drooping 
 condition. Europe owes its Politeness to the age of Louis XIV. 
 
DIDEROT 
 
 1713-1784 
 
 (Esha Gey Gill © PAD ale 
 
 Dents DipErot was the eldest son of a cutler of Langres. At the age of 
 nine he entered the school of the Jesuits, and later was sent to Paris to the 
 Collége d'Harcourt. After finishing the college course, and refusing to study 
 either law or medicine, he found himself thrown on his own resources, and 
 until his thirtieth year led the sort of vagabond existence not uncommon to 
 literary men of his century. After 1743 he gained some notoriety as an 
 author by publishing his “Essay on Merit and Virtue,” “ Philosophical 
 Thoughts,” “Interpretation of Nature,” and “ Letters on the Blind.” For 
 the religious views contained in the latter he was imprisoned at Vincennes. 
 In 1749 he undertook the “ Encyclopeedia,” the grand work of his life 
 and of the century, and perhaps of modern times, Associated with him, at 
 first as co-editor, was d'Alembert, who abandoned the enterprise when it was 
 attacked so vehemently by the Catholics, and when all who were not for it 
 were against it. Diderot bore the brunt of the battle alone, and the immense 
 amount of work he accomplished seems almost incredible. For years he 
 never knew a day of repose, nor of security. Yet no man of that century 
 was better fitted to carry such a burden. Besides moral energy, Diderot 
 
DIDERGL 
 
 s) 
 
 united two other qualities not less essential to the founder of such a vast 
 work,—a sincere love of truth, and consequently great zeal in seeking it, and 
 an aptitude which may be called an encyclopaedic faculty. His learning was 
 prodigious, and, further, he could learn anything he chose. Being charged 
 with the department of the arts and sciences, he began to study from life all 
 the machines and processes he had to describe, often learning the trades 
 themselves, in all their details. In 1758 appeared the seventh volume of the 
 “Eneyclopeedia,” and two plays by Diderot, “The Father of the Family,” and 
 “The Natural Son.” 
 
 In 1765, after reaching its seventeenth volume, the “ Encyclopeedia ” 
 was finished, and Diderot found himself poor, approaching old age, with a 
 daughter to provide for. He resolved to sell his library. The Empress 
 Catherine of Russia became the purchaser, but made him its librarian, paying 
 his salary “ fifty years in advance.” 
 
 In 1773 Diderot went to St. Petersburg to thank his benefactress, 
 whom he greatly pleased. She consulted him on all her plans, overwhelmed 
 him with benefits, and he returned to France escorted by a gentleman of her 
 court. Although he did not meet the fate of Descartes at the court of 
 Christina, he returned to Paris with altered health, but put himself instantly 
 to work and soon published “ Voyage in Holland,” “Jacques le Fataliste,” “La 
 Religieuse,” and his more important work, “ Essay on the Reigns of Claudius 
 and Nero” (a defence of Seneca). 
 
 In 1784 he fell ill; recovermg somewhat, he was removed to the 
 elegant apartments prepared for him by Catherine's continued bounty ; 
 but after enjoying them twelve days the end came, and in his seventy-first 
 year he passed away. 
 
 Tue EncyctopepiA. Diderot was first asked to edit a translation of 
 Chambers’s “ Encyclopeedia” but the philosopher was not pleased with this 
 meagre work, and conceived the idea of another more complete. He first 
 thought of arranging a table or inventory of human knowledge, where all 
 the results of progress and civilisation would be found classified in an 
 immense collection. But in such a prodigious undertaking he clearly saw 
 that there was need of a second person, and laid the plan before d'Alembert, 
 who was an admirable man for such an enterprise. The idea expanded, and 
 in 1750 appeared the prospectus, which called the work a picture of human 
 knowledge, and is a chapter to the “glory of the arts and sciences and 
 
ease 
 
 SST 
 
 SSS 
 
 SSS 
 
 a 
 
 AS 
 
 es 
 
 NUNN 
 
 AY 
 
 SSS 
 
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 SN 
 
LISRAXY 
 GF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLING'S 
 
DIDEROT 
 
 Oo 
 
 manual labour.” With almost prophetic instinct he dwelt on the subject, and 
 ‘here,’ says M. Martin, “ Diderot, so often exaggerated, so often emphatic, 
 is simple, because he is truly great. He felt the importance of a work which 
 was to be the rehabilitation of labour, which until that time had been called 
 servile ; he made himself the historian of the long line of past generations 
 who had no history, but to whom civilisation owes its well-being, its intelli- 
 gence, and its indispensable instruments. He announces that he will raise a 
 monument to them, by the exposition of the science of the arts and trades, 
 the admirable legacy of anonymous genius to the lower classes.” 
 
 He says, “The matter of our ‘ Encyclopeedia’ may be ranged under 
 three heads. We shall begin with the consideration of the Sciences, proceed 
 to the Liberal Arts, and conclude with the Mechanical Arts. Our conduct 
 in the Mechanical Arts requires great pains and attention. Too much has 
 been written upon the Sciences, scarcely anything upon the Liberal and 
 Mechanical Arts. Chambers has added little to what he translated from 
 French writers, and hence we have been obliged to have recourse to the 
 workmen themselves. We have visited and questioned them, cleared up and 
 methodised their information, and learned the proper terms used in their 
 arts. We were often obliged to procure the machines, construct them, and 
 serve, as it were, an indifferent apprenticeship with a view of instructing 
 others how to do better. 
 
 By this method we have become convinced of the general ignorance that 
 prevails with regard to most of the objects of common life, and the difficulty 
 of enlightening it. The method we have followed is this. We treat, 1. Of 
 the materials, the manner of preparing them, and the places where they are 
 found. 2. Of the principal things made of them, and the process. 3. The 
 name and description of utensils, tools, and machines employed. 4. We 
 explain and represent the hand at work. 5. We collect and define all the 
 peculiar terms of each art. As simply reading a treatise on the Mechanical 
 Arts makes the clear apprehension of them difficult, we have found an 
 absolute necessity of illustrating our work with plates. The bare view of an 
 object, or its figure, may give more information than pages of words.” 
 
- ONO FOE 
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE MAN AND THE WorRK. 
 
 “'The ‘ Encyclopeedia,’” says Morley, “ was virtually a protest against 
 the old organisation no less than against the old doctrine. Broadly stated, 
 the great central moral of it was this, that human nature is good, that the 
 world is capable of being made a desirable abiding-place, and that the evil of 
 the world is the fruit of bad education and bad institutions. It was the 
 great counter-principle to asceticism in life and morals, to formalism in art, 
 to absolutism in the social ordering, to obscurantism in thought.” 
 
 It was this band of writers, organised by a harassed man of letters, and 
 not the nobles swarming around Louis XV., nor the churchmen singing 
 masses, who first grasped the great: principle of modern society, the honour 
 that is owed to productive industry. They were vehement for the glories of 
 peace and passionate against the brazen glories of war. 
 
 The union of all these secular acquisitions in a single colossal work 
 invested them with something imposing. Secular knowledge was made to 
 present a massive and sumptuous froat. It was pictured before the curious 
 eyes of that generation as a great city of glittering palaces and stately 
 mansions; or else as an immense landscape, with mountains, plains, rocks, 
 waters, forests, animals, and a thousand objects, glorious and beautiful in 
 the sunlight. Men grew to be conscious of the vastness of the universe. 
 
 Diderot struck a key-note of difference between the old Catholic 
 spirit and the new social spirit, between quietist superstition and energetic 
 science, in the casual sentence in his article on almshouses and hospitals :— 
 “It would be far more important to work at the prevention of misery, 
 than to multiply places of refuge for the miserable.” 
 
 The eighteenth century called Diderot the philosopher, the nineteenth 
 century calls him the critic. The judgment of Ste.-Beuve is as follows :— 
 “ Before Diderot, criticism in France had been exact, curious, and fine with 
 Bayle; elegant and exquisite with Fénelon; honest and useful with Rollin; 
 but none of it had been lively, fruitful, or penetrating. It was Diderot 
 who first gave the soul to criticism. He had in the highest degree that 
 faculty of demi-metamorphosis, which is the triumph of the critic, and 
 which consists in putting himself in the place of the author and examining 
 the subject from his point of view. He excelled in being able at will to 
 
DIREROL 5 
 
 seize the inspiration of the author, and, in warming not only his imagina- 
 tion but his heart also, he often did the work better than they themselves. 
 Then it was that he showed himself the great journalist of modern times, 
 intelligent, eloquent, and generous; the friend of everybody and everything, 
 giving to all the world, to readers, authors, and artists, not a lesson simply, 
 but a feast. 
 
 At the same time that we regret the exaggeration of which he accuses 
 himself, the lack of discretion and sobriety, a certain license of manner and 
 defects of taste, we render homage to the good nature, the sympathy, and 
 cordial intelligence, to the richness and breadth of his views, and to the 
 admirable freshness which he always kept in spite of his incessant toil. He 
 is the first great writer of the period who belongs decidedly to modern demo- 
 cratic society. He points out the way, and sets the example. Putting the 
 Academies to one side, he addresses himself to the public at large. 
 
 Always to give, never to receive; ‘to work out rather than rust 
 out’: this was his whole maxim of life; this was the guiding-star that 
 directed his energy and devotion to the end. Amidst all the varied pursuits 
 of this great man something durable has been saved; and he teaches us how 
 to attain a future and posterity, though it be by the débris saved from the 
 wreck of everyday work.” 
 
1713 
 1722 
 1732 
 1742 
 1743 
 1746 
 1749 
 
 Dat Det h Oak 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS 
 
 BORN AT LANGRES. 
 
 SENT TO JESUITS’ COLLEGE 
 REFUSED TO CHOOSE A PROFESSION. 
 INTRODUCED TO ROUSSEAU 
 MARRIED : : 
 ‘“‘PENSEES PHILOSOPHIQUES ” 
 
 “LETTRE SUR LES AVEUGLES,” ETC.; IMPRISONED 
 
 AT VINCENNES . 
 
 1751-61 CHIEF EDITOR OF “ENCYCLOPAEDIA” . 
 
 1773 
 1784 
 
 VISITED COURT OF RUSSIA 
 DIED AT PARIS 
 
 LIFE 
 
 essed 8 
 
DIDEROT 
 
 HISTORY OF ENCYCLOPADIAS 
 
 TABLE OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 Puiny, 2ND CENTURY. 
 
 Cosmography, Astronomy, Meteorology, Geography, Zoology, Botany, 
 Medicine, Magic, Metals, Fine Arts, Mineralogy. 
 
 Marrianus CAPELLA, 5TH CENTURY. 
 
 Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectics, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music. 
 
 IstDORE OF SEVILLE, 7TH CENTURY. 
 
 Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectics, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy, 
 Medicine, Chronology, God and Angels, The Church, Languages, Man, 
 Animals; The Universe, Buildings, Metals, Farming, War, Ships, 
 Domestic Life. 
 
 VINCENT DE BEAvvalis, 13TH CENTURY. 
 
 God and Angels, Work of the Six Days, viz., Light, Colours, Demons, 
 Firmament, Waters and Earth, Plants, Birds, Fishes, Monsters, Animals, 
 Man. Miracles, Sin, Nature of Things and Human Life, The Fall, Studies, 
 Doctors, Dictionary, Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Poetry, Monastic Science, 
 Economy, Law, Mechanical Arts, Medicine, Physics, Mathematics, Meta- 
 physics, Theology, Chronology. 
 
DIDEROT 
 
 ALSTED, 16TH CENTURY. 
 
 Hexologia, Technologia, Archeologia, Didactica, Lexica, Grammar, Logic, 
 Rhetoric, Oratory, Poetry, Metaphysics, Pneumatics, Physics, Arith- 
 metic, Geometry, Cosmography, Uranometica, Geography, Optics, 
 Music, Ethics, Economics, Politics, Scholastics, Theology, Jurisprudence, 
 Medicine, The Arts, Agriculture, Printing, Architecture, Magic, Alchemy, 
 Mnemonics, Dipnosophistics, Tabaccologia, We. 
 
 CHAMBERS, 18TH CENTURY. 
 
 Natural History, Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, Pure Mathematics, 
 Ethics and Theology, Chemistry, Mixed Mathematics, Medicine, Agri- 
 culture, Ferrying and Hunting, Grammar, Heraldry, Rhetoric, Poetry. 
 
 Diverot, 18TH CENTURY. 
 
 IT) History -— 
 
 ie 
 
 bo 
 
 Pe 
 
 Ecclesiastical: Traditions and History of the Church. 
 
 Civil: Memoirs, Antiquities, Chronicles. 
 
 Literary. 
 
 Natural: Uniformities and Wonders of Nature. 
 
 The useful Arts: Work in Gold, Silver, Work in Precious Stones, in 
 Iron, in Glass, in Leather, in Stone, in Silk, in Wood. 
 
 TiS PeILOSOPH y= 
 
 oR ww bo 
 
 Metaphysics: Science of Being in General, 
 Theology: Natural and Revealed Religion. 
 
 . Science of Man: Grammar, Logic, Moral Philosophy. 
 . Mathematics: Arithmetic, Geometry, Medicine, Astronomy, Optics, &e. 
 . Special Physics: Anatomy, Physiology, Meteorology, Geology, 
 
 Botany, Mineralogy, Chemistry. 
 
 IIL Portry :— 
 
 Narrative: Epic, Romance, &c. 
 Dramatic: Tragedy, Comedy, Opera, Pastoral. 
 Art: Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, Music. 
 
LESSING 
 
 1729-1781 
 
 GERMAN CRITIC AND DRAMATIST 
 
 GoTTHOLD EpHraim Lesstna, who has frequently been styled the Luther of 
 German literature, of the German drama, and of German art, was born at 
 Kamenz, a small town in Upper Lusatia, a province of what was then the 
 Electorate of Saxony. In early infancy his education was directed by his 
 father, who was a learned pastor of the Lutheran Church, and by one of his 
 cousins, who acted as a private tutor. At the tender age of eight he was 
 admitted into the public grammar-school of his native town, and he was 
 afterwards removed to the school of St. Afra at Meissen, where he studied 
 the Latin, Greek, English, French, and Italian languages, philosophy and 
 mathematics, with such eager assiduity that he often spent over his books 
 the hours set apart for recreation and repose. In 1746 he entered the 
 University of Leipzig. His early friendship with Schlegel, Mylius, Zacharie, 
 and Weisse, the acquaintance he made with some of the actors at the Leipzig 
 theatre, and, above all an irresistible inclination for the dramatic art, led him 
 to renounce the theological career for which his parents had destined him. 
 At the age of twenty-two he brought out a piece entitled “The Young 
 Scholar.” It was followed by the “Jews,” the “ Freethinker,” and other 
 plays of the same kind, which were loudly applauded. Later in life he 
 himself criticised with just severity these crude productions of his youth ; 
 
2 LESSING 
 
 indeed, he went so far as to disavow the authorship of certain works which, 
 through the indiscreet zeal of friends, had been given to the world without 
 his knowledge. 
 
 In 1750 he undertook, conjointly with Mylius, a quarterly periodical 
 devoted to the drama. It appeared at Berlin and was carried on for one 
 year. At this period he studied the English and Spanish poets; and pub- 
 lished a volume of original poems, under the title of “ Trifles.” Going to 
 Wittenberg he took his degree of Doctor in Philosophy, and there resumed 
 a life of study, without attending classes, and passed his days in his own 
 modest apartment, or in the University Library, opened to him by a friend 
 who held the post of under-librarian. 
 
 On his return to Berlin he gained a precarious livelihood by contri- 
 buting literary articles to the Voss Gazette. A monthly supplement to that 
 journal quaintly entitled “The newest out of the Kingdom of Wit,” was 
 edited and almost entirely written by Lessing. Here he had free scope, and 
 first exhibited the real powers of a genius which won for him afterwards the 
 proud title bestowed by Macaulay, of being “beyond all dispute the first 
 critic in Europe.” 
 
 During a brief retreat at Potsdam he composed “ Miss Sara Sampson,” 
 a tragedy, acted subsequently with success at Leipzig. This play contributed 
 largely to free German literature from the prevalent imitation of French 
 writers, and to give it a new and original character. In fact it marks a 
 period, not only in Lessing's writings, but in the development of the national 
 literature. The title, the names of the personages, as well as the place of 
 action, sufficiently announce its source of inspiration. It is a domestic 
 drama after the English pattern, the immediate materials being clearly 
 derived from “ Clarissa Harlowe” and Lillo’s “ London Merchant.” 
 
 At Berlin he formed a close intimacy with the famous Moses Men- 
 delssohn and the celebrated publisher Nicolai. During his second residence 
 in the Prussian capital his reputation gradually and imperceptibly increased ; 
 his lively discussion with Pastor Lange, who had published a translation of 
 Horace, drew upon him the attention of learned Germany; truth and talent 
 were declared to be on his side; and the accomplished Michaelis of 
 Gottingen publicly complimented the young controversialist. 
 
 Lessing was about to visit Italy, and had already made preparations 
 for his departure, when the events of the Seven Years’ War compelled him 
 to relinquish the design. He now went back to Leipzig, where he conducted 
 the “ Library of Belles Lettres,” a literary journal. 
 
— SS 
 
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LIBRARY, 
 
 OF THE 
 UIVERSITY OF LLNS 
 
LESSING 3 
 
 In the course of a third residence at Berlin he composed “ Philotas,” a 
 drama which embodied the heroic sentiments of the period; and published 
 his “Fables” in prose, and “ Letters concerning Contemporary Literature.” 
 The talent he displayed in criticism was so marked that he was elected a 
 member of the Academy of Berlin. 
 
 These multifarious labours enfeebled his health, and the constant 
 poverty in which he lived induced him to accept the post. of secretary to 
 General Tauentzien, at Breslau. Five years later he withdrew from the 
 uncongenial duties of this office, and returned to Berlin, having firmly 
 resolved never to accept any other appointment which was not immediately 
 connected with his favourite occupations. 
 
 He now published the “ Laocoon,” by many regarded as his greatest 
 work, which has exerted a permanent influence upon both literary and 
 artistic criticism; and his most faultless drama, “ Minna von Barnhelm.” 
 The latter is a genuine character comedy, a healthy delineation of real life ; 
 not a one-sided impersonation of human vices or weaknesses. 
 
 In 1768, Lessing, attached as Director to the Grand Theatre of 
 Hamburg, gave expression, in his Dramaturgie, to his opinions on dramatic 
 art, and on the masterpieces of the great French writers for the stage. His 
 primary object was to destroy the predilection of the Germans for the false 
 classicism of the French, and to justify Shakspeare and the romantic school. 
 
 Lessing had just published his “ Antiquarian Letters,” and a charming 
 little essay, “‘ How the Ancients represented Death,” when he was invited to 
 Wolfenbiittel, under the powerful protection of Duke Ferdinand of Bruns- 
 wick, who appointed him his librarian with a salary of 600 thalers, “rather 
 that the library might serve him, than he the library.” He, however, dis- 
 dained to regard the office as a sinecure, and in the course of his researches 
 among the manuscripts he had the good fortune to discover the curious 
 treatise of Berengarius on the doctrine of the Eucharist. While at Wolfen- 
 bittel he displayed astonishing literary activity. As a special favour his 
 writings were exempted from the censorship, but this privilege was withdrawn 
 in consequence of an acrimonious controversy in which he engaged with 
 some Lutheran divines. 
 
 In the midst of these theological wranglings, which rapidly exhausted 
 what remained of his health and strength, Lessing found time to write two 
 of his most admired works, the tragedy of “ Emilia Galotti,” and “Nathan 
 the Wise,” a dramatic poem, intended to inculcate the duty of toleration in 
 matters of religion. 
 
4 LESSING 
 
 The “Fragments of an Anonymous Writer,” a work of ill repute, 
 directed against the dogmas of Revelation, brought upon him formidable 
 enmities which embittered the closing years of his life. These essays are 
 negative and regard all positive creeds as human devices. 
 
 His wife died in giving birth to his first child, who died with her. 
 This terrible blow completely prostrated him; his spirits sank, and he 
 became weary of existence. His theological conflicts alone afforded him a 
 certain amount of relief; and it was in his desperate struggle with what 
 he considered intolerance that he developed his greatest energy, and the 
 richest resources of his intellect. Worn out in mind and body, he ended 
 his great career at the age of fifty-two, dying so poor that his patron, the 
 Duke of Brunswick, had to defray the expenses of his funeral. 
 
 Lessing has had many biographers. One of the most recent and the 
 most accomplished, Miss Helen Zimmern, remarks that he was a man in 
 whom two ages, two opposed tendencies of thought, were combined in 
 unique harmony. He exhibited in his person all the good elements of the 
 eighteenth century, while he became the pioneer of the new. It was his 
 peculiar characteristic to be at the same time the representative of his own 
 and of a succeeding generation. For while the eighteenth century was 
 negative and destructive, the nineteenth is affirmative and constructive: 
 Lessing is both. He anticipated the nineteenth century in its tendency to 
 return to the past, and its endeavours to disengage primitive truth from the 
 disfiguring accretions of later ages. In this respect he presents a remarkable 
 contrast to Voltaire: a contrast wholly to his advantage. In art, in religion, 
 he helped towards the liberation of mankind from the shackles of mere tradi- 
 tion and authority as such. But while he destroyed, he built; he did not 
 use the thin weapons of persiflage to undermine both good and bad together, 
 and leave his fellows shelterless. Hence it is that Lessing may lay claim to 
 be the intellectual pioneer of our present culture. There are few depart- 
 ments of thought into which he did not penetrate, and none into which he 
 penetrated without leaving the impress of his genius behind him. So varied 
 and catholic were his interests, that to many he is only known as a 
 theologian, to others as an esthetician, to others again as a dramatist, 
 poet, critic, or philologist. In one point only he did not free himself from 
 a characteristic defect of his age; and this was his indifference to the beauty 
 and significance of Nature. In this respect alone he cannot be ranked as a 
 precursor of Goethe, whom he anticipated in his attachment to the Greeks, 
 to Shakspeare, and Spinoza. 
 
1729 
 1746 
 1753 
 
 1754 
 1755 
 1757 
 1759 
 1760 
 1765 
 1766 
 1767 
 1770 
 1772 
 1779 
 1780 
 1781 
 
 LESSING 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 BORN AT KAMENTZ. 
 STUDIED AT LEIPSIC 
 
 TOOK M.A. DEGREE AT WITTENBERG; WENT TO 
 
 BERLIN ees: 
 “POPE ALS METAPHYSIKER” 
 “MISS SARAH SAMPSON” 
 
 “ BIBLIOTHEK DER SCHOENEN WISSENSCHAFTEN ” . 
 
 “ LITTERATUR-BRIEF ” 
 
 SECRETARY TO PRUSSIAN GENERAL AT BRESLAU. 
 
 RETURNED TO BERLIN 
 
 1A OCOON * ©. 
 
 “MINNA VON BARNHELM ” : 
 
 KEEPER OF WOLFENBUETTEL LIBRARY 
 VISITED ITALY 
 
 “NATHAN ” : : : : : : 
 “DIK ERZIEHUNG DES. MENSCHENGESCHLECHTS” 
 DIED AT BRUNSWICK . 
 
 AGE 
 
GIBBON 
 
 1737-1794 
 
 GREATEST MODERN HISTORIAN 
 
 Epwarp Grppon, the greatest of English historians, was born at Putney, 
 near London, in 1737. He was an extremely sickly child, and owed his life 
 to the care of a maiden aunt. Ill health interrupted his education till his 
 fifteenth year, when a change for the better took place, and permitted his 
 father to send him to Oxford, where he studied little however. Already he 
 had read many historical works. “Simon Ockley,” he says, “first opened 
 my eyes, and I was led from one book to another till I had ranged round 
 the circle of Oriental history. Before I was sixteen I had exhausted all 
 that could be learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and 
 Turks, and the same ardour urged me to guess at the French of d’Herbelot, 
 and to construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock’s ‘ Abulfaragius.’” As the 
 next step after reading history, he attempted to write it, and began, at 
 fifteen, the chronology of the age of Sesostris, which, it is needless to say, 
 was never finished. | 
 
 The most noteworthy event in his Oxford career was his conversion, 
 before the end of the first year, to the Catholic religion, through reading 
 Middleton’s “ Free Inquiry” and Bossuet’s “ Variations of Protestantism.” 
 
2 GIBBON 
 
 Obliged to leave college on this account, it was feared he would become a 
 priest, and his father sent him to Lausanne, in Switzerland, as the pupil of 
 a Protestant clergyman. He studied diligently, became proficient in French 
 and Latin, and by a regular course of “ discussions, arguments, and judicious 
 reading,” he recovered from the Catholic fever, only to relapse, like Bayle, 
 from the profound study of two religions into the condition of a sceptic. 
 During this time he had fallen in love with the daughter of a Calvinist 
 minister, the future Madame Necker. His father would not hear of this 
 “ strange alliance,” and “after a painful struggle,” says Gibbon, “I sighed as 
 a lover, but obeyed as a son.” 
 
 He returned home in 1758, and shortly after published an “ Essay on 
 the Study of Literature,” which was favourably received in Paris, and also 
 began the formation of his famous library of 7,000 volumes, his “ Seraglio,” 
 so useful to him in after years. For more than two years he served as 
 captain in the Hampshire militia, at the time of the French Invasion 
 panic. This active life improved his health, he says, made him an English- 
 man and a soldier, and corrected the effect of long foreign residence and 
 solitary studies. He found time when off duty to read Horace and review 
 his studies. 
 
 He had formed many projects for future historical works. Several 
 subjects had been thought of, and some even commenced. He had pitched 
 upon the expedition of Charles VIII. of France; then the crusade of 
 Richard I. had appeared attractive. To these in turn succeeded the history 
 of Edward the Black Prince, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 But they were all relinquished, and at last he comes to two conclusions— 
 “first, that his subject must not be English; and secondly, it must not be 
 narrow.” 
 
 The danger of a war with France being over, Gibbon set out to visit 
 Paris and Italy, and it was at Rome, in 1764, “seated amidst the ruins of 
 the Capitol, while barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of 
 Jupiter,” that he resolved to write the “ History of the Decline and Fall of 
 the Roman Empire.” He returned to England full of his idea, but it was 
 not till after the death of his father in 1770 that he could set himself 
 seriously to work. He settled the estate, moved to London, and began to 
 write, the first volume appearing in 1776, the same year which saw a new 
 empire born in the West. 
 
‘ad Y fi AREA 7 : 
 WU WVHA 
 ARREARS 
 
 LISKARY 
 OFTHE 
 UIUVERSITY OF ILLINS'S. 
 
