SOURCE: “Gassendi's Life of Peiresc: The Humanist's Unattainable Goal of Writing a Universal History,” in Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in an Age of Science, Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 41-65.

[In this excerpt, Joy considers Gassendi as a historian, using an examination of his early Life of Peirescto demonstrate the development of his historiography. Finally, Joy proposes, Gassendi's recognition of the futility of Peiresc's “universal history” fueled his later development and expansion of Epicurean philosophy.]

Gassendi's residence in Paris and his Dutch travels in the late 1620s were significant not only because they resulted in his decision to expand the scope of the Epicurean project. They also constituted a key period in his development as a historian of philosophy. For just as his earlier encounters with Mersenne had forced him to rethink the consequences of his use of skepticism as a weapon against Aristotle, his new encounters with influential humanists forced him to recognize the importance of other aspects of humanism, especially those aspects involving the creation and use of scholarly libraries. In Paris Gassendi himself succumbed to the attraction of days of endless research in an impressive repository of books and documents, the library of the historian Jacques-Auguste de Thou, which was administered since De Thou's death in 1617 by Pierre and Jacques Dupuy. Mindful of the open-endedness of research in a library containing over 8,000 volumes of printed books and over 1,000 manuscripts—research in which the determinate goal of refuting Aristotle may easily have been subsumed in the investigation of other philosophical systems—Gassendi began to recognize a tacit assumption underlying the humanists' devotion to scholarship.¹ He recognized the tendency of his scholarly friends to assume, on the basis of their research in such libraries, that the whole spectrum of past human cultures could be assembled and analyzed if only scholars would work assiduously enough toward that end. This assumption may even have heightened his own interest in reconstructing the philosophy of Epicurus. For if one were seeking to demonstrate the superiority of Epicurean principles over Peripatetic principles, then a historical delineation of the advantages and disadvantages of each school's views over the course of the history of philosophy might provide an unimpeachable way of establishing that superiority. Gassendi might further compare the views of the Epicurean school with those of other ancient philosophical schools in order to show why Epicureanism was the preferable philosophy.

He at no time articulated in writing this strategy which ultimately shaped his Epicurean studies. However, his development as a scholar was influenced by several possible sources of such a strategy. His exposure to one source had already occurred while he was a professor at Aix. In the early 1620s, when he had been engaged in criticizing his university's Aristotelian curriculum, he had read a wide range of recent Latin authors, several of whom had employed a notably historical method in expounding their philosophical views. Among these recent authors were Justus Lipsius, the reviver of Stoicism, and Francesco Patrizi, the Platonist critic of Aristotle.² Although Lipsius and Patrizi had advanced widely divergent philosophical principles, they had employed similar historical methods of exposition when presenting their respective views. Patrizi had structured his Discussiones Peripateticae (1581) in such a way that he first defined the Aristotelian philosophical tradition by giving a detailed account of Aristotle's life, his character, his writings, and his method of philosophizing as well as an account of his students, disciples, expositors, interpreters, and sects.³ In Parts 1 and 3 of his Discussiones, Patrizi had then placed Aristotle's principles within the context of Greek philosophy as a whole by pinpointing the areas of agreement and disagreement among Aristotle and many other ancient philosophers including Plato. Only in Part IV, after having carefully established a historical context, did Patrizi finally offer his own criticisms of various Aristotelian doctrines. This comprehensive historical treatment of Aristotle's views was considered by Patrizi to be a necessary part of his refutation of them. Lipsius had adopted a similar historical approach in his Manuductionis ad Stoicam philosophiam libri tres (1604), which he had composed in order to restore to prominence, not to combat, an ancient philosophical school.⁴ Lipsius' revival of Seneca's Stoicism in the Manuductio consisted of three books, in the first of which he described the origins of philosophy among the barbarians, the Italians (Pythagoreans), and the Greeks (whom he divided into poets, Ionians, and Eleatics). Lipsius explained that Stoicism had developed as an offshoot of the Cynic school, which had itself been an offshoot of the Ionian tradition. Just as Patrizi had done in the case of the Aristotelians, he summarized the important statements made by numerous ancient authors both for and against Stoic principles, and he gave a brief defense of Seneca's character and writings.⁵ This was followed, in Books II and III, by a discussion of how to classify the different parts of philosophy and also by a comparison of Stoic ethical doctrines with those of their ancient rivals, including the Academic skeptics.

Gassendi's awareness of the historical style of exposition in philosophy was further enhanced by his friend and patron in Provence, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. The long-term effects of their relationship will be examined later in this chapter, but it is worth noting now that Peiresc's encouragement of Gassendi's Epicurean researches had a profound effect on the latter's career. His encouragement did not simply take the form of an interest in overthrowing the hegemony of the various Aristotelian sects in philosophy. Peiresc also anticipated that a significant increase in the knowledge of ancient cultures in general would result from Gassendi's successful rehabilitation of Epicurus' reputation and principles.⁶ Thus he helped Gassendi to understand his own aims by emphasizing Gassendi's potential contributions not just to philosophy or physics but to the humanists' larger goal of reconstructing the history of the ancient world.

Gassendi's stay in Paris from 1628 to 1632 exposed him to still other ways of understanding the relations between historical studies and philosophical inquiry. During this stay, he composed parts of his life of Epicurus, which later appeared in print as De vita et moribus Epicuri libri octo (1647). He also probably finished a Latin translation of three of Epicurus' texts which was published as part of his Animadversiones in decimum librum Diogenis Laertii (1649), and he started, although he did not immediately complete, the lengthy commentary that accompanied this translation in the Animadversiones.⁷ In the research associated with these works and in conversations with Parisian humanists, Gassendi acquired an increasing familiarity with the variety of scholarly techniques that were being utilized by the humanists in the writing of their histories of empires, histories of great men, and histories of such subjects as Roman law and natural magic. He became in effect a fellow traveler in several circles of historians who adhered to a common humanist goal, the development of the historiographical disciplines, but who did not always agree about the kind of history which should be the end-product of work in these disciplines. Thus to say that he had become a student of the discipline of history would be highly misleading, for history writing in the early seventeenth century comprised a cluster of disparate activities which were themselves undergoing significant changes in definition and scope.⁸

In particular, Gassendi formed lifelong friendships with Gabriel Naudé and François de la Mothe le Vayer, whose careers as humanists and historiographers he was now well placed to observe. Naudé had served as librarian to Henri de Mesme, president of the Parlement of Paris, and had recently published his widely read summary of how to create a first-rate scholarly library, Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (1627). Over the course of his friendship with Gassendi, Naudé would administer, augment, and in some cases found libraries for a formidable host of patrons: the Italian Cardinal De Bagni, the French Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, and Queen Christina of Sweden.⁹ Besides being one of the most assiduous book buyers on the Continent, he edited or brought to publication works by no less than twenty-five authors, including many Italians such as Leonardo Bruni, Tommaso Campanella, Hieronymo Cardano, Augustino Nifo, and French writers such as Jean Riolan and Gassendi.¹⁰ Naudé was also notable because of his familiarity with numerous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers of handbooks on the methods of writing history.¹¹ Among these was the same Francesco Patrizi who was already known to Gassendi as an opponent of Aristotle's philosophy. Had it not been for Naudé's and, later, La Mothe le Vayer's repeated references to Patrizi's writings, it seems unlikely that Gassendi would have known about the Italian philosopher's De legendae scribendaequae [sic] historiae ratione dialogi decem (Italian first edn, 1560).¹² Naudé himself wrote several controversial histories, one of which stressed the importance of understanding the principles of history writing if one were a monarch who used histories as aids in the analysis of contemporary politics. In another of his books, he advanced a cyclical theory of history, according to which he concluded that Rome would not always be the seat of St Peter or Paris, the seat of the kings of France. His cyclical theory was applied by him even to the fortunes of the sciences which, he said, would exhibit the advances and declines inherent in historical change.¹³ They were no less affected by historical change than were the fortunes of French kings.

La Mothe le Vayer's career also proved instructive to Gassendi. La Mothe le Vayer was an ambitious private scholar who, for nearly twenty years, enjoyed the generous patronage of the King's minister, Cardinal Richelieu. Following Richelieu's death in 1642, he was moreover considered as a strong candidate for the positions of tutor to young Louis XIV and tutor to Philippe, Duc d'Anjou.¹⁴ He failed to get the former post, owing to opposition from the Queen, but he was appointed to the latter and hence was able to put into practice the pedagogical precepts which he had advocated several years earlier in his L'Instruction de Monseigneur le Dauphin. His numerous other writings included a Discours de l'histoire (1638) and an evaluation of the methods of the ancient Greek and Latin historians in Jugement sur les anciens et principaux historiens Grecs et Latins (1646).

