SOURCE: “The Libertines Érudits,” in The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza,” University of California Press, 1979, pp. 87-109.

[In this excerpt, Popkin considers the work of Gassendi in the context of the so-called French libertines of the seventeenth century. The critic debunks the myth of the libertine philosopher as a dissolute atheist, finding instead that although Gassendi was a skeptic, his motives were of an anti-Aristotelian and not an anti-Christian bent.]

Gassendi (or perhaps Gassend)¹ was one of the prodigies of the early seventeenth century. He was born in 1592 in Provence, went to college at Digne, and by the age of 16 was lecturing there. After studying theology at Aix-en-Provence, he taught theology at Digne in 1612. When he received his doctorate in theology, he became a lecturer in philosophy at Aix, and then canon of Grenoble. Quite early in life, Gassendi began his extensive scientific researches, assisted and encouraged by some of the leading intellectuals of Aix, like Peiresc. The philosophy course that he taught led Gassendi to compile his extended critique of Aristotelianism, the first part of which appeared as his earliest publication in 1624, the Exercitationes Paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos. This was followed by several scientific and philosophical works, which gained Gassendi the greatest renown in the intellectual world and brought him into contact with the man who was to be his life-long friend, Father Marin Mersenne. In 1633, Gassendi was appointed Provost of the Cathedral of Digne, and in 1645, Professor of Mathematics at the Collège Royal in Paris. Gassendi retired in 1648, and died in 1655.²

In spite of his tremendous role in the formation of ‘the new science’ and ‘the new philosophy’, Gassendi's fame has survived mainly for his criticisms of Descartes' Meditations, and not for his own theories, which throughout the seventeenth century had rivalled those of his opponent. He is also remembered for the part he played in reviving the atomic theory of Epicurus. But by and large, until quite recently, Gassendi's status as an independent thinker has been most neglected. Perhaps this is due in part to Descartes' judgment of him, and in part to the fact that he usually presented his ideas in extremely lengthy Latin tomes, which are only now being translated into French.³

But Gassendi, in his life time, had an extremely important intellectual career, whose development, perhaps more than that of René Descartes, indicates and illustrates ‘the making of the modern mind.’ Gassendi started out his philosophical journey as a sceptic, apparently heavily influenced by his reading of the edition of Sextus brought out in 1621, as well as by the works of Montaigne and Charron. This phase of ‘scientific Pyrrhonism’ served as the basis for Gassendi's attacks on Aristotle as well as on the contemporary pseudo-scientists, and made Gassendi one of the leaders of the Tétrade. However, he found the negative and defeatist attitude of humanistic scepticism unsatisfactory, especially in terms of his knowledge of, and interest in, the ‘new science’. He announced then that he was seeking a via media between Pyrrhonism and Dogmatism. He found this in his tentative, hypothetical formulation of Epicurean atomism, a formulation which, in many respects, comes close to the empiricism of modern British philosophy. In this chapter we shall deal with the sceptical views of Gassendi's early writings, and in a later chapter shall discuss his ‘tentative Epicureanism’ or ‘mitigated scepticism’.

Bayle, in his article on Pyrrho, credited Gassendi with having introduced Sextus Empiricus into modern thought, and thereby having opened our eyes to the fact that ‘the qualities of bodies that strike our senses are only appearances,’⁴ This attack upon the attempts to build up necessary and certain sciences of Nature from our sense experience is the starting point of Gassendi's thought. As early as 1621, he announced his admiration for the old and the new Pyrrhonism.⁵ In his lectures on Aristotle at Aix, he began employing the sceptical arsenal to demolish the claims of the dogmatists, and especially those of Aristotle. The Exercitationes Paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos, of 1624, represent the first installment of this sceptical onslaught against those who claim to have knowledge of the nature of things, and who fail to see that all that we ever actually do or can know are appearances. (The book was planned as having seven parts, of which only two ever appeared. It is possible that Gassendi stopped work on it after he heard of the attacks by some of the entrenched philosophers on a few of the anti-Aristotelians in Paris, in 1624-5.)⁶ In it, Gassendi asserted bluntly that he much preferred the acatalepsia of the Academics and Pyrrhonians to the arrogance of the Dogmatists.⁷