 — 
 
GIBBON 3 
 
 The publication of the volume created a great sensation, and Gibbon 
 found his reputation established amidst universal applause. Its vast plan so 
 well conceived, and executed in polished and elegant style, gave the work 
 a rapid and brilliant success. Even those who might with justice be 
 considered his rivals—Robertson, Ferguson, and Hume—sent him warm 
 congratulations. 
 
 Gibbon had in 1774 become a member of Parliament under Lord 
 North’s administration, but as, according to his own account, he had entered 
 upon a public career “‘ without patriotism and without ambition,” he proved 
 but an indifferent politician; and when in 1782 Lord North resigned, he 
 retired to Lausanne to lead a more retired life. Here, in a charming house 
 on the borders of Lake Geneva, he terminated his great history in 1787, 
 and immediately started for England to arrange for its publication. 
 
 The spring of 1788 saw him again settled at Lausanne, where he 
 resided till 1793, when he resolved on another visit to England, this time to 
 comfort his old friend Holroyd, who had lost his wife. Though Gibbon was 
 now feeble in health, and corpulent to an extraordinary degree, the fatigue 
 and dangers even of the journey were nothing to the affection he felt for 
 his bereaved friends, and he hastened to mingle his tears with theirs. He 
 arrived after a rapid journey in his usual health, but at the end of six months 
 Edward Gibbon was no more. He died in the fifty-seventh year of his age, 
 of dropsy, from which he had suffered for thirty-two years. 
 
 Cotter Morrison, in his recent life of Gibbon, thus speaks of his work : 
 
 “The sudden and rapid expansion of historic studies in the middle of 
 the eighteenth century constitutes one of the great epochs of literature. 
 Up to the year 1750 no great historical work had appeared in any modern 
 language. The instances that seem to make against this remark will be 
 found to confirm it. They consist of memoirs, contemporary documents, in 
 short, materials for history, but not history itself. Excellent as were the 
 Scotch historians—Hume, in style nearly perfect ; Robertson, admirable for 
 gravity and shrewd sense—they left much to be desired. It is not doing 
 them injustice to say that these eminent men were a sort of modern Livies, 
 chiefly occupied with the rhetorical part of their work, and not over-inclined 
 to waste their time in ungrateful digging in the deep mines of historic lore. 
 Obviously the place was open for a writer who should unite all the broad 
 spirit of comprehensive survey with the thorough and minute patience of a 
 
GIBBON 
 
 Benedictine, whose subject, mellowed by long brooding, should have sought 
 him rather than he it ; whose whole previous course of study had been an 
 unconscious preparation for one great effort which was to fill his life. When 
 Gibbon sat down to write his book, the man had been found who united 
 these difficult conditions. 
 
 The decline and fall of Rome is the greatest event in history. It 
 occupied a larger portion of the earth’s surface, it affected the lives and 
 fortunes of a larger number of human beings than any other revolution on 
 record. For it was essentially one, though it had for its theatre the civilized 
 world. Great revolutions and catastrophes happened before it and have 
 happened since, but nothing which can compare with it in volume and mere 
 size. Nor was it less morally. The destruction of Rome was not only the 
 destruction of an empire, it was the destruction of a phase of human thought, 
 of a system of human beliefs, of morals, politics, civilization, as all these had 
 existed in the world for ages. 
 
 The book is such a marvel of knowledge at once wide and minute, 
 that even now, after numbers of labourers have gone over the same ground, 
 with only special objects in view, small segments of the great circle which 
 Gibbon fills alone, his word is still one of the weightiest that can be quoted. 
 Modern research has unquestionably opened out points of view to which he 
 did not attain, but when it comes to close investigation, we rarely fail to 
 find that he has seen it, dropped some pregnant hint about it, more valuable 
 than the dissertations of other men. As Mr. Freeman says, ‘Whatever else 
 is read, Gibbon must be read too.’” 
 
1737 
 1749 
 1752 
 1753 
 1754 
 
 GIBBON 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS 
 
 BORN AT PUTNEY. 
 
 AT WESTMINSTER SCHOOL . 
 ENTERED OXFORD 
 
 ABJURES PROTESTANTISM . 
 RE-CONVERTED AT LAUSANNE . 
 
 1760-3 CAPTAIN IN HAMPSHIRE MILITIA . 
 
 1764 
 1774 
 1776 
 1783 
 1788 
 1794 
 
 VISITED FRANCE AND ROME 
 
 M.P. FOR LISKEARD 
 
 FIRST VOLUME OF “ DECLINE AND FALL ” 
 WENT TO LAUSANNE TO RESIDE 
 
 “ DECLINE AND FALL” FINISHED 
 
 DIED IN LONDON . 
 
 LIFE 
 
 23- 
 
 12 
 15 
 16 
 17 
 26 
 27 
 37 
 39 
 46 
 51 
 57 
 
Vel Ta 
 
 GIBBON: HIS WORKS 
 
 CONTENTS OF THE DECLINE AND FALL. 
 
 . From the Antonines to the Emperors Decius, Gallus, Valerian, &c., 
 
 and General Irruption of Barbarians, 2nd century—260. 
 
 . From Reign of Claudius to Victories of Julian in Gaul, 268—359. 
 
 . From Conversion of Constantine to Final Destruction of Paganism, 
 
 386—490, 
 
 . From Division of Empire between Arcadius and MHonorius to 
 
 Conquest of Britain by the Saxons, 395—455. 
 
 . From Zeno and Anastasius, Emperors of the East, to Conquest and 
 
 Death of Chosroes, 456—628. 
 
 . From Cyril of Alexandria and First Council of Ephesus to Defeats 
 
 and Victories of Greek Emperors in the East, 412—963. 
 
 . From State of the Eastern Empire in the Xth Century to Victory of 
 
 Genoese over the Venetians and Greeks, 733—1352. 
 
 From Agressions of Zingis Khan, Moguls and Tartars to Conquest 
 of Constantinople by the Turks, 1206—1453. 
 
APPENDIX TO VOLUME V. 
 
 SOURCES OF THE PORTRAITS 
 
 HERODOTUS. 
 
 Line engraving, double-headed marble bust Herodotus and Thucydides. 
 Antique, Rome. Bein del. et sculpsit. Proof. Didot Coll. 
 
 THUCYDIDES. 
 
 Antique bust now in the Louvre. Line engraving. Gio. Domenico Campiglia 
 dis. Sylvestro Pomared inc. Tucidide, Bell, Ill. Rhet. num. 89. 
 
 DEMOSTHENES. 
 
 From the antique bust in the Louvre. Fine stipple engraving by Vauthier and 
 Mécon. Forms one of a series published by Mécon and Vauthier. Many busts of 
 Demosthenes exist, and nearly all agree. 
 
 CICERO. 
 
 One of the series by Mécon and Vauthier. Stipple engraving after the bust 
 formerly in the cabinet of the Duke of Wellington. Portraits of Cicero show great 
 differences, the likeness here being the favourite. 
 
 TACITUS. 
 
 Lith. par Julien d’aprés l’antique. The usual portrait with whiskers is spurious. 
 Portraits of Tacitus are rare. 
 
 PLUTARCH. 
 
 From an ancient bas-relief discovered at Naples. Painted in grisaille to two- 
 thirds life-size and reduced, 
 
il APPENDIX TO VOLUME VI. 
 
 MONTAIGNE. 
 Fine line engraving by St. Aubin, enlarged one-tenth. The likeness is 
 characteristic, others of Montaigne being more or less idealised. 
 
 MONTESQUIEU. 
 
 Line engraving by a French artist, drawn from life, in the style of a medallion, 
 the idea of the artist being to give it a Roman character. 
 
 VOLTAIRE. 
 Old coloured mezzo-tint engraving from the painting by Garneray. Engraved 
 by Mix. Scarce. 
 DIDEROT. 
 Peint par L. M. Vanloo. Gravé par David. Line engraving. Didot Coll. 
 
 LESSING. 
 Line engraving by Sichling, from a painting by A. Graaf. One of a series— 
 Portraits of eminent Germans. 
 GIBBON. 
 
 From a picture after the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. This is the only 
 portrait of Gibbon. 
 
4156 dir 
 
 HUNDRED GREATEST MEN 
 
 PORTRAITS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ONE HUNDRED GREATEST MEN OF HISTORY 
 
 REPRODUCED FROM FINE AND RARE ENGRAVINGS 
 
 VEO Me VL 
 
 Science 
 
 MATHEMATICIANS, PHYSICIANS, NATURALISTS 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 By Prorgessor H. HELMHOLTZ 
 
 TRO eNeLOUN 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, AND RIVINGTON 
 CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET 
 
 1880 
 
 (All rights reserved) 
 
| LONDON: 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limiten, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME VI. 
 
 By Proressorn HELMHOLTZ. 
 
 Ks ist sehr lehrreich sich in den Gedankenkreis und die Sinnesweise alter 
 Zeiten zuriickzuversetzen; aber man stosst dabei auf unerwartete Schwie- 
 rigkeiten. Vieles, was wir von unserer ersten Kindheit an gewusst und 
 gekonnt haben, ohne dass unserer Erinnerung nach es uns jemand gelehrt 
 hatte, was uns daher als ganz einfach und selbstverstandlich erscheint, 
 das haben, wie wir staunend entdecken, in alten Zeiten auch die leitenden 
 Manner der intelligentesten Nationen nicht gekonnt und nicht gewusst. 
 Gerade bei solcher Gelegenheit tritt am entschiedensten hervor, dass wir 
 der Arbeit der vorausgegangenen Generationen noch viel mehr verdanken, 
 als wir uns gewohnlich klar machen. 
 
 Solche Gedanken driingen sich uns auf, wenn wir auf die Geschichte 
 der Naturwissenschaften zuriickblicken. Nichts ist einfacher, als die 
 Methode der Forschung dieser Wissenschaften, wie sich dieselbe schliesslich, 
 nachdem viele Irrwege vergebens betreten waren, festgestellt hat. Diese 
 Methode, die unter dem Namen der inductiven beschrieben zu werden 
 pflegt, ist in der That nichts anderes als das Verfahren, welches der 
 sogenannte gesunde Menschenverstand fiir die praktischen Zwecke des 
 tiglichen Lebens ohne alle wissenschaftliche Schulung von selbst einzu- 
 schlagen pflegt, und von dessen Anwendung wir selbst bei den intelligenteren 
 Thieren unverkennbare Spuren finden. Durch Erfahrung suchen wir 
 kennen zu lernen, wie sich die uns umgebenden Dinge unter diesen 
 oder jenen Umstiinden, namentlich auch bei den Eingriffen, die wir durch 
 unsre Handlungen machen, zu verhalten pflegen. Wir setzen dann voraus, 
 dass in jedem neu eintretenden Falle der Verlauf der Dinge der gleiche 
 sein werde, wie in allen friiheren Fallen von hinlinglich ahnlicher Art. 
 
iv INTRODUCTIONVIOSVOL CME, 
 
 Der Unterschied zwischen der wissenschaftlichen Forschung und der 
 allttiglichen Erfahrung liegt nur darin, dass wir in letzterer die Fiille so 
 hinnehmen, wie sie der Zufall uns vorfiihrt, dass wir uns mit den allmalig 
 sich verdunkelnden Erinnerungen des Gesehenen begniigen, wie sie in 
 unserm Gediichtnisse haften bleiben, und dass das einzige Maass, nach wel- 
 chem wir quantitative und qualitative Unterschiede beurtheilen, meist nur 
 durch die Intensitaét und Art der sinnlichen Empfindung gegeben ist. 
 Bei wissenschaftlicher Forschung dagegen suchen wir moglichst grosse 
 Vollstindigkeit in der Beobachtung der einzelnen Falle und ihrer Abin- 
 derungen zu erreichen, indem wir sie entweder aufsuchen, wo sie sich von 
 selbst darbieten, oder sie absichtlich durch den Versuch herbeifiihren. 
 Namentlich suchen wir scharf und bestimmt die Bedingungen abzugrenzen, 
 von denen es abhiingt, ob ein gewisser Erfolg eintritt oder ausbleibt, bezieh- 
 lich in welcher Grosse er eintritt, und ruhen nicht eher, als bis wir in jedem 
 einzelnen neu eintretenden Falle ahnlicher Art vorauszusagen wissen, was 
 geschehen wird. Indem wir das Gefundene in genau definirte Begrifte 
 fassen, in Wort und Schrift fixiren, erweitern wir die Erfahrung jedes 
 Kinzelnen durch die Erfahrung aller Mitlebenden und Vorausgegangenen. 
 Wir sind dabei sicher, dass jede Abweichung von einem fiir wahr gehaltenen 
 Gesetz die allgemeine Aufmerksamkeit um so stiirker erregen wird, je fester 
 der Glauben an seine Richtigkeit war. So bleiben die schon gewonnenen 
 Ergebnisse der Wissenschaft einer dauernden Controlle ihrer Wahrheit 
 oder eventueller Verbesserung unterworfen. Aber alles dies ist im Grunde 
 nichts als eine moglichst sorgfiltige und consequente Ausfiihrung dessen, 
 was ein verstiindiger Mann fir die niichstliegenden praktischen Zwecke auch 
 ohne alle wissenschaftliche Schulung zu thun pflegt. 
 
 Natiirlich diirfen wir uns nicht dartiber wundern, wenn dem Jiinger 
 der Wissenschaft eine um so schwerere Arbeit des Denkens zugemuthet 
 wird, je umfassender und je schirfer bestimmt die Gesetze werden, welche 
 er verstehen und anwenden soll. Die allgemeinsten Principien der Mechanik 
 in ihrer abstract mathematischen Fassung scheinen freilich von der Anschau- 
 lichkeit eines populiren Erfahrungssatzes weit entfernt zu sein. Sie sind 
 die Zauberformeln geworden, mit deren Hilfe die moderne Menschheit die 
 widerstrebenden Gewalten der Natur in ihren Dienst gebannt hat, und doch 
 sind sie auf demselben Wege gewonnen, der mit kleimen Fertigkeiten und 
 Kunstgriften des hiiuslichen Lebens und des Handwerks begonnen hat. 
 
4NIRODOUCTION TO WOLCME, Vi, Vv 
 
 Dass die Nationen des classischen Alterthums weniger naturwissen- 
 schaftliche Kenntnisse gehabt haben, als wir, die wir auf ihren Schultern 
 stehen, wird uns nicht in Erstaunen setzen dirfen. Wir wundern uns 
 vielleicht 6fter dariiber, dass sie dieses und jenes gewusst haben, als iiber das 
 Gegentheil. Was uns aber immer wieder in Verwunderung setzt, ist, dass 
 diese Volker, die in der Ausbildung der Sprache, des Rechtes und der staat- 
 lichen Ordnung, in der Geschichtschreibung und philosophischen Abstrac- 
 tion uns in keiner Weise nachstanden, in vielen Richtungen kiinstlerischer 
 Thatigkeit uns sogar entschieden iiberlegen waren, eine auffallende Un- 
 fihigkeit zeigen die richtigen Wege fiir die Losung naturwissenschaftlicher 
 Probleme zu finden, ja auch nur die richtigen Fragen zu stellen. Es macht 
 den Eindruck, als sei ihnen die Methode, welche schliesslich die reichen 
 Friichte gezeitigt hat, zu einfach und zu einfaltig erschienen, um Grosses 
 von ihr zu hoffen, und dass sie geglaubt haben erheblichere Resultate nur 
 durch starkere Anspannung tiefsinnigen Denkens erreichen zu kénnen. 
 
 Dass ihnen die Fahigkeit, die ich vorher als gesunden Menschenver- 
 stand ohne wissenschaftliche Schulung bezeichnete, auch in der Beobachtung 
 der Aussenwelt nicht gefehlt habe, brauche ich nicht hervorzuheben. Sie 
 ist ausserdem dem kiinstlerischen Talent und der Fahigkeit, charakteristische 
 Typen kiinstlerisch darzustellen, nahe verwandt. Denn ein solcher Typus 
 ist auch die Erscheinungsweise eines gesetzlichen Verhaltens. Wir finden 
 geradezu ein hervorragendes Beispiel einer solchen mehr kiinstlerischen als 
 wissenschaftlichen Begabung in Hippokrates. Er hat die Regelmissigkeiten 
 im Ablauf und in der Verbreitung der Krankheiten aufzufinden und zu 
 beschreiben gewusst und so die erste Ordnung in diesem Gebiete geschaffen, 
 in welchem unverkennbar die Sonderung der verschiedenen zusammen- 
 wirkenden Ursachen am aller schwierigsten ist. Wissenschaftliche Schulung 
 fehlte ihm nicht ganz. Eine ziemliche Anzahl guter medicinischer Kennt- 
 nisse scheint in der Schule der Asklepiaden, aus der er hervorging, iiberliefert 
 worden zu sein, und er kannte, was seine Zeit an wissenschaftlichen Theorien 
 hervorgebracht hatte. Diese waren aber freilich der Art, dass man urtheilen 
 muss, Hippokrates sei troz seiner theoretischen Bildung, nicht durch dieselbe 
 ein grosser Arzt geworden. Er bezieht sich auf seine Theorien eben 
 immer nur da, wo sich ihre Folgerungen den Thatsachen gutwillig anpassen ; 
 wo nicht, tibergeht er sie mit Stillschweigen. Seine Schiiler und Nachfolger 
 aber, denen die Hauptsache, namlich sein ausgezeichnetes Beobachtungstalent 
 
vi INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME VI. 
 
 fehlte, suchten seine Grosse gerade in dem, wo er schwach war, namlich in 
 den Theorien, und zogen aus diesen deductiv Schliisse, die sie nicht etwa an 
 den Thatsachen priifen zu miissen meinten, sondern die sie statt der That- 
 sachen festhielten. Dasselbe Verhaltniss wiederholte sich immer wieder, so 
 oft ein grosser Meister der Beobachtung aufgetreten war, und kann als das 
 charakteristische Zeichen einer Entwicklungsstufe der Wissenschaft ange- 
 sehen werden, wo diese noch nicht zum Bewusstsein der richtigen Principien 
 ihrer Methode gekommen ist. 
 
 Allerdings haben die Griechen auch zur Auffindung dieser Principien 
 die ersten Schritte gethan. Dass es darauf ankomme in den Beobachtungs- 
 wissenschaften zunachst einen moglichst vollstandigen Uberblick der That- 
 sachen zu gewinnen und die Erfahrungen der Generationen zu sammeln, 
 hat Aristoteles richtig erkannt und sich selbst an das Werk gemacht, um dies 
 fiir die naturhistorischen, zum Theil auch fiir die physikalischen Wissen- 
 schaften zu leisten, Galenus spater fiir die medicinischen, beide mit grosser 
 Einsicht und richtigem Urtheil. Daneben haben Sokrates und Aristoteles auch 
 richtige Anfange der Erkenntnisstheorie entwickelt, ersterer indem er die 
 wissenschaftliche Wichtigkeit der Bildung von scharf definirten Begriffen an 
 Beispielen erlauterte, letztrer indem er die logischen Principien der deduc- 
 tiven Methode, die Entwickelung der Folgerungen aus gegebenen Vorder- 
 satzen, entwickelte. Was beide in dieser Beziehung geleistet haben, machte 
 grossen Hindruck auf ihre Zeitgenossen und erregte tiberschwangliche 
 Hoffnungen. Fiir uns ist es kaum noch moglich uns in einen Zustand der 
 geistigen Bildung zuriickzudenken, wo die Satze der gewohnlichen Logik 
 als neue und iiberraschende Einsichten erscheinen, und doch mag keine 
 geringe Kraft der Abstraction dazu gehort haben, sie das erste Mal klar in 
 Worte zu fassen. 
 
 Die deductive Methode findet ihre berechtigte Anwendung aber erst 
 dann, wenn richtige und hinreichend allgemeine Vordersitze. gewonnen 
 worden sind, aus denen Folgerungen ftir besondere Falle hergeleitet werden 
 konnen. Dies war dem Alterthum nur in einem Gebiete, dem der Geometrie, 
 gelungen, welche, wie es scheint, zuerst von den Aegyptern ftir praktische 
 Zwecke ausgearbeitet, von Pythagoras den Griechen iiberliefert und von 
 Eukleides in eme schon sehr vollendete wissenschaftliche Form gebracht 
 wurde. Dass auch die Axiome der Geometrie, diese allgemeinen Vorder- 
 siitze, aus denen alle andern Satze dieser Wissenschaft abgeleitet werden 
 
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME VI. vil 
 
 konnen, aus der Erfahrung und nicht aus der Natur des reinen Denkens 
 abgeleitet sind, habe ich an andrem Orte zu beweisen gesucht. 
 
 Uebrigens waren auch einige physikalische Gesetze im engeren Sinne 
 schon dem Alterthum bekannt. Pythagoras kannte die einfachen Verhalt- 
 nisse der Linge von Saiten, welche den consonanten musikalischen Inter- 
 vallen entsprechen. Archimedes kannte die Gesetze der Zuriickwerfung des 
 Lichts, und viele Gesetze der Statik, z. B. die fiir das Gleichgewicht des 
 Hebels und fiir das der in Fliissigkeiten eingetauchten schweren Korper. 
 Er begriindete darauf die noch jetzt gebrauchten Methoden, das specifische 
 Gewicht der Korper zu finden. Hero kannte die Wirkungen des Luftdrucks, 
 Claudius Ptolemaeus die Gesetze der Strahlenbrechung in der Atmosphire. 
 
 Namentlich aber in der Astronomie hatte man schon friih eine ziemlich 
 genaue Kenntniss von der Weise, wie Sonne, Mond, Planeten und Fixsterne 
 sich am Himmel scheinbar bewegen. Auch hier waren Aegypter und 
 Babylonier den Griechen vorangegangen. Der Calender fiir die biirgerliche 
 Zeitrechnung wurde allmalig immer mehr verbessert und genauer mit den 
 Bewegungen von Sonne und Mond in Einklang gesetzt. Die astronomischen 
 Forschungen waren sehr geeignet durch die Anschauung der genauen und 
 unabanderlichen Gesetzmissigkeit in so grossen Verhaltnissen den mensch- 
 lichen Geist zum Aufsuchen einer ewigen Ordnung hinzuleiten; aber die 
 Gesetze, die man zu formuliren wusste, bezogen sich zunachst nur auf die 
 aussere Erscheinungsweise der himmlischen Bewegungen. Wenn auch Vor- 
 stellungen von der wahren Art der Bewegung der Erde um die Sonne 
 gelegentlich aufgetaucht sind: so war weder in der Astronomie der Alten, 
 noch in den musikalischen Beobachtungen des Pythagoras, noch in den 
 medicinischen des Hippokrates die geringste Spur von einem Verstandniss 
 der Mechanik dieser Erscheinungen. 
 
 Es folgt wihrend des Mittelalters eine lange Zeit geistiger Unselb- 
 stindigkeit, Ueberschitzung der deductiven Methode und der Autoritat 
 der alten Meister, namentlich des Aristoteles und des Hippokrates. Das 
 erste neue Erwachen selbstandiger Forschung musste ein harter Kampf 
 gegen diese Autoritaiten sein, wie ihn Copernicus in der Astronomie, 
 Vesalius in der Anatomie, Harvey in der Physiologie zu ftihren hatten. 
 Der Fortschritt wurde zunachst hauptsachlich durch die Astronomie 
 herbeigefiihrt. Die Gesetzmissigkeit der Planetenbewegungen erschien als 
 eine ausserordentlich viel einfachere und verstiindlichere, seitdem Copernicus 
 
vill INTRODUCTION JORVOLOMLET, 
 
 die Sonne als den feststehenden Mittelpunct des Systems zu betrachten 
 gelehrt und Kepler die regelmissig elliptische Form der Bahn, so wie die 
 einfachen Gesetze, welche die Geschwindigkeit der Fortbewegung jedes 
 Planeten in seiner Bahn bestimmen, aufgefunden hatte. Der entscheidende 
 Schritt aber wurde durch Galilei und J. Newton gethan, indem sie den 
 Begriff der bewegenden Kraft nach seiner wahren Bedeutung entwic- 
 kelten, Ersterer that es zunachst an dem Beispiel der irdischen Schwere. 
 Seine Darstellung ist noch eine bildliche, indem er die Wirkung einer con- 
 tinuirlich wirkenden Bewegungskraft mit der einer Reihe kleiner in kurzen 
 Zwischenzeiten auf einander folgender Anstdsse vergleicht. Newton war im 
 Stande mit Hilfe der scharfer definirten neuen Begriffe der Differential- 
 rechnung die Kraft in rein begrifflicher und ganz scharf bestimmter Form 
 nach Grosse und Richtung durch das Product aus der Masse des von ihr 
 angegriffenen Korpers und seiner Beschleunigung zu definiren. Diese — 
 Definition, angewendet auf die Planetenbewegungen, fiihrte diese verwickelte 
 Reihe von Erscheinungen auf das hochst einfache Gesetz der allgemeinen 
 Anziehung aller schweren Korper gegen einander zuriick, und stellte damit 
 das glanzendste und imponirendste Beispiel fiir die einfache und strenge 
 Gesetzmissigkeit der Natur und das Vorbild ftir die Ziele hin, denen die 
 Wissenschaft nachzustreben habe. Durch das Gravitationsgesetz war der 
 Ort und die Geschwindigkeit jedes Planeten nicht bloss in grober An- 
 niherung, sondern mit den feinsten Messungen iibereinstimmend und fir 
 unabsehbare Zeiten genau quantitativ bestimmt. Was noch fehlte, war 
 die vollstandige Berechnung der sogenannten Storungen, welche die 
 Planeten durch ihre wechselseitige Anziehung auf einander hervorbrachten. 
 Diese Aufgabe wurde hauptsachlich durch Laplace gelost. Was die Theorie 
 anzeigte fand sich in der Beobachtung nachtraglich bestatigt. 
 
