GASSENDI, PIERRE (properly GASSEND), one of the most distinguished of the naturalists, mathematicians, and philosophers of France, was born 22nd of January 1592, at Chantersier, a village near Digne, in the department of the Lower Alps, of poor parents.
Richer in virtue than in worldly goods, they were content to sacrifice their own enjoyments to the education of their child, who, before ho reached his fifth year, had already given many premature indications of extraordinary powers. At a very early period he evinced a taste for astronomy, which became so strong, that he is said to have often deprived himself of sleep in order to enjoy the contemplation of the heavens; and the following anecdote betokens the precocious develop ment of that talent of observation and deduction for which he was in after-life so eminently distinguished. A dispute having arisen one evening between some children of his own age whether the moon or clouds were moving, and his companions maintaining that the apparent motion was that of the moon, but that the clouds were stationary, Gassendi proceeded to undeceive them by ocular proof: placing his playfellows beneath a tree, he bade them notice that while the moon was steadily visible between the same branches, different clouds were constantly appearing in succession.
Gassendi was sent to school at Digne, where be made rapid progress in the Latin language, and soon acquired a decided pre-eminence over his schoolfellows. Upon completing the usual course, he returned to Chantereier in order to prosecute his studies in retirement ; but he had not been there long when he was invited, at the early age of sixteen, to teach rhetoric at Digne. This office he shortly relinquished, and proceeded to Aix to study divinity. In 1614 he was appointed professor of theology at Digne, and two years afterwards he was invited to Aix to fill the chairs of divinity and philosophy, vacant by the death of Fesac, his master and teacher.
The careful perusal of the works of Vilma, Remus, and Patricius, had thoroughly convinced Gassendi of the faults and defects of the philosophy of the scboolmen, or the so-called followers of Aristotle, but it required no ordinary boldness to call it in question. Animated
however by the spirit of truth and free inquiry, Gassendi did not hesitate to submit the principles of the schoolmen to a rigorous and searching criticism, and considered it his duty, as a professor of philosophy, to expose the errors of the prevailing theory. This he did indirectly in a work entitled ' Excrcitationes paradoxical adversus The appearance of the first volume, which was pub lished at Grenoble in 1624, gained for its author a well-established and wide-spread reputation; and if on the one hand it gave great offence to the blind partisans of established doctrines, it was on the other highly esteemed by severs] learned and distinguished individuals, and particularly by Nicholas Peirce; president of the University of Aix, by whose interest and influence, assisted by Joseph Walter, prior of Valetta Gassendi was promoted to a canoury in the cathedral of Digne, where he was admitted to the degree of doctor in divinity, and appointed prevet of the church. This new situation, which enabled him to vacate the chair at Aix, allowed to Gassendi the undisturbed disposition of his time, which he devoted to the diligent prosecution and advancement of astronomy and anatomy, and to the study of classical literature, and of the works of the ancient philo sophers. As the result of his anatomical researches, he composed a treatise to prove that man was intended to live upon vegetables, and that animal food, as contrary to the human constitution, is baneful and unwholesome. In 1629 a second volume of his 'Excrcitationes' appeared, the object of which was to expose tho futility of the Aristotelian scholastic logic. At the same time five more volumes, in further consideration of the same subject, were announced; but in conzegnence of the bitter hostility which his attacks upon the favourite system had awakened in its advocates, Gassendi deemed it prudent to abandon the design.