From the outset, Gassendi proclaimed himself a disciple of Sextus, and for him, this involved two main elements, a doubt of all claims to knowledge about the real world, and an acceptance of the world of experience or appearance as the sole basis for our natural knowledge.⁸ After presenting his sceptical attitude in the preface, Gassendi criticized the insistence of the Aristotelians on their way of philosophizing. Instead, he called for complete intellectual freedom, including a recognition that Aristotle's doctrines do not deserve any special or privileged position. The Aristotelians have (he said) become merely frivolous diputers instead of searchers after truth. They argue about verbal problems instead of studying experience. They submit servilely to the word of the Philosopher or his interpreters rather than thinking for themselves; a submission one owes to God, but not to a philosopher. Aristotle's views are not so wonderful that they deserve all this respect. To show this Gassendi tried to point out all the errors and doubts that existed in Aristotle's theories.⁹

The second book of the Exercitationes, not published till later,¹⁰ contains the heart of the sceptical criticism of Aristotelianism, and of dogmatic philosophy in general. The attempt to discover scientific knowledge, in Aristotle's sense, is doomed to failure because the principles and the definitions can only be gained through experience. The only clear information we have is what we perceive. In order to arrive at real or essential definitions of objects we need some basic concepts by which to understand things, but we actually know only the sensible object. From experience, we cannot induce general propositions or principles, because it is always possible that a negative instance may turn up later. (Although Gassendi was acquainted with Bacon's work, this problem, as well as most of Gassendi's views here, is more likely derived from Sextus' discussions of logic.)¹¹ Even if we knew some definitions and principles, we could gain no scientific knowledge by means of syllogistic reasoning, since, as the Pyrrhonists had shown, the premises of the syllogism are only true if the conclusion is antecedently known to be true. The conclusion is either part of the evidence for the premises, in which case the syllogism is a circular argument, or the syllogism is inconclusive since one does not know if the premises are true (the problem later raised by J. S. Mill.)¹²

The high point of Gassendi's Pyrrhonian attack occurs in the last chapter, entitled, ‘That there is no science, and especially no Aristotelian science.’ Here, the tropes of the ancient Pyrrhonists, of Sextus, Agrippa, Aenesidemus and others, were employed in order to show that our knowledge is always restricted to the appearances of things, and can never deal with their real, hidden inner natures. We can tell how things seem to us, but not how they are in themselves. Thus, for example, we know from our experience that honey seems sweet. But we cannot discover if it is really sweet.¹³ The distinction Gassendi made between apparent qualities, how things seem or appear to us, and real qualities, what properties the object actually has, is one of the earliest clear formulations of the primary-secondary quality distinction in modern philosophy.¹⁴

Since we can know nothing ‘by nature and in itself, and as a result of basic, necessary and infallible causes’,¹⁵ no science, in the sense of necessary knowledge about the real world, is possible. All that we can know about nature is how it appears to us, and, as the sceptical arguments show, we can neither judge nor infer the real natures of things which cause or produce the appearances. Variations in sense experience prevent us from being able to define or describe the real objects on the basis of what we perceive. Due to the lack of indicative signs, that is, necessary true inferences from experience to reality, and due to the defects of syllogistic reasoning, we have no way of reasoning from our experience to its causes, or from its causes to their effects. We cannot even establish a criterion of true knowledge, so we cannot tell what would constitute a science. All that we can conclude is nothing can be known.¹⁶

In all this, Gassendi was challenging neither Divine Truth, which he accepted primarily on a fideistic basis, nor common-sense information, the world of appearances.¹⁷ Rather, he was attacking any attempt, be it Aristotle's or anyone else's, to construct a necessary science of nature, a science which would transcend appearances and explain them in terms of some nonevident causes. In experience, and in experience alone (he said), lay the sole natural knowledge that men could attain. Everything else, whether it be metaphysical or mathematical foundations or interpretations of our sense information, is only useless conjecture. As Gassendi's disciple, Samuel Sorbière, said of him ‘This learned man does not assert anything very affirmatively; and following the maxims of his profound wisdom, he does not depart from the Epoche, which protects him from the imprudence and presumption to which all the other philosophers have fallen.’¹⁸