 Moglich wurde die vollstandige Anwendung der genannten mecha- 
 nischen Principien durch die gleichzeitige Entwickelung der Mathematik, 
 namlich durch Descartes, analytische Geometrie, in der alle geometrischen 
 Probleme zu Aufyaben der Rechnung gemacht werden, und durch die von 
 Leibnitz und Newton entwickelte Analysis, d. h. die Rechnung mit continuir- 
 lich verinderlichen Grodssen. Man hatte liingst die letzten verborgenen 
 Ursachen der Naturerscheinungen als Krafte bezeichnet, diese als inhirent 
 den Stoffen, als dauernd bestehend und dauernd wirksam betrachtet. In 
 der schon vor Galilei und von ihm entwickelten Lehre von der Zusammen- 
 
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME. VI. iX 
 
 setzung verschiedener Krifte, die auf denselben Punct wirken, war die 
 Selbstandigkeit jeder einzelnen und ihre Unabhingigkeit von den gleich- 
 zeitig vorhandenen andern Kriaften anerkannt. Aber bis dahin war die 
 Kraft immer noch ein hypothetisches Abstractum gewesen. Der grosse 
 Fortschritt, der in Galile’s und Newton's Auffassung lag, war, dass sie nun 
 die Bedeutung einer beobachtbaren Thatsache bekam, der Beschleunigung, 
 d. h. der fiir die Secunde berechneten Aenderung der Geschwindigkeit, 
 multiplicirt mit der Masse des bewegten Korpers. Wenn Newton die Kraft 
 von der Entfernung der Korper abhingig machte, so war darin ein un- 
 veranderliches Verhaltniss beobachtbarer Thatsachen ausgesprochen: die 
 Beschleunigungen beider Korper werden von ihrer Lage abhingig gemacht. 
 Es zeigte sich bald, dass die ganze Mechanik, die Lehre vom Gleichgewicht, 
 wie die von der Bewegung aller Arten von Korpern aus diesen Principien 
 entwickelt werden konnte, und Newton's Gravitationsgesetz wurde das 
 Vorbild, nach dem die Erklarungen auch in allen andern Zweigen der 
 Physik durchgefiihrt wurden. Erst die Elektrodynamik hat Probleme 
 eestellt, die sich nicht mehr auf dieses Schema zuriickftihren lassen. 
 
 Wenn es die Aufgabe der Naturwissenschaften ist zu suchen, was 
 unabanderlich bleibt in dem Wechsel der Erscheinungen, so hatte die Ent- 
 wickelung des Begriffes der Kraft und des durch sie als zwingende Macht 
 anerkannten Gesetzes der Erscheinungen, dieser Forderung nur nach einer 
 Richtung hin Geniige gethan. Es lag auch noch die Aufgabe vor, die 
 unzerstorbaren, mit unveranderlichen Kraften begabten Stoffe zu suchen, 
 die wir jetzt ““chemische Elemente” nennen. Dass diese Aufgabe vorliege, 
 haben auch die Alten richtig gesehen; aber ihre Versuche sie zu ldsen, 
 zeigen nur, wie weit sie von der Einsicht in die richtige Methode entfernt 
 waren. Ihre vier Elemente sind Producte einer Hypothese, die nur die 
 auffallendsten Unterschiede des Aggregatzustandes beriicksichtigte, und 
 bei der an eine thatsiachliche Priifung nie gedacht wurde. Eine solche 
 begann, wenn auch nicht zu wissenschaftlichen Zwecken, bei den Alche- 
 misten des Mittelalters. Die Frage, ob Gold aus andern Stoffen zu machen 
 sei, fiel zusammen mit der Frage, ob es Elementarstoffe gebe, die nicht in 
 einander verwandelt werden konnen. Dass die Elemente nur auf dem Wege 
 des Versuchs zu finden seien, dass ihr Gewicht unveranderlich sein miisse, 
 hat R. Boyle (1627-1691) zuerst deutlich ausgesprochen; aber die Unbe- 
 kanntschaft mit der Natur der Gase, und die damit zusammenhangenden 
 
we INTRODUCTIGN WOSVCOL Ucar. 
 
 Schwierigkeiten der Verbrennungstheorie verzogerten noch ein Jahrhundert 
 lang die richtige Durchfiihrung dieser Principien, bis Lavoisier gestiitzt auf 
 Priestley’s Entdeckung des Sauerstoffs und auf H. Cavendish’s Nachweis, dass 
 Wasserstoff verbrannt Wasser erzeuge, die Rolle des Sauerstoffs bei der 
 Verbrennung richtig erkannte, und sein neues System durch den Nachweis 
 bekraftigte, dass in der That das Gewicht keiner der von ihm als Elemente 
 hingestellten Substanzen durch Schliessung oder Losung einer chemischen 
 Verbindung jemals geandert werde. 
 
 Damit waren die principiellen Fragen im Wesentlichen entschieden. 
 Die Wissenschaften, welche die lebenden Organismen erforschen, haben sich 
 in den bisher besprochenen Perioden der jedesmaligen Entwickelung der 
 physikalischen und chemischen Theorien angeschlossen. Ihre Aufgabe 
 erschien zunachst zu verwickelt und zu schwierig, als dass von ihnen aus 
 principielle Fragen zu entscheiden waren. Erst in der neusten Zeit ist dies 
 anders geworden. Diese Entwickelung ist aber so neu, dass dariiber kaum 
 Geschichte zu schreiben ist. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME VI. 
 
 Ir is instructive to revert to the modes of thought and of perception 
 that were prevalent in ancient times; but unexpected difficulties imme- 
 diately present themselves in any such attempt. Many things that 
 we have known and understood from our earliest childhood, apparently 
 without aid or suggestion from without, and which, therefore, appear to us 
 to be quite simple, and indeed self-evident, we are astonished to discover 
 were unknown and unperceived by the leading men of the most intelligent 
 nations of antiquity. It thus becomes evident that we are indebted, to a 
 much greater extent than is usually admitted, to the labours of past 
 generations. 
 
 Thoughts like these crowd upon the mind when we look back on the 
 history of Science. Nothing is simpler than that method of investigation 
 which, after many erroneous paths had been successively pursued, is now 
 adopted in every scientific research. This method, usually termed 
 the inductive method, is in fact only the procedure which the healthy human 
 understanding is accustomed to employ in the practical operations of daily 
 life without special instruction, and unmistakeable traces of the application 
 of which may be observed in any of the more intelligent animals. We 
 endeavour by experiment to ascertain how the things by which we are 
 surrounded behave under various circumstances ; and, in particular, how far 
 and in what way we are able to influence them; and we anticipate that, 
 under new conditions, the course of events will be similar to that observed 
 in all previous cases of a sufficiently similar nature. The difference between 
 scientific investigation and ordinary inquiry lies in the circumstance that in 
 the latter case we merely observe the facts presented to us, and are 
 satisfied with the slowly fading impressions of the past as they may Imger 
 in our memory, whilst the only means by which we form an estimate of 
 
xl INTRODUCTION Os 0 DOVE aia. 
 
 quantitative and qualitative differences is derived from the mode and 
 intensity of the sensorial impressions that have been made upon our mind. 
 
 In scientific research, on the other hand, we endeavour, so far as may 
 be practicable, to obtain a complete knowledge of particular instances, and to 
 ascertain clearly the variations to which they are liable, whilst at the same 
 time we observe whether these variations are spontaneous or can be inten- 
 tionally or experimentally produced. We then seek to define with clearness 
 and precision the conditions upon which each variation depends ; whether a 
 certain effect follows a supposed cause or fails to appear, and if it appear, 
 to what degree or amount; in fine, we continue our inquiries until we are 
 able to anticipate the result in every future case of a similar nature. We 
 endeavour thus to obtain accurate conceptions, to fix them by oral and 
 written description, and at the same time to expand and develop our 
 knowledge of each particular by comparing it with the statements of our 
 contemporaries and predecessors. We are thus certain that every deviation 
 from a law supposed to be correct will arouse attention in proportion to 
 the belief in the accuracy of that law. The results already obtained by 
 scientific inquiry are thus subjected to constant control in regard to their 
 accuracy, and are always amenable to improvement. But all this is, in point 
 of fact, nothing else but an extremely careful and consequent performance 
 of that which an intelligent man is accustomed to execute without scientific 
 training in the performance of the most ordinary acts of everyday life. 
 
 It is not surprising that by the tyro in science the effort of the mind 
 is held to be greater in proportion as the laws which he understands and 
 can apply are more comprehensive and exact. The general principles of 
 Mechanics in their abstract mathematical form appear, no doubt, to be far 
 enough removed from the simplicity of popular laws derived from simple 
 experience. ‘They constitute the magic spell by whose aid the moderns 
 have compelled the opposing forces of Nature to submit to their control ; 
 yet they have undoubtedly been acquired in the same way as the minor 
 appliances and handy inventions of the household and of the workshop. 
 
 That the ancients possessed less scientific knowledge than we who 
 inherit what they acquired need not surprise us. We should rather wonder 
 that in many instances they should have been acquainted with so much than 
 be surprised at their knowing so little. But what never ceases to excite our 
 astonishment is, that these nations who, in the formation of their language, 
 
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME SVT. xi 
 
 in their laws and in their general polity, in the writing of history, and in 
 the philosophical discussion of abstract ideas, stand no whit behind us— 
 who were, moreover, in many branches of art decidedly our superiors—should 
 exhibit so remarkable an incapacity of discovering the correct mode of 
 solving scientific problems, and even of perceiving the more important 
 questions that arise. We seem to feel that the method which has ultimately 
 yielded so rich a harvest to us, appeared to them too simple and uncom- 
 plicated to excite hope, and that they believed they could obtain superior 
 results by deep cogitation and mental exertion. 
 
 That they were not wanting in that faculty of observing the phe- 
 nomena around us which I have already termed common sense without 
 scientific training, I need scarcely demonstrate. That faculty is nearly 
 allied to Art and the power of representing characteristic types in an 
 artistic manner; for such types represent order and law. <A. remarkable 
 example of such artistic, rather than scientific exposition, is exhibited in 
 the works of Hippocrates. He attempted to discover and describe the order 
 and mode in which the course and distribution of disease occur, and he thus 
 constitutes the first example of order, or classification, in a department of 
 knowledge, in which the separation of the various co-operating causes is 
 undeniably the most difficult of all. He was not, however, entirely destitute 
 of scientific training. A fair amount of sound medical knowledge was 
 already possessed by the school of the Asclepiads, with which he appears to 
 have been acquainted; so that, in point of fact, he knew what there was 
 to be known in his time. But in forming an estimate of him, it is clear 
 that Hippocrates is a great physician, not on account of his theoretical 
 knowledge, but in spite of it. He refers to his theories only when they 
 agree with his facts; when they do not, he passes them over in silence. 
 His pupils and successors, however, who were defective in the essential 
 point of his character, namely, his extraordinary talent of observation, 
 sought for his greatness exactly where he was weakest, that is, in his 
 theories, and drew from them deductions which, whilst they did not attempt 
 to substantiate by facts, they nevertheless considered to be true. The 
 same thing has always occurred whenever a great master of observation 
 has arisen, and may be regarded as a characteristic sign of a step in the 
 progress of knowledge, and as showing that science had not yet arrived at 
 a clear perception of the true principles by which it should be guided. 
 
XIV INTRODOCTION LOCVOL OME, 
 
 The Greeks undoubtedly made the first steps towards the discovery 
 of these principles. In those sciences which rest on observation Aristotle 
 rightly saw that it was necessary to obtain in the first instance, as general 
 and complete a view as possible of the facts, and to collect the experience 
 of preceding ages; and he exerted himself to accomplish this in Natural 
 History, and in part also in the Physical Sciences, just as Galen did in the 
 case of Medicine. Both of these masters exhibited remarkable penetration and 
 sound judgment. In a similar way Socrates and Aristotle traced correctly 
 the first lines of the theory of consciousness; the former by pointing out 
 and giving examples of the importance, in a scientific point of view, of 
 sharply defined conceptions illustrated by examples; the latter by developing 
 the true principles of the deductive method, namely, the development of 
 consequences from admitted data. The progress made by both in this 
 direction produced a profound impression on their contemporaries and 
 excited unreasonable expectations. It is scarcely possible for us to conceive 
 a condition of mind in which ordinary logical propositions constituted new 
 and surprising feats of mental insight; whilst at the same time it may be 
 freely admitted, that no slight effort at abstraction was required to clothe 
 them in clear and definite language for the first time. 
 
 The deductive method is most appropriately employed when accurate 
 and sufliciently numerous data have been obtained, from which conclusions 
 in regard to special cases may be drawn. This was only accomplished by 
 the ancients in the case of one subject, that, namely, of Geometry, which 
 it appears was first worked out with practical objects in view by the 
 Keyptians, from whom it was borrowed by Pythagoras, who again taught it to 
 the Greeks, being ultimately worked up into a very perfect scientific form 
 by Euclid. J have elsewhere endeavoured to show that the axioms of 
 Geometry, those general propositions from which all the others may be 
 deduced, were really drawn from experience, and were not created by the 
 exercise. of pure reason. It may be added, that a few physical laws, in 
 a limited sense, were actually known to the ancients. Pythagoras was 
 acquainted with the simple relations that the length of strings bear to 
 consonant musical intervals, Archimedes knew the laws which govern the 
 reflection of light, and many of the laws of Statics ; for example, those of the 
 balance, of the lever, and of the weight of heavy bodies immersed in fluids. 
 He founded on his knowledge of the last the methods which are still 
 
INIRODUGLION GO LOLGMELYT, XV 
 
 employed to determine specific gravity. Hero, again, knew the effects of 
 pressure of the air; and Claudius Ptolemaeus the laws of the refraction of 
 light in the air. 
 
 Mankind early acquired a tolerably exact knowledge of the apparent 
 motions of the sun, moon, planets, and fixed stars, in the heavens. In this 
 knowledge the Greeks were preceded by the Egyptians and Babylonians. 
 The Calendar for the estimate of civil time underwent gradual but constant 
 improvement, and was made to agree with the movements of the sun and 
 moon. Astronomical researches were peculiarly adapted, in the exact and 
 unchangeable regularity they showed to exist in the mighty operations of 
 Nature, to conduct the mind of man to seek for perpetual order; but the 
 laws which it was desired to formulate referred, in the first instance, only to 
 the apparent movements of the celestial bodies. 
 
 But even if it be admitted that some representation or conception of 
 the true nature of the motion of the earth around the sun has occasionally 
 arisen, neither in the astronomy of the ancients, nor in the musical observa- 
 tions of Pythagoras, nor in the medical knowledge of Hippocrates, is there 
 the slightest trace of an intelligent comprehension of the mechanics of these 
 phenomena. In the Middle Ages a long period followed of mental 
 imbecility, of over-estimation of the deductive methods, and of the authority 
 of the old masters, especially of Aristotle and of Hippocrates. The first 
 re-awakening of independent inquiry exhibited itself in a severe contest 
 against the old authorities, which was conducted by Copernicus in Astronomy, 
 by Vesalius in Anatomy, and by Harvey in Physiology. 
 
 Progress was first made in the science of Astronomy. The regularity 
 of the movements of the planets appeared wonderfully more simple and 
 intelligible after Copernicus taught that the sun must be regarded as the 
 fixed central point of the system ; and after Kepler demonstrated the regu- 
 larly elliptical form of the path of each planet, and the simple laws which 
 determine the rapidity of its movement in its orbit. The decisive step was, 
 however, made by Galileo and by Newton, when they developed in its true 
 significance the conception of motion. The former adduced examples of ter- 
 restrial gravity ; but his conception was still material, since he compared the 
 effect of a continuously operating moving force to a series of small impulses 
 succeeding one another at short intervals. Newton was in a position, with 
 the aid of the better defined and novel ideas of differential calculus, to 
 define force in a conceivable and quite distinct form, and to show that, 
 
Xvi INTRODUCTION DON OL aa 
 
 however various it might be in amount and direction, it was always the 
 product of the mass of the body multiplied into its velocity. This definition, 
 when applied to the planetary motions, referred their complicated pheno- 
 mena to the extremely simple law of the general attraction of all material 
 substances to each other; and thus gave the most brilliant and imposing 
 example of the simple and strict orderliness of Nature, whilst it constituted 
 also an example of the object for which science should strive. The law 
 of gravitation not only enabled a coarsely approximative estimate of the 
 position and rapidity of each planet to be obtained, but showed that these 
 were actually in accordance with the most delicate measurements of time 
 and space. That which was still defective was the means of exactly esti- 
 mating the so-called disturbances exerted by the planets upon each other, 
 owing to their varied and mutual attraction. This problem was essentially 
 solved by Laplace. What was required by theory was corroborated by 
 subsequent observation. ; 
 
 The complete application of the above-mentioned mechanical principles 
 was materially furthered by the coincident development of Mathematics, 
 and especially the analytical geometry of Descartes, in which all geometric 
 problems were made problems of calculus; and also by the method of 
 analysis developed by Liebnitz and Newton, that is to say, calculations with 
 continuously changing amounts. 
 
 The final and most recondite causes of natural phenomena had long 
 been characterised as forces; these forces were regarded as inherent to 
 matter, as persistent and permanently active. In the doctrine of the 
 composition of forces acting on a single point, which existed before Galileo, 
 and was developed by him, the independency of each force, and its distinct- 
 ness from other coincidentally present forces, was clearly recognised. But 
 force was still always regarded as a hypothetic abstraction. The great 
 advance contained in the explanation given by Galileo and by Newton was, 
 that the term force acquired the significance of something capable of being 
 observed ; the acceleration of movement, that is, the variation per second, 
 equalling the velocity multiplied into the mass of the body moved. When 
 Newton considered force to be dependent on the distance separating bodies, 
 he expressed an invariable relation of observable facts. The acceleration of 
 the movement of both bodies, on the other hand, he showed to be dependent 
 upon their position. It soon appeared that the whole of Mechanics, as well 
 as Dynamics, could be developed from these principles; and Newton’s law of 
 
UNTRODOCTIONST OSCR OI Vi. XVli 
 
 gravitation was the type in accordance with which explanations were given 
 in all other branches of Physics. Electro-dynamics has however recently 
 presented problems which cannot be referred to this scheme. 
 
 As it is the aim of natural science to discover the invariable amidst 
 the variable, the development of our conception of force and of the laws 
 of phenomena, over which it exerts control, progress only in one direction. 
 The problem still remains to discover the indestructible, ze, those materials 
 
 “chemical elements.” 
 
 endowed with unalterable force, which we now term 
 That this problem existed was clearly seen also by the ancients; but 
 their endeavours to solve it served only to show how far removed they were 
 from the right method of investigation. Their four elements were products 
 of an hypothesis which only took into consideration the most striking 
 differences of outward appearance, and was never attempted to be definitely 
 proved. Such proof commenced, though it was not conducted by them 
 with a strictly scientific object in view, with the alchemists of the Middle 
 Ages. The question whether gold could be made from other substances 
 was synonymous with the question whether there are elementary substances 
 capable of being transmuted into each other. That the elements are only 
 discoverable by experiment, and that their weight is invariable, was first 
 distinctly expressed by R. Boyle (1627-1691) ; but ignorance of the nature 
 of gases and the associated difficulty of the theory of combustion delayed 
 for a century the correct application of this principle. Lavoisier then, 
 basing his views on Priestley’s discovery of oxygen, and upon the proof 
 furnished by H. Cavendish, that water was produced by the burning of 
 hydrogen, clearly recognised the part played by oxygen in combustion, and 
 supported his new system by evidence that the weight of none of the 
 substances he admitted to be elements underwent change, either in entering 
 into or separating from a chemical combination. The main questions were 
 in this way essentially decided. The sciences which deal with living 
 organisms accept the physical and chemical theories of the present time ; 
 but the problems with which they have to deal appeared, in the first 
 instance, to be too complicated and too difficult to enable their principal 
 questions to be solved by these means. It has only quite recently turned 
 out otherwise. This development is, however, so recent that no historical 
 
 details respecting it can be given. 
 H. HELMHOLTZz. 
 
iS Tt © Ee © Ren ASE S 
 
 IN THE 
 
 SIXTH VOLUME 
 
 HIPPOCRATES HARVEY 
 ARCHIMEDES NEWTON 
 GALEN LINNAZUS 
 COPERNICUS LAVOISIER 
 KEPLER BICHAT 
 
 GALILEO | CUVIER 
 
a: = 
 
TABLE OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES. 
 
 THE HUNDRED GREATEST MEN OF SCIENCE. 
 
 I—MATHEMATICIANS. 
 SCIENCES OF CALCULATION: MATHEMATICS, ASTRONOMY, PHysics. 
 Antiquity: Euclid, Hero, Archimedes, Apollonius, Eudoxus, Aratus, Hip- 
 parchus, Ptolemy. 
 Middle Ages: Albategnius, Nasir Eddin. 
 
 Renaissance: Copernicus, Tycho Brahé, Kepler, Halley, Huyghens, Bernouilli, 
 Bradley, Pascal, Galileo, Porta, Gilbert, Torricelli. 
 
 Modern Times: Clairaut, Euler, Delambre, Newton, Hooke, La Grange, 
 Franklin, Young, Herschel, Faraday, Volta, Galvani, Ampére, Rumford, 
 Arago, Oersted, Laplace, Gauss. 
 
 Il.—PHYSICIANS AND CHEMISTS. 
 SCIENCES OF EXPERIMENT: CHEMISTRY, PHYSIOLOGY. 
 
 Antiquity : Hippocrates, Erasistratus, Hierophilus, Galen. 
 
 Middle Ages: Avicenna, Marcus Grecus, Geber, Roger Bacon. 
 
 Renaissance: Vesalius, Fabricius, Harvey, Malpighi, Paracelsus, Van Helmont. 
 
 Modern Times: Boerhaave, Hunter, Haller, Stahl, Bordeu, Bichat, Gall, 
 Bell, Miiller, Black, Cavendish, Bergmann, Priestley, Scheele, Davy, 
 
 Lavoisier, Daiton, Gay-Lussac, Berthollet, Berzelius, Ritter, Liebig, 
 Graham. 
 
 Il.—NATURALISTS. 
 
 SCIENCES OF OBSERVATION: GEOGRAPHY, MINERALOGY, BorTany, 
 ZOOLOGY. 
 
 Antiquity : Theophrastus, Eratosthenes, Strabo, Pliny. 
 
 Renaissance: Gesner, Ceesalpinus. 
 
 Modern Times: Leuwenhoek, Tournefort, Linneeus, Buffon, Bonnet, Werner, 
 Hutton, Lyell, Jussieu, De Saussure, Haiiy, Humboldt, Cuvier, 
 Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Blainville, Von Baer, 
 
 Wolff, Schleiden, Agassiz. 
 
HIPPOCRATES 
 
 B.C. 460?-357? 
 
 THE FATHER OF MEDICINE 
 
 THE art of healing, it is obvious, must have been in its origin coeval, or 
 nearly so, in some rude form, with the earliest human need of its exercise. 
 Such a phrase as “the Father of Medicine” without explanation, is therefore 
 misleading. It must of course be accepted cum grano, as we say. The fact 
 is that long before the age of Hippocrates, the practice of medicine had 
 made large advances from the condition of primitive rudeness which we are 
 compelled to assume. It had become in Greece the business of a special 
 and numerous class, the Asclepiade, a priestly class, who carefully kept their 
 own secrets from profane understandings, and handed them down from 
 father to son. They were scattered in small bands all over Greece, but had 
 their headquarters at Epidaurus, on the coast of Argolis, where stood the 
 principal temple of their god Asclepios. Homer speaks of him as the 
 “blameless physician,” and says nothing of his origin. After times vene- 
 rated him as the son of Apollo; and the human personality was hopelessly 
 lost in the clouds of myth and legend which gradually gathered around it. 
 One of the offshoots from the Epidaurian temple and group of priests, was 
 to be found in the small island of Cos, a gem of the Augean ; and here was 
 
2 HIPPOCKATLTES 
 
 born the great master, of a family who practised the healing art for several 
 centuries, some members of it attaining a great reputation. 
 
 For the story of his life, we have, unfortunately, no contemporary or 
 even trustworthy authority. We can, therefore, only tell the tale as it is 
 usually told without saying how the truth may be. 
 
 Hippocrates was born about B.c. 460 (Ol. 80, 1), the year of the birth 
 of Democritus. He lived in the greatest age of Greece, and was contem- 
 porary with Herodotus, Socrates, Thucydides, Plato, Auschylus, Phidias, and 
 their compeers. His education was not confined to professional subjects, 
 but embraced logic, physics, geometry, and even philosophy and rhetoric, 
 which he studied under Gorgias. He spent many years in travelling, 
 especially in Macedonia, Thrace, and Thessaly, investigating the virtues 
 of “simples” and the action of remedies in the treatment of disease. He 
 visited the temple of Diana at Ephesus, and transcribed the medical 
 registers or records preserved there. It was customary to keep accounts of 
 the maladies of those who resorted to the temples of health, and of the 
 remedies which had been effectual. These records formed the quasi-medical 
 literature of the time. 
 
 The reputation of Hippocrates grew to a great height. Kings and 
 nations coveted the presence of so mighty a healer and helper. Perdiccas II. 
 of Macedonia consulted him; Artaxerxes of Persia offered him immense 
 gifts, money and towns, for his services; the Illyrians summoned him to 
 save them from pestilence: the Abderites called him to see their “mad” 
 philosopher Democritus, whom he found to be the sanest man among them ; 
 and the Athenians voted him a crown of gold, maintenance for him and his 
 descendants at the Prytaneum, and initiation into their mysteries, seldom 
 given to foreigners. Hippocrates did not care for gifts. He declined the 
 invitation of the Persian king, and the remuneration offered by the 
 Abderites. He prayed the gods to give him, not money, not pleasures, 
 but a long life, with good health, success in his art, and a lasting fame. 
 His desire was fulfilled, and the nations have given 
 
 “ Eternal honour to his name.” 
 Dante, it is worth noting, has placed him in the first circle (Limbo) of his 
 
 “ Inferno,” among the wise and good of old, the “souls of mighty worth” 
 who lacked nothing but the rite of baptism for admission to the paradise. 
 
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HIPPOCRATES 
 
 & 
 
 Hippocrates is depicted to us as a man of great bodily vigour, with 
 capacity of immense labour without injury ; and of astonishing power and 
 penetration of mind, so that he never despaired of conquering the toughest 
 problems in his science, by persistent endeavour. He lived to a great age, 
 variously stated at 85, 90, 104, and 109 years, and died at Larissa in 
 Thessaly. 
 
 With Hippocrates and his race, the Asclepiade, is associated the great 
 revolution by which the priestly monopoly of the practice of medicine was 
 broken up, and the pursuit of it was thrown open to all who desired it. 
 This is shown by a clause in the “ Oath” exacted of his pupils, one of the 
 pieces most certainly genuine among the writings attributed to him. To 
 the same end, the opening of knowledge to all, he wrote his medical works, 
 the earliest that have come down to us, and which, after all the advances 
 made through two thousand years, are still studied with reverence. In his 
 writings, medical science appears at a height of development for which 
 nothing that we know of its earlier state furnishes adequate explanation. 
 On such grounds as these firmly rests his claim to the title which the ages 
 have awarded him, of “Father of Medicine.” In the long process of 
 development of medical science, his teaching forms one of the greatest 
 forces. He summed up in himself all that was known before, added 
 immensely to the store by his own study and practice, and so handed on an 
 almost newly constituted science, to those who came after him. 
 