Gassendi was also befriended in Paris by the wealthy lawyer and Epicurean, François Luillier. Luillier not only exhibited great generosity as a patron, but he showed genuine enthusiasm for Gassendi's Epicurean ideas as well. It was he who organized and accompanied Gassendi on a stimulating trip to the Netherlands in 1628-9. During these travels, Gassendi became acquainted with many of the leading Dutch scholars, including two notable specialists in the discipline of chronology, Gerardus Joannes Vossius (1577-1649) of Leiden and Eerryk van de Putte (1574-1636) of Louvain. In Dordrecht he also met Isaac Beeckman, the physicist who most probably persuaded him to undertake the reconstruction of Epicurus' physics as part of his work vindicating the beliefs and practices of the philosopher of the Garden.¹⁵

It is not surprising that Gassendi's involvement in the activities of the international community of humanist historiographers helped to bring about his ultimate decision to shelve his anti-Aristotelian project and to focus his efforts instead on the reform of philosophy through the rehabilitation of Epicurean atomism. He had, whether in Paris, in the Netherlands, or in Provence, gained access to the best printed texts and manuscript sources for the study of Epicurus' philosophy. He further enjoyed, at a letter's notice, the combined wisdom of a variety of learned friends. Observing their expertise in philology, chronology, geography, epigraphy, and numismatics, he became increasingly conscious of the ways in which contemporary philosophers depended upon the techniques of the historiographers. Gassendi himself may even have perused the widely available handbooks on historical method, in which scholars sought to define the aims of ancient Greek and Latin as well as modern historical narratives ranging from biography to universal history. These narratives together with the specialized studies produced by philologists, chronologers, geographers, epigraphers, and numismatists dominated European intellectual life at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Historiographers were often in positions which allowed them to determine the meanings of the words that philosophers used. They edited the texts that philosophers studied. They provided what limited biographical information was available concerning past philosophers, and they also summarized the agreements and disagreements which had occurred among the ancient philosophical schools. Gassendi, for example, became well acquainted during his studies of Epicurus' Greek texts with the multiple talents of the formidable Estienne family. In five generations, this family of scholars had produced by birth or marriage several notable printers and philologists whose works were respected throughout Europe: Josse Badius Ascensius (d. 1535), Robert Estienne (1503-59), Henri Estienne (1528-98), Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), and Meric Casaubon (1599-1671).¹⁶ Of particular interest to Gassendi was Henri Estienne, whose works included not only the standard Greek edition of Plato (1578) and the Thesaurus Graecae linguae (1572) but also a major annotated edition (1570) of the Greek text of Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.¹⁷ Book X of Diogenes Laertius contained both the biographical sketch of Epicurus and the three longest pieces of Epicurus' extant writings which Gassendi used to reconstruct his philosophy. Gassendi was similarly indebted to Henri's son-in-law, Isaac Casaubon, for his reprinting (1594) of Estienne's edition of Diogenes Laertius together with additional notes which Gassendi consulted when preparing his own Animadversiones. Humanists like the Estiennes were historiographers in the most fundamental sense of performing the tasks, such as the writing of dictionaries and the translation of key texts, which gave philosophers their principal access to classical Greek, Hellenistic, and Latin thinkers. Narrative historians they were not, yet their achievements in reconstituting and transmitting the languages, laws, and beliefs of past cultures were a sine qua non for all other research concerning those cultures.

As a philosopher who sought to master the philological skills so amply deployed by the Estiennes, Gassendi polished his own humbler knowledge of the Greek language in order to interpret for himself the puzzling Epicurean texts which had been preserved by Diogenes Laertius. He embarked on an ambitious reading program in which he prescribed for himself the laborious study of all forms of Greek literature as well as the study of philosophy and history.¹⁸ Whether this strenuous reading improved his translation of Epicurus' texts is difficult to judge, but it undoubtedly slowed him down. After laboring intensively on his Latin translation of Book X of Diogenes Laertius during several periods in the years 1629-31, he worked by fits and starts until 1645 on the philological commentary which eventually accompanied it in his Animadversiones. However, Gassendi conceived of the commentary not simply as a philological tool, in which he would provide information about the manuscripts he had consulted in establishing the Greek text and notes about his Latin renderings of certain Greek words. He also planned to explicate Epicurus' substantive views. And, as if these two aims were not enough, he added a third, that of discussing the modern debates and experiments in natural philosophy which were related to several of the topics covered by Epicurus' physics. Hence the range of possible reasons for postponing the completion of his commentary was expanded to include, besides his ecclesiastical duties as dean of the cathedral at Digne, a potentially endless regress of efforts to polish his Greek, to analyze philosophical arguments, and to study contemporary scientific experiments. This combination of rigor and folly was not surprising in a young man who had been and would continue to be closely associated with Peiresc. For Gassendi's Provençal patron was notorious for his own encyclopedic interests and prodigious efforts to master every humanist discipline.

Naudé in Paris recognized, as early as 1630, comparable tendencies in Gassendi.¹⁹ He thus tried to warn his new friend of the practical pitfalls which could result from too demanding an attempt to fulfill one's scholarly goals. A humanist himself, Naudé never advocated abandoning the larger goal of humanist scholarship, that of deciphering the meaning of human history through the reconstruction of all important past cultures. However, he did exert a counter-weight to Peiresc's influence by telling Gassendi in no uncertain terms that he must buckle down and find an intellectual focus, preferably in his Epicurean researches, if he wanted to realize a productive scholarly career. The larger goal of the humanists, in Naudé's estimation, was one that no single individual should set himself to achieve. It was one whose fulfillment would depend on the joint labor of scores of specialists. Although Naudé himself published books designed to synthesize the works of the specialists, the pragmatic aims and eclectic form of his writings suggest that he believed that the narrative history of any subject should be written quickly and provisionally.²⁰ Such a history could later be corrected or amended, and its utility even in a rough, imperfect state was preferable to the perfect, nonexistent work of scholars whose standards of rigor and universality led them to entertain unrealistic views concerning methods for digesting the burgeoning mass of texts and artifacts which were being collected in France from sources all over the world.

Naudé was alarmed to learn in the fall of 1630 that Gassendi planned to accompany the Comte de Marcheville on his impending trip to Constantinople on behalf of the French government. Naudé knew of the valuable astronomical observations and natural history investigations which Gassendi would be able to make while traveling with Marcheville in the Ottoman Empire. But even the possibility of sojourns in places like Alexandria compared poorly, he thought, with the opportunities for research on Epicurus' writings now available to Gassendi in Paris.²¹ It was true that in Alexandria Gassendi could obtain astronomical observations which might allow him better to comprehend the works of Ptolemy, the great astronomer of that city. Nonetheless astronomical observations could be conducted anywhere in the world simply through the use of an astrolabe, a telescope, and a gnomon. By contrast, Naudé argued, nowhere in the world would Gassendi be as well situated to consult other scholars and to obtain the printed and manuscript sources necessary for his Epicurean researches as in Paris.

In making his plea for the abandonment of this trip, which was finally canceled by Gassendi, Naudé offered some additional timely advice. Gassendi must take less seriously the ambitious program of literary studies which he had begun in order to perfect his Greek. Naudé cautioned him about the mistake of assuming that an understanding of the recondite language of comic poets like Aristophanes or tragedians such as Lycophron would improve his reading of Greek philosophy. Underscoring this point, Naudé asked, “What did St Thomas and Nifo and Pomponazzi not perform in philosophy without its aid, [and] what in mathematics did Peurbach, Tycho, and Copernicus not accomplish [while] deprived for the most part of the assistance of the same?”²² He explained that philosophy and the other scholarly disciplines had suffered a serious setback in recent times because of the inflated and immoderate use of the Greek language by contemporary scholars.²³ It was true that philosophers and mathematicians in the past who had totally lacked a facility in Greek may have suffered from the want of such erudition. However, this was no reason for contemporary scholars to engage in the excessive study of esoteric forms of Greek literature. Gassendi, he concluded, should see at once that his own possession of even an ordinary reading knowledge of Greek would easily enable him to expound the best Greek historians, orators, and philosophers.²⁴ With just his present command of the language, Gassendi could develop an exemplary scholarly career through his rehabilitation of the reputation, texts, and principles of Epicurus.

Naudé’s remarks revealed both concern for his friend's welfare and a shrewd assessment of the present state of affairs among the historiographical disciplines. In his opinion, Gassendi was incurring definite risks in his attempt to master the wide range of humanist historical techniques. For the study of history was itself undergoing a period of crisis and reorganization, and, in emulating the practices of contemporary historiographers, Gassendi himself was becoming a participant in the crisis. This crisis had partly come about because scholars were now better equipped than ever to investigate the past cultures of Greece, Rome, or indeed any other society whose remains could be analyzed by means of philology, geography, chronology, epigraphy, and numismatics. The pursuit of rigorous techniques for the study of the Greek language in all its forms was just one example of the contemporary scholar's increased mastery. However, at least two circumstances threatened to render the techniques of the humanists ineffective and sterile. One of these had already been noted by Naudé when he urged Gassendi to rely on his ordinary reading knowledge of Greek in expounding Epicurus’ philosophy. Gassendi, he had advised, should not aspire to acquire a perfect knowledge of that language, for that would be to specialize unnecessarily and to put such constraints on his writing that he might never complete his planned work. Too many humanists, Naudé thought, could no longer distinguish the forest from the trees, and they had allowed their methods of scholarship to become ends in themselves.