The early Gassendi was concerned primarily with the destructive side of the sceptical critique of scientific knowledge, attacking any who sought to discover necessary, certain knowledge of things. If such knowledge must be demonstrable from certain premises, or be self-evident, and yet must also deal with something other than appearances, then all that can be concluded is ‘nothing can be known’. Starting his attack with Aristotle, Gassendi quickly broadened it to include the Renaissance naturalists, the Platonists, and any philosophers whatever who claimed to know the true nature of things.¹⁹

On the other hand, while Gassendi called himself a disciple of Sextus, he included in his discipleship an unquestioned acceptance of experience as the source of all knowledge. And, as one of the major figures in the scientific revolution, Gassendi sought to extend man's knowledge through careful examination of nature. In the fields of astronomy and physiology, he made important contributions, describing and discovering facets of the natural world.²⁰ Later he made perhaps his greatest contribution to modern science by developing the atomic theory of Epicurus as an hypothesis, or mechanical model, for relating appearances and predicting future phenomena.²¹ The positive side of Gassendi's thought led him to an attempt to mitigate his initial Pyrrhonism into a type of ‘constructive scepticism’ and to develop a theory which would lie between complete scepticism and dogmatism.²² This later view, fully developed in his Syntagma, as well as the theory of knowledge of his friend Mersenne, constitutes, perhaps, the formulation, for the first time, of what may be called the ‘scientific outlook’. This view will be examined later, and it will be shown to be perhaps the most fruitful result of the impact of Pyrrhonism on modern philosophy.

In evaluating Gassendi, two questions have been debated by many commentators; first, was Gassendi really a sceptic? and second, was Gassendi a libertin? The problem of the first of these revolves around what is meant by a sceptic. If a sceptic is supposed to be someone who doubts everything, and denies that we have, or can have, any knowledge, then Gassendi definitely was not a sceptic, especially in his later writings, where he specifically denied these views, and criticized the ancient sceptics.²³ However, there is a more fundamental sense of sceptic, that is, one who doubts that necessary and sufficient grounds or reasons can be given for our knowledge or beliefs; or one who doubts that adequate evidence can be given to show that under no conditions can our knowledge or beliefs be false or illusory or dubious. In this sense, I believe, Gassendi remained a sceptic all of his life. In the chapter dealing with the ‘constructive scepticism’ of Mersenne and Gassendi, I shall try to show that though both thinkers attack, and claim to answer scepticism, their positive views actually constitute a type of epistemological Pyrrhonism, much like that of David Hume. As the Jesuit writer, Gabriel Daniel, said of Gassendi, ‘He seems to be a little Pyrrhonian in science, which, in my view, is not at all bad for a philosopher.’²⁴

The other question, about Gassendi's libertinism, is more difficult to decide. Gassendi was a priest, who performed his religious duties to the satisfaction of his superiors. He was a fideist, by and large, offering theological views like those of Montaigne and Charron.²⁵ He was also a member of the Tétrade along with such suspect figures as Naudé, Patin, and La Mothe Le Vayer and went to their débauches pyrrhoniennes. He was a friend of some very immoral libertins like Lullier and Bouchard.²⁶ His religious friends found him a most sincere Christian. In view of this apparently conflicting information, French commentators have debated ‘le cas Gassendi’. Pintard has recently marshalled the evidence that suggests Gassendi was really a libertin at heart.²⁷ On the other side, Rochot has argued that none of the evidence against Gassendi actually proves his libertinism, and that there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.²⁸

In previous discussions of the question of the sincerity of the other so-called libertins érudits, I have tried to show that there is a problem in estimating the actual views of the Christian Pyrrhonists. The majority of reasons for classifying them as either dangerous or exemplary unbelievers are based upon traditional evaluations and guilt-by-association. The traditional estimates were formed by and large by either extremely intense religious thinkers such as Pascal and Arnauld, or extremely anti-religious writers like Voltaire. The information about the lives and views of all the so-called libertins érudits is compatible, both philosophically and psychologically with either an interpretation of sincerity or insincerity. But, in the case of Gassendi, it most strains the limits of one's credulity, to consider him as completely insincere. If, as I have previously suggested, it is possible that Naudé, Patin and La Mothe Le Vayer might have been true Christian fideists in the style of Montaigne and Charron, then it is even more possible and likely that Gassendi was, in view of his religious life, the testimonials of his religious friends and friendships, etc. As the Abbé Lenoble has put the problem,

If one wishes at all costs to penetrate to the inner core of Gassendi in order to determine the reality of his faith and the extent of his ‘libertinage’ (in which I do not believe), it is necessary to analyze closely the letters of Launoy and Boulliau. Both speak of a profoundly Christian end of his life, and without any anxiety of a repentant libertine. But then how does one judge (again!) the secret heart of these two witnesses?