 Among the most noteworthy features of his practice and teaching, are 
 the following. He paid special attention to the observation of symptoms in 
 disease, both those precedent and those concurrent (prognosis and diagnosis) ; 
 and in acuteness of observation and accuracy of description he has never 
 been surpassed. Most of the forms of disease which he described and 
 named still bear the names he gave them. He held the four humours (or 
 fluids) of the body to be the original seat of disease ; health depending ona 
 due proportion and proper quality of these humours. He taught also that 
 there is a relation between them and the four seasons of the year. This 
 doctrine of the “humours,” accepted and extended by Galen, held its ground 
 for more than thirteen centuries, and traces of it still remain in our common 
 speech. Hippocrates was the first to insist upon the important influence of 
 diet, and would frequently trust to its regulation as the sole remedy in disease, 
 especially where the constitution was strong. He had a firm faith in the 
 
A HiPRPOCKALES 
 
 restorative tendency of nature (vis medicatriz nature). There is no evidence 
 that he knew of the pulse as an indication of states of the body. He was 
 the first to treat anatomy as a science, although there is no evidence and 
 little probability that he practised dissection of human subjects. He was 
 well versed in surgery, had much skill in dealing with fractures, and practised 
 all the operations known in his time, except lithotomy. This appears to 
 have been left for some reason to other hands than physicians. He discon- 
 tinued the superstitious method, in vogue up to his time, of treating some 
 cases by action on the imagination, and confined himself to rational methods. 
 He greatly enlarged the Materia Medica of his time; three hundred articles 
 being mentioned in his writings. But it is difficult now to understand in 
 some cases the accounts left of his medical preparations. Hippocrates 
 was more than a great physician; he was a philosopher and a great man. 
 Scattered through his works are abundant proofs of this, in weighty 
 axioms, acute observations, and pithy sayings. Our hackneyed quotation, 
 ‘Life is short, Art is long,” first appears in literature as part of his first 
 aphorism. 
 
 Of the numerous pieces which have come down to us under his name, 
 hardly a fourth are admitted as genuine. Attempts to distinguish these’ 
 began to be made at an early period. Editions of the whole or of separate 
 portions, and translations into various languages are almost numberless, 
 and the commentaries upon them make a formidable mass of literature. <A 
 complete German translation, by Grimm, appeared in 4 vols. 8vo. between 
 1781-1792. A complete French edition, with translation, troduction, 
 medical commentaries, and philological notes, by M. Littré, was published 
 in 10 vols. 8vo., between 1839-61. This elaborate and scholarly work is at 
 present unrivalled. In 1849 an English translation of the genuine works, 
 by Adams, with a preliminary discourse and introductions, in 2 yols. 8vo., 
 was published by the Sydenham Society. 
 
HXTRACT FROM HIPPOCRATES 
 
 ON THE ART OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ALL who are acquainted with it will admit that there are two classes of 
 diseases : one affecting the extreme parts, and few in number; the other 
 is in vast amount, and attacks the parts that are internal and concealed, 
 wherein they manifestly differ from the former, which are apparent to 
 sight and touch by tumours, redness, &c. 
 
 The human body has many cavities: thus, two exist for the reception 
 and discharge of food, with many others known to those who have studied 
 the subject. All those fleshy rounded parts called muscles are cavernous ; 
 all parts in fact in which there is defect of continuity are cavities, whether 
 covered by flesh or skin, and they are filled with air (spiritus) in health, 
 but in disease with unhealthy humour. Such fleshy parts are the arms, 
 thighs, ete. Even such parts as are not fleshy have a similar structure. 
 For instance the liver, concealed in the abdomen, the brain in the skull, 
 the lungs in the thorax, all have cavities with subordinate divisions, or 
 vessels, filled with humours of a healthy or unhealthy tendency. There 
 are moreover nerves and vessels innumerable passing to the bone; and 
 ligaments and cartilages belonging to the joints wherein the bones move, 
 and which are moistened by a glairy fluid emitted from small cavities. 
 Now none of these parts are apparent to our sight, and hence the above 
 division of diseases into concealed and apparent. 
 
ARCHIMEDES 
 
 B.C. 287-212 
 
 Ir (AGE IN ID) Adie 0) 1c) Swede bay fey li (Gs: 
 
 THE preservation and transmission of ancient books, through all the 
 destructive revolutions that have swept over empires and nations, is one 
 of the most astonishing facts in the history of the human race. All the 
 more astonishing when we consider that they existed only in the frail form 
 of manuscripts, and that the number of persons seriously interested in most 
 of them and concerned about their safety was really very limited. Many, 
 indeed, have perished. But the wonder is not that some of these “ ships 
 of time,” as Bacon calls them, laden with priceless treasures of truth and 
 wisdom, fit for the nourishment and the healing of the peoples, should have 
 gone down to the unsearchable abysses, but that so many have escaped, 
 and after voyages of millennial duration have found at last safe havens. 
 Terrible was the risk to accumulated treasures of this kind when the 
 city of Constantine, the new Rome, a centre of civilisation and literary 
 culture, at length fell into the hands of the Turks. But Greek scholars had 
 already begun to resort to the seats of reviving culture in the great cities 
 of Italy ; and in their enforced final flight they carried with them such of 
 the precious manuscripts of old as they could snatch from impending 
 
2 ARCHIMEDES 
 
 destruction. Among these treasures thus carried to Italy were the writings 
 of Archimedes, the greatest name among ancient geometricians. Copies 
 of them falling into the hands of Regiomontanus, he took them to Germany ; * 
 and, printing having meanwhile been invented, the editio princeps of 
 Archimedes was published at Basel, in Greek and Latin, in 1544. This 
 was followed within the next 150 years by editions at Paris, Venice, 
 Messina, Palermo, and London. Aid these were all surpassed by the first 
 complete and most splendid edition, the folio of Torelli, printed at the 
 Clarendon Press in 1792. The sight of this folio may well call to mind 
 the reply which Archimedes made to Hiero, when asked if he could not 
 make these things easier: “There is no royal road to geometry.” The 
 greatness of Archimedes, like that of Newton, is of a kind which lies beyond 
 the apprehension of more than a very few minds in each generation. 
 
 He was born at Syracuse B.c. 287 (Ol. 123, 2), a few years before the 
 death of his greatest predecessor, Euclid. On his father’s side he was 
 related to Hiero IL, King of Syracuse; but his mother was of an obscure 
 family. His ruling passion revealed itself in his youth, in earnest absorbing 
 devotion to the study of geometry. He was a follower of Plato in 
 philosophy, and, like him, set the research of truth far above the pursuit 
 of gain or any profit to the mere outward life. While men praised him 
 without stint on account of his marvellous mechanical inventions, he thought 
 lightly of these, felt almost ashamed of them, called them trifles and 
 playthings, in comparison with those lofty far-reaching speculations in the 
 sphere of pure intellect in which he delighted, and in which he was grandly 
 alone; herein presenting a contrast to Bacon, who valued the study of 
 geometry only for its practical applications. He is said to have travelled 
 in Egypt and in other countries before finally settling at his native place. 
 In Egypt he invented the screw bearing his name, for drawing off water, 
 now called by the Germans the “ water-snail.” He is said also to have 
 applied a screw to the purposes of navigation. 
 
 To him we owe the discovery of the principle that a body plunged 
 into a fluid loses weight equal to that of the fluid displaced. With this 
 discovery is connected the story of the golden crown made for Hiero, which 
 he suspected to be alloyed with silver. The test for gravity occurred to 
 Archimedes while at the bath, and with irrepressible joy he rushed to his 
 home, forgetting to dress, and shouting “I have found it” (Zureka). One 
 
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ARCHIMEDES 
 
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 of his most remarkable achievements was the construction of a sphere to 
 exhibit the movements of the heavens, a quasi-orrery. This is noticed by 
 Claudian in a striking passage of his poems, and also by Silius Italicus and 
 Ovid. He made a very near approach to a precise determination of the 
 ratio between the diameter and the circumference of a circle ;, determined 
 the relation between a circle and an ellipse, and the proportion between 
 the solid contents of a sphere and of a cylinder circumscribed. He devoted 
 much attention to the mensuration of conic sections, expressed his familiarity 
 with the power of the lever in the saying, “Give me a standing place and 
 I will move the earth itself;” and among the engines which he devised for 
 the defence of Syracuse, when besieged by the Romans under Marcellus; 
 were burning glasses by which to set the enemy’s ships on fire. It is most 
 likely that there is much exaggeration in the traditional accounts of his 
 machines at this siege; he wrote none himself, and it is certain that we 
 find no mention of the burning mirrors before Tzetzes, who lived fourteen 
 centuries later. Buffon, to test the possibility of such action, constructed, 
 in 1747, a burning mirror, with which he could set fire to wood, or melt 
 lead, at considerable distances. Archimedes is the only ancient writer who 
 has left anything satisfactory on the theory of Mechanics and on Hydro- 
 statics. ‘These subjects are treated in his works on centres of gravity of 
 lines and planes, and on the equilibrium of bodies plunged in a fluid. 
 Even the germs of the calculus are found in his speculations. 
 
 The rare faculty possessed by Archimedes of solving hard problems 
 had given rise, in the time of Cicero, to the phrase, “ Archimedean 
 problem,* in the sense of enormously difficult. ‘To measure and appreciate 
 the greatness and achievements of Archimedes it is necessary to have exact 
 knowledge of the state of his science before his time. Nothing remains to 
 us but Euclid, with some fragments of his commentators, and a solitary 
 work of Pappus. Leibnitz, with adequate intelligence, says: “Those who 
 have attained .to the power of comprehending Archimedes will be less 
 astonished at the discoveries of modern men.” 
 
 When Syracuse was besieged by Marcellus (214 B.c.) so efficient were 
 the services rendered by the great thinker and inventor, Archimedes, that 
 the operations of the attack were wholly frustrated, and the siege was 
 converted into a blockade. The city held out for two years, and was taken 
 in 212. Archimedes was among the slain. The accounts of his death vary 
 
4 ARCHIMEDES 
 
 in detail, but agree in the essential fact that, while absorbed in his mathe- 
 matical studies, he was surprised and killed by a Roman soldier. Marcellus 
 had given particular orders to spare him and his house, but in vain. 
 
 On the monument erected to him in the burial place was cut, by his 
 own desire, the figure of a sphere with a cylinder circumscribed, and a 
 record of the proportion between the contents of the two. Less than a 
 hundred and forty years had passed when Cicero, a young man and 
 enthusiastic student, held his first public office, the queestorship, in Sicily. 
 Before leaving the island he wished to see the tomb of Archimedes. It was 
 already forgotten. The magistrates knew nothing about it. They led the 
 eager inquirer to the old burial place, and allowed him to search. He soon 
 detected in a spot overgrown with briars a small column bearing the figure 
 of the sphere and cylinder, with the inscription partly illegible. ‘“ This,” 
 said he, “is what I was looking for. And this noble and once learned city 
 had known nothing of the monument of its greatest citizen if it had 
 not been discovered to them by a native of Arpinum.” A noteworthy 
 illustration of Crabbe’s reflection— 
 
 Cl e 
 ‘ And monuments themselves memorials need.” - 
 
ARCHIMEDES 
 
 CONTENTS OF HIS WORKS 
 
 LETTERS TO DOSITHEUS. 
 
 ON THE SPHERE AND THE CYLINDER. 
 
 Boox I. Eleven Propositions. 
 » LI. Ten Propositions. 
 
 On THE MEASUREMENT OF THE CIRCLE. 
 Three Propositions. 
 
 On CoNOIDS AND SPHEROIDS. 
 
 Thirty-four Propositions. 
 
 On SPIRALS. 
 Twenty-seven Propositions. 
 
 ON THE CENTRE OF GRAVITY OF DIFFERENT Boptes. 
 
 Book I. Fifteen Propositions. 
 » IL. Ten Propositions. 
 
 ON THE QUADRATURE OF THE PARABOLA. 
 
 Twenty-four Propositions. 
 
 THE SAND PROBLEM. 
 Or Bopres FLOATING IN A FLUID. 
 
 Boox I. Nine Propositions. 
 » ALI. Seven Propositions. 
 
GALEN 
 
 130-200 (?) 
 
 ANATOMICAL SCIENCE 
 
 MANIFOLD is the interest attaching to the old city of Pergamos in Asia 
 Minor. Its origin lost in mythical remoteness of time; its singularly lovely 
 situation and environment; its colony of Asclepiads from Epidaurus, which 
 became in the course of centuries one of the most famous of medical schools ; 
 its flourishing kingdom, which rose rapidly and maintained itself for a century 
 and a half; its library and school of learning, once rivalling those of Alex- 
 andria; its early Christian church, one of the seven addressed by the author 
 of the Apocalypse ; the existing remains of its Acropolis, temples, churches, 
 amphitheatre and other buildings (marvellous fragments of its sculptures at 
 this moment exciting the admiration of Europeans) ; its invention of parch- 
 ment (Charta Pergamena) as writing material; such claims has Pergamos on 
 the enduring memory of men. And one other claim, strongest of all—it 
 was the birthplace of a great man. And while Asclepiads, school, library, 
 temples, fortress, churches were all vanishing or crumbling to dust, the 
 name and fame of Galen rose higher and higher and, in the sphere of 
 medicine, ruled the civilised world with an authority beyond question for 
 
 more than twelve centuries. 
 
GATE 
 
 iS) 
 
 Galen (Claudius Galenus), after Hippocrates the greatest of ancient 
 writers on medicine, was born A.D. 180. He was the son of Nikon, an 
 architect and mathematician, wealthy, honoured and of cultivated mind. 
 His mother is less favourably portrayed. She is said to have been a 
 Xanthippe. Trained at first for a philosopher, his course was altered in his 
 seventeenth year, and he began the special study of medicine under teachers 
 in his native city. After the death of his father (about 149) he set out on 
 a course of studious travel, visiting and making some stay at Smyrna and 
 at Alexandria, then the seat of the best medical school in the world. 
 Returning to Pergamos (158) he was at once appointed physician to the 
 school of gladiators. After practising there for several years he went to 
 Rome. In the imperial city his rare skill in anatomy and some remarkable 
 cures which he effected ensured him high distinction; and also brought upon 
 him a storm of jealousies, envies and ill-will from those whose credit and 
 emoluments were imperilled. Galen was ridiculed as a theorist (not 
 altogether without reason), was accused of magic (he thought much of 
 amulets and dreams), and was called utterer of paradoxes and worker of 
 wonders. He is said to have carried himself with offensive vanity and 
 infinite scorn. Considering the usual position of genius among the dunces, 
 this is not much to be wondered at. It is, however, clear that Galen 
 had not the simple greatness of his master Hippocrates; did not equal 
 him in reverent regard for facts, but was anxious at all cost to shine; and 
 of things which he did not really understand would sometimes give 
 hypothetical explanations. 
 
 He was at Rome on this first occasion about four years; and he had 
 no sooner returned to Pergamos than he was summoned to attend the 
 emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus at Aquileia. Driven thence 
 by the plague, Galen accompanied the emperors to Rome (170). He was 
 charged with the care of the young Commodus, and remained at Rome for 
 some time. Dates are unobtainable; but it is known that he attended 
 M. Aurelius, his son and Severus, and that at Rome he lectured and wrote 
 some of his most important works. He appears to have gone once more 
 to Pergamos ; but where he died, and when, is unknown. He is stated 
 by Suidas to have lived to the age of seventy, which would fix his death to 
 the year 200; and by Abulfaragius to have lived to the age of eighty, thus 
 dying in 210. 
 
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 Galen wrote in Greek, with all the dialects of which he was familiar. 
 He was also acquainted with the Latin, Ethiopic and Persian languages. 
 It is stated that his medical treatises numbered 500, and that his works 
 on philosophy, logic, &c., numbered-about half as many. Of the published 
 treatises 83 are recognised as genuine, 19 are held to be doubtful, and 45 
 certainly spurious. There are besides these, many volumes of fragments 
 and of notes on Hippocrates. His works were early translated into Arabic, 
 and he became supreme in the East as well as in the West. Most of his 
 extant works are in Greek, some in Latin, and a few in Arabic. One of the 
 most remarkable proofs of the commanding position of Galen is the fact that 
 all the medical sects which existed before his day disappeared, and after him 
 all were Galenists. Of his supremacy there is a striking instance in English 
 medical history. In the middle of the sixteenth century a physician who 
 dared to question the infallibility of the master was cited before the Royal 
 College of Physicians and compelled to sign a recantation. 
 
 Of all Galen’s writings the most valued are those on anatomy and 
 physiology; and of these the most important are the treatises “ De 
 Anatomicis Administrationibus ” and “ De Usu Partium Corporis Humani.” 
 The latter is especially remarkable for the large knowledge and acuteness 
 of thought displayed in it. In some passages a deep religious feeling shows 
 itself. “In writing these books,” he says, “‘ I compose a hymn to the Author 
 of nature. True piety doth not consist in the sacrifice of hecatombs or the 
 burning of a thousand exquisite perfumes in His honour; but in recognition 
 and proclamation of His wisdom, almightiness and goodness.” 
 
 In philosophy Galen was an eclectic. He rejected the current 
 Epicureanism, and studied the Stoics, the Academics and the Peripatetics. 
 He held that a physician ought to be also a philosopher. In medicine he 
 was a follower of Hippocrates, whose chief doctrines he adopted; as for 
 example, those of the four humours, of critical days, of disease as contrary 
 to nature, the importance of diet, &c. He wrote much clear exposition and 
 sound criticism of his master’s teaching. He attached much importance to 
 the pulse as an indicator; and on this subject he is the first and highest 
 authority. He made large advances in anatomy; introduced many new 
 terms which have kept their ground ; was the first to dissect a great number 
 of muscles and demonstrate their position and direction; and though the 
 subjects of his dissection were, with very rare exceptions, only animals, and 
 
4 GALEN 
 
 chiefly of the ape tribe, his books on anatomy were the best existing between 
 the second and fifteenth centuries. In “ Materia Medica” he was not so good 
 an authority as Dioscorides. His pharmacopeeia consisted chiefly of organic 
 substances, and included no chemical preparations. Galen was a persevering 
 observer and collector of facts and a great master of generalisation. He 
 lived a sober and temperate life, was humane in his practice, not respecting 
 persons, but caring as much for the beggar as for the king. There is no 
 evidence that he had much intercourse with the Christians ; but in one of his 
 extant fragments he mentions the “ sect” and praises their temperate and 
 chaste lives. 
 
 The first Latin edition of Galen was published at Venice in 1490, in 
 2 vols. folio. The editio princeps of the Greek text was the Aldine, at Venice, 
 5 vols. folio, in 1525. It has been three times republished, the most recent 
 and best edition being that of Kiihn, at Leipsic, 20 vols. 8vo., in 1821-83. 
 An edition of the Greek with a Latin version appeared in Paris, in 13 vols. 
 folio, in 1639. The commentaries written upon his works are very numerous 
 and voluminous. 
 
 Fast bound in the chains of the Galenic system, the science of medicine 
 was for ages paralysed. There was need of a revolution before a fresh 
 advance in real knowledge was possible. In the fifteenth century came the 
 awakening. Iresh study of the greater ancients was followed by the opening 
 of the recovered Bible. The dreams and investigations of the alchemists 
 were the germs of chemical science ; and when the new iatro-chemists began 
 their labours, Galenism was doomed. In 1520 Luther burnt the Pope's Bull 
 at Wittenberg, and in 1526 the coarse, drunken Paracelsus began his career 
 of Professor of Physic and Surgery at Basel by burning, in the presence of 
 his pupils, the works of Galen and Avicenna. He called them vain dreams, 
 and invited his pupils to study “ the open book of Nature which God's finger 
 had written.” In spite of all his faults and errors, “the word of Paracelsus,” 
 says the historian, “ gives to the century its direction.” 
 
(GP va Thy diy INT 
 
 CGH RiON OMPOIG: You ©. HY Hel Sel lehels 
 
 130 BORN AT PERGAMUS. 
 
 147 BEGAN TO STUDY MEDICINE 
 
 158 ESTABLISHED PHYSICIAN AT PERGAMUS 
 162 VISITED ROME 
 
 167 LEFT ROME; VISITED AQUiLEIA . 
 
 169 RETURNED TO ROME WITH M. AURELIUS . 
 170-7 “DE USU PARTIUM,” ETC. . 
 
 191 “DE LIBRIS SUIS DE COMPOSITIONE MEDICAM,” 
 BOOKS BURNED . 
 
 192-3 DELIVERED LECTURES 
 200 DIED. 
 
GALEN 
 
 USES OF THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE BODY 
 
 ABSTRACT OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Books I. anp Il.—Introductory. The hand of man, from its peculiar 
 structure, is set forth by Galen as the chief source of his great 
 superiority over every other animal. 
 
 Boox II.—The lower extremities. Galen expatiates on man’s superiority 
 from having two legs instead of four. 
 
 Booxs IV. anp V.—Consideration of the stomach, liver, and other organs 
 of nourishment. The liver is the largest and most surprising organ in 
 the body. The pancreas and kidneys are treated, completing the sub- 
 ject of digestion and excretion. 
 
 Books VI. ano VII.—The thorax with its contents, the heart and lungs, 
 are described. Fish are mute, having no lungs. In respiration some- 
 thing is discharged of a noxious character. 
 
 Books VIII. anp [X.-—The head. Animals with a neck are those that have 
 lungs. Common purpose of the head. Instruments of sense. Cerebral 
 nerves. Cerebellum. The cerebrum, its arteries, veins, and nerves. 
 
 Boox X.—The organ of vision. 
 
 Books XI., XII., anp XIII.—The face. Neck. Vertebree. Spinal marrow 
 and spinal nerve. 
 
 Books XIV. anv XV. treat of generation and the formation of the foetus. 
 
 Book XVI. treats of the distribution of the arteries, veins, and nerves 
 through the entire body. These Galen calls the common istruments. 
 The great artery rises from the heart, the vein from the liver, and the 
 spinal marrow and nerves from the brain. 
 
 Boox XVII. is a sort of recapitulation of the preceding books. 
 
COPERNICUS 
 
 1473-1543 
 
 FATHER OF MODERN ASTRONOMY 
 
 NIcHOLAS COPERNICUS was a native of Thorn, which, at the time of his 
 birth, formed part of the dominions of the King of Poland. Historians 
 have long discussed the origin of this great man. Some assert that his 
 father was a serf, while others pretend that he was descended from a noble 
 family, as if an illustrious pedigree could, like genius, confer glory and 
 immortality. The truth seems to be that he was of mixed descent. His 
 father was apparently of the Sclavonic race, as he was certainly a Bohemian 
 by country ; his mother was an undoubted German. His parents took care 
 that he should receive a first-class education. After studying classics in the 
 college at Thorn, he went, at the age of eighteen, to follow the courses of 
 philosophy and medicine in the University of Cracow. There the lectures of 
 Albert Brudzewski inspired him with a passion for the science of astronomy, 
 with which his name was destined to be inseparably connected. Through 
 the influence of his uncle Lucas Wasselrode, Bishop of Warmia, he 
 was, at the early age of twenty-two, raised to the dignity of Canon 
 of Frauenburg, a town on the coast, near the mouth of the Vistula, 
 and, having completed the obligatory year of residence, he obtained from 
 
COPERNICTS 
 
 to 
 
 the Chapter three years’ leave of absence for the purpose of completing in 
 Italy the course of study begun in his native country. Towards the end of 
 1496 he was enrolled amongst the students at the University of Bologna, 
 where he inscribed his name on the list of the Poles who frequented that 
 famous seat of learning—a circumstance which has been cited as an addi- 
 tional proof that he was not a German. Early in the following year the 
 Ferrarese astronomer, Domenico Maria Novara, had already found in him a 
 zealous assistant in his nightly observations. 
 
 The interval between the first arrival of Copernicus in Italy and _ his 
 final departure from that country, was of eight years—from the end of 1496 
 to that of 1504. But his sojourn was interrupted by two homeward journeys 
 for the purpose mainly of obtaining renewed leave of absence from the 
 Chapter of Frauenburg. The first was in 1499, after the University of 
 Bologna had conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Later in 
 the same year he returned to Bologna, accompanied by his brother Andrew ; 
 but finding themselves in extremely necessitous circumstances—probably 
 because the pittance which had been bread for one was starvation for two— 
 the brothers repaired to Rome in the jubilee year 1500. There for about ten 
 months Nicholas taught mathematics amid the plaudits of thronging 
 audiences. Again in 1501 both Nicholas and Andrew Copernicus were in 
 Poland, and this time the Chapter of Frauenburg granted them a more 
 prolonged leave for the purpose of studying at Padua. The permission, we 
 are told, was granted the more readily because Nicholas had promised to 
 devote himself to medicine. Thus when, after three years’ further study, he 
 finally returned to his native land, he was a Doctor in two faculties, as well 
 as a competent classical scholar, a rare mathematician, and the astronomer 
 all the world knows of. 
 
 The remainder of his life, which extended to the term allotted to man 
 by the Psalmist, was spent in the little town of Frauenburg, his attention 
 being divided between the duties of his ecclesiastical office and the cultiva- 
 tion of astronomical science. He employed a great portion of his time in 
 works of charity and in giving good advice; he visited the sick poor ; he 
 projected the construction of a hydraulic machine to distribute water in all 
 the houses of the town; he occupied himself with the best mode of coining 
 money ; and he successfully pleaded the cause of his colleagues in a law-suit 
 brought by the Chapter of Frauenburg against the knights of the Teutonic 
 
COPEKNIGOGS 3 
 
 Order. In the little cathedral town on the banks of the Vistula no passion 
 disturbed the peaceful tranquillity of his existence. An enemy of useless 
 conversation he did not seek for praise nor the clamour of glory ; indepen- 
 dent without pride, content with his lot and content with bimself, he was 
 great in obscurity, and revealing himself only to a small number of chosen 
 disciples, he accomplished a scientific revolution without Europe being aware 
 of the fact during his lifetime. 
 
 Copernicus read carefully the explanations which Ptolemy and other 
 ancient astronomers had given of the movements of the sun and planets, 
 but none of their theories satisfied him, because he could not make them 
 agree with what he himself observed. At last, after many years of labour, 
 he came to the conclusion that the real explanation was the one which 
 Aristarchus had given, and which was called the Pythagorean system— 
 namely, that the sun stands still in the centre of our system, and that the 
 earth and other planets revolve round it. 
 