The second circumstance which threatened to render humanist techniques ineffective was a circumstance that Naudé himself had helped to create, and, not surprisingly, he was less perceptive about its contribution to the present crisis. By the mid seventeenth century, humanist patrons and their librarians had greatly expanded the supply of texts and artifacts which were available for scholarly research. However, their success as procurers and collectors had made the tasks of scholars in the historical disciplines increasingly difficult, if not impossible. There were simply too many texts! Naudé, for instance, built up the Bibliothèque Mazarine from a good private collection of some 6,000 volumes in 1643 to a collection of 45,000 volumes, which was open to the public, by 1647.²⁵ In the great gallery and six adjoining stack rooms of the Hôtel de Tubeuf on the Rue de Richelieu, he eventually administered this matchless collection, which covered all of the following subjects: philosophy, jurisprudence, theology, civil and customary law, chemistry, astronomy, natural history, bibles in all languages, the Koran, the Talmud, Latin and Oriental manuscripts, canon law, politics, light literature, and a special section devoted to Protestant, Jansenist, and other heretical writings. Thus while Naudé disapproved of the counterproductive results of excessive rigor in philology, he nonetheless introduced his own form of rigor at another stage in the humanist research process. His idea of rigor was to build libraries which would serve as repositories of universal knowledge. He did not expect any one scholar to master the whole of such a library. But the fact that a scholar's work had been researched in a first-rate scholarly library was rigor enough for Naudé since it indicated that the author of the work had consulted a significant number of the available extant sources relevant to his topic.

Concomitant with the growth of such libraries was the widespread acceptance of the assumption that humanist methods could be detached from their original aims of recovering the classical cultures of Greece and Rome and could be applied to any and all cultures. These methods were now being routinely employed in the reconstruction of a variety of cultures, especially those of the Near East whose Egyptian, Hebrew, Samaritan, Arabic, Syriac, Turkish, Persian, and Indian texts were the subject of growing interest not only among scholars studying their histories but among buyers and collectors, too. As early as 1593, the philogist Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609) had conceived the project of analyzing the Samaritan Pentateuch as part of his Semitic studies.²⁶ When his efforts to obtain a copy of that work through his usual agent in Marseille failed after a fifteen-year wait, Scaliger enlisted the aid of Peiresc and his agents in Egypt.²⁷ The latter finally succeeded in procuring a copy of the work, but it was lost to pirates at sea and never reached Scaliger in Leiden. Nonetheless two letters from the Samaritan priests at Sichem—written in response to an earlier communication from Scaliger and containing accounts of the Samaritans' observation of the Sabbath and their beliefs about the Messiah—were recovered from another source. These were eventually published after Scaliger's death, and thus his hopes of bringing the Samaritans' religion to light were at least partly achieved.²⁸

Since the mid sixteenth century, moreover, the humanists' critical method of explicating texts and evaluating the manuscript sources had begun to be utilized in the writing of the history of France itself. Historians of France adopted the methods of the humanists because of their dissatisfaction with the prevalent forms of chronicle writing employed in the treatment of France and also because of their desire to reform Greek and Latin classical models of narrative history. Estienne Pasquier (1529-1615), for example, had produced studies of France as a historical civilization which borrowed heavily from the techniques of humanist legal scholars like the influential Jacques Cujas (1522-90) and François Baudouin (1520-73).²⁹ Pasquier, who studied law under both Cujas and Baudouin, published in 1560 the first edition of his Les Recherches de la France. This work, which was based on his analyses of French law and government and the French language and its literature, has been characterized by one recent scholar as a compendium of monographs on all facets of French culture.³⁰ Another calls it “a collection of essays whose arrangement is neither entirely topical nor quite chronological.”³¹ Its purpose is to define French civilization by contrasting it with Roman civilization. Although not a unified narrative, Pasquier's Recherches was exceptionally effective in establishing the origins of French society during Julius Caesar's wars in Gaul and in explaining the medieval history of France with essays such as the three that he devoted to the Hundred Years War.

What did the detachment of the methods of the humanist disciplines from their original ends and their reapplication to French and various Near Eastern cultures signify about the new aims of the historiographers who befriended Gassendi in France, in Italy, and in the Netherlands? Why was this shift in cultural subject matters tolerated? Furthermore, why did the tension between gifted practitioners of the highly technical individual disciplines such as Scaliger and the generalist builders of libraries such as Naudé not produce a fragmentation of the humanist community? Did humanism still have a coherent and convincing rationale as a set of related scholarly methods and as a shaper of intellectual careers? Was it still a viable means for defining and deciding one's substantive beliefs about law, religion, and politics?

Several illuminating answers to these questions emerge from a consideration of the next important stage in Gassendi's Epicurean researches, his residence with Peiresc in Aix from 1636 to 1637 and the composition of his Viri illustris Nicolai Claudii Fabricii de Peiresc … vita from 1637 to 1639. Peiresc's remarkable career had exemplified the flexibility and continuing effectiveness of the humanist disciplines in France. A skilled practitioner of numismatics and epigraphy, for example, Peiresc showed how the study of coins and inscriptions could be used to reconstruct not only Greek and Roman history but also the history of other civilizations.³² He further sought to improve the humanist disciplines by deploying them as mutual checks upon each other's accuracy. In Peiresc's hands, numismatics and epigraphy became methods for testing the accuracy of the philological (i.e., manuscript) evidence on any subject which was commemorated by artifacts and buildings as well as by written records.³³ Similarly, he employed the disciplines of chronology and geography to assess the accuracy of the extant narrative histories written by both ancient and recent historians. Peiresc was able therefore to win the respect of specialists and generalists alike, managing on different occasions to be as rigorous a specialist as Scaliger and as encyclopedic a generalist as Naudé.

Although Gassendi's new contacts with historiographers in Paris and the Netherlands had introduced him to conceptions of historical studies which did not always agree with Peiresc's all-encompassing conception, he still remained powerfully influenced by his friend in Aix. On returning from Paris to Digne in 1632, Gassendi found that his duties as dean of the cathedral and his commitments to complete other philosophical and astronomical projects effectively halted all progress on his Epicurean writings. At Peiresc's urging, however, he made major efforts in 1634 and again in 1636 to finish his life of Epicurus and to resume full-time work on his commentary on Book X of Diogenes Laertius.³⁴ During this period Gassendi was a frequent houseguest of Peiresc in Aix, and it was while residing with him that he finally focused his undivided attention on Epicurus. He was preparing new sections of the commentary explaining Epicurus' physical principles when, in June 1637, Peiresc painfully succumbed to the kidney stones which had plagued him for many years.³⁵ For Gassendi this death was a devastating experience, one which profoundly affected his intellectual progress. As was noted by Rochot, he wrote no letters to his usually wide circle of correspondents for nearly two years afterwards.³⁶ What absorbed him instead was the composition of his biography of Peiresc. In composing this beautifully detailed work, he articulated for the first time his own opinions concerning the problems of method which were facing the humanist historiographers. His reflections on Peiresc's career forced him to ask whether Peiresc had in fact pursued a viable conception of history and whether the attempt by Peiresc to preserve the unity of the humanist community—in the face of emerging divisions caused by the increasing specialization of techniques and the increasing scope and number of the available texts—had been a successful one. Gassendi had at last reached the stage of his own career when his general interest in mastering the historian's methods for the purpose of achieving the reform of philosophy led him to confront specific historiographical questions. He had ceased to be just a fellow traveler and now regarded the humanists' dilemmas as his own.

In describing Peiresc's life, Gassendi identified its major events by asking whether they had been significant contributions to Peiresc's development as a humanist scholar. He thus set aside the standard contemporary practice of writing biographies chiefly about the public achievements of political rulers or military leaders.³⁷ Of course Peiresc did to some degree possess a public identity, since he had represented the fourth generation of his family to serve as counselor to the King in the Parlement of Aix. Like previous generations of the Fabrii or Fabricii family, which had been transplanted from Pisa to Provence in the mid thirteenth century as a result of its participation in the first Crusade of St Louis, he had been exceptionally scrupulous in the performance of his duties to the Catholic Church and the French Crown.³⁸ Still these did not constitute the truly significant parts of his life, on Gassendi's view. They were eclipsed by Peiresc's activities as a scholar, which were by definition those of a private person, since they did not directly affect the maintenance of public life in Provence. To explain fully the accomplishments of a private person, Gassendi extended the scope of the standard humanist biography to include a description of the intimate thoughts and habits of his friend. He looked, as he said, at “what lies hid under the skin and in the heart.”³⁹

Gassendi conceived of his biography as an account of the res gestae of a prince of learning. Although he violated certain precepts which had been recommended by the sixteenth-century handbooks on historical method, regarding the type of subject and style suitable to a biography, he did so in order to extol the virtues of a private man as if they were comparable to those of the kings and princes who were thought to be more appropriate subjects of biographical studies by the authors of these handbooks.⁴⁰ Peiresc's scholarship constituted, in Gassendi's estimation, a series of great deeds:

But if some shall expect deeds more illustrious and honorable than [those] we are about to recall, they ought to know that every man cannot be a Scipio or a Maximus, whose battles and triumphs should be recorded. Those men deserve abundantly to be commended who, although fortune has not raised them to the greatest wealth and dignities, yet they display greater minds, are of a more generous virtue, and undertake far greater designs than anyone could expect from men of their condition. Such was Peiresc, who will be presented as only a man of Senatorial rank and order, and who nevertheless so carried himself as to transcend any encomium and even any panegyric.⁴¹

Gassendi spoke modestly about the style of his biography. He would simply write, he said, “such commentaries as I shall only digest as loose materials in the order of years, as in the manner of annals.”⁴² Yet his annals were studded with detailed information about every aspect of his subject's personal and intellectual life. A firsthand knowledge of Peiresc's private affairs and unlimited access to his letters and memorabilia after his death turned the simple task of narration into a formidable one, as Gassendi himself confessed in the dedicatory epistle:

For he loved me so much that it is easier for me to conceive it in my mind than to express it in words. It may suffice to say that I regard it as a great happiness that he prized me so dearly, and that it was his pleasure to have me so frequently with him and to make me privy to the intentions of all [his] plans and, besides other matters, to utter his last words and breathe out his very soul itself upon my bosom.⁴³

Although Gassendi wrote the first five books of his Vita Peireskii in the form of annals, his method of organizing the biography as a whole was far more sophisticated than the mere chronicling of successive events. This was because, in the sixth and final book, he provided a summary of the kind of man Peiresc had been, analyzing his physical constitution and bodily habits and also the disposition of his mind as it was reflected in his moral character and scholarship. This account of the kind of man it had taken to conceive and perform the actions described in Books I to V enabled Gassendi to explain how these notable actions had been brought about by the conjunction of Peiresc's abilities with the circumstances prevailing in the life of the humanist community in Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century. By offering such causal explanations of the achievements of a prince of learning, Gassendi thus fulfilled a crucial requirement which had been set by sixteenth-century historical methodologists such as Patrizi. The histories of great men must explain the causes of their actions, for only through the proper identification of the causes can the true nature of the actions themselves be specified.⁴⁴

Gassendi's sensitivity to questions of historical method was most striking of all in the actual content of his portrayal of Peiresc. Modern readers may view this portrayal as an uncritical panegyric written by one friend about another or as a determined attempt by Gassendi to recount the praiseworthy details of his mentor's life. So it seems, because what other reason could there be for recounting Peiresc's universal interests and proficiencies? In reality, however, his Vita Peireskii reveals Gassendi's ambivalence toward his friend's fundamental belief in the unlimited possibilities of humanist learning, and his encomium is tempered by a sense that Peiresc's career as a humanist had been a unique one which could not be replicated by most scholars. Gassendi's principal reason for writing the biography was to preserve the record of an outstanding humanist's career which might not otherwise be remembered on account of its unusual nature. Perhaps the most unusual feature of Peiresc's career was the fact that he never published any of the works which his extensive researches were meant to embody.⁴⁵ There was thus no public record of his achievements or his views concerning the humanist disciplines in which he excelled. All that remained were numerous letters, notes, and collections of documents. Gassendi's ambivalence about Peiresc's beliefs principally concerned his mentor's conception of universal history. It was this conception which seemed to him to underlie both Peiresc's view of the kinds of knowledge which humanists ought to seek and Peiresc's own scholarly interests. In his biography, Gassendi struggled to define universal history first by suggesting its relationship to Peiresc's legal career as a counselor in the Parlement of Aix:

For he studied jurisprudence according to the liberal method of Cujas, which from the very sources of the law rather than from the rivulets of the doctors [of law] reveals the excellence of the laws. It was this that chiefly made him take pleasure in the study of antiquity … And in addition to the Pandects manuscripts which he had, he sought even other codices because certain passages in the published books demanded clarification from them.⁴⁶

However, the study of antiquity for the specific purpose of enhancing his legal education comprised just one part of Peiresc's conception of history. Gassendi further explained:

What I said formerly … about his study of antiquity especially comprehends universal history, which he so conceived and retained in his mind that it might have appeared that he had lived in all places and times. Indeed he always held it as a maxim that history most of all serves not only to elucidate the study of the law but to order [one's] life and to bestow on the mind a certain rare and noble delight. For he counted it in some ways more effective than philosophy since the latter instructs men with words, but the former rouses them with examples … He always sought the historians of all nations, and not only did he value the very ancient [historians], but he also esteemed most dearly those who either were of our own nation or had to do with it … Thus he wished to know of whatever was recorded in memorials not only regarding the affairs of Provence or France in particular but also regarding [the affairs] of the Italians, Spaniards, Germans, English, Hungarians, and all those with whom [our nation had] commerce or quarrel.⁴⁷

Peiresc's assumption that no nation, whether past or present, should be ignored by the historian and his confidence that universal history would instruct men in how to order their lives through examples drawn from the whole of human history saddled historians with several unattainable goals. To attain them, historians would have been required to develop criteria of rationality capable of serving as the basis for the comparative study of all human cultures. They would actually have had to digest the bewildering diversity of texts and artifacts which were being amassed in their scholarly libraries. Peiresc considered himself a citizen of the world, a scholar whose intellectual prerogative was to become a member of all nations and an exponent of all cultures. It was the exercise of this prerogative which caused him to entertain a conception of history involving an unavoidable double standard. He wanted historians strictly to observe the laws of their own country while at the same time they were engaging in the sympathetic study of other nations' laws and customs. He asked historians to “lay aside that prejudice which makes the vulgar [sort of person] count as the law of nature whatever is customary to them … [and] to be equally inclined toward all men …”⁴⁸ But he also demanded that they defend the laws of France.

Peiresc could see no irresolvable moral problems arising from this double standard. He firmly held that once the perspective of universal history was adopted, the “greatest tranquillity” and “greatest good” would somehow be discoverable by historians sifting through the alternative prescriptions given by diverse cultures. However, Gassendi was considerably more realistic than Peiresc about the amount of intellectual labor which would be needed to reconcile conflicting moral systems, and he seriously doubted the feasibility of Peiresc's conception of universal history. Could such a history actually be written? He pointed out in no uncertain terms that Peiresc himself had proven incapable of completing for publication any of the individual projects which he had planned and which might have served as the first steps toward a universal history:

It cannot be denied that for a long time he had given great hope of bringing to light the antiquities of Provence and of publishing observations about coins and other choice monuments of antiquity; that he had had a consuming desire to publish commentaries concerning the Medicean stars and the calendar of Constantine; that he had wanted to publish a complete work dealing with weights and measures in jurisprudence; [and] that he had attempted many other subjects. For, as there was no kind of praiseworthy knowledge which he did not comprehend by means of his wide-ranging and curious mind, there was almost nothing concerning which he did not intend to write in a scholarly manner. Nevertheless he in fact did none of the writing which he undertook except that … which he inserted in his letters … This excellent man, who—however many monuments he obtained on any subject—never thought they were sufficient, gathered a variety [of them] all his life … But because the more he obtained, the more he thought was wanting, he digested nothing in the end, nor did he even begin [to digest anything].⁴⁹

What Gassendi discerned with great clarity was the connection between the unattainable nature of Peiresc's goals and his heroic efforts to master the full range of humanist disciplines. Although he praised Peiresc's proficiency in so many disciplines, he recognized that these multiple interests and skills did not add up to a coherent intellectual project. Their very diversity helped to mask the ambiguities left unresolved in Peiresc's conception of universal history. Conversely, the ambiguities of this conception of history had concealed from Peiresc the gravity of the problems facing the humanist disciplines. He had taken too lightly the divisiveness which had been caused by the specialization of techniques and the increasing number of subjects treated according to these techniques. He had assumed that such problems were only the growing pains that must reasonably be expected in a project as vast as the writing of universal history. In Book VI of his biography, Gassendi marveled at his friend's strategies for managing these metaphorical growing pains just as he had marveled in real life at Peiresc's courage in dealing with the pains of his chronic kidney stone condition. Among the examples of these strategies mentioned by Gassendi were Peiresc's frequent consultation of the works of foreign historians to verify the events reported in French history books.⁵⁰ He had used Arabic accounts of the campaigns of the French kings in Syria to supplement the accounts of French writers. By thus enlarging the fund of evidence, Peiresc had hoped to improve the accuracy as well as the scope of his narratives. Furthermore, by consulting not only the evidence in books and manuscripts but also charters, letters, seals, coats of arms, inscriptions, coins, and other such things, he had sought to “clear up most of the obscure passages of [past] authors that were intelligible by no other means.”⁵¹

Gassendi also observed that Peiresc had easily moved from this verification of the written accounts of historical events to the empirical study of nature. In pursuing his interest in natural philosophy, he had had no patience with “those logical and metaphysical subtleties which held nothing of profit and were established only by fostering clamorous disputes.”⁵² He preferred the careful observation of minerals, stones, plants, and animals to the study of Aristotelian natural philosophy, which he thought was “based more on tricks of the wit than on experiments of nature.” Even his investigations in the mathematical disciplines were considered by Peiresc to be related to the attainment of certain humanist goals. As Gassendi explained:

Moreover, he chiefly loved astronomy because a man born for contemplation could behold nothing greater, more sublime and excellent than those bright [celestial] regions. Next to that he loved geography, because it and chronology especially illuminate history and are responsible for [the fact that] noble and otherwise learned men do not behave themselves like children but instead are furnished with a grasp of the whole world and even the whole of time. And next to that he loved optics because the causes of so many things which appear to the eyes are explained by it. …⁵³