If one suspects the two witnesses, as well as Gassendi, of lying, ‘One here, I believe, runs into a psychological impossibility, unless it is supposed that the two (it would be necessary then to say three) cronies possessed an exceptional cynicism, of which we have, no proof, this time.’²⁹

The long tradition of assuming that there must have been duplicity in the writings and actions of the libertins érudits depends, it seems to me, on the supposition that no other explanation of their views can be offered. But, as I have tried to indicate, another possibility exists, namely that men like Naudé, La Mothe Le Vayer and Gassendi were sincere Christians (though, perhaps, not particularly fervent ones). In the absence of completely decisive evidence as to the real intentions of these men, why should we assume the worst (or the best?), that they were engaged in a conspiracy against Christendom. The overwhelming number of their intimates and contemporaries found no signs of insincerity. And one of the basic sources of the suspicion of libertinage in each case has been the friendship with the others; Naudé was a friend of La Mothe Le Vayer and Gassendi; Gassendi was a friend of Naudé and La Mothe Le Vayer, etc. If we knew definitely (a) that at least one of these men was a genuine libertin trying to undermine Christendom, and (b) that the others accepted his friendship because of (a), then the argument of guilt-by-association might be significant. But since it is possible that each of the men in question was a sincere fideist, and quite probable that Gassendi was, then nothing is indicated by the fact that these men, all to some extent involved in the affairs of the Church or the Christian State, with similar avowed sceptical views and fideistic theologies, were close friends. (One might mention that they were all, apparently, intimates of Father Mersenne, who has not, to my knowledge, ever been accused of libertinage.) If one considers the liberitns érudits without any preconceptions as to their intent, can we decide positively either from their views, or their careers, or the circle of religious and irreligious figures within which they moved, whether they were the center of a campaign against Christianity, or part of a sincere movement within the Counter-Reformation aimed at undermining Protestantism through the advocacy of fideism?

To return to the historical material, the last of this group of sceptical thinkers of the early seventeenth century whom we shall mention here is Gassendi's and La Mothe Le Vayer's disciple, Samuel Sorbière. He was not an original thinker, but more a parrot of the most Pyrrhonian side of his mentors. Perhaps, in the context of the history of French scepticism, what is different or novel about Sorbière, is that he was both a philosophical sceptic and a Protestant.³⁰ However, he overcame this peculiarity later in life by becoming a Catholic. Much of Sorbière's success in publication came from printing other people's works, like those of Hobbes and Gassendi. And, for the sceptical cause, he attempted a French translation of Sextus Empiricus which was never completed.³¹

In the two letters of Sorbière which contain the surviving fragments of his translation of Sextus's Hypotyposes, he indicated that he had started this task on leaving college in order to cultivate his knowledge of Greek, and to learn a type of philosophy he had not been taught.³² He evidently became a complete admirer and advocate of Pyrrhonism and, hence, a disciple of the ‘nouveaux pyrrhoniens’. With almost a fanatic consistency, he continued throughout his life to advocate a complete scepticism with regard to all matters that went beyond appearances, and to phrase his observations so that he could not be accused of transgressing the doubts of the sceptics. In a Discours sceptique about the circulation of the blood, Sorbière said, ‘Permit me then, Monsieur … to remain in suspense of judgment regarding scientific matters. On others, that divine revelation convinces us of or that duty orders us to, you will find me more affirmative. These latter are not in the province or jurisdiction of my scepticism.’³³ Only when he was shown that the circulation of the blood was an empirical theory, and not a judgment of what existed beyond experience, was he willing to accept it. In his account of his voyage to England, Sorbière carefully stated that he was only recounting ‘what appeared to him, and not what is perhaps actually in the reality of things.’³⁴ Bishop Sprat, in his rejoinder for the Royal Society against some of Sorbière's nasty comments, chided him for not maintaining his suspense of judgment on such questions as whether English cookery was bad.³⁵