 The results of his labours he embodied in a volume which is the 
 foundation of modern astronomy. But he hesitated for a long time to 
 publish the work which has immortalized his name. Persuaded at last by 
 the reiterated solicitations of his friends, especially Cardinal Schomberg and 
 Tidemann Gysius, Bishop of Kulm, he determined, at the age of seventy, to 
 send to the press, at Nuremberg, his ‘De Revolutionibus Corporum 
 Ceelestium,” which had been in preparation for nearly thirty-six years. 
 He directed his pupil Rheticus to revise the proofs, and a few days before 
 his death he had the satisfaction of holding in his failing hands a complete 
 copy of his work. 
 
 Copernicus came into the world at that period of revival when the 
 human mind seemed suddenly to wake up after a sleep of ages. That sleep, 
 however, had been apparent and not real, for all the great problems then so 
 eagerly canvassed were not new. More than once they had been put forward 
 by bold thinkers whose utterances were soon stifled by the dominant autho- 
 rity, or failed to find an echo among their contemporaries. As a general 
 rule it may be safely maintained that every revolution openly accepted has 
 been previously accepted in men’s minds. Thus a long time prior to the 
 discovery of America the probable existence of a fourth part of the world 
 had been spoken of, and Copernicus himself was well aware that he was 
 not the first to make the Earth move round the Sun. But extraordinary 
 
4 COPERMICCS 
 
 perseverance was required in order to gain a hearing for his theory ; and 
 in this respect the recent discovery of the New World was a great help 
 to a revolutionary astronomer. There was now no obstacle to the Earth 
 circulating in space, since it had been demonstrated that it forms, with the 
 ocean, one single globe; that it is not immoderately large, and that there 
 may really exist underneath us inhabitants whose feet are opposed to our 
 own. Yet to no man is granted the power of discovering all truths at 
 once. Copernicus continued to deceive himself, in common with the 
 ancients, in reference to the movements of the planets, and he made a 
 great error in his theory of what he called the “third movement of the 
 Earth.” In spite of these mistakes and shortcomings, Copernicus is the 
 father of those men of genius who have created modern astronomical 
 science ; and the name of the Canon of Frauenburg will be ever memorable, 
 because, to cite his own stately language, he placed “the light of the 
 world—the orb which governs the planets in their circulation—upon a 
 royal throne, in the midst of the Temple of Nature.” Kepler and Newton 
 penetrated much more deeply into the mysteries of the heavenly bodies, 
 but it was Copernicus who gave them the key; and even at the present 
 day, after their immortal labours, the true explanation of the universe is 
 called the Copernican system. 
 
1473 
 1497 
 1500 
 1530 
 
 1543 
 
 COPERNICUS 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 BORN AT THORN, PRUSSIA. 
 
 SETTLED AT BOLOGNA 
 
 AT ROME 
 
 “DE REVOLUTIONIBUS ORBIUM CQELESTIUM” . 
 DIED 
 
KEPLER 
 
 1571-1630 
 
 THE LAWS OF CELESTIAL MOTION 
 
 JoHN KeEp.er, one of the greatest astronomers of all ages, was a native of 
 Magstatt, near the imperial city of Weil, in the duchy of Wiirtemberg. His 
 parents were Henry Kepler and Catharine Guldenmann, both of noble, 
 though decayed, families. Henry Kepler at the time of his marriage was a 
 petty officer in the Duke of Wiirtemberg’s service; and a few months after 
 the birth of his eldest son John, in 1571, he joined the army then serving 
 in the Netherlands. His wife followed him, leaving their son, then in his 
 fifth year, at Leonberg, under the care of his grandfather. He was a seven- 
 months child, very weak and sickly ; and after recovering with difficulty from 
 a severe attack of small-pox, he was sent to school in 1577. Henry Kepler's 
 limited income was still further reduced on his return into Germany the 
 following year in consequence of the absconding of one of his acquaintances 
 for whom he had incautiously become surety. His circumstances were so 
 much narrowed by this misfortune that he was obliged to sell his house and 
 nearly all that he possessed, and for several years he supported his family by 
 keeping a tavern at Elmendingen. This occasioned great interruption to 
 young Kepler’s education ; he was taken from school and employed in menial 
 services till his twelfth year, when he was again placed in the school at 
 Elmendingen. In the following year he was again seized with a violent 
 
KEBLE 
 
 } 
 
 illness so that his life was almost despaired of. In 1586 he was admitted 
 into the monastic school of Maulbronn, where the cost of his education 
 was defrayed by the Duke of Wiirtemberg. 
 
 The three years following his admission to Maulbronn were marked by 
 periodical returns of several of the disorders which had well nigh proved 
 fatal to him in his childhood. During the time some disagreements arose 
 between his parents, in consequence of which his father quitted his home, 
 and soon after died abroad. After his father’s departure his mother also 
 quarrelled with her relations, having, we are informed, been treated “ with a 
 degree of barbarity by her husband and brother-in-law that was hardly 
 exceeded even by her own perverseness.” Notwithstanding these disadvan- 
 tages Kepler took his degree of Master at Tiibingen—with which university 
 the school of Maulbronn was connected—in 1591, attaining the second place 
 in the annual examination. 
 
 Two years afterwards the astronomical lectureship at Gratz in Styria 
 became vacant and was offered to Kepler, who was forced to accept this 
 situation by the authority of his professional tutors. In 1597 he married a 
 beautiful and noble lady, who was a widow for the second time, though only 
 twenty-three years of age. The income he derived from his professorship 
 was very small, and as his wife’s fortune turned out much less than he had 
 been led to expect, he was not only annoyed by pecuniary difficulties, but 
 involved in disputes with his wife’s relations. 
 
 On the outbreak of the religious persecutions in Styria, Kepler, who 
 was an avowed Protestant, judged it prudent to retire into Hungary. He 
 was soon recalled to Gratz by the States of Styria, but the city was still 
 divided into two factions, and Kepler found his situation very uncomfortable. 
 
 In 1599 he went to Prague to assist the distinguished astronomer 
 Tycho Brahé in his researches. His position was not, however, improved. 
 “ Everything is uncertain here,” he wrote to his friends. “Tycho is an 
 ill-tempered man, with whom it is impossible to live.” Handsome remu- 
 neration had been promised to Kepler, but he experienced much difficulty 
 in procuring payment, and had to extort from Tycho, florin by florin, the 
 means of subsistence. Fortunately for him Tycho died in 1601, and he 
 was soon afterwards appointed principal mathematician to the Emperor 
 Rodolph, with a pension of 1500 florins. He now fixed his residence at 
 Linz. ‘The pay is good,” he writes, “but the exchequer is empty. I 
 spend my time at the door of the Crown Treasurer and in begging.” 
 Kepler was consoled for all these mortifications by the free use which he 
 
LIBRARY 
 GF THE 
 UOIVERSITY OF ILLING'S 
 
KEPLER 4 
 
 had from this time of the original observations of Tycho, and the possibility 
 of discovering in them the secret of the planetary movements. In 1611 
 he lost three children, as well as his wife, who had become first epileptic and 
 then mad. 
 
 After the death of Rodolph, his successor, the Emperor Matthias, 
 continued Kepler in the office of Imperial Mathematician, and sent him to 
 the Diet of Ratisbon to assist in the correction of the calendar. The 
 arrears then due to him amounted to 12,000 crowns, and although he 
 travelled in the retinue of the Emperor he was obliged, in order to live, 
 to compose little almanacs containing prognostications. Poverty soon after- 
 wards placed him under the necessity of accepting a chair of mathematics at 
 Linz. There he contracted a second marriage with the beautiful Susanna 
 Reuthinger, by whom he had seven children. 
 
 His happiness was of brief duration. The priests of Linz and the 
 Protestant pastors of Wurtemberg simultaneously brought against him a 
 charge of heresy which he had great trouble in rebutting. In 1615 a 
 letter arrived from Kepler’s sister imploring the aid of this great man in 
 favour of their mother, who was accused of witchcraft. The suit lasted more 
 than five years. After having vainly demanded in writing the intervention 
 of the Duke of Wirtemberg to stop this extraordinary persecution, Kepler 
 journeyed on horseback from Linz to Stuttgart, in order to try the effect of 
 his personal solicitations. In spite of his high renown, he couid only succeed 
 in modifying the sentence pronounced on his mother, who was then seventy- 
 five years of age. The judges decided that the executioner should territy 
 the old woman by showing to her one by one the instruments of torture, 
 explaining to her at the same time their mode of action and the progressive 
 increase of the pain they inflicted. This terrible explanation was made, 
 but the old woman resisted all threats, and wound up with this declaration : 
 “T will say in the midst of the torments that I am a witch, but it will be 
 a lie all the same.” Her courage produced such an effect that she was 
 released. Kepler returned to Linz, but his enemies insulted him to such a 
 degree as the son of a witch that he was obliged to leave Austria. 
 
 Previously to this, in 1620, Kepler was visited by Sir Henry Wotton, 
 the English ambassador at Venice, who, finding him oppressed by pecuniary 
 difficulties, urged him to go over to England, where he assured him of a 
 welcome and an honourable reception; but Kepler could not resolve upon 
 the proposed journey, although in his letters he often returned to the 
 
 consideration of it. 
 
2 KEPLER 
 
 Soon afterwards Albert Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, a great patron 
 of astrology and one of the most distinguished men of the age, made a most 
 munificent offer to Kepler, who in consequence took up his residence at 
 Sagan, in Silesia. The duke treated him with liberality and distinction, and 
 by his influence with the Duke of Mecklenburg he obtained for him a 
 professorship in the University of Rostock. 
 
 In the frequent journeys on horseback which he made between Sagan 
 and Ratisbon to obtain the arrears of his pay from the Emperor, his health 
 gave way, and he died at the age of fifty-nine. He left at his death 
 twenty-two crowns, one coat, two shirts, and no books except fifty-seven 
 copies of his “‘ Ephemerides” and sixteen copies of his “ Rodolphine Tables.” 
 His body was buried in St. Peter’s churchyard at Ratisbon. 
 
 This great man published no fewer than thirty-three separate works. 
 His discoveries in optics, general physics, and geometry are numerous ; but 
 his fame rests chiefly on the discovery of three remarkable laws by which 
 the movements of all the planets are explained. The first of ‘“ Kepler's 
 Laws,’ as they are called, is that planets move round the sun in ellipses or 
 ovals, and not in circles ; the second law is that planets describe equal areas 
 about their centre in equal times; and the third law is that the squares of 
 the periodic times of the planets are proportional to the cubes of their dis- 
 tances. Even if Kepler had never turned his attention to the heavens, his 
 optical labours would, as Sir David Brewster justly points out, have given 
 him a high rank amongst the original inquirers of his age ; but when we 
 consider him also as the discoverer of the three great laws which bear his 
 name we must assign him a rank next to that of Newton. The history of 
 science does not present us with any discoveries more truly original, or which 
 required for their establishment a more acute and vigorous mind. The 
 speculations of his predecessors afforded him no assistance. From the 
 cumbrous machinery adopted by Copernicus, Kepler passed at one step to 
 an elliptical orbit, with the sun in one of its foci; and from that moment 
 astronomy became a demonstrative science. The splendid discoveries of 
 Newton sprang immediately from those of Kepler, and completed the great 
 chain of truths which constitute the laws of the planetary system. The 
 eccentricity and boldness of Kepler's genius form a striking contrast with 
 the calm intellect and the enduring patience of Newton. ‘The bright spark 
 which the genius of the one elicited was fostered by the sagacity of the other 
 into a steady and enduring flame. 
 
1571 
 1591 
 1594 
 1596 
 1601 
 1602 
 1604 
 1606 
 1609 
 1612 
 1619 
 1627 
 1630 
 
 KEPLER 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 DATE OF BIRTH. 
 
 M.A. AT TUBINGEN : 
 LECTURER ON ASTRONOMY AT GRATZ 
 
 “ PRODROMUS DISSERTAT. COSMOGRAPH.” 
 ASSISTANT TO TYCHO BRAHE 
 
 “DE FUNDAMENTIS ASTROLOGLA” 
 “PARALIPOMENA AD VITELLIONEM ” 
 “DE STELLA NOVA” 
 
 “« ASTRONOMIA NOVA”. 
 
 PROF. AT LINZ; MATHEMATICIAN TO EMPEROR 
 “DE COMETIS”; “HARMONICE MUNDI” 
 “TABULA RUDOLPHINA” . 
 
 DIED AT RATISBON 
 
KOE Pia Bak 
 
 TH GAWs370 FS Sst0 TLON: 
 
 Copernicus, by his discovery of the movement of the earth and 
 planets round the sun, laid the foundations of modern astronomy. Galileo 
 strengthened the building by basing the system upon new proofs. But the 
 real form of the earth’s orbit and that of the other planets, and the velocity 
 with which they moved in the various portions of those orbits, and their 
 relative distances from the central body remained for Kepler to determine. 
 
 Kepler's First Law.—Kach planet describes round the sun an orbit of 
 elliptic form, and the centre of the sun always occupies one of the foci. 
 
 Kepler's Second Law.—The areas described or passed over by the radii 
 vectores of a planet, round the solar focus, are proportionate to the time 
 taken in describing them. 
 
 Kepler's Third Law.—The squares of the times of revolution of the 
 planets round the sun are proportional to the cubes of the major axes. 
 
GALILEO 
 
 1564-1642 
 
 THE PIONEER OF SCIENCE IN MODERN TIMES 
 
 AmoneG the great men who have contributed to the advance of science 
 there are not many whose lives possess so much interest for the mass of 
 men as that of Galileo. Personalities are the delight of the gossip; truth 
 is the joy of the philosopher. To uncultivated persons a man’s “ life” 
 means what he outwardly does and what visibly befalls him. To the 
 philosophic and reflective it means what he thinks, what he loves, and learns 
 and teaches. The former hunger for adventures, the latter eagerly watch 
 the growth of a mind. But there are very few lives exclusively of the one 
 kind or the other. “‘ The web of our life is of a mingled yarn.” The great 
 man is still a man, and the scientific interest is closely inwoven with the 
 human. This is the case to an unusual degree with Galileo. He was not 
 only the man of science, but he was one of “the martyrs of science ;” and 
 to this fact is clearly owing the strong hold which his name has gained on 
 the imagination and interest of men in general. 
 
 Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa, then a dependency of Florence, 
 February 18, 1564. It was the year of Shakspeare’s birth. Bacon was 
 born three years earlier, Campanella four years later, Kepler seven years 
 later. Copernicus had been dead about twenty years. Descartes, Milton, 
 Spinoza, and Locke, were born in the lifetime of Galileo; and Newton was 
 
2 GALILEO 
 
 born the same year that Galileo died. The Galilei family were of noble 
 rank. In boyhood Galileo showed great mechanical inventiveness, and also 
 a fondness for literature. He received his early education at the convent 
 of Vallombrosa, near Florence, was trained in Greek and Latin, and 
 acquired a good style. He tasted of monkish logic, was disgusted, and 
 abandoned it. He had some leaning to a monastic life, and entered upon 
 the novitiate; but his father withdrew him, and wished to make him a 
 physician. At seventeen he entered the University of Pisa to study 
 medicine, and attended the lectures of the famous Andrea Cesalpino. 
 His “ gifts” were so various that, like Leonardo, he seemed fit to be and 
 to do anything; might be musician, painter, orator, mathematician, 
 mechanician. 
 
 As with Pascal, mathematics were forbidden him, lest they should 
 seduce him from his appointed course. But in 1583, in Pisa cathedral, his 
 thoughts wandering from the service, he watched the swinging of a bronze 
 lamp—it still hangs there—and observed that its oscillations, long or short, 
 were made in equal times. This led him, through experiments, to the 
 discovery of the isochronism of the pendulum. The first use he made of it 
 was to apply it to the pulse, and it was named pulsilogia. Long years had 
 to pass before it was applied to clockwork. The same year he accidentally 
 overheard a mathematical lesson given, his native passion was awakened, 
 and Hippocrates and Galen were presently laid aside for Euclid and 
 Archimedes. 
 
 In 1586 he left the University without taking a degree. At Florence 
 he lectured on Dante's “ Inferno.” About the same time he invented and 
 described the hydrostatical balance; and by his work on the centre of 
 gravity in solids acquired the designation of “ the Archimedes of his time.” 
 His reputation now procured him an introduction to the Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany, and an appointment as lecturer on mathematics at Pisa (1589). 
 During his stay he made experiments in dynamical science, and convinced 
 the Aristotelians against their will of the true law of falling bodies. They 
 could neither refute nor rejoice in him; and his sarcastic style exasperated 
 them. He was hissed at his lectures, and in 1591 he retired to Florence. 
 In the following year he was appointed by the Venetian government to 
 the chair of Mathematics at Padua. This post he filled for eighteen years 
 with immense success and popularity. 
 
 To this period (1591-1610) belong a series of inventions and great 
 discoveries: the proportional compasses, the first thermometer, the 
 
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GALILEO 3 
 
 telescope, and the swift train of startling disclosures made by the last when 
 first directed to the heavens. Galileo was not the inventor of the telescope. 
 Report reached him of such an instrument made in the Netherlands; he 
 seized upon the conception and immediately made one with his own hands. 
 It was his distinction to be the first to apply it to the study of the heavens. 
 He quickly improved upon his first attempt, and afterwards made hundreds 
 of instruments. ‘They were in demand all over Europe. The results of the 
 first few months were astounding. Discovery after discovery gave the lie 
 to the doctrines of the blind guides. First, the moon revealed the 
 mountainous configuration of her surface; next, the Milky Way resolved 
 itself into separate stars; the four moons of Jupiter were seen; the ring of 
 Saturn was seen, but not recognised as such; Venus appeared in a crescent 
 shape; and the Sun-spots were discovered. How is it possible for us, 
 familiar all our lives with these facts, to imagine the confused excitement 
 of delight and consternation which accompanied their first disclosure ? 
 The grand scientific result of the whole was the demonstration of the truth 
 of the Copernican theory, which, after making its way for nearly a century 
 so slowly as to seem almost lost, now arose to life, victorious over all 
 gainsayers. Galileo had early accepted this theory, but had abstained from 
 avowing it, more, he says, from fear of derision than of persecution. But 
 he might well dread both. For, had he not heard, in February 1600, how 
 the brave thinker, Giordano Bruno, was burned at Rome? He must have 
 known Bruno’s works and learnt something from them; and if the terror 
 entered into him, can we wonder ? 
 
 It was during his residence at Padua, in 1597, that his friendship with 
 Kepler began, which lasted till Kepler’s death in 1632. 
 
 Galileo was a courtly man, and he not only named the new-found 
 satellites the “ Medicean stars,” but named each of the four after some 
 member of the ducal family. In September 1610 he settled at Florence, 
 as philosopher and mathematician to the Grand Duke. In the spring of 
 1611 he visited Rome, was cordially received, and with his “ 
 showed the wonders of the heavens to the folk of the papal court. 
 
 But it was soon evident that the conclusive demonstration of the 
 Copernican theory was, with the Church, a casus belli; and the war began. 
 Galileo had no wish to raise discussion on the relation of Scripture to 
 Science, but once begun he accepted it fiercely. During 1615 there was 
 a suspension of arms; and Galileo was again well received at Rome at 
 the end of the year. The Inquisition interfered; but only to decree the 
 
 optic tube ” 
 
4 GALILEO 
 
 Copernican theory to be absurd and false. Bellarmine, the leading member 
 of the Holy College, gave Galileo a warning not to hold, teach, or defend 
 the condemned doctrine. He gave him also a certificate that no abjuration 
 was required, no penance imposed. The next sixteen years he spent in 
 scholarly quiet at Florence. Ominous tidings, however, reached him in 
 February 1619, of another philosopher— atheist,” of course—Vanini, burned 
 by the Inquisition at Toulouse. 
 
 In 1632 Galileo published his most important work, the “ Dialogue 
 on the Systems of the World.” This was the final signal for action. 
 Proceedings were taken under the authority of a decree of the Holy Office 
 passed in February 1616, an absolute prohibition of the teaching of the 
 condemned theory, which had not been published nor communicated to 
 Galileo. (The existence of this decree, long doubted, has now been verified 
 beyond question.) The old man, now 70, and broken in health, was cited 
 to Rome, and underwent the agony of a trial with “rigorous examination,” 
 but not with the actual torture. His courage failed him, and to save his 
 life he made a lying abjuration. A spectacle too mournful to dwell on! 
 But the truth falls not when her champion turns coward. Henceforward 
 he was the prisoner of the Holy Office, although allowed to return to 
 Florence. 
 
 The next year he lost his beloved daughter—she dies, although 
 
 “He loved her most, and thought to set his rest 
 On her kind nursery.” 
 
 In 1636 he became blind. His last years were spent at his country-house 
 at Arcetri; and here, in 1639, Milton visited him. He is mentioned in 
 ‘“ Paradise Lost,” but no particulars of the interview are given us. What 
 could Milton—he who could unshrinking face a world in arms—what could 
 he say of the abjuration? It might be an exquisite delicacy of feeling that 
 kept him silent. Galileo died at Arcetri, January 8, 1642. 
 
 The original records of his trial, preserved in the Vatican, were first 
 published im extenso in 1867. Of recent works on Galileo the most note- 
 worthy is that by von Gebler, entitled “ Galileo Galilei und Romische 
 Curie,” which has finally cleared up the story of the trial. An English 
 translation was published in 1879. The first complete edition of Galileo's 
 works appeared at Florence m 1842-56, in 15 vols. 8vo. There is a good 
 English biography of Galileo, by Drinkwater. 
 
GEASS Te iiaiia®) 
 
 SeLiehiOiN O10. GY Oi HL Seeinl BE 
 
 1564 BORN AT PISA. 
 
 1581 ENTERED UNIVERSITY OF PISA. , 
 
 1582 DISCOVERED LAW OF VIBRATION OF PENDULUM . 
 1589-92 LECTURER AND PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS . 
 1597 FRIENDSHIP WITH KEPLER COMMENCED . 
 
 1603 INVENTED THERMOMETER . 
 
 1609 CONSTRUCTED TELESCOPE . 
 
 1610 “SIDEREUS NUNCIUS”; DISCOVERED SATELLITES 
 OF JUPITER. 
 
 1611 REMOVED TO FLORENCE; VISITED ROME. 
 1615 APPEARED BEFORE THE INQUISITION AT ROME 
 1624 VISITED ROME AGAIN. 
 
 1632 “DIALOGO SOPRA I DUE MASSIMI SISTEMI DEL 
 MONDO” . 
 
 1633 SUMMONED TO ROME, SIGNED ABJURATION 
 
 1688 “DISCORSO E DEMOSTR. INTORNO ALLE DUE NUOVE 
 SCIENZE” 
 
 1642 DIED AT ARCETRI 
 
GAT eta® 
 
 PREFACE TO THE DIALOGUES ON THE COPERNICAN 
 
 SYSTEM. 
 Jupicious READER,— 
 
 THERE was published some years since in Rome a salutiferous 
 Edict that, for the obviating of the dangerous Scandals of the present Age, 
 imposed a seasonable silence upon the Pythagorean Opinion of the mobility 
 of the Earth. There want not such as unadvisedly affirm, that that decree 
 was not the production of a sober scrutiny, but of an ill-formed passion ; 
 one may hear some mutter that Consultors altogether ignorant of Astrono- 
 mical Observations ought not to clip the wings of speculative wits with 
 rash Prohibitions. My zeal cannot keep silence when I hear these incon- 
 siderate complaints. I thought fit, as being thoroughly acquainted with 
 that prudent determination, to appear openly upon the Theatre of the 
 World, as a Witness of the naked Truth. I was at that time in Rome; 
 and had not only the audience but applauds of the most Eminent Prelates 
 of that Court; nor was that Decree published without Previous Notice given 
 me thereof. Therefore it is my resolution in the present case to give 
 Foreign Nations to see, that this point is as well understood in Italy, and 
 particularly in Rome, as Transalpine Diligence can imaginé it to be; and 
 collecting together all the proper Speculations that concern the Copernican 
 System to let them know, that the notice of all preceded the censure of the 
 Roman Court; and that there proceed from this Climate not only Doctrines 
 for the health of the Soul, but also ingenious Discoveries for the recreating 
 of the mind. 
 To this end I have personated the Copernican in this Discourse; 
 proceeding upon a Hypothesis purely Mathematical; striving by all artificial 
 
GALLE 7 
 
 ways to represent it Superior, not to that of the Immobility of the Earth 
 absolutely, but according as it is mentioned by some that retain no more 
 but the name of Peripatetics, and are content, without going farther, to 
 adore Shadows, not philosophising with requisite caution, but with the sole 
 remembrance of four Principles but badly understood. 
 
 We shall treat of three principal heads. First I will endeavour to 
 show that all Experiments that can be made upon the Earth are insufficient 
 means to conclude its Mobility, but are indifferently applicable to the Earth, 
 moveable or immoveable: and I hope that on this occasion we shall dis- 
 cover many observable passages unknown to the Ancients. Secondly, we 
 will examine the Celestial Phenomena that support the Copernican 
 Hypothesis, as if it were to prove absolutely victorious; adding by the 
 way certain new observations, which yet serve only for the Astronomical 
 Facility, not for Natural Necessity. In the third place, I will propose an 
 ingenious Fancy. I remember that I have said many years since that the 
 unknown Problems of the Tide might receive some light, admitting the 
 Earth’s Motion. This Position of mine passing from one to another had 
 found charitable Fathers that adopted it for the Issue of their own wit. 
 Now, because no stranger may ever appear that defending himself with our 
 arms, shall charge us with want of caution in so principal an Accident, I 
 have thought good to lay down those probabilities that would render it 
 credible, admitting that the Earth did move. I hope that by these con- 
 siderations the world will come to know that if other Nations have navigated 
 more than we, we have not studied less than they; and that our returning 
 to assert the Earth’s Stability, and to take the contrary only for a mathe- 
 matical Caprice proceeded not from inadvertency of what others have 
 thought thereof, but (had we no other inducements) from those Reasons 
 that Piety, Religion, the knowledge of the Divine Omnipotency, and a 
 consciousness of the incapacity of man’s Understanding dictates unto us. 
 
 With all I conceived it very proper to express these conceits by way 
 of Dialogue which, as not being bound up to the rigid observance of 
 Mathematical Laws, gives place also to Digressions that are sometimes no 
 less curious than the principal Argument. 
 
 I chanced to be several years since at several times in the Stupendous 
 City of Venice, where I conversed with Signore Giovan Francesco Sagredo, 
 of a Noble extraction, and piercing wit. There came thither from Florence 
 
8 GALLE 
 
 at the same time Signore Filippo Salviati, whose least glory was the eminence 
 of his blood, and magnificence of his estate; a sublime Wit that fed not 
 more hungrily upon any pleasure than on elevated Speculations. In the 
 company of these two I often discoursed of these matters before a certain 
 Peripatetic Philosopher, who seemed to have no greater obstacle in under- 
 standing of the Truth, than the fame he had acquired by Aristotelian 
 Interpretations. 
 