Peiresc's strategies for managing the growing pains experienced by practitioners of the humanist disciplines further dealt with the actual physical processes for handling books and artifacts. He had not been content simply to suggest how scholars should interpret their evidence. He also took great care to specify how exactly the evidence required in the writing of universal history should be organized and stored. Gassendi had admired his friend's rigorous personal habits, which had made him highly efficient in obtaining, copying, and disseminating scholarly information. However, he suspected that these habits may also have concealed from Peiresc the impossibility of digesting all the information he was so adroit in collecting. These habits included the year-round purchase of printed books, not only through periodic book marts such as Frankfurt's, but through the efforts of his friends in Rome, Venice, Paris, Amsterdam, Antwerp, London, Lyons, and elsewhere.⁵⁴ Peiresc had kept constant watch over the catalogues of the major research libraries of Europe. If he could not purchase a manuscript that he needed he would borrow it from the relevant library. His personal scribes, like the gifted François Parrot, stood ready to reproduce any text at his request whether in the vernacular languages or in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, or any other language.⁵⁵ Peiresc even had employed in his home a personal bookbinder whose job it was to bind newly purchased texts and to repair any worn or damaged books which he had borrowed from fellow scholars. Often these scholars discovered much to their surprise that books which they loaned Peiresc were returned to them in better condition than they were in when he had borrowed them. But his acquisitive practices were not merely designed to enhance his own scholarship and to enlarge his personal library. As Gassendi noted, “… he sought books not only for himself but for anyone who might have needed them. He loaned countless numbers which were never restored [to him]; he also gave away countless numbers. …”⁵⁶

During his last years Peiresc's intellectual activities were confined to the maintenance of his massive correspondence with other scholars. He worked long hours in his library, yet he had effectively stopped reading books himself except to gather the materials for his letters.⁵⁷ He had reached that stage of his career when, acutely conscious of the fact that he would never publish any works embodying his conception of universal history, he tried as much as possible to insert the sum of his knowledge into his correspondence. There at least his scholarly expertise might assist other writers in the production of their works, and it would not be lost forever. Gassendi spoke with mixed admiration and regret when he described Peiresc's preoccupation with letter writing and with the clerical procedures which he adamantly followed to insure the efficiency of his communications.⁵⁸ All of his letters were written in duplicate. He kept his scribe's copy of each letter to remind him of exactly what he had previously said in any exchange with another scholar. All of these copies and all of the incoming letters which he received were bound into fascicles according to their author, place of origin, or date of composition. Every incoming letter was marked with the name of its author, its date, and its place of origin. Both incoming and outgoing letters had their significant sentences underlined, and the topics of these sentences were recorded in an index appended to each letter. Peiresc had organized all of his research notes with similar meticulous care.

Admirable as these clerical procedures were, Gassendi saw in them still another instance of virtues which, pursued to excess, had hampered Peiresc's intellectual productivity and blinded him to the changing realities of scholarly life. Peiresc, he reluctantly acknowledged, had been moderate in all other things, but he had been notably immoderate in his desire for knowledge. He had in his excessive zeal turned scholarly virtues into vices. He was paralyzed by detail. Occasionally he seemed overly credulous when evaluating documents or listening to the testimony of witnesses.⁵⁹ He never completed any of the histories which he had planned to write. What he left behind at his death in 1637 was a massive collection of letters and manuscript notes on every conceivable subject which, when bound by later scholars, amounted to 132 volumes—according to the 1739 catalogue of Montfaucon—and which contained enough letters alone to fill the anticipated ten or eleven volumes of Tamizey de Larroque's modern edition of his correspondence (only seven of which reached publication).⁶⁰ He also bequethed to his friends and family assorted paintings, instruments, and artifacts as well as a library of printed books that numbered about 5,000 volumes.⁶¹

Gassendi's shrewd assessment of the successes and failures of his friend from Aix gave seventeenth-century readers an insider's view of the complex relations which had gradually been established between the humanist disciplines (including philology, chronology, geography, numismatics, and epigraphy), on the one hand, and a major form of classical as well as contemporary historiography known as universal history, on the other. Because of the complexity of these relations, there was no straightforward way of defining what it meant to be a humanist historiographer. The subject matter of such a scholar's work might vary enormously, depending on whether he had specialized in a discipline like philology, where texts in a particular language were studied for their own sake, or whether he had undertaken philological investigations merely as a preparation for the more general task of writing a universal history of the entire world or a universal history of the civilization whose language he had mastered. Moreover, the attitudes that humanist historiographers took toward their subjects could range from a strong sense of identification with the past cultures they chose to study to a strong sense of detachment from these cultures. Some scholars felt an intense personal involvement in the perpetuation of classical Greek thought, for example, while others exhibited a more historicist view, regarding classical Greece as one of several past civilizations which might be emulated by moderns but could not be relived by them.⁶² In Peiresc's France, practitioners of the humanist disciplines were either historians themselves or were closely related to writers of history by social, educational, and family ties. To such a variegated community of humanist scholars, Peiresc's assumption that diverse scholarly interests could contribute to a common fund of historical knowledge from which a universal history might be written had a genuine appeal.⁶³ In his biography Gassendi was thus able to show how this community's social ties and its somewhat ambiguous interest in universal history had combined to provide its members with a rationale for understanding the relationships between their individual researches and their common historical aims. He described, for instance, how Peiresc had acquired an important part of his humanist training in Italy at the turn of the seventeenth century.⁶⁴ As a young student in Padua, Peiresc had become the protégé of Giovanni Vincenzio Pinelli, a model patron through whose influence he had entered a circle of scholars which included, in Italy, Cardinal Caesar Baronius (author of the Annales ecclesiastici), Paolo Sarpi (author of the Istoria del Concilio tridentino, which contained an influential refutation of Baronius' Annales), Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, Galileo, the Contarini family of Venice, and also the visiting Dutch chronologer Eerryk van de Putte. Outside Italy, Pinelli's influence had brought the young Peiresc into contact with scholars such as Lipsius, Joseph Scaliger, Casaubon, the De Thou family of Paris, and the Pithou family of Troyes. Gassendi of course recognized that Peiresc had modeled himself after Pinelli and had devised for his protégé—Gassendi—a similar set of introductions to many of these scholars. In the case of those who were no longer living, Peiresc had introduced Gassendi to their writings. However, Gassendi was led by his analysis of his mentor's failures to ask two disturbing questions concerning the practices of these scholars. Were they, like Peiresc, pursuing an ambiguous, counterproductive conception of history? Could they and their successors continue to call themselves a community in the face of the emerging divisions which had been caused by the increasing specialization of techniques and the greater scope and number of the texts being studied?

It would exceed the limits of the present study of Gassendi to try to offer a complete account of the genre of history writing called “universal history” as it was practiced throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.⁶⁵ The foregoing discussion has featured only a selective sampling of the individuals who comprised the ranks of humanists and historiographers of the period. I do, however, want to suggest that Gassendi had acquired by the early 1640s a fairly sophisticated knowledge of the conception of universal history as it was articulated by his wide circle of acquaintances. The example of Peiresc had taught him that universal history could function as a conceptual catchall which merely associated under a convenient label the interests of very different scholars or it could function, as Peiresc had hoped, as a synthetic concept which would unify the respective works of the specialized humanist disciplines into a single, coherent account of human history. But Peiresc's failure to produce any part of such a universal history had led Gassendi to entertain reservations about the feasibility of this genre. He acknowledged the effectiveness of Peiresc's conception as a catchall capable of strengthening existing social ties within the humanist community. Concerning its potential as a genuinely synthetic concept, however, he was less optimistic. When Gassendi further considered what his other humanist friends had to say about their own projects for writing universal histories, he could not have been very encouraged.

The pronouncements of historians such as La Mothe le Vayer and Naudé certainly did little to clarify Peiresc's conception. Their views merely made the notion of universal history more confusing since they attempted to articulate this notion both in terms of classical Greek and Latin examples of universal history and in terms of more recent French and Italian models of the genre. La Mothe le Vayer developed a keen interest in the methodology of history during the 1630s and 1640s despite having begun his career as a writer of philosophical dialogues. This new interest, he explained, was the result of a friend's suggestion that he should switch fields, from philosophy to the writing of histories.⁶⁶ His friend had especially encouraged him to compose the type of history commonly known as “a history of one's time.” La Mothe le Vayer had initially refused to make such a switch on the grounds that a project so vast would require skills which he did not possess. However, this episode did start him thinking about methodologies of history. He was of course familiar with the controversial Historia sui temporis (1603-17) of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, a work which was well known to scholars as a model of the kind of history named in its title despite the fact that it had been listed on the Catholic Church's Index of Prohibited Books in 1609.⁶⁷ But it was the ancient Greek and Latin historians who most engaged La Mothe le Vayer's attention, and in 1646 he published his Jugement sur les anciens et principaux historiens Grecs et Latins, a study summarizing their achievements. He later conceived a serious ambition to write a history of his own time and drafted his Préface pour un ouvrage historique in anticipation of the substantive work which he hoped would follow.

Because La Mothe le Vayer never actually produced the substantive history that he had promised to write, the best evidence concerning his ideas about history is limited to the methodological discussions of his Préface and his book on the ancient historians.⁶⁸ Both of these leave little doubt that the genre of history he endorsed was universal history. In Jugement sur les anciens et principaux historiens Grecs et Latins, for instance, he made it a rule only to survey the works of those ancient authors whom he believed to have been writers of universal histories.⁶⁹ Of the twenty-four authors included in his study, he reserved the highest praise for the Greek historian Polybius, whose narrative of Rome's rise to world power during the third and second centuries BC seemed to La Mothe le Vayer perfectly to exemplify the genre of universal history. Most notably, La Mothe le Vayer omitted from his study any treatment of two widely read Greek historians, Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, on the grounds that, as writers of biographies, they did not “comprehend much more than the simple narration of a life.”⁷⁰ Still he did not exclude all biographers, for among the Latin writers he treated were Suetonius and Quintus Curtius. He included Quintus Curtius because he judged the latter's life of Alexander the Great as having been essentially a much larger history of the transformation of the Persian Empire into the Macedonian Empire. As such Quintus Curtius counted as a writer of universal history.