Sorbière appears to have been a man quite well versed in the intellectual movements of his time, seeing them all in terms of a constant Pyrrhonian attitude. With such an outlook, he could only see as meaningful questions those that related to matters of appearance. The rest were only the vain presumptions of the Dogmatists. Sorbière was not a theoretician of the ‘nouveau Pyrrhonisme’, but rather represented the next generation which absorbed its conclusions and applied them almost automatically to whatever problems it was confronted with.

The French sceptics of the first half of the seventeenth century confronted the new, optimistic age in which they lived and prospered with a complete crise pyrrhonienne. As the avant-garde intellectuals of their day they led the attack on the outmoded dogmatism of the scholastics, on the new dogmatism of the astrologers and alchemists, on the glorious claims of the mathematicians and the scientists, on the fanatic enthusiasm of the Calvinists, and, in general, on any type of dogmatic theory. Some, like La Mothe Le Vayer, heaped up information from the classical world and the New World and, of course, from ‘the divine Sextus’, to undermine the moral sciences. La Peyrère was casting doubts on some of the basic claims of the Bible. Others, like Marandé and Gassendi, used the Pyrrhonian doubts and new information to undermine the natural sciences.

The Reformation had produced a crise pyrrhonienne in religious knowledge in the quest for absolute assurance about religious truths. The new Pyrrhonism had begun as a means of defending Catholicism by destroying all rational grounds for religious certainty. From Montaigne and Charron, down to the Tétrade, an abyss of doubts had been revealed, undercutting not only the grounds of religious knowledge, but of all natural knowledge as well. As the Scientific Reformation began, and the system of Aristotle was challenged, the sceptical attack quickly broadened the problem to an assault on the bases of all knowledge. In two orders of human knowledge, revealed and natural, the very foundations were taken away.

Not only had the old problem of the criterion been raised in theology setting men off to justify a ‘rule of faith’, but the same difficulty had occurred in natural knowledge, forcing men to search for some ‘rule of truth.’ The ‘new science’ of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Gassendi has ‘cast all in doubt’. The discoveries in the New World and in the classical world had given other grounds for scepticism. And the ‘nouveaux pyrrhoniens’ showed man's inability to justify the science of Aristotle, of the Renaissance naturalists, of the moralists, and of the new scientists as well. The cumulative attacks of humanistic Pyrrhonists from Montaigne to La Mothe Le Vayer, and of the scientific Pyrrhonists like Gassendi and Marandé, left the quest for guaranteed knowledge about the ‘real’ world without a method, a criterion, or a basis. No type of rational inquiry into the truth of things seemed possible, since for any theory, or any dogma, a battery of apparently irrefutable arguments could be put up in opposition. The crise pyrrhonienne had overwhelmed man's quest for certainty in both religious and scientific knowledge.

Notes

1. The problem of the true name of the philosopher is discussed by Bernard Rochot in some introductory comments to his paper on ‘La Vie, le caractère et la formation intellectuelle’, in the Centre International de Synthèse volume, Pierre Gassendi, 1592-1655, sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris 1955), pp. 11-12.

2. For information about Gassendi's life, see Rochot, ‘La Vie, le caractère’; and René Pintard, Le Libertinage érudit dans la première moité du XVII^e (Paris 1943) Tome I, pp. 147-56.

3. Professor Rochot had undertaken this task. Since his unfortunate demise, this project has been halted. An English translation of a representative sample of Gassendi's work has been published by Craig Brush, The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi (New York 1972).

4. Bayle's Dictionaire, art. ‘Pyrrhon’, Rem. B.

5. Cf. Gassendi's letter to Henricus Fabri Pybracii, April 1621, in Petrus Gassendi, Opera Omnia (Lyon 1658), Vol. VI, pp. 1-2.

6. This matter is discussed in Rochot's Les Travaux de Gassendi sur Épicure et sur l'Atomisme, 1619-1658 (Paris 1944), chap. 1, and in his article ‘La Vie, le caractère’, pp. 18-20; and in Gaston Sortais' La Philosophie moderne depuis Bacon jusqu' à Leibniz (Paris 1922), Tome II, pp. 32-36.