 Now seeing that inexorable Death hath deprived Venice and Florence 
 of those two great Lights in the very meridian of their years, I did resolve, 
 as far as my poor ability would permit, to perpetuate their lives to their 
 honour in these leaves, bringing them in as Interlocutors in the present 
 Controversy. Nor shall the Honest Peripatetic want his place, to whom for 
 his excessive affection towards the Commentaries of Simplicius, [ thought 
 fit, without mentioning his own name, to leave that of the Author he so 
 much respected. Let those two great souls, ever venerable to my heart, 
 please to accept this public Monument to Posterity, the Considerations I 
 have promised. at 
 
 There casually happened (as was usual) several discourses at times 
 between these Gentlemen, the which had rather inflamed than satisfied in 
 their wits the thirst they had to be learning; whereupon they took a 
 discreet resolution to meet together for certain days, in which, all other 
 business set aside, they might betake themselves more methodically to 
 contemplate the wonders of God in Heaven, and in the Earth: the place 
 appointed for their meeting being in the Palace of the Noble Sagredo. 
 After the due, but very short compliments, Signore Salviati began in this 
 manner. 
 
HARVEY 
 
 1578-1657 
 
 DISCOVERER OF THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD 
 
 WitiramM Harvey, the greatest physiologist the world has seen, was a 
 native of Folkestone, in Kent. His father was a yeoman in substantial 
 circumstances, and brought up a large family, nine in number, five of whom 
 became merchants of note and consideration in the city of London. At 
 ten years of age William Harvey was sent to the grammar school at 
 Canterbury, and at sixteen was entered a pensioner of Caius College, 
 Cambridge, where he spent some years in the study of logic and natural 
 philosophy, as preparatory to the study of medicine. He next travelled 
 through France and Germany to the University of Padua, then the most 
 celebrated school of medicine in the world, where he attended with the 
 utmost diligence the lectures of Minadous, Fabrizio d’Acquapendente, and 
 Casserius. From the first he attracted the marked notice of his eminent 
 teachers, who, high as was the estimate they had formed of his abilities 
 and attainments, were nevertheless surprised at the accuracy and extent 
 of the knowledge which he evinced preparatory to his doctor's degree. 
 This was conferred upon him in 1602, and his diploma is couched in terms 
 of extraordinary approbation. 
 
2 HARVEY 
 
 Having returned to England in the course of the same year, he was 
 incorporated Doctor of Medicine at Cambridge; and then going to London, 
 and taking to himself a wife, in his twenty-sixth year, he entered on the 
 practice of his profession. On the recommendation of King James LI, 
 backed by that of the President and of several members of the College of 
 Physicians, he was elected physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and 
 afterwards he was appointed Lumleian lecturer on anatomy and surgery in 
 the College of Physicians—an office then held not for a definite period only, 
 but for life. Harvey commenced his lectures in 1616, and is generally 
 supposed to have expounded on this occasion those original and complete 
 views of the circulation of the blood which have rendered his name 
 immortal. It was not, however, until 1628 that he gave his views to the 
 world at large in his celebrated treatise entitled “ Exercitatio Anatomica, 
 de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis,” having then, as he states in the preface, 
 for nine years and more, gone on demonstrating the subject before his 
 auditory at the College of Physicians, illustrating it by new and additional 
 arguments, and freeing it from the objections raised by the skilful among 
 anatomists. This discovery was of such vast importance to medical science, 
 that when men became satisfied, as they did in the course of a few years, 
 that it could not be contested, several put in a claim for the prize 
 themselves, and many affirmed the discovery to be due to others. 
 
 At one period Harvey’s professional emoluments must have been very 
 large ; but it is sad to relate that the appearance of his admirable “ Exercise 
 on the Motion of the Heart and Blood,” while it immortalized his name, 
 gave a decided check to his professional prosperity. Aubrey tells us he had 
 “heard him (Harvey) say that after his book on the ‘Circulation of the 
 Blood’ came out, he fell mightily in his practice; ‘twas believed by the 
 vulgar that he was crack-brained, and all the physitians were against him.” 
 
 About the year 1618 Harvey was chosen one of the physicians 
 extraordinary to the reigning sovereign, James I., and afterwards he became 
 physician in ordinary to Charles J. He always spoke of the latter monarch 
 in terms of unfeigned love and respect; and King Charles, in turn, loved 
 and honoured his physician. It was certainly worthy of the sovereign who 
 appreciated, while he commanded, the talents of a Vandyke and a Rubens, 
 that he also prized and encouraged the less brilliant but not less useful 
 genius of a Harvey. 
 
LIBRARY 
 QF THE 
 UOUIVERSITY OF ILLINT'S 
 
HAK MEY 3 
 
 For a considerable time Harvey followed the fortunes of his royal 
 master. He was with him at the battle of Edgehill, and during the 
 engagement, as we are told by Aubrey, the Prince of Wales and the Duke 
 of York were committed to his care, when “ he withdrew with them under 
 a hedge, and tooke out of his pocket a booke and read. But he had not 
 read very long before a bullet of a great gun grazed on the ground neare 
 him, which made him remove his station.” Harvey accompanied the King 
 to Oxford after the battle, and was there incorporated Doctor of Medicine. 
 In 1645 he was, by royal mandate, elected warden of Merton College, in 
 place of Nathaniel Brent, who had withdrawn himself from the office, had 
 left the University, and had taken the covenant. This preferment was 
 merited by Harvey, on account not only of his fidelity and services, but 
 of his sufferings in the royal cause, for during the confusion of the times 
 his house in London was plundered of its furniture, and—what was a much 
 heavier loss—of his papers, containing a great number of anatomical 
 observations, particularly with regard to the generation of insects. 
 
 He did not long possess the wardenship of Merton College, for upon 
 the surrender of Oxford to the Parliament he left the University and 
 repaired to London. From this time he lived in a retired manner, residing 
 either at Lambeth, or in the house of one of his brothers at Richmond. 
 
 In the seventy-first year of his age he was prevailed upon by his 
 intimate friend, Dr. George Ent, to permit the publication of his second 
 great work, “ Exercises on the Generation of Animals,” which had employed 
 so large a portion of his time and attention. Indeed, no one appears to 
 have possessed in a greater degree that genuine modesty which distinguishes 
 the real philosopher from the superficial pretender to science. His great 
 discovery was not publicly offered to the world till after a nine years’ 
 probation among his colleagues at home; and the labours of all the latter 
 part of his life would scarcely have appeared till after his death, had not 
 the importunities of a friend extorted them from him. 
 
 Worn down by repeated attacks of gout he died on June 3, 1657, 
 and was buried at Hempstead, in Essex. 
 
 “ Tn person,” says Aubrey, who knew him well, “ Harvey was not tall, 
 but of the lowest stature ; round-faced, olivaster (like wainscot) complexion, 
 little eye—round, very black, full of spirit—his hair black as a raven, but 
 quite white twenty years before he died.” 
 
4 HARVEY 
 
 The honour of discovering the circulation of the blood has been 
 assigned to others. The claims of Fra Paolo Sarpi to be ranked among 
 discoverers in this line of inquiry have proved on investigation to be of 
 the flimsiest description. Andrea Cesalpino’s ideas on the circulation of the 
 blood were far nearer the truth, and, in fact, he had very nearly approached 
 and well-nigh anticipated Harvey. To Cesalpino’s theory Harvey added 
 little, but that little was all-important, namely, the demonstration of the 
 true function of the heart. Three centuries have now elapsed since Harvey 
 first saw the light, and two and a half from the “natal day of the 
 circulation” (as he terms the date of the first appearance of his book) ; 
 but, as a living writer remarks, we have not yet exhausted the consequences 
 of his labours. Although each succeeding generation has contributed its 
 quota of new knowledge to that already accumulated, what they have done 
 has but prepared the path of investigation for those to come. Their task, 
 however, will still be to correct and complete, not to supersede, the work 
 of the great English physiologist. His theory must always be the indis- 
 pensable sub-structure upon which the science of animal life is founded ; 
 and each successive storey added to the edifice, each buttress by which it is 
 strengthened, each pinnacle by which it is embellished, serves to enhance 
 the glory of him who drew his plans so straight and laid his foundations 
 so sure. 
 
1578 
 1593 
 1599 
 1602 
 1615 
 1623 
 1628 
 
 1632 
 1645 
 1649 
 
 1651 
 1657 
 
 IE va dan WW In Ye 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 BORN AT FOLKESTONE. 
 
 ENTERED CAMBRIDGE . 
 
 STUDIED AT PADUA 
 
 RETURNED TO ENGLAND; M.D. . 
 
 LUMLEIAN LECTURER ON ANATOMY AND SURGERY 
 PHYSICIAN TO JAMES I. 
 
 “EXERCITATIO ANATOMICA DE MOTU CORDIS ET 
 SANGUINIS IN ANIMALIBUS ” : : 
 
 PHYSICIAN TO CHARLES I.. 
 WARDEN OF MERTON COLLEGE 
 
 “HXERCITATIONES DUA ANATOMIC DE CIRCU- 
 LATIONE SANGUINIS,” &e. . ; : A 
 
 “ HXERCITATIONES DE GENERATIONE ANIMALIUM ” 
 DIED 
 
VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 HARVEY 
 
 CONTENTS OF HIS WORK ON THE CIRCULATION 
 
 . The Author’s Motives for Writing. 
 
 . On the Motions of the Heart, as seen in the Dissection of Living 
 
 Animals. 
 
 . Of the Motions of Arteries, as seen in the Dissection of Living 
 
 Animals. 
 
 . Of the Motion of the Heart and its Auricles, as seen in the Bodies 
 
 of Living Animals. 
 
 . Of the Motion, Action, and Office of the Heart. 
 . Of the Course by which the Blood is carried from the Vena Cava 
 
 into the Arteries, or from the right into the left Ventricle of the 
 Heart. ; 
 
 The Blood percolates the substance of the Lungs from the right 
 Ventricle of the Heart into the Pulmonary Veins and _ left 
 Ventricle. 
 
 Of the quantity of Blood passing through the Heart from the Veins 
 to the Arteries, and of the circular Motion of the Blood. 
 
 That there is a Circulation of the Blood is confirmed from the first 
 Proposition. 
 
 The first position: Of the quantity of Blood passing from the Veins 
 to the Arteries; and that there is a Circuit of the Blood, freed 
 from objections, and farther confirmed by experiment. 
 
8 HARVEY 
 
 XI. The second Proposition is demonstrated. 
 
 XII. That there is a Circulation of the Blood is shown from the second 
 position demonstrated. 
 
 XII. The third position is confirmed, and the Circulation of the Blood is 
 demonstrated from it. 
 
 XIV. Conclusion of the demonstration of the Circulation. 
 
 XV. The Circulation of the Blood is further confirmed by probable 
 
 reasons. 
 
 XVI. The Circulation of the Blood is further proved from certain con- 
 sequences. 
 
 XVII. The Motion and Circulation of the Blood are confirmed from the 
 particulars apparent in the structure of the Heart, and from those 
 things which Dissection unfolds. 
 
NEWTON 
 
 1642-1727 
 
 eet AW OH GRAVITATION 
 
 THE little village of Woolsthorpe, in the county of Lincoln, was the 
 birth-place of Newton, who was born in the year that marked the death 
 of Galileo. His father dying previous to his birth, and his mother 
 marrying a second time when he was three years old, he grew up under the 
 charge of his grandmother. At the age of twelve he was sent to the public 
 school at Grantham, and for a time was rather inattentive to his studies, 
 and the last in his class. But one day an incident occurred which effectually 
 roused his dormant faculties. The boy who stood above Newton in the 
 class gave him a severe kick on the way to school, the thought of which 
 rankling in his breast during the morning session, induced him at the close 
 to challenge the boy to a fight in the churchyard, and he had the good 
 fortune to vanquish him; but, though beaten in the churchyard, the boy 
 still stood above him in the class, and Newton determined to supplement the 
 muscular victory by a mental triumph; and though the conflict was longer, 
 it was, like the first, successful, and the position once gained was never lost. 
 
 Without doubt Newton’s indolence arose from the fact that his health 
 was extremely delicate, and he was already occupied with subjects more 
 
2 NEWTON 
 
 entertaining to him; for he passed all his leisure in constructing little models 
 of known machines, and amusing contrivances for his playmates. He made 
 a water-clock, the index of which was turned by a piece of wood, which 
 rose and fell according to the force of the water. A windmill that was 
 turned by a mouse, and a chair that was propelled by the person occupying 
 it, were others that the “sober, silent, and thinking lad” amused himself by 
 constructing. 
 
 After three years at Grantham, his mother, now a second time a 
 widow, returned to Woolsthorpe, and called Isaac from his school to help 
 her in managing the little farm. But his decided tastes for study and 
 meditation prevented him from rendering much service, and, upon the 
 advice of an uncle, it was decided that he should prepare for Cambridge. 
 He was at this time experimenting on the subject of the resistance of 
 fluids—endeavouring to find out the proper form of a body which would 
 experience the least resistance when moving in a fluid. In 1658, on the day 
 of the great storm, (the day that Cromwell died), we find the boy of sixteen 
 determining the force of the gale, by jumping first in the direction of, and 
 then in a direction opposed to, the wind; comparing the length of these 
 jumps with the length of a jump made in a calm day, he computed the 
 violence of the storm. 
 
 After a year or more of preparation he entered college, followed the 
 mathematical lectures of Barrow, familiarised himself with the geometry of 
 Descartes and Wallis’s “ Arithmetic of Infinites” ; and, as a result of these 
 studies, put to paper his discovery of the Method of Fluxions. He was 
 also occupied with making researches on the decomposition of light, in 
 which he detected the errors of Descartes, and established his own views on | 
 the subject. 
 
 In 1665, on account of the plague, the students at Cambridge were 
 dismissed for a time; and it is related that while at home, seated in the 
 garden, the fall of an apple directed his mind to the idea of the law of 
 gravitation, which he afterwards perfected to his lasting renown. “ It 
 occurred to him that as the same power by which the apple fell to the 
 ground was not sensibly diminished at the greatest distance from the centre 
 of the earth to which we can reach, neither at the summits of the loftiest 
 spires, nor on the tops of the highest mountains, it might extend to the 
 moon, and retain her in her orbit, in the same manner as it bends into 
 
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NEWTON 3 
 
 a curve a stone or a cannon ball, when projected in a straight line from the 
 surface of the earth. If the moon was thus kept in her orbit by gravitation 
 to the earth, or, in other words, its attraction, it was equally probable, he 
 thought, that the planets were kept in their orbits by gravitating towards 
 the sun.” 
 
 After the re-opening of the University Newton took his degrees, and, 
 in 1669, succeeded Barrow as Professor of Mathematics, and in his lectures 
 exposed his theory of the composition of light and the explanation of the 
 phenomenon of the rainbow. He had at this time constructed his reflecting 
 telescope; but the work which added much to his reputation was_ his 
 “Universal Arithmetic,” probably written for his scholars, and which 
 contains many geometrical problems solved by Algebra. 
 
 On the exhibition of his telescope to the King and to the Royal 
 Society, he was elected a member of that body, and, three years later, 
 submitted to them his views on the Inflection and Composition of Light. 
 During the years 1686 and 1687 he presented to the Society his three 
 volumes of the “ Principia,” which contained the exposition of the law of 
 gravity, founded on Picard’s measure of the earth’s diameter, and to which 
 we are to believe the fall of the apple contributed so much. 
 
 The publication of the “ Principia” saw Newton’s life work accom- 
 plished at the early age of forty-five. It brought him fame and riches, 
 which he lived to enjoy forty years longer. He had already represented 
 Cambridge in Parliament; now he was appointed Warden, then Master of 
 the Mint, and was elected President of the Royal Society. After he was 
 ennobled he became a great favourite at the Court of George I. He 
 had found time, during these years of hard scientific labour, to write a 
 “Commentary on the Apocalypse”; but it does not appear that his 
 researches here were very valuable. 
 
 Newton was noted for generosity ; and, after his fortune improved, he 
 lived in good style, with six servants, and often gave sumptuous entertain- 
 ments to his friends and foreigners, and preserved his cheerful, even temper, 
 to the day of his death, which occurred in March 1726. 
 
 “ We owe to Galileo,” says Brewster, “ the study of the laws of gravity ; 
 those which come into play in the fall of bodies on the surface of our globe. 
 Since the time of this great man it has been discovered that gravity is a force 
 inherent in the matter even of which the terrestrial globe is composed ; it is 
 
4 NEWTON 
 
 known that the energy with which it is exercised depends on the distance of 
 the body which is influenced; so that the energy increases when the distance 
 diminishes, and decreases, on the contrary, when the distance augments. 
 
 “ For example, the flattening of the two poles of the terrestrial globe, 
 or what amounts to the same thing, the swelling of the spheroid towards 
 the equatorial regions, causes the distance from the surface to the centre 
 of the globe to increase continually as the equator is approached. It 
 should therefore follow, that the attraction of the Earth on heavy bodies 
 is exercised with much greater intensity at the poles than at the equator. 
 This fact is abundantly proved by observation. 
 
 “The law which regulates this diminution of the force of gravity, 
 when the distance of the heavy body from the centre of the earth increases, 
 is as follows :— 
 
 “To understand the law well in its simplicity, let us imagine a heavy 
 body placed on the surface of the earth, and, consequently, distant from 
 the centre of the length of the earth’s radius, or, in round numbers, 
 4000 miles. Let us place it twice, three times, four times . . . ten times 
 further away. The action of gravity on this body will be four times less at 
 8000 miles; that is to say, at the second position; nine times less at the 
 following position, sixteen times... a hundred times less at the con- 
 secutive distances; in such a manner that, when the distances increase, 
 following the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4,5... 10, &c., the force of gravity 
 diminishes in the proportion of the squares of these same numbers, or 
 becomes 1, 4, 9, 16, 25 . . . 100 times less, and so on. 
 
 “The force of gravity is measured by the space fallen through during 
 the first second of the body’s fall. So that, if experiment shows that a 
 body requires a second to fall from a height of sixteen feet to the surface 
 of the earth, when it is removed to a distance double that of the terrestrial 
 radius, it will not travel more than four feet during the first second of its 
 fall; at a distance sixty times as great as the radius of the earth, it would 
 not fall more than the one-twentieth part of an inch. 
 
 “This number gives precisely the measure of the diminution of the 
 energy of terrestrial gravity on a heavy body situate in space at the mean 
 distance of the Moon. 
 
 “ If, then, the earth exercises its action on bodies situated at whatever 
 distances in space, it ought to act on the Moon, and its action should be 
 
NEWTON: 5 
 
 precisely equal to that which we have just calculated. Such is the question 
 which the genius of Newton put to him, and which he solved, when he 
 showed that the Moon, in moving in its circular orbit, falls towards our 
 earth that very quantity in a second. It is this incessant fall, combined 
 with the centrifugal movement, which, if left to itself, would impel the 
 Moon into space, which produces the elliptical movement of our satellite 
 in her orbit. Such is the bold generalization which served as a point of 
 departure to the great geometer whom we have just named. 
 
 ‘He went farther; he penetrated more profoundly into the secrets 
 of the sublime mechanics which rule the celestial bodies. He extended to 
 all the bodies of our Solar System this law, which is sometimes called ‘ the 
 law of attraction, but more correctly, ‘the law of gravitation.’ 
 
 “ Newton showed, that if the planets move round the Sun, describing 
 elliptical curves, according to the laws the discovery of which is due to 
 Kepler, it is because that they are submitted to a constant force, located, 
 as it were, in the Sun—a force the direction of which is that of a radius 
 vector, or a right line which joins the planet and the common focus. He 
 showed also, that all the circumstances of the movements of the planets are 
 well explained by supposing that the force of gravitation is gravity itself, 
 exercised by the Sun on the planets in the inverse ratio of the squares of 
 their distances. 
 
 “Thus the same force which precipitates on to the surface of the 
 earth bodies abandoned to themselves, is that which maintains the Moon 
 in its orbit. It is a force of similar nature, exercised by the preponderant 
 body of the system—the Sun—which also maintains the planets and the 
 comets in their elliptical orbits, and prevents them from losing themselves 
 in space, following the impulse with which they are animated, and thus 
 
 oO ” 
 breaking up our system. 
 
1642 
 1660 
 1663 
 1665 
 1666 
 1668 
 1669 
 1672 
 
 NEWTON 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 BORN AT WOOLSTHORPE. 
 
 ENTERED TRINITY COLLEGE- 
 
 INVENTED “BINOMIAL THEOREM ” 
 ESTABLISHED “THEORY OF FLUXIONS” . 
 DISCOVERED COMPOSITION OF SOLAR LIGHT . 
 CONSTRUCTED REFLECTING TELESCOPE 
 PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS AT CAMBRIDGE 
 F.R.S. 
 
 1676-7 CORRESPONDED WITH LEIBNITZ 
 
 1686 
 1687 
 
 1689 
 1695 
 1701 
 1705 
 gilt 
 1728 
 
 “ PRINCIPIA ” PRESENTED TO R.S. 
 
 DEFENDED PRIVILEGES OF CAMBRIDGE BEFORE 
 THE HIGH COMMISSION COURT. 
 
 MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT . 
 WARDEN OF THE MINT; PRES. RBS. . 
 M.P. FOR PARLIAMENT 
 
 KNIGHTED 
 
 “METHODUS DIFF.” 
 
 DIED AT KENSINGTON. 
 
NEWTON 
 
 CONTENTS OF HIS WORKS. 
 
 The Principia consists of three Books. The First and Second, which 
 occupy three-fourths of the work, are entitled, On the Motion of Bodies ; the 
 First treating of their motions in free space, and the Second of their motions 
 in a resisting medium, The Third bears the title, On the System of the 
 World. 
 
 The First Book, besides the definition and axioms, or laws of motion, 
 with which it begins, consists of fourteen sections, in the first of which the 
 author explains the method of prime and ultimate ratios used in his 
 investigations, and which is similar to the method of fluxions, more fully 
 explained in the Second Book. The other sections treat of . centripetal 
 forces and motions in fixed and movable orbits. 
 
 The Second Book consists of nine sections, and treats of bodies moving 
 in resisting media, or oscillating as pendulums. 
 
 The Third Book is introduced by the “ Rules of Philosophising.” It 
 consists of five sections —on the Causes of the System of the World; on the 
 Quantity of Lunar Errors; on the Quantity of the Tides; on the Precession 
 of the Equinoxes, and on Comets; and it concludes with a general scholium, 
 containing reflections on the constitution of the universe, and on the 
 “Kternal, Infinite, and Perfect Being,” by whom it is governed. 
 
 The great discovery which characterises the Principia is that of the 
 principle of universal gravitation, that every particle of matter in the universe is 
 attracted by, or gravitates to every other particle of matter, with a force inversely 
 proportional to the squares of their distances. In order to establish this 
 principle, Newton begins by considering the curves, which are generated by 
 
8 NEWTON 
 
 the composition of a direct impressed motion with a gravitation or tendency 
 towards a centre; and having demonstrated that in all cases the areas 
 described by the revolving body are proportional to the times of their 
 description, he shows how to find, from the curves described, the law of 
 force. In the case of a circular orbit passing through the centre of 
 tendency, the force or tendency towards the centre will be in every point 
 as the fifth power of the distance. If the orbit is the proportional spiral, 
 the force will be reciprocally as the cube of the distance. If it is an ellipse, 
 the force towards the centre of it will be directly as the distance. If it is 
 any of the conic sections, the centripetal force or tendency towards the 
 focus will, in all points, be reciprocally as the square of the distance from 
 the focus. If the velocity of the impressed motion is of a certain mag- 
 nitude, the curve described will be a hyperbola; if different to a certain 
 degree, it will be a parabola; and if slower, an ellipse or a circle in one case. 
 
 Having established this universal law, Newton was enabled not only 
 to determine the weight which the same body would have at the surface of 
 the sun and the planets, but even to calculate the quantity of matter in the 
 sun and in all the planets that had satellites, and even to determine the 
 density or specific gravity of the matter of which they were composed— 
 results which Adam Smith pronounced to be “above the reach of human 
 reason and experience.” 
 
LINN AUS 
 
 1707-1778 
 
 GREATEST NATURALIST OF MODERN TIMES 
 
 Tue celebrated naturalist, Karl Linneus, was born at Rooshoolt, a small 
 village in Sweden, where his father was settled as pastor of a Lutheran 
 church. From his infancy Linneus seems to have been an ardent lover 
 of Nature, and his father, who had some knowledge of Natural Science, 
 taught him the Latin names of all the trees and plants in the vicinity, as 
 soon as he could talk. But his progress in his early studies at the village 
 school was slow, and he often played truant to go in search of flowers; so 
 that he became known by the name of “the little botanist.” His father 
 had intended to fit his son for the church, but as years went on he changed 
 his intention upon the advice of the boy’s instructors, and arranged to place 
 him at a trade instead. His seventeenth year found him about to be 
 apprenticed to a shoemaker; but, fortunately, a Dr. Rothmann became 
 interested in him, encouraged his love of Nature, and provided for his being 
 received as student at Lund, in the house of Stobzus, the Professor of 
 Natural History there. 
 
 After a short stay at Lund, desirous of following the courses of the 
 most celebrated Swedish professors, Linneus repaired to Upsal in 1728. 
 
2 LINNAZUS 
 
 His resources were so small that his life was little else than a hard struggle 
 against actual want for months; but it did not prevent his following his 
 studies with zeal, and one day, in the garden of the University, he 
 attracted the attention of Olaus Celsius, Professor of Theology, and a clever 
 naturalist. He became his friend and patron, and employed Linneus to 
 aid him in his “ Hierobotanicon,” a description of the plants mentioned in 
 Scripture. 
 