The conception of universal history which La Mothe le Vayer articulated resembled Peiresc's conception in several respects. He shared Peiresc's assumption that a universal history must tell an all-encompassing story which involves as many societies as possible. In praising the ancient historian Polybius, he accordingly endorsed Polybius' explanation of why his history of Rome had been a universal history. From Polybius' history, the reader could apprehend the destinies of all nations because, during the period which it described, almost all nations had had to contend with the Romans.⁷¹ Secondly, La Mothe le Vayer shared Peiresc's belief that history competed favorably with philosophy in furnishing moral instruction, especially to political leaders. He maintained that history could surpass the pedagogical efficacy of philosophy by its teaching through actions and examples rather than through words and principles. History, he said, should be regarded as “the metropolitan of philosophy.”⁷² Statements such as these revealed the extent to which seventeenth-century historiographers continued to depend on the ancient Greek and Latin exponents of universal history. For it was again from Polybius that many of them borrowed the argument that history, defined as magistra vitae, was simply philosophy teaching by example.⁷³ Not surprisingly, Polybius' ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑΙ [Histories] were widely read in France at this time, particularly in Isaac Casaubon's Latin translation (1609) of the Greek text.

Despite the ancient precedents for such a conception of universal history, it seemed to Gassendi unlikely that these precedents were adequate models for the sort of histories which contemporary historiographers aspired to compose. Most of them gave no clues about how contemporary writers should synthesize the proliferating studies of past cultures now being produced. It was one thing to write a history of Rome, but it was quite another to write histories of all the empires that ever existed and to digest the evidence for these histories from sources written in every conceivable classical and vernacular language. Analytic problems involving questions such as historical relativity and narrative order needed to be solved, together with more practical problems such as the division of labor among specialists handling similar or related subjects. La Mothe le Vayer's and Peiresc's humanist scholarship crucially distinguished their problem situation from the problem situation of the ancient historians. Their friend Naudé perhaps best characterized this distinction when he remarked that, for the érudit, history was the pre-eminent subject of scholarship not only because it served as a witness of past times and as a teacher by example but because it represented the knowledge which had been accumulated and collected from all parts of the world.⁷⁴ The seventeenth-century érudits' historical researches had become so prolific as to defy assimilation in any single model of history. Naudé also pointed out that, while the study of the ancient authors' rules for writing different genres of history should remain an indispensable part of the historian's training modern historians could not agree on which of the ancient rules should be followed in contemporary works. Although eminent sixteenth-century methodologists of history like Jean Bodin and Francesco Patrizi had drawn some of their ideas from the ancients, it would be misleading to think that their study of the ancients had led to any consensus among them about how best to interpret historical evidence and how best to compose an actual history.⁷⁵ The ancients were still to be emulated, but one should not expect that this would solve contemporary problems of method.

It became clear to Gassendi after the death of Peiresc that Naudé had been right. The classical Greek and Latin models of universal history and even the sixteenth-century emendations of these models did not appear to be adequate to the task of defining a genre of history in which the érudits could digest all the knowledge of past cultures that had been unearthed in their researches. Peiresc's conception of universal history had proven to be too loosely defined to guide him in the actual writing of the works which he had hoped would embody the information he had collected in his philological, geographical, chronological, numismatic, and epigraphic investigations. Perhaps Gassendi realized that no form of history could have done what Peiresc had expected of universal history. In any case, during the years following the completion of his Vita Peireskii, Gassendi puzzled over the dilemmas of the humanist historiographers. These would now be his dilemmas if he continued to pursue his historical researches on the philosophy of Epicurus. For, by the early 1640s, he had become a true érudit, one who regarded the skills inculcated by the humanist disciplines as something more than mere exegetical tools to assist him in becoming a better philosopher. He was even open to the suggestion that the relationship between historians and philosophers, hitherto a one-way exchange from the former to the latter, might become a profitable two-way exchange. Not only should philosophers continue to rely on the humanist historiographers for texts and translations, but the community of historians should in turn consult the philosophers to develop more effective ways of interpreting the histories of past cultures. Gassendi himself refused to characterize the relationship between history and philosophy by reiterating, as his friend La Mothe le Vayer had done, the ancient exemplar theory of history. La Mothe le Vayer's endorsement of this theory's maxim—that history and philosophy both aim at moral instruction, but history teaches by example whereas philosophy teaches by reasoning from general principles—fell far short of what Gassendi had in mind. He now realized that his own Epicurean researches were pointing the way toward a different understanding of the relationship between history and philosophy. The Epicurean texts on which he had been working were taken from Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, itself a notable model of Greek history writing. In extolling the virtues of the ancient historians, La Mothe le Vayer had deliberately ignored this Greek model on account of his preference for more universal works. Gassendi, by contrast, considered Diogenes Laertius to be one of the few ancient authors who could offer contemporary historians at least a good provisional model for writing the history of past cultures. This was because Diogenes Laertius' historical subject had been, not wars or politics, but ancient philosophy. And it was in writing the history of philosophy that Diogenes had already encountered the fundamental problem of writing a history of past cultures: the problem of how to treat in a coherent narrative a wide variety of incommensurable systems of belief. But Gassendi thought that contemporary philosophers, too, would benefit from this emphasis on the history of philosophy because the increased deployment of historical arguments in philosophy might provide acceptable solutions to the problems of justification which stymied so many of his contemporaries whenever they attempted to refute the doctrines of the Aristotelians.

The making of Gassendi the érudit therefore ended by rekindling his earliest ambition to achieve the reform of philosophy. However, the complex form in which Gassendi now conceived this ambition requires careful elaboration. Since his exposition of Epicurus' principles would become the basis for his writing of a larger history of philosophy, we need to ask what exactly constituted the relationship between these two activities.

Notes

1. Concerning the holdings of De Thou's library, see Mark Pattison, Isaac Casaubon, 1559-1614 (Oxford, 1892), p. 120.

2. According to the eulogy of him written by Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Francesco Patrizi taught Plato's philosophy at the University of Ferrara for seventeen years. His criticism of Aristotle and his idiosyncratic interpretations of other ancient philosophers made him many enemies, and his Nova de universis philosophia … (Ferrara, 1591) was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books. See De Thou, Histoire universelle de Jacque-Auguste [sic] de Thou depuis 1543 jusqu'en 1607, French trans. of the London Latin text which was edited by Thomas Carte (16 vols., London, 1734), vol. 13, p. 189. On Gassendi's familiarity with Patrizi's Discussiones Peripateticae, see my Chapter 2, pp. 32-3 and n. 32. Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) was professor of history and Latin literature at Louvain and, prior to that, at Leiden. On Gassendi's familiarity with Lipsius' writings, see Gassendi to Pibrac, April 8, 1621, in Gassendi, Opera, vol. 6, p. 2A.

3. Patrizi, Discussiones Peripateticae, pp. 2-175 (pt 1), 176-287 (pt 2), 288-361 (pt 3), 362-479 (pt 4).

4. Justus Lipsius, Manuductionis ad Stoicam philosophiam libri tres … (Antwerp, 1604), pp. 48-53.

5. Ibid., pp. 27, 42-6 on the Ionian and Cynic origins of Stoicism, 57-61 on Seneca's character.

6. The correspondence during this period between Peiresc and Gassendi contains references to a wide range of historical projects in which Peiresc was assisting other scholars who were investigating such ancient texts as the Samaritan Pentateuch and various Arab books. Gassendi's research on the Greek text of Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers was just one of the many historical projects that Peiresc helped to sponsor. See Gassendi to Peiresc, August 28, 1629, pp. 206-9; Peiresc to Gassendi, January 18, 1630, p. 239; and Peiresc to Gassendi, November 18, 1632, pp. 262-6, in Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Lettres de Peiresc, ed. Philippe Tamizey de Larroque (7 vols. Paris, 1888-98), vol. 4.

7. See Gassendi's letters to Peiresc of September 11, 1629 and April 28, 1631, and several relevant ones written between these two dates in Lettres de Peiresc, vol. 4, pp. 217, 249-52. Rochot summarizes the information about Gassendi's work on the translation and commentary which is contained in these letters. See Bernard Rochot, Les travaux de Gassendi sur Epicure et sur l'atomisme, 1619-1658 (Paris, 1944), pp. 41-8.

8. See Chapter 1, n. 7. [Not excerpted.]

9. James V. Rice, Gabriel Naudé, 1600-1653 (Baltimore, 1939), pp. 14-17, 22-5, 41-3.

10. Kristeller, “Gabriel Naudé as an Editor,” Renaissance Quarterly 32 (1979), esp. 61-8.

11. On Naudé's references to Patrizi and other writers of handbooks on history, see Gabriel Naudé, Bibliographia politica (Venice, 1633), pp. 102-6. Naudé also mentions Patrizi in: Gabriel Naudé, Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque … (Paris, 1627), 2nd edn (Paris, 1644), pp. 41, 90; Gabriel Naudé, Syntagmata de militari studio (Rome, 1637), p. 18.