7. Gassendi, Exercitationes Paradoxicae Adversus Aristoteleos, in Opera, Vol. III, Praefatio, p. 99.

8. Cf. Gassendi's letter to Henricus Fabri Pybracii, April 1621, in Opera, Vol. VI, p. 1; the Praefatio to Exercitationes Paradoxicae, in Opera, Vol. III, pp. 98-104; and Gassendi's letter of 15 Juin 1629, in Lettres de Peiresc, Tome IV, publiées par Philippe Tamizey de Larroque (Paris 1893), in Collection de Documents inédits sur l'histoire de France, publiées par les soins du Ministre de l'Instruction Publique. Mélanges Historiques, Tome I (Paris 1873), p. 196n.

9. Gassendi, Exercitationes Paradoxicae, Lib. I, in Opera, Vol. III, pp. 105-48. A summary of this is given in Sortais, La Philosophie moderne, Tome II, pp. 28-30.

10. Sortais, op. cit., Tome II, pp. 23-4 and 32; and Rochot, Les Travaux de Gassendi sur Épicure et sur l'atomisme 1619-1658 (Paris, 1944) pp. 9-22, where the reasons for the delayed publication are discussed.

11. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, II, sec. 204.

12. Gassendi, Exercitationes Paradoxicae, II, in Opera, Vol. III, pp. 187-91. See also F. X. Kiefl, ‘Gassendi's Skepticismus und seine Stellung zum Materialismus’, Philosophiches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft, VI (1893), pp. 27-34.

13. Gassendi, Exercitationes Paradoxicae, lib. II, Exer, vi, Opera, Vol. III, pp. 192-210.

14. Cf. Kiefl, ‘Gassendi's Skepticismus’, pp. 301-5.

15. Gassendi, Exercitationes Paradoxicae, Lib. II, Opera, Vol. III, p. 192.

16. Ibid., Lib. II, Exer. vi.

17. Ibid., Lib. II, Exer. vi, p. 192.

18. Quoted from the manuscript of Sorbière's Discours de M. Sorbière sur la Comète, in Gerhard Hess, ‘Pierre Gassend. Der französische Späthumanismus und das Problem von Wissen und Glauben’, in Berliner Beiträge zur Romanischen Philologie, Band IX, Heft 3/4 (1939), p. 77.

19. See, for instance, Gassendi's work against the Rosicrucian, Robert Fludd, Examen Philosophiae Roberti Fluddi, the answer to Herbert of Cherbury, ‘Ad Librum, D. Edoardi Herberti Angli, de Veritate’, and the Disquisitio Metaphysica seu Dubitationes, et Instanciae adversus Renati Cartesii Metaphysicam, all in Vol. III of Opera.

20. On Gassendi's scientific achievements, see Alexandre Koyré's paper, ‘Le Savant’, in the Synthèse volume, Pierre Gassendi, pp. 59-70; and Rochot, ‘Gassendi et le Syntagma Philosophicum’, in Revue de Synthèse, LXVII (1950), pp. 72-77, and Rochot, Les Travaux de Gassendi.

21. Cf. Rochot's paper, Le philosophe, in Synthèse volume, Pierre Gassendi, pp. 74-94 and 104-6, and Rochot, Les Travaux de Gassendi, passim.

22. ‘Media quadam via inter Scepticos & Dogmaticos videtur tenenda’, Gassendi, Syntagma philosophicum, Logica, Lib. II, chap. V, in Opera, Vol. I, p. 79.

23. Cf. Gassendi's discussion of scepticism and knowledge in the second book of the Syntagma philosophicum, Logica, in Opera, Vol. I, pp. 69ff.; Henri Berr, An Jure inter Scepticos Gassendus Numeratus Fuerit (Paris 1898). This work has recently been translated into French by B. Rochot, with the title Du Scepticisme de Gassendi, (Paris 1960). Kiefl, ‘Gassendi's Skepticismus’, pp. 311 and 361-2; Rochot, ‘Gassendi et le Syntagma Philosophicum’, pp. 76-7; Les Travaux de Gassendi, pp. 79-80; ‘Le philosphe’, pp. 78ff; and Sortais, La Philosophie moderne, Vol. II, pp. 252-7. The most complete study now available of Gassendi's thought is Olivier R. Bloch, La Philosophie de Gassendi (The Hague 1971). Also see Tullio Gregory, Scetticismo ed empirismo: studi su Gassendi, (Bari 1961). Bloch tries to modify and expand some of Gregory's and my interpretations.