 After having studied Burchardt and Vaillant, Linnzeus conceived his 
 ingenious and celebrated system of the classification of plants according to 
 their stamens and pistils. In 1731 this plan was published, and the young 
 man of twenty-four, who till then had been only a struggling student, was 
 invited to become deputy-lecturer under the Professor of Botany, and 
 was put in charge of the Botanical Gardens of the University. He now 
 began to sketch out plans for future works : “Classes Plantarum,” “Genera 
 Plantarum,” “ Critica Botanica,” and “ Bibliotheca Botanica.” | 
 
 His rapid advancement gave rise to such an amount of envy, however, 
 that in 1732 he left Upsal, and accepted a commission from the Academy 
 of Sciences at Stockholm to travel in Lapland, and make researches in the 
 natural sciences. This journey, which comprised about 4000 English miles, 
 was performed on foot, and proves Linneus to have been full of resolution, 
 courageously braving danger and unremitting toil, for the sake of augment- 
 ing the stores of knowledge. This toilsome journey, supplemented by 
 another to Dalecarlia, was badly remunerated, and, on returning to Upsal, 
 Linneus found his circumstances so very precarious that it appeared 
 necessary to go abroad to try and better his fortunes. In 1735 he visited 
 Denmark, Hamburg, and Holland. At Harderwyk he took the degree of 
 M.D., and at Leyden became acquainted with Boerhaiive, through whose 
 influence he was appointed to take charge of the valuable plants and books 
 belonging to a wealthy Dutch banker, Cliffort. For three years he lived 
 in this delightful house, and brought through the press the works com- 
 menced at Upsal. The bounty of Cliffort enabled him, in 1736, to go to 
 England, where he met Dillenius, Professor of Botany at Oxford. Two 
 years later, en route to Sweden, he visited Paris, where he was received with 
 great distinction by Bernard Jussieu, and elected corresponding member 
 of the Academy of Sciences. 
 
 Arrived at Stockholm, he began the practice of medicine, and became 
 
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LINNZUS 3 
 
 Professor of Medicine and Botany at Upsal, which latter chair he occupied 
 thirty-seven years. Later he was ennobled, and became physician to the 
 King; was elected a member of all the learned societies of Europe, and 
 became the centre around which revolved all the affairs of Natural History. 
 
 The almost universal adoption of his system of botany shows the 
 estimation of the scientific world, and the honours conferred upon him by 
 his Government show how he was regarded at home. The King of Sweden 
 conferred on him the order of the Polar Star, which no man of letters had 
 ever received before, and to which the Queen added many flattering proofs 
 of esteem. 
 
 In 1776 Linnezus’ health began to fail, and a stroke of apoplexy, 
 followed by paralysis, somewhat impaired his mental faculties. Though he 
 lingered two years, a third shock at last proved too much for his system, 
 and in his seventy-first year he died, universally lamented. The King 
 caused a public medal to be struck, as an expression of the public grief, 
 and erected a monument to his genius beside the one raised to Descartes. 
 
 One of the principal titles of Linnzeus to glory is his creation of a 
 scientific language, ingenious as it is useful. As a mineralogist he directed 
 the attention of naturalists to the crystal; he made the first classification 
 known, and established the principal modifications. As zoologist he ought 
 to be commended for his ingenious classification of the organs of mastica- 
 tion, digestion, &c., in the animal kingdom. As botanist there is owing to 
 him a complete system, besides the ingenious classification of plants spoken 
 of above. All his scientific labour shows him to have been particularly 
 clever in developing and rendering fruitful the scattered ideas of his 
 predecessors. | 
 
 The system of Linnzus has not endured without undergoing important 
 modifications; and before his death he amended many of the statements 
 of his previous years; but the uncontested honour remains to him, to have 
 indicated the true method in Natural History. He observed the analogous 
 indications in plants and animals, and they inclined him to attempt 
 something in Zoology. ‘To establish the divisions of the animal kingdom, 
 he made classes of the distinctive characteristics of the parts of the organism 
 destined to the most important functions of life; the brain, heart, lungs, 
 organs of nutrition and locomotion. His zoological labours, without doubt, 
 obtained as great renown as his discoveries in Botany ; and he has given, 
 
‘i LINNEUS 
 
 in his assimilation, a new and startling proof of the extent of his genius. 
 His classification of minerals had only an ephemeral existence ; but it was 
 on account of the slow progress that chemical analysis made, this being the 
 essential base of their study. 
 
 “ When looking over the ‘Systema Nature’ of Linnzeus,” says one of 
 his biographers, ‘‘it is hardly possible, in our day, to realize how great was the 
 influence of that work upon the progress of Zoology. And yet it acted like 
 magic upon the age, and stimulated it to exertions far surpassing anything 
 that had been done in preceding centuries. Such a result must be ascribed 
 partly to the circumstance that he was the first man who ever conceived 
 distinctly the idea of expressing in a definite form what he considered to be 
 the system of Nature; and partly also to the great comprehensiveness, sim- 
 plicity, and clearness of his method. Discarding in his system everything 
 that could not easily be ascertained, he for the first time divided the animal 
 kingdom into distinct classes, characterised by definite features; he also for 
 the first time introduced orders into the system of Zoology, besides genera 
 and species, which had been vaguely distinguished before. And although he 
 did not even attempt to define the characteristics of these different kinds 
 - of groups, it is plain, from his numerous writings, that he considered them 
 all as subdivisions of a successively more limited value, embracing a larger 
 or smaller number of animals, agreeing in more or less comprehensive 
 attributes.” 
 
 “It is said of Linneeus, that although no man of science ever 
 exercised a greater sway, or had more enthusiastic admirers, yet his merit 
 was not so much that of a discoverer, as of a judicious and strenuous 
 reformer. The knowledge which he displayed, and the value and simplicity 
 of the improvements which he proposed, secured the universal adoption of 
 
 his suggestions, and crowned him with a success altogether unparalleled 
 in the annals of science.” 
 
IES AL IN, AN) va, WTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO THE SYSTEM OF NATURE. 
 
 THe UNIVERSE comprehends whatever exists; whatever can come to our 
 knowledge by the agency of our senses: the Stars, the Klements, and this 
 our Globe. 
 
 The Stars are bodies remote, lucid, revolving in perpetual motion. 
 They shine either by their own proper light, as the Sun, and the remote 
 fixed Stars ; or are Planets receiving light from others. Of these the primary 
 planets are solar; Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Harth, Venus, Mercury, and 
 Georgium Sidus: the secondary are those subservient to and rolling round 
 the primary, as the Moon round the earth. 
 
 The elements are bodies simple, constituting the atmosphere of, and 
 probably filling the spaces between the stars. /ire; lucid, resilient, warm, 
 evolant, vivifying. Av; transparent, elastic, dry, encircling, generating. 
 Water ; diaphanous, fluid, moist, gliding, conceiving. arth; opaque, fixed, 
 cold, quiescent, sterile. 
 
 The Earrn is a planetary sphere, turning round its own axis once in 
 twenty-four hours, and round the sun once a year; surrounded by an 
 atmosphere of elements and covered by a stupendous crust of natural bodies, 
 which are the objects of our studies. It is terraqueous, having the depressed 
 parts covered with waters; the elevated parts gradually dilated into dry and 
 habitable continents. The land is moistened by vapours, which rising from 
 the waters, are collected into clouds; these are deposited upon the tops of 
 mountains; form small streams which unite into rivulets, and reunite into 
 those ever-flowing rivers, which pervade the thirsty earth, and affording 
 moisture to the productions growing for the support of her living inhabitants, 
 are at last returned into her parent sea. 
 
 The study of natural history, simple, beautiful and instructivé, consists 
 
6 LINNAZUS 
 
 in the collection, arrangement and exhibition of the various productions of 
 the earth. 
 
 These are divided into the three grand kingdoms of nature, whose 
 boundaries meet together in the Zoophytes. 
 
 MineErats inhabit the interior parts of the earth in rude and shapeless 
 masses; are generated by salts, mixed together promiscuously and shaped 
 fortuitously. They are bodies concrete without life or sensation. . 
 
 VEGETABLES clothe the surface with verdure, imbibe nourishment 
 through bibulous roots, breathe by quivering leaves, celebrate their nuptials 
 in a genial atmosphere, and continue their kind by the dispersion of seed 
 within prescribed limits. They are bodies organized, and have life and not 
 sensation. 
 
 ANIMALS adorn the exterior parts of the earth, respire, and generate 
 eggs; are impelled to action by hunger, congeneric affections and pain; 
 and by preying on other animals and vegetables, restrain within proper 
 proportion the numbers of both. 
 
 They are bodies organized, and have life, sensation, and the power of 
 locomotion. 
 
 MAN, the last and best of created works, formed after the image of his 
 Maker, endowed with a portion of intellectual divinity, the governor and 
 subjugator of all other beings, is, by his wisdom alone, able to form just 
 conclusions from such things as present themselves to his senses, which can 
 only consist of bodies merely natural. Hence the first step of wisdom is to 
 know these bodies and to be able, by those marks imprinted on them by 
 nature, to distinguish them from each other, and to affix to every object its 
 proper name. 
 
 These are the elements of all science; this is the great alphabet of 
 nature: for if the name be lost the knowledge of the object is lost also; 
 and without these the student will seek in vain for the means to investigate 
 the hidden treasures of nature. 
 
 MeErHop, the soul of Science, indicates, that every natural body may 
 by inspection be known by its own peculiar name; and this name points 
 out whatever the industry of man has been able to discover concerning it; 
 so that amidst the greatest apparent confusion the greatest order is visible. 
 
 SYSTEM is conveniently divided into five branches, each subordinate to 
 the other: class, order, genus, species, and variety, with their names and 
 characters. For he must first know the name who is willing to investigate 
 the object. 
 
LINNAUS ” 
 
 The science of nature supposed an exact knowledge of the nomen- 
 clature, and a systematic arrangement of all natural bodies. In this arrange- 
 ment the classes and orders are arbitrary ; the genera and species are natural. 
 All true knowledge refers to the species, all solid knowledge to the genus. 
 
 Of these three grand divisions the animal kingdom ranks highest in 
 comparative estimation; next the vegetable, and the last and lowest is the 
 mineral kingdom. — 
 
 ANIMALS. 
 
 ANIMALS enjoy sensation by means of a living organization, animated 
 by a medullary substance ; perception by nerves, and motion by the exertion 
 of the will. | 
 
 They have members for the different purposes of life; organs for their 
 different senses ; and faculties or powers for the application of their different 
 perceptions. 
 
 They all originate from an egg. 
 
 Their external and internal structure, their comparative anatomy, 
 habits, instincts, and various relations to each other, are detailed in authors 
 who professedly treat on these subjects. 
 
 The natural division of animals is into six classes, formed from their 
 internal structure. 1. MAMMALIA: viviparous; heart with two auricles, two 
 ventricles; blood warm, red. 2. Brrps: oviparous; heart with two auricles, 
 two ventricles ; blood warm, red. 3. AmpuisiA: lung voluntary. 4. Frisues : 
 external gills; both classes, heart with one auricle, one ventricle, blood cold, 
 red. 5. Insects, have antennae. 6. Worms, have tentacula; both classes, 
 heart with one auricle, no ventricle ; sanies, cold, white. 
 
 . 
 
 VEGETABLES. 
 
 Nature, by a succession of seeds, with the assistance of the elements, 
 modifies Earths into Vegetables, Vegetables into Animals, and resolves each 
 of them again into Earths in a perennial increasing circle. 
 
 Vegetables have life without voluntary motion. They consist of a 
 Root, Trunk, Branches, Leaves, and Flowers. 
 
 A perfect Flower consists of Calyx, Corolla, Stamen, Pistil, Germ, Seed, 
 
 and Receptacle. 
 Vegetables are distributed into twenty-four Classes, distinguished by 
 
 the number, situation and proportion of their stamina. 
 
8 LINNAZUS 
 
 I. Monanpria, 1 stamen or male in each flower. II. Dranpria, 2 
 distinct stamina or males in each flower. III. TrrIANpRIA, 3 distinct stamina 
 in each flower. IV. TerrANpRIA, 4 distinct stamina, all of the same length 
 in each flower. V. PENTANDRIA, 5 distinct stamina in each flower. 
 VI. Hexanprta, 6 distinct stamina, all of the same length in each flower. 
 VII. Hepranprt, 7 distinct stamina in each flower. VIII. Ocranprta, 8 
 distinet stamina in each flower. IX. ENNEANDRIA, 9 distinct stamina in each 
 flower. X. DecanprtiA, 10 distinct stamina in each flower. XI. DopEcAN- 
 pRIA, 12-19 distinct stamina. XII. Icosanpria, more than 12 stamina, 
 fixed in the calyx or petals, and not on the receptacle. XIII. Pory- 
 ANDRIA, 20-1000 stamina, fixed on the receptacle. XIV. Dipynamta, 4 
 distinct stamina, 2 being longer. XV. TETRADYNAMIA, 6 distinct stamina, 4 
 being longer. XVI. MonapEpuia, all the stamina united by their filaments 
 into one body. XVII. DIADELPHIA, stamina united by filaments into 1 or 2 
 sets, corol papilonaceous. XVIII. PotypeLpnta, stamina united by filaments 
 into 3 sets. XIX. SyNGENEsIA, 5 stamina, united by their anthers into a 
 cylinder—jlowers compound. XX. GYNANDRIA, stamina inserted in the 
 pistil. XXI. Monacra, bearing stamina or males, and pistils or females on 
 the same plant, but in distinct flowers. XXII. Diacia, bearing males and 
 females on separate plants. XXIII. PoryGamra, bearing hermaphrodite 
 flowers, and male and female, or both, on same or distinct plants. 
 XXIV. CryproGamtia, fructification concealed. 
 
 MINERALS. 
 
 The substances of inorganic nature are treated in the last volume of 
 the work in the following order :— 
 
 The Warer of the ocean, frigid, passive, concipient. Saxrs, sapid, 
 many-sided, diaphanous. Earrus, reducible to dust, dry, dissoluble, fixed. 
 CLAy, the earth of marine water. Sanp, the earth of rain water. Sor, the 
 earth of vegetables. CALx, the earth of animals. Sronrs grow from earth, 
 are again resolved and again reproduced. CrysTALs are stones produced in 
 and from water. Vuirrio1, the product of alum, intimately allied to metal. 
 METALS are supra decompound, and consist of earth, salt, and sulphur 
 tocKs, appearing like the prominent bones of the earth, of great bulk, 
 solidity and longevity, composed of sand, gravel, &e. PETREFACTIONS, the 
 parents rather than the products of marmoreous mountains, &e., &e. 
 
LAVOISITER 
 
 1743-1794 
 
 FOUNDER OF MODERN CHEMISTRY 
 
 ANTOINE LAURENT LAvolstIER, whose discoveries laid the foundation of 
 modern chemistry, was a native of Paris. His father, who had acquired a 
 considerable fortune in commercial pursuits, took care to give him an excel- 
 lent education. He studied with brilliant success at the Collége Mazarin, 
 and carried off a great number of prizes in different classes. When he 
 reached the class of philosophy he evinced so decided an inclination for 
 natural science that he determined to devote the whole of his life to its 
 cultivation; and his father, instead of following the general rule which 
 obliges a young man to adopt a profession or trade, had sufficient courage 
 to confirm him in this resolution. Accordingly, young Lavoisier, on leaving 
 college, began at once to explore the mysteries of mathematics and astro- 
 nomy in the observatory of the Abbé de la Caille, to practise chemistry in 
 the laboratory of Rouelle, and to follow Bernard de Jussieu in his herbal- 
 izings and botanical demonstrations. So intense was his passion for study 
 that he restricted himself to a diet of bread and milk, when he perceived 
 that the want of air and exercise was likely to injure his health; for he 
 
LAVOISIER 
 
 ip 
 
 entirely renounced the. pleasures of Parisian society in order to devote 
 himself without interruption to his favourite pursuits. 
 
 Scarcely had he attained his twentieth year when a prize proposed by 
 the Academy of Sciences gave him an opportunity of making positive 
 researches on an important subject of natural philosophy. The problem 
 was, to discover a more effectual and at the same time a cheaper method of 
 lighting the streets of Paris than was then in vogue. Lavoisier, being 
 desirous to trace the art back, by a series of delicate experiments, to its 
 very first principles, had his room hung with black, and shut himself up in 
 it for six weeks without seeing daylight, in order to render his eyes more 
 sensible to the different degrees of intensity in the light shed by lamps. 
 Such enthusiasm obtained the recognition it deserved, a gold medal being 
 presented to him at a public meeting of the Academy. Previously to this he 
 had accompanied Guettard on several mineralogical expeditions, which gave 
 him new ideas on the structure of the globe—ideas which he developed and 
 then published in a “ Memoir on the Layers of Mountains,” printed among 
 the proceedings of the Academy. He had also presented to that learned 
 body several essays on special chemical subjects, such as the pretended 
 conversion of water into earth, and the analysis of the plaster of Paris. 
 This latter essay was written with such admirable method and perspicuity, 
 and the experiments were so exactly appropriate to the object in view, as to 
 render it obvious that great discoveries might be expected from the author. 
 Accordingly the Academy hastened to enroll him among their members, 
 and in 1768, at the early age of twenty-five, Lavoisier was elected an 
 associate, on a vacancy being caused by the death of Baron. 
 
 The young chemist was not long in perceiving that a fortune might 
 be required in order to carry out the experiments which he had in contem- 
 plation. Therefore he decided to sacrifice a portion of his time to pursuits 
 more lucrative than those of science; and a few months after his admission 
 to the Academy he was appointed a Farmer-General, or collector of the 
 public revenues. Some of his colleagues in the Academy were astonished 
 at first that he should have accepted a post of this kind, but they soon 
 learnt that a well-ordered mind, like that of Lavoisier’s, only required a very 
 brief space of time every day for the transaction of business, and that there 
 was nothing to prevent him from devoting his principal energies to scientific 
 researches. These he conducted for several hours every morning and 
 
LIBRARY 
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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLIN['S 
 
LAVOISIER 3 
 
 evening, and one day in the week was set entirely apart in order that he 
 might ascertain, by actual experiments, the correctness of the ideas which 
 his studies and meditations had engendered. 
 
 In these weekly assemblies, to which learned men of all nations found 
 easy admission, the opinions of the most.eminent scientists in Europe were 
 canvassed ; passages the most striking and novel, out of foreign writers, 
 were recited and animadverted on; and theories were compared with experi- 
 ments. Happy hours were passed in these learned interviews, no subject 
 being left uninvestigated that could possibly contribute to the progress of 
 the sciences and the physical amelioration and happiness of man. One of 
 the greatest benefits resulting from these assemblages, the influence of which 
 was soon felt in the Academy itself, and consequently in all the physical 
 and chemical works afterwards published in France, was the agreement 
 established in the methods of reasoning between the natural philosophers 
 and the geometricians. The precision, the severity of style, and the 
 philosophical method of the latter, were insensibly transferred into the 
 minds of the former; the philosophers became disciplined in the tactics of 
 the geometricians, and were gradually moulded into their resemblance.. In 
 the assemblage of such a constellation of scientific lights, Lavoisier im- 
 proved and embellished his own great talents. To the critical examination 
 of these philosophers he submitted the results of his most important 
 experiments, and invited his critical friends to state the most weighty 
 objections that occurred to them; nor did he venture to announce any of 
 his discoveries to the public until they had undergone this ordeal. 
 
 Thus Lavoisier became the founder of the French Chemical School, 
 the distinctive character of which was a close and mathematical mode of 
 reasoning in theory, combined with a rigid attention to facts in conducting 
 experiments. The period when that school flourished in its greatest vigour 
 (1780-88) was marked by the most’ important discoveries, and the most 
 striking alterations were made both in the foundation and superstructure, 
 the doctrine and language of chemistry. Ancient and baseless theories 
 were exploded, the ideal doctrine of Phlogiston vanished before the decisive 
 proofs of experiment, and the new system of Pneumatics was completely 
 established. Although Lavoisier, in this great revolution of science, was 
 assisted by many of the most eminent chemists of the age, yet to him 
 exclusively is due the honour of being the founder of it; his own genius 
 
4 LAVKOISTER 
 
 was his sole conductor, and the talents of his associates were only rendered 
 subservient to the completion of his comprehensive plan, by his own 
 meritorious exertions. For upwards of fifteen years did Lavoisier pursue 
 his chemical experiments and discoveries, without making a single false 
 step; at last, in 1789, he published his “ Elements of Chemistry,” which 
 presented the science in a form entirely new, and completely distinguished 
 the discoveries and improvements of Lavoisier from those of all former 
 chemists. 
 
 In 1794 an order was issued by the Revolutionary Tribunal for the 
 arrest of Lavoisier and twenty-seven other farmers-general, on the paltry 
 charge of having connived at the putting of too much water upon tobacco. 
 Their real offence was the possession of wealth. On hearing that such a 
 decree had been issued, Lavoisier fled and remained for several days 
 concealed in one of the innermost cabinets of the Academy; but finding 
 that this step might be prejudicial to his companions in misfortune, he came 
 forth from his hiding-place and voluntarily delivered himself up. He now 
 became convinced that he should be deprived of his entire property, and 
 resolved to devote himself to the profession of pharmacy, which he had 
 studied in youth. But the release he expected was not in store for him. 
 A decree was passed making the Farmers-General punishable for treason, on 
 the ground of their having made profits from the old government. Under 
 this decree Lavoisier and his companions were sentenced to death by the 
 Revolutionary Tribunal, not, however, without an earnest protest being 
 made by a courageous citizen named Hallé, who read a paper recounting 
 the manifold services rendered to Science and to the State by the great 
 chemist. On hearing his sentence Lavoisier requested a few days’ respite, 
 in order to finish some experiments he had been making in prison. Even 
 this poor boon was denied him. The Tribunal rudely answered: “ The 
 tepublic has no need of learned men.” Accordingly, on the 8th of May, 
 1794, he was guillotined, at the age of 51, along with 123 others. Thus 
 died Lavoisier, one of the brightest stars in the firmament of Science. 
 
LAWN-OT STE R 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 BORN AT PARIS. 
 ASSOCIATE OF ACADEMY 
 FARMER-GENERAL 
 
 “ OPUSCULES CHIMIQUES ET PHYSIQUES ” 
 IMPROVED GUNPOWDER 
 «SUR LA FABRICATION DE SALPETRE ” 
 DISCOVERED COMPOSITION OF WATER 
 «TRAITE ELEMENTAIRE DE CHIMIE ” 
 GUILLOTINED AT PARIS 
 
2 DICGHAT 
 
 his place. In his treatment of the subject, which was the fracture of the 
 clavicle, he did not confine himself entirely to the remarks of the professor, 
 but hinted at some new methods of treatment; and this, together with the 
 excellence and brilliancy of its style, caused his abstract to make a lively 
 sensation among both students and professors, and stamped his genius as 
 being of no ordinary type. To this happy incident he owed his friendship 
 with Desault, who immediately discovered his merit. He offered Bichat 
 a home, with the treatment of a son, and destined him to become his 
 successor. He associated him in all his work, gave him a part of his patients 
 to visit, a post at the hospital, and employed him in collecting facts from 
 experiments for an important work. But if Desault exacted much, Bichat 
 performed still more. Notwithstanding the incessant duties of the day, he 
 devoted a large portion of his nights to operations and study upon divers 
 points of the science. 
 
 By such profound application he acquired in a short time a fund of 
 knowledge that enabled him to depend on himself alone for means of 
 advancement ; and when, at the end of a year, Desault died, Bichat not 
 only was able to continue his investigations with the same success, but 
 undertook to prepare Desault’s works for publication, and assumed the 
 support of his widow and son. 
 
 After two years of solitary and profound study Bichat opened, in 
 1797, a school for teaching anatomy, physiology, and surgery. The 
 course of instruction was entirely distinct from that of the Faculty of 
 Paris, and became very popular. Three lectures were often given in 
 one day, and here, as elsewhere, Bichat showed himself a most zealous 
 worker ; often preparing the dissections with his own hand before deliver- 
 ing the lecture. His laborious researches in the hospital, the dissecting- 
 room, and the physiological laboratory, were often interrupted by illness 
 brought on by overwork; and it seems extraordinary that he could find 
 time to arrange and perfect his views and researches for publication. In 
 1800, however, appeared his “ Traité des Membranes,” in which he laid the 
 foundation for a science of general anatomy. 
 
 “ He thought only of performing his promises and of enlarging upon 
 the truths of which he had but just given an insight. In a treatise, which 
 he shortly afterwards published, he displayed more fully his doctrines on 
 the membranes, and considered them with respect to their form, organiza- 
 
LIBRARY 
 QF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINS'S 
 
 - 
 ry ire 
 
BICHAT 3 
 
 tion, vital properties, functions, and sympathies. These considerations 
 obliged him to expose, at some length, many of his physiological principles ; 
 the latter, however, were in many cases the result of his researches upon the 
 organs themselves. Thus the difference of vital power possessed by the 
 mucous membranes which are subject to the contact of external bodies, and 
 the serous membranes which are withdrawn from such contact, conducted 
 him to the distinction of two kinds of sensibility ; he had already distin- 
 guished two kinds of contractility. The study of the sympathies in the 
 membrane gave him the happy idea of dividing them according to the vital 
 powers, of which they are only the irregular development, instead of classing 
 them, as is usually done, according to the parts in which they supervene, 
 or from the nature and disposition of the organs in which they are 
 remarked.” 
 
 “The treatise on the membranes had the greatest success. Imme- 
 diately regarded as an elementary and classical book, it was cited in almost 
 every work, and given an honourable place in the libraries of the studious. 
 
 ‘““ About the same time he announced a regular course of physiology, 
 and in a more authentic and universal manner gave the world these 
 principles in his “ Physiological Researches on Life and Death.” The work 
 is divided into two entirely different parts; the first contains the general 
 exposition of his physiological views; the second is composed of a series 
 of experiments upon the mutual connection of the three principal organs of 
 life—the brain, the heart, and the lungs. These are, indeed, two separate 
 works; the first explains the second, but is not absolutely necessary to it. 
 The opinion which is formed of the one should be entirely independent 
 of that which is formed of the other. 
 
 “In his researches on life he exposes, in great detail, the distin- 
 guishing characters of the two orders of the functions which serve for the 
 external relations and preservation of the individual. He examines the 
 development of the two lives, and lastly, the manner in which they 
 terminate. This plan, which is filled up with the utmost luxuriance of 
 idea, incessantly presents wherewithal to admire the genius of the author. 
 His theory on sleep will never be forgotten, nor his considerations on what 
 has been named the epigastric centre, nor his table of the vital properties, 
 nor his observations on the progressive manner of natural death.” 
 
 The same year that his first book appeared he was appointed 
 
4 BICHAT 
 a 
 physician of Hétel-Dieu, when in a single winter he dissected six hundred 
 bodies. Devoting himself to the study of therapeutics, he meditated a com- 
 plete reform in that science, a reform which he would probably have effected 
 had not a sudden death surprised him in the midst of his superhuman toils. 
 Engaged on a large and complete treatise on descriptive anatomy, he 
 carried on his dissections even during the hot days of July, when the heat 
 and unpleasant odours drove all others away, but which could not move 
 him from his studies. Such intense devotion cost him his life; for he was 
 attacked with a fever originating in exposure to the putrescent emanations, 
 and his short but brilliant career was brought to a close in 1802, in the 
 thirty-first year of his age. 
 