12. La Mothe le Vayer commented on Patrizi's dialogues on the method of reading and writing history in his Jugement sur les anciens et principaux historiens Grecs et Latins, dont il nous reste quelques ouvrages (Paris, 1646), in Oeuvres de François de la Mothe le Vayer, reprint of Paris, 1669 edn (7 vols. in 14 pts, but lacking vol. 15 of the 1669 edn, Dresden, 1756-9), vol. 4, pt 2, pp. 44-5; and in his “Préface pour un ouvrage historique” (undated), in Oeuvres de François de la Mothe le Vayer, vol. 4, pt 2, p. 286. For a modern scholar's evaluation of Patrizi's contributions to sixteenth-century historiography, see William J. Bouwsma, “Three Types of Historiography in Post-Renaissance Italy,” History and Theory 4 (1965), 303-14, esp. 310.

13. Naudé discussed history as an aid to politics in his Bibliographia politica, pp. 102-6. His cyclical theory regarding kingdoms appeared in Gabriel Naudé, Considérations politiques sur les coups d'estat (Paris, 1639; Rome, 1679), p. 228. For his theory's application to the sciences as well as to politics, see Gabriel Naudé, Addition à l'histoire de Louis XI (Paris, 1630), pp. 132-5.

14. Mr le Ch … C … D.M … “Abrégé de la vie de Monsieur de la Mothe le Vayer …” in Oeuvres de François de la Mothe le Vayer, vol. 1, pt 1, pp. 21-60, esp. 39.

15. Gassendi lists the Dutch scholars whom he met in a letter to Peiresc of July 21, 1629 in Lettres de Peiresc, vol. 4, pp. 198-202. Concerning Gassendi's meeting with Beeckman, see my Chapter 2, n. 50. [Not excerpted.]

16. On the family as a whole but focusing on Henri Estienne, see Mark Pattison, “Classical Learning in France: The Great Printers Stephens,” Quarterly Review 117 (Jan.-Apr., 1865), 323-64, esp. 326 on Badius. Regarding Badius, who was Robert Estienne's father-in-law and the publisher of most of Guillaume Budé's works, see David O. McNeil, Guillaume Budé and Humanism in the Reign of Francis I (Geneva, 1975), pp. 15, 27, 71-6, esp. 72 n. 68. For other individual family members, see Elizabeth Armstrong, Robert Estienne, Royal Printer (Cambridge, 1954) and Mark Pattison, Isaac Casaubon.

17. For a full account of the editions of Diogenes Laertius which were available to Gassendi, see Chapter 4, pp. 74-5.

18. See Naudé's warning about the possible ill effects of this reading program in Naudé to Gassendi, October 31, 1630, in Gassendi, Opera, vol. 6, p. 399.

19. Ibid., pp. 396-9.

20. For instance, Naude's Apologie pour tous les grands personnages qui ont esté faussement soupçonnez de magie (Paris, 1625), Addition à l'histoire de Louis XI, and Considérations politiques sur les coups d'estat were all eclectic works which borrowed principles as well as examples from the writings of others such as the skeptic Pierre Charron. All of these works were, moreover, designed to correct or enhance the previous interpretations of important persons or events which had been attempted by scholars before Naudé.

21. Naudé to Gassendi, October 31, 1630, in Gassendi, Opera, vol. 6, pp. 397-8.

22. Ibid., p. 399.

23. Ibid., p. 399.

24. Ibid., p. 399.

25. Jack A. Clarke, Gabriel Naudé, 1600-1653 (Hamden, Conn., 1970), pp. 62-82, esp. 79-80; Rice, Gabriel Naudé, pp. 24-5.

26. Vita Peireskii, p. 270B.

27. Ibid., p. 270B. On Scaliger's friendship and prior encounters with Peiresc, see also pp. 254B, 258A, 259A, 264B-265A.

28. Several excellent accounts of the different facets of Scaliger's work may be found in: Jacob Bernays, Joseph Justus Scaliger (Berlin, 1855) on Scaliger's Semitic studies; Grafton, “Joseph Scaliger and Historical Chronology: the Rise and Fall of a Discipline,” History and Theory 14 (1975), 156-85, on his chronologies; Grafton, Joseph Scaliger. A study in the History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford, 1983) on his conception of philology.

29. See the discussions of Pasquier in George Huppert, The Idea of Perfect History. Historical Erudition and Historial Philosophy in Renaissance France (Urbana, 1970), pp. 32-71; Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance (New York and London, 1970), pp. 271-300.

30. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, pp. 271-2.

31. Huppert, The Idea of Perfect History, pp. 63-5.

32. Vita Peireskii, p. 253A.

33. Ibid., pp. 342A-B, 344A.

34. See the following correspondence cited by Howard Jones in Pierre Gassendi, 1592-1655. An Intellectual Biography (Nieuwkoop, 1981), pp. 49-50; Gassendi to Peiresc, January 13, 1634, and Peiresc to Gassendi, February 1, 1634 and February 3, 1634, in Lettres de Peiresc, vol. 4, pp. 414-15, 428, 444; Peiresc to Dupuy, November 25, 1636, in Lettres de Peiresc, vol. 3, p. 611.

35. Vita Peireskii, pp. 347B-348A.

36. Rochot, Les travaux de Gassendi, pp. 82-3.

37. Gassendi was very conscious of the fact that, in his biography of Peiresc, he was treating Peiresc's private achievements as a scholar as if they had been the res gestae of a prince. See his dedicatory remarks to Louis-Emmanuel de Valois in Vita Peireskii, esp. pp. 240, 242. Whether a historian should commemorate a person's private actions, as opposed to those public actions which have consequences for the well-being of the political state, was a lively subject of debate in late sixteenth-century handbooks on methods of writing history, such as Francesco Patrizi's De legendae scribendaequae [sic] historiae ratione dialogi decem … Italian edn (Venice, 1560), Latin edn (Basle, 1570), pp. 6-7, 64-73. A useful discussion of the classical Greek and Latin traditions which led to the sixteenth-century exemplar theory of history's focus on the actions of great men and political states appears in George H. Nadel, “Philosophy of History before Historicism,” History and Theory 3 (1964), 291-315.

38. Vita Peireskii, p. 337B.

39. The phrase I have quoted is from the following passage of Vita Peireskii, p. 241: “… Unde quidnam intus, et sub cute lateat, internosse per-arduum sit; quae vero procul ab arbitris, et sine famae captatione, atque idcirco sine fuco, ereptaque persona fiunt, ea demum hominem ostendunt; quod discernere est operae-pretium.” Unless otherwise noted, all English translations of Latin and French quotations in this book are my own. In translating excerpts from Vita Peireskii, I have generally followed, although with my own revisions, William Rand's translation, The Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentility. Being the Life of the Renowned Nicolaus Claudius Fabricius, Lord of Peiresk … (London, 1657).

40. See above, Chapter 3, n. 37. [Not excerpted.] The popularity of both the subject of his biography and his method of composing it is evident in the number of editions of Gassendi's Vita Peireskii that were published within a short period of time. There were five Latin editions—1641, 1647, 1651, 1655, and 1656—followed by Rand's English translation of 1657.

41. Vita Peireskii, p. 242: “Sin vero nonnulli requirent illustriora quaedam, et ampliora facta, quam commemoraturi simus; norint oportet non omneis posse Scipiones esse, aut Maximos, ut bella, triumphosque recordari valeant. Abunde illi merentur laudem, quos cum Fortuna ad summas opes, atque dignitates non evexerit; majores tamen animos gerunt, generosiore virtute sunt, ac moliuntur grandiora longe, quam pro conditione sperare quis possit. Talis porro Peireskius fuit, quem exhibituri non sumus, nisi ut Virum, qui fuerit gradus, censusque Senatorii; et qui sese tamen ita gesserit, ut se fecerit quolibet encomio, ac panegyri superiorem.”

42. The phrase I have quoted is from this sentence of Vita Peireskii, p. 241: “Alii, si videbitur, comptiore calamo expolient, ac historiae forma donabunt quos ipse commentarios, ceu rudera quaedam, digessero solum, veluti annaleis, in temporum seriem.”

43. Vita Peireskii, p. 240: “Nam me quidem quantum amarit, promptius est animo sentire, quam verbis exprimere; satisque est dicere me foelicitati vertere magnae, quod me tam carum habuerit, quod tam frequentem sibi adesse, consiliorumque animi omnium esse conscium voluerit; quod in meum sinum ut caetera, sic extrema verba, animamque ipsam tandem exhalarit.”

44. Patrizi, De legendae scribendaequae [sic] historiae ratione dialogi decem, pp. 155-61.

45. See Chapter 3, p. 59.

46. Vita Peireskii, p. 341B: “Jurisprudentiam nempe excoluit Cujaciana illa, ac liberali methodo, quae ex ipsis fontibus Juris, potiusquam ex Doctorum rivulis, Legum nitorem conspicuum facit. Heinc vero praecipue amavit antiquitatis studium; … et praeter Pandectas MSS. quos habuit, requisivit etiam alios Codices, quod quaedam editorum loca expeterent ab ipsis lucem.”