24. Gabriel Daniel, Voyage du Monde de Descartes, as quoted in Sortais, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 257 n.1.

25. Cf. Rochot, ‘Le philosophe’ in Pierre Gassendi, pp. 98-9 and 102-3 (on p. 81-2, Rochot indicates that Gassendi had some empirical leanings in theology). See also Hess's chapter on ‘Wissen und Glauben’ in ‘Pierre Gassend’, pp. 108-58.

26. On Gassendi's friendship with Lullier and Bouchard, see Rochot ‘La Vie et le caractère’ in Pierre Gassendi, pp. 26-32; Gassendi, Lettres familières à François Lullier pendant l'hiver 1632-33, avec introduction, notes et index par Bernard Rochot (Paris 1944); and Pintard, Le libertinage érudit, pp. 191-5 and 200-3.

27. Pintard, Le libertinage érudit, esp. pp. 147-56 and 486-502, and also the various links between Gassendi and the libertins that are discussed throughout the book; and Pintard, ‘Modernisme, Humanisme, Libertinage, Petite suite sur le “cas Gassendi”,’ in Revuew d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, 48 Année (1948), pp. 1-52.

28. Rochot, Travaux de Gassendi, pp. 137-9 and 192-4; ‘Le Cas Gassendi’, in Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, 47 Année (1947), pp. 289-313; and ‘La vie et le caractère’, pp. 23-54. See also Henri Gouhier's excellent discussion of ‘le cas Gassendi’ in his review of Pintard's Le libertinage érudit and La Mothe le Vayer, Gassendi, Guy Patin, in Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger, CXXXIV (Jan-Juin 1944), pp. 56-60.

29. Robert Lenoble, ‘Histoire et Physique. A propos des conseils de Mersenne aux historiens et de l'intervention de Jean de Launoy dans la querelle gassendiste’, Revue d'Histoire des Sciences, VI (1953), p. 125, n. 1.

30. So was Élie Diodati, the least philosophical member of the Tétrade. Cf. Pintard, Le Libertinage érudit, pp. 129-31.

31. On Sorbière, see André Morize, ‘Samuel Sorbiere (1610-70)’, in Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Litteratur, XXXIII (1908), pp. 214-65; Pintard, Le Libertinage érudit, pp. 334-45; Popkin, ‘Samuel Sorbière's Translation of Sextus Empiricus’, pp. 617-8; and Sortais, La philosophie moderne, II, pp. 192-228.

32. Samuel Sorbière, Lettres et Discours de M. de Sorbiere sur diverses matieres curieuses (Paris 1660), letter to Du Bosc, pp. 151-2.

33. Sorbière, Discours sceptique sur le passage du chyle, & le mouvement du coeur (Leyden 1648), pp. 153-4. This passage is cited in Sortais, La philosophie moderne, II, p. 194.

34. Quoted in Vincent Guilloton, ‘Autour de la Relation du Voyage de Samuel Sorbière en Angleterre 1663-1664’, in Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, XI, no. 4 (July 1930), p. 21.

35. Thomas Sprat, Observations on Monsieur de Sorbier's Voyage into England (London 1665), pp. 275-6. ‘But yet I must tell him, that perhaps this Rigid condemning of the English Cookery, did not so well suit his belov'd Title of Sceptick. According to the lawes of that profession, he should first have long debated whether there be any tast, or no; whether the steam of a pot be only a fancy, or a reall thing; whether the Kitchin fire has indeed the good qualities of rosting, and Boiling, or whether it be only an appearance. This had bin a dispute more becomming a Sceptick, then thus to conclude Dogmatically on all the Intrigues of Haut gousts; and to raise an endlesse speculative quarrel between those that had bin hitherto peaceful and practical Sects, the Hasche's and the Surloiners.’