 Bichat achieved the downfall of the so-called Iatro-mathematical 
 school, which had regarded exclusively the physical phenomena of the 
 living body, exposing on the other hand the fallacy of the then prevalent 
 doctrine that there is in every living body a “ vital principle,” which governs 
 and directs all its actions. Among others of the important new doctrines 
 propounded in his work “On Life and Death,” is the classification of the 
 functions into organic and animal, which was a great step toward helping to 
 arrange the phenomena of life on a systematic basis. “ Altogether,” says 
 Carpenter, “ Bichat left an impress upon the science of life, the depth of 
 which can scarcely be overrated; and this not so much by the facts which 
 he collected and generalized, as by the method of inquiry which he 
 developed, and by the systematic form which he gave to the study of 
 general anatomy in its relations both to physiology and pathology.” 
 
 Bichat is one of the few men whose names form epochs in the history 
 of medicine. Medical science, from Hippocrates to Galen, was empiric ; 
 from Galen to Harvey, scholastic; from Harvey to Bichat, dogmatic ; only 
 since his time has it become scientific. No man has ever penetrated the 
 human organism as he did. All the landmarks of the older anatomists were 
 thrown down—the liver, the heart, the stomach, were no longer regarded 
 as distinct seats of life, but became, under his hand, resolved into the 
 elementary tissues; Physiology was generalized; tissues, not organs, were 
 seen to be the true vital souree—the mucous, the vascular, the nervous, 
 the muscular. He set the world to studying the minute structure of the 
 tissues ; Physiology became based on Histology, Medicine became based on 
 Pathological Anatomy. 
 
PCL 
 1793 
 V797 
 1800 
 
 1801 
 1802 
 
 Jb} WG) del oN Ab 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 —09400-— 
 
 BORN AT THOIRETTE. 
 STUDIED UNDER DESAULT AT PARIS 
 PROF. ANATOMY . 
 
 “TRAITE DES MEMBRANES ”*; “RECHERCHES SUR 
 LA VIE ET LA MORT” 
 
 « ANATOMIE GENERALE,” &c. 
 DIED 
 
IBS JE(@ Val sk 4k 
 
 I. LIST OF THE SIMPLE COMPONENT TISSUES 
 OF THE BODY. 
 
 The Cellular. The Fibrous. 
 
 The Nervous. | The Fibro-Cartilaginous. 
 The Arterial. | The Muscular. 
 
 The Venous. | The Mucous. 
 
 The Exhalent. | The Serous. 
 
 The Absorbent. | The Synovial. 
 
 The Osseous, | The Glandular. 
 
 The Medullary. | The Dermal. 
 
 The Cartilaginous. | The Epidermal, &e. 
 
 Il. TABLE OF THE FUNCTIONS. 
 [As modified by Ch. Robin. | 
 
 VEGETATIVE. 
 
 Nutritive. 
 Reproductive.——Spermatic, Ovaric. 
 
 Digestion, Respiration, Circulation. 
 
 ANIMAL. 
 
 Relational.—Sensation, Locomotion, Expression. 
 Speculative.—Affections, Intelligence, Activity. 
 
eGR re Nw 
 
 PREFACE TO THE GENERAL ANATOMY. 
 
 THE general doctrine of this work bears little resemblance to that contained 
 in the prevailing works—physiology and physic. Opposite in its nature to 
 Boerhaave’s, it differs not only from that of Stahl, but all others who, like 
 him, have ascribed everything in the living economy to one sole, abstract 
 and ideal principle, whether it be under the name of soul, vital principle, 
 or archaeus. 
 
 To analyse with precision the properties of living bodies; to demon- 
 strate that every pathological phenomenon is derived from their increase, 
 diminution, or change; that every therapeutic phenomenon has for its object 
 and principle their restoration to a natural state; to mark distinctly those 
 cases in which such phenomena are found to operate; to ascertain in 
 physiology as in pathology, what proceeds from the one and what from 
 the other; to determine, therefore, in the most accurate and decisive manner 
 which of the natural and morbid phenomena are regulated by those of 
 animal life, and which are produced by those of organic; and lastly, to point 
 out when the animal sensibility and contractility, or where organic sensi- 
 bility and contractility, sensible or insensible, are called into action; such is 
 the general doctrine of this work. One glance will convince us that it is 
 impossible to define the prodigious influence of vital properties in physiology, 
 without considering them in the points of view I have represented them. It 
 may be said that this manner of investigating them is still theory: to which 
 I answer—the doctrine that demonstrates the laws of vravity, elasticity and 
 affinity, that proves them to be first principles of all the facts observed in 
 physics, is in this case itself a theory. That the relation of properties as causes, 
 
8 BICHAT 
 
 with phenomena as effects, is an axiom in philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, 
 &c., it is in these days scarcely worth while to repeat; and if this work 
 establishes the like axiom in the physiological sciences, it will have attained 
 its end. 
 
 There are in Nature two classes of beings, two classes of properties, 
 and two classes of sciences. Beings are organic or inorganic, properties 
 vital or non-vital, sciences, physiological or physical. Animals and vegetables 
 are organic. What are called minerals are inorganic. The vital properties 
 are sensibility and contractility. The non-vital are gravity, affinity, and 
 elasticity. The physiological sciences are composed of animal physiology, 
 vegetable physiology, and physic. The physical sciences are astronomy, 
 natural philosophy, chemistry, &e. 
 
 These two classes of sciences belong exclusively to phenomena. Two 
 other classes corresponding to them embrace external and internal forms, 
 and their description. Botany, anatomy, and zoology, constitute the 
 sciences that treat of organic forms; mineralogy, that which treats of 
 inorganic forms. ‘The first will occupy us particularly when we come to 
 examine the connections of living bodies with one another, and with 
 those that are inanimate. 
 
CUVIER 
 
 1769-1832 
 ZOOLOGIST 
 
 FOUNDER OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY 
 
 CERTAIN of the world’s worthies are born to be initiators, others to raise 
 monuments ; those of the first class make epochs, and change the current of 
 human thought or human feeling: such were Socrates and Zischylus. 
 The others are the monument builders, like Aristotle and Shakspeare. 
 While those of the first class change the course of the current, those of the 
 last crystallize it. 
 
 There is one of the world’s monuments to be found in the Reference 
 room of the British Museum. It is in seventeen volumes, large octavo, full 
 of coloured plates, and bears the following title: “The Animal Kingdom, 
 Distributed According to its Organization, Serving as a Basis for the Natural 
 History of Animals, and an Introduction to Comparative Anatomy.” 
 
 This is one of the few books that can never grow old. Science as 
 it advances grows more abstract and profound ; but the student can scarcely 
 penetrate to the new depths, except by cutting down from the surface. 
 This is a book for a first year’s course in Natural History, and it is a book 
 
: CUVIER 
 
 for the lover of Nature to take up at any time. It is a zoological and 
 anatomical museum entire. 
 
 Georges-Léopold-Chrétien-Frédéric-Dagobert Cuvier, the great French 
 naturalist, was born in 1769, at Montbéliard, a town under the dominion 
 of the Duke of Wiirtemberg. His family were Protestants, who at the 
 time of the Reformation had been driven by persecution from a village 
 in the Jura, which still bears the family name. Cuvier’s mother was an 
 accomplished woman, and his father’s brother was distinguished for his 
 learning ; so that it is not extraordinary that, though being far from robust, 
 he early showed an eager desire to acquire knowledge. At four years he 
 could read fluently, and at six was inquiring into the phenomena of Natural 
 Philosophy. His mother taught him drawing, and helped him with his 
 Latin ; so that he was always the first scholar in his classes. As he grew 
 older he became noted for his great memory, skill in drawing, and aptitude 
 for Greek and Latin. At thirteen years of age he began to show that 
 decided taste for Natural History which was to influence his whole life, and 
 now he was never without a volume of Buffon in his pocket. He not only 
 read and re-read it, but copied all the plates in water-colours, or made them 
 out of pasteboard and bits of silk. Besides manifesting an absorbing 
 interest in study, he was quite remarkable for his declamatory powers, and 
 organized among his school fellows a juvenile society, with a code ot 
 regulations, and of which he was the president. It met at stated times, 
 when, seated on his bed, after placing his companions round a table, he 
 ordered that some work should be read which treated of natural history, 
 philosophy, or travels. The merits of the book were then discussed, after 
 which the youthful president summed up the whole, and pronounced judgment. 
 
 In 1784 he was brought to the notice of Duke Charles of Wurtem- 
 berg, who took him under his special favour, and sent him, free of expense, 
 to the Carolinian Academy at Stuttgart, which school had a somewhat 
 military character. The pupils were instructed in every branch of know- 
 ledge likely to be useful to men destined to govern and direct. Unusual 
 attainments enabled Cuvier to take a place among the foremost, and he 
 had for companions three German boys, who became distinguished men— 
 Schiller, Kielmayer, and Somermering. Cuvier studied hard, gamed many 
 prizes, and was one of the five or six out of four hundred pupils, who had 
 the honourable title of Chevalier conferred upon them. He seized every 
 
LISRARY ; 
 OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINO'S 
 
CUVIER 3 
 
 opportunity for studying natural history, and collected a very considerable 
 herbarium ; besides which he drew and coloured an immense number of 
 insects, birds, and plants. 
 
 His studies finished, he was promised a place under fhe administration, 
 but circumstances jatrgent him to seek employment at once. He found it © 
 as tutor in a nobleman’s family in Normandy. Here he remained almost 
 eight years; but from his correspondence it is seen that he laid the 
 foundations of his future fame during the very first year of his tutorship, 
 by his researches on Mollusca. He began by accidentally comparing some 
 fossil remains with recent species, and the casual dissection of a calmar, 
 a species of cuttle-fish, led him to the study of Mollusca, which were not 
 difficult to obtain, as the sea-shore was near. 
 
 All the inferior animals had been included by Linneeus in the class 
 called Vermes; but Cuvier, after carefully studying their organization, felt 
 impelled to make a new classification, and arranged them according to their 
 natural affinities; a classification founded on the internal structure of the 
 animal, and not on the form of the shell. He committed his observations 
 to paper, merely for his own use, not realizing the special value of his 
 discovery. But an acquaintance with Abbé Tessier, a refugee of the 
 Revolution, brought these papers to light; and the Abbé, who was a writer 
 of note, enthusiastically transmitted them to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who 
 also saw the importance of such a discovery. A correspondence began, and 
 Cuvier was invited to Paris. ‘Come quickly,” wrote Saint-Hilaire to him ; 
 “to play among us the ré/e of a new Linneus, another founder of Natural 
 History.” 
 
 Not till 1794, however, did Cuvier accept the invitation—then, at 
 first became assistant to Mertrud in the Jardin des Plantes, and, at the 
 death of Daubenton, was elected to the chair of Natural History in the 
 College of France. Here he acquired the reputation of being the greatest 
 teacher of his day. He began to publish various papers, chiefly on the 
 structure of the lower animals; and in 1798 produced “ Tableau Elémentaire 
 de I'Histoire Naturelle des Animaux;” and later, after vigorous research, 
 gave to the world a great work, the “ Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds.” 
 
 Napoleon was not long in recognizing Cuvier’s great administrative 
 ability, and appointed him one of the inspectors-general of education, and he 
 helped to found the royal colleges at Marseilles, Nice, and Bordeaux. One 
 
4 COU LIEL 
 
 of the most brilliant productions from the pen of Cuvier is the Report on 
 the Progress of Natural Science from 1789, drawn up at the request of the 
 Emperor. He was also employed in reorganizing the educational institu- 
 tions of Piedmont, Genoa, and Tuscany, and travelled through Holland, 
 Lower Germany, and Italy, where, besides examining academies, he visited 
 all the museums, making drawings of everything new, and procuring fossil 
 remains. The delicate task of organizing a university at Rome was 
 entrusted to him; and, on his return, Napoleon appointed him Master ot 
 Requests, and, just before his abdication, Counsellor of State, which appoint- 
 ment was confirmed by Louis XVIII., who, in addition, created him Baron. 
 In 1818 Cuvier became a member of the French Academy, and, four years 
 later, Grand Master of the Faculties of Protestant Theology, and was 
 instrumental in establishing fifty Protestant cures in France. 
 
 It might be well to glance at another side of the picture. Cuvier 
 certainly was a most polished courtier, possessing legislative shrewdness, 
 fidelity, and the confidence of those who employed his talents; but he was 
 also, and in as marked a degree, the indefatigable seeker after truth. He 
 may be said to have never lost a moment, and his amusement and relaxation 
 consisted merely in a change of employment. At the beginning of his 
 career he had called his brother to Paris to aid him in making and arranging 
 his collection, and later, when work increased, he employed his pupils to 
 write out, from the notes of his lectures, much of his Anatomie Comparée, 
 to which he wrote the introduction, arranged the chapters, and corrected 
 the proofs. As perpetual secretary to the National Institute, he was 
 appointed to write the celebrated éloges, in addition to other work; and he 
 might be seen before seven o’clock in the morning arranging work for the 
 various secretaries and amanuenses that he kept employed in the library 
 at the top of his house. At first when he began to publish, as his means 
 were limited, he not only drew but engraved the plates for his works himself. 
 As opportunities presented themselves he had brought out second editions 
 of his works, with modifications and additions, bringing them up to the 
 same point as his investigations and lectures. As he passed the meridian 
 of life he was as unremitting and enterprising in his researches as ever ; 
 undisturbed by the political changes which France underwent, he continued 
 the favourite of all parties, a most extraordinary combination of the public 
 functionary and philosopher. 
 
CUVIER : 5 
 
 But after almost forty years of research, teaching, and writing, com- 
 bined with an arduous public life, although his intellectual faculties had 
 never been more brilliant, the bodily frame broke down, and, after a short 
 illness, he paid the great debt of Nature, being in the sixty-third year of 
 his age. Having faithfully served his sovereign, greatly advanced the cause 
 of science, and been ever a friend to the poor and struggling genius, he died 
 universally lamented. 
 
 His Works.—His most important works are : “‘ Comparative Anatomy ” 
 (1800-1805), “‘ Researches on Fossil Bones,” preceded by a “ Discourse on 
 the Revolutions of the Globe,” and “The Animal Kingdom” (1816-1829). 
 In the first, to the facts gathered by Claude Perrault and’ Daubenton, he 
 added innumerable observations, and co-ordinated these elements into the 
 form of a doctrine. In the second work he founded a science entirely new, 
 the science of lost species of fossils—in short, Paleontology. In the third 
 he embraced the entire animal creation, applied the principle of the sub- 
 ordination of characters to Zoology, and established the classification which 
 serves to-day for the basis of this science; a classification based upon 
 comparative anatomy. Linneus had divided the animal kingdom into six 
 classes: quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, and worms. Cuvier 
 remarked the extreme difference of creatures confounded in the last two 
 classes of Linneeus, and proposed a new general distribution of the animals 
 with white blood (insects and worms) into the following six classes : 
 molluses, crustaceans, insects, vermes, echinoderms, and zoophytes. 
 
 Until this time Comparative Anatomy was only a collection of facts 
 relative to the structure of animals. Cuvier concluded that anatomy and 
 physiology should form the basis of zoology, and that the most general 
 and constant fact in the organization should determine its grand divisions, 
 and the least general and most variable facts the secondary divisions. He 
 thus established a subordination of character, which ought to be, and alone 
 can be, the principle of a natural method ; that is to say, of such a method 
 of arrangement of beings that the place occupied by each of them gives a 
 general idea of its organization, and of the relations which connect it with 
 all others; a method which he regarded as science itself reduced to its most 
 simple expression. Thus, examining the modifications of the organs of 
 circulation, respiration, and sensation throughout the animal kingdom, 
 instead of the six classes of Linneeus, Cuvier established four great types, 
 
6 Cal ad ere 
 
 vertebrates, molluscs, articulates, and radiates, which he calls embranch- 
 ments, and divides into classes of nearly equal value with those long 
 established among the vertebrata. ‘This tended very much to raise into 
 importance the inferior animals. 
 
 Cuvier'’s two laws, the law of the subordination of the organs and the 
 law of correlations, with some others, formed part of that science which 
 permitted him methodically to reconstruct a great number of lost species 
 by means of fossil débris. “ Such was,” says M. Flourens, “ the vigour and 
 infallibility of this method that Cuvier could recognise an animal by a 
 single bone, or a single facette of a bone.” 
 
 As a naturalist Cuvier takes a permanent rank among the few great 
 men who have eftected great revolutions in the sciences which they have 
 cultivated, and who have left ineffaceable traces of the influence of their 
 discoveries. The whole animal kingdom has assumed under his hands a 
 systematic arrangement, founded on a careful and laborious observation of 
 the analogies of internal structure. He converted the science of Natural 
 History into a science of strict and severe induction, and conferred on it 
 a dignity hitherto unpossessed by it. He reconstructed, as it were, the 
 fossil remains of an antediluvian world, from imperfect fragments. “The 
 ‘ History of Fossil Bones’ must ever remain a classical work to geologists ; 
 and the discoveries which it contains are some of the most interesting and 
 extraordinary which observation upon the surface of the globe has ever 
 enabled us to ascertain.” To his masterpiece, “The Animal Kingdom,” 
 sufficient allusion has been made; the monument builders receive their full 
 share of fame in this world, while the claims of the initiators are often 
 forgotten, often disputed. Many people have never heard of Lamarck ; 
 every schoolboy is familiar with the name and work of Cuvier. 
 
1769 
 1795 
 1796 
 1798 
 
 1800 
 1802 
 1812 
 1813 
 1814 
 1815 
 1816 
 1818 
 1819 
 1822 
 1828 
 1832 
 
 CUVIER 
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE 
 
 BORN AT MONTBELIARD. 
 
 ASST. SUPT. AT JARDIN DES PLANTES, PARIS 
 
 MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE Ae I 
 
 “TABLEAU ELEMENTAIRE DE LHISTOIRE NATU- 
 RELLE,” &c. . <a | 
 
 PROF. NAT. PHILOSOPHY, COLLEGE DE FRANCE 
 
 INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF SCHOOLS 
 
 * RECHERCHES SUR LES OSSEMENTS FOSSILES,” &c. 
 
 ORGANISED UNIVERSITIES AT ROME 
 COUNCILLOR OF STATE 
 
 CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 “LE REGNE ANIMAL” . 
 
 VISITED ENGLAND aay . 
 PRESIDENT OF INTERIOR; BARON; “ ELOGES ” 
 
 GRAND MASTER OF FACULTIES OF PROT. THEOLOGY 
 
 “ HISTOIRE NATURELLE DES POISSONS” . 
 PEER OF FRANCE; DIED 
 
HISTORY OF THE CLASSIFICATION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 ANIMALS WITH Bioop.—Viviparous quadrupeds. Oviparous quadrupeds 
 (reptiles). Winged bipeds. Animals with fins. BrLoopitess ANIMALS.— 
 Soft. Encrusted. Shelled. Insected. 
 
 LINNAXUS. 
 
 MammattA.—Suckling their young. Primates, Bruta, &c. Avrs.—Hatched 
 from the egg. <Accipitres, Anseres, &c. Amputpta.—Reptiles. Ser- 
 pentes. Nantes. Pisces.—Furnished with gills. Apodes. Jugu- 
 lares. Thoraci. Abdominales. Insecta.—Furnished with Antenne. 
 Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, &c. Vermes.—Furnished with 
 tentacles. Intestina, Mollusca, Testacea, Lithophyta, Zoophyta. 
 
 CUVIER. 
 
 BrancH I.—VERTEBRATA. 
 
 ~ Mammaria.—Bimana. Quadrumana. Carnivora. Marsupialia. Rodentia. 
 Edentata, Pachydermata, Ruminantia, Cetacea. Birps.—Accipitres, Pas- 
 seres, Scansores, &e. Reprirra.—Chelonia, Sauria, Ophidia, Batrachia. 
 Fisnes.—The Bony series. The Cartilaginous series. 
 
 Brancu IJ.—Mo.uvsca. 
 
 CEPHALOPODA, PTEROPODA, GASTEROPODA, ACEPHALA, BRACHIOPODA, 
 CIRRHOPODA. 
 
il HISTORY OF THE CLASSIFICATION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 . BrancyH III.—ARTICULATA. 
 
 ANNELIDA, CRUSTACEA, ARACHNIDA, INSECTA. 
 
 Brancu [V.—RADIATA. 
 
 EcHINoDERMA, INTESTINA, ACALEPH®, POLYPI, INFUSORIA. 
 
 4 
 
 LAMARCK. 
 
 Aparuetic Animats.—Infusoria, Polypes, Radiaria, Tunicata, Vermes. 
 SpnsiBLE ANIMALS.— Insects, Arachnids, Crustaceans, Annelids, Con- 
 chiferse, Mollusks. INTELLIGENT ANIMALS.—Fishes, Reptiles, Birds and 
 Mammalia. 
 
 BLAINVILLE. 
 
 First Type, OsrzozoA (Mammalia). Bearing hair, feathers, scales, fins, &e. 
 
 Seconp Tyre, Entomozoa (Annulata). With six, eight or ten feet. With 
 a variable number of feet. With no feet. 
 
 Turrp Type, Maracozoa (Mollusks). | Cephalopodes, Cephalidians, 
 Acephales. 
 
 Fourrn Tyre, Actrnozoa (Radiata). Cirrhoderma, Arachnoderma, Zoan- 
 tharia, Polyparia, Zoophytaria, Spongiaria, Monadaria, Se. 
 
 OKEN. 
 
 Dicrestion Animats.—Infusoria, Polypes, Acalephes. CrrcuLATION ANI- 
 mAts.—Mollusca. ResprraTion ANIMALS.—Articulata. CARNAL ANI- 
 MALS.—Fish, Reptiles, Birds. SrNsuous AntmALs.—Mammalia. The 
 first three classes are grouped as Intestine Animals, the last two as 
 Flesh Animals. 
 
 EHRENBERG. 
 
 NuTrRIENTIAA—Warm Blooded, Caring for their Young, Mammalia, Birds. 
 OrpPHANOZOA.—Cold Blooded, not Caring for Young, Reptiles and 
 Fishes. Articutata, Motiusca, TuBuLata, Intestine or tube. Race- 
 mirerA, Intestine forked, Radiata, We. 
 
FISLORIJIOPRS HE CLA SSIFICATIONVOL ANIMALS. il 
 
 OWEN. 
 
 MYELENCEPHALA (Vertebrata). HomoGaneLiata (Articulata). HerTero- 
 GANGLIATA (Mollusca). RaAprarta, ENtrozoa, INFusoRIA. 
 
 LEUCKART. 
 
 Protozoa, COELENTERATA, ECHINODERMATA, VERMES, ARTHROPODA, 
 Mo.uiusca, VERTEBRATA. 
 
 VAN BENEDEN. 
 
 Hypocotytes.—Yolk Ventral (Vertebrates). Eprrcorytes.—Yolk Dorsal 
 (Articulates). ALLocoryLes.—Yolk entirely transformed into embryo 
 (Mollusks and all lower groups). . 
 
 VON BAER. 
 
 PeERIPHERIC Type (Radiata). EHvolutio Radiata. Massive Tyre (Mollusca). 
 Ewvolutio Contorta. LonerrupinaLt Type (Articulata) Evolutio gemina. 
 Dous_e SyMMETRICAL Type (Vertebrata) Evolutio Bigemina. 
 
 MOQUIN-TANDON. 
 
 IsoLATED.—Vertebrata, Mollusca and Protozoa. SEGMENTED.— Articulata, 
 Echinoderma. AGGREGATED.—-Zoophyta. 
 
 HUXLEY. 
 
 Prorozoa, AGASTRHA, PoLysToMATA (Sponges), COELENTERATA, SCOLECI- 
 MORPHA, ENTEROCOELA, SCHIZOCOELA (Arthropoda, Annelida, Mollusca, 
 Polyzoa). Eprcorta.—Vertebrata, Amphioxus, Tunicata. Vertebrates 
 divided into Ichthyopseida (Fishes and Amphibia), Sauropseida (Reptiles 
 and Birds), and Mammalia. 
 
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 SOURCES OF THE PORTRAITS 
 
 HIPPOCRATES. 
 
 Antique bust in the Louvre. Vauthier del. Mecon sculpt. Many busts of 
 Hippocrates exist, all of which correspond. The likeness is well known. 
 
 GALEN. 
 
 Modern line engraving from the Roman bust in the College of Physicians in 
 London. The head is characteristic, the features strongly marked. 
 
 ARCHIMEDES. 
 From antique bas-relief—Archimedis Effigies marmorea in veteri anaglypho 
 Rome affervato. 
 COPERNICUS. 
 Gravé d’aprés un tableau du Cabinet de M. de la Lande des Acad. RI, des 
 Sciences par N. Dandeleau. 
 KEPLER. 
 From a painting in the Gallery at Munich. Has been several times engraved. 
 It differs considerably from the Kraenner picture at Ratisbon, but is the one generally 
 accepted. 
 GALILEO. 
 Passignani dipinse, Tommaso Minardi disegno, Pietro Bettellini incise. Fine Line 
 Engraving, Didot Coll. 
 GALILEO, OLD. 
 Jac, Bassan pinxit. Dom. Cunego sculpsit Rome 1769. Londini apud Guliel- 
 mum Beckfort. 
 
il APPENDIX TO VOLUME VI. 
 
 HARVEY. 
 
 From the great painting by Vandyke. There is a portrait by Jansen in the 
 College of Physicians, another by Van Reyn, Lee to the Royal Society, another 
 in the National Gallery. The last is very poor. 
 
 NEWTON. 
 
 From the picture by Kneller, 1689, now at Cambridge. A fine modern stipple, 
 copyrighted by Graves, who has kindly permitted it to appear in this work. 
 
 NEWTON AT 16. | 
 Boy with long hair and student’s surplice, holding a globe. Published as Newton, 
 but of questionable authenticity. 
 LINNAGUS. 
 
 Fine line engraving by Bervic, Roslin Eques. pinx. Drugulin Coll. 
 
 LAVOISIER. 
 From a miniature; the only portrait current, and repeated in the new editions 
 of his works. There is a stipple engraving bearing his name, which represents a man 
 much younger, and is of doubtful authenticity. 
 
 BICHAT. 
 
 P. Sudra del. All Bichat’s pictures correspond. The features are strongly 
 marked, the forehead finely developed. The appearance is of a man rather older than 
 31, at which age Bichat died. 
 
 CUVIER. 
 
 Line engraving, English, 1840. From the painting made in England by W. H. 
 
 Pickersgill. Inscribed to Prince Albert. 
 
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