47. Ibid., pp. 341B-342A: “Quod dixi porro obiter circa antiquitatis studium, complectitur id maxime universam Historiam, quam sic animo informaverat, tenebatque, ut videri posset omnibus et locis, et temporibus interfuisse. Defixum quippe hoc semper habuit, conferre maxime historiam non illustrando modo Juris studio, sed componendae etiam vitae, animoque eximia quadam atque liberali delectatione afficiendo. Censebat enim quodammodo efficaciorem Philosophia, quod haec quidem verbis homines erudiat, sed illa exemplis accendat … Conquisivit proinde semper nationum omnium Historicos, et cum per-antiquos haberet per-caros, tum eos duxit carissimos, qui vel nostrae gentis essent, vel quomodocunque ad eam attinerent … Ita callere ipse voluit quicquid monumentis esset proditum, non de rebus modo ad Provinciam, Galliamve speciatim pertinentibus; sed etiam de iis, quae ad Italos, Hispanos, Germanos, Anglos, Hungaros spectarent, universeque ad illos omneis, quibuscum hominibus nostris commercium, aut dissidium fuit.”

48. The phrases I have quoted are from the following passage of Vita Peireskii, p. 343B: “Heinc enim putabat hominem ingenuum exuere posse praeoccupationem, qua vulgus legem naturae putat, quicquid sibi in usu est … Tum posse illum animum suum supra vulgarem conditionem evehere, et defensurum quidem sua, sed aequum tamen se praebiturum adversus omneis homines … et, ut paucis dicam, ea exstiturum temperatione animi, ut maximam tranquillitatem, maximumque adeo bonum consequatur.”

49. Vita Peireskii, p. 344B: “Et sane haud negandum quidem, quin dudum spem multam fecisset edendi in lucem Antiquitates Provinciae, evulgandique observationes in numismata, selectaque alia priscarum rerum monumenta: quin flagrasset pridem desiderio emittendi Commentarios de Mediceis Sideribus, et Kalendario Constantiniano; quin voluisset perfectum opus de ponderibus, et mensuris publici Juris facere; quin multa quoque alia argumenta non affectasset: quoniam, ut nullum fuit genus laudabilis eruditionis, quod animi sui amplitudine, curiositateque non fuerit complexus; ita nihil propemodum fuit, de quo aliquid scribere pererudite non destinarit. Veruntamen nihil demum fuit, cuius scriptionem fuerit aggressus; si ea excipias, quae, ut iam innui, in Epistolas transsumpta inservit … Is nempe optimus Vir fuit, qui factum satis nunquam putarit, quantumcunque monumentorum aliqua de re obtinuisset: adeo ut toto quidem aevo congesserit varia de argumento quolibet; sed, quia quo plura nanciscebatur, eo sibi plura deesse censebat, nihil tandem digesserit, imo ne inchoarit quidem.”

50. Ibid., p. 342A.

51. Ibid., p. 342B: “… Adeo ut innotuerint demum pleraque Auctorum obscura, nec alia ratione intellecta loca.”

52. The phrases I have quoted are from the following sentences of Vita Peireskii, p. 343A: (a) “Ex his fere elicitur non placuisse ipsi Dialecticas illas, Metaphysicasve argutias, quae nihil bonae frugis haberent, et fovendis solum clamosissimis contentionibus essent comparatae.” (b) “Displicebat profecto illi quae Physica vulgo docetur in Scholis, tanquam nimis umbratica, et ingeniorum potius technis, quam experimentis naturae innixa.”

53. Note that, in the quoted passage from Vita Peireskii, p. 344A, Gassendi says that Peiresc regarded geography and chronology as mathematical as well as historical disciplines: “Adamavit autem praesertim Astronomiam, quod homo natus ad contemplandum, nihil possit majus, sublimius, excellentius, illustribus illis plagis inspectare. Deinde Geographiam, quod illa, una cum Chronologia, Historiam maxime collustrent, praestentque ne Viri ingenui, ac aliunde literati, gerant sese pro pueris; quin potius in totius Orbis, atque temporis quasi possessionem mittantur. Postea Opticen, quod per illam explicentur causae tam multarum rerum, quae apparent oculis …”

54. Vita Peireskii, pp. 339B-340A.

55. Ibid., p. 341A.

56. Ibid., p. 340A: “… Quaesiisse eum libros non sibi solum sed etiam quibusve opus illis foret. Innumeros vero commodato dedit, qui restituti nunquam sunt; innumeros quoque donavit …” Modern scholars have estimated that, at the time of his death, Peiresc's library contained, among other items, about 5,000 printed books. See: Henri Auguste Omont, “Les manuscrits et livres annotés de Fabri de Peiresc,” Annales du Midi 1 (1880), 316-39, esp. 317; Francis W. Gravit, The Peiresc Papers (Ann Arbor, 1950), p. 1.

57. Vita Peireskii, p. 341A.

58. Ibid., pp. 339A-340B.

59. Ibid., p. 338B. Peiresc's credulousness was also noted in Gabriel Naudé, Jugement de tout ce que a esté imprimé contre le Cardinal Marzarin … (Paris, 1649), p. 667.

60. Dom Bernard de Montfaucon, Bibliotheca bibliothecarum manuscriptorum nova (2 vols. Paris, 1739), vol. 1, pp. 1181-9. Montfaucon was the second important cataloguer of Peiresc's manuscripts. The first was Pierre Dupuy, whose original catalogue was revised and published by François Henry in an appendix to an edition (The Hague, 1655) of Vita Peireskii. For a description of all of the modern collections of Peiresc's papers, especially the main body of them in the Bibliothèque Inguimbertine at Carpentras, see: Gravit, The Peiresc Papers, pp. 7-57; Omont, “Les manuscrits et livres annotés de Fabri de Peiresc,” pp. 319-36.

61. Vita Peireskii, pp. 346B-347A. See also: Omont, “Les manuscrits et livres annotés de Fabri de Peiresc,” p. 317; Gravit, The Peiresc Papers, p. 1. An unedited version of Peiresc's will has been published by Philippe Tamizey de Larroque in his “Le testament de Peiresc,” Annales du Midi 1 (1889), 35-46. According to the will, Gassendi received all of Peiresc's mathematical books and instruments plus 100 other books on whatever subjects he desired. This version of the will has been reprinted in a volume which also contains and bears the title of Léopold Delisle's Un grand amateur français du dix-septième siècle, Fabri de Peiresc (Toulouse, 1889).

62. This contrast between devoted Hellenists and contemporary historians who adopted a more historicist approach was clearly recognizable among French humanists during the sixteenth century and continued to be so during the early seventeenth century. Striking examples of sixteenth-century works that illustrated this contrast were, on the one hand, Guillaume Bude's Commentarii linguae graecae (Paris, 1529) and Henri Estienne's Thesaurus Graecae linguae (Geneva, 1572) and, on the other hand, Henri Lancelot-Voisin de la Popelinière's L'histoire des histoires (Paris, 1599). On Budé, see Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship, esp. pp. 64-6. On La Popelinière, see Huppert, The Idea of Perfect History, esp. pp. 139-44 concerning La Popelinière's distinction between “general history” and the older Christian idea of universal history, and pp. 161-6 on La Popelinière's historicism.

63. In the close ties maintained between French historiographers and other varieties of French humanists, France differed notably from Italy, where the historians and the antiquarians operated to a large extent independently of each other. France also differed from Italy because, in Italy, the writers of universal history were isolated from the intellectual transactions of other humanists. For a description of these two features of Italian humanism, see Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago and London, 1981), esp. pp. 382-9, 435-44. For further discussion of the patronage ties which helped to bind together the French historiographical community, see Orest Ranum, Artisans of Glory. Writers and Historical Thought in Seventeenth-Century France (Chapel Hill, 1980), pp. 26-102.

64. Vita Peireskii, pp. 248A-255B. For a modern account of Peiresc's dealings with Italian scholars, see Cecilia Rizza, Peiresc e l'Italia, with a preface by Raymond Lebègue (Turin, 1965).

65. There are useful short discussions of universal history in many of the works cited above, in Chapter 1, n. 7. See especially some of the passages from: Cochrane, Historians in the Italian Renaissance; Huppert, The Idea of Perfect History; Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. See also F. Smith Fussner, The Historical Revolution. English Historical Writing and Thought, 1580-1640 (London, 1962), pp. 163-75, 191-210.

66. François de la Mothe le Vayer, Discours de l'histoire (Paris, 1638), in Oeuvres de François de la Mothe le Vayer, vol. 4, pt 1, pp. 280-4.

67. Samuel Kinser, The Works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou (The Hague, 1966), p. 1.

68. The fact that La Mothe le Vayer never completed this history of his own time was noted by Michel Groell, printer of the 1756 edn of his Oeuvres, in an advertisement at the beginning of vol. 4, pt 2.

69. La Mothe le Vayer, Jugement sur les anciens et principaux historiens Grecs et Latins, pp. [1-3] of his unnumbered preface and pp. 32-4 on Polybius, in Oeuvres de François de la Mothe le Vayer, vol. 4, pt 2.

70. Ibid., p. [2] of unnumbered preface: “En effet, une vraie et legitime Histoire embrasse bien plus que la simple narration d'une vie de qui que ce soit …”

71. Ibid., pp. 33-4.

72. Ibid., pp. 32, 44-5; La Mothe le Vayer, Discours de l'histoire, in Oeuvres, vol. 4, pt 1, pp. 281-3.

73. For an account of Polybius as a source for the concept of history as philosophy teaching by example, and an account of his influence on the sixteenth-century historiographer Jean Bodin and the seventeenth-century historiographer Gerardus Vossius, see Nadel, “Philosophy of History before Historicism,” History and Theory 3 (1964), esp. 295, 300-1, 305-8.

74. Naudé, Bibliographia politica, p. 103.

75. Ibid., pp. 103-4.