Part 54 (2/2)

”So those who wear the holy robes That rail so much at _Father Hobbs_, Because he has exposed of late _The nakedness of Church and State_; Yet tho' they do his books condemn, They love to buy and read the same.”

Our author, so late as in 1750, was still so commanding a genius, that his works were collected in a handsome folio; but that collection is not complete. When he could not get his works printed at home, he published them in Latin, including his mathematical works, at Amsterdam, by Blaew, 1668, 4to. His treatises, ”De Cive,” and ”On Human Nature,” are of perpetual value. Ga.s.sendi recommends these admirable works, and Puffendorff acknowledges the depth of his obligations. The Life of Hobbes in the ”Biographia Britannica,” by Dr.

Campbell, is a work of curious research.

HOBBES'S QUARRELS

WITH DR. WALLIS THE MATHEMATICIAN.

HOBBES'S pa.s.sion for the study of Mathematics began late in life--attempts to be an original discoverer--attacked by WALLIS--various replies and rejoinders--nearly maddened by the opposition he encountered--after four years of truce, the war again renewed--character of HOBBES by Dr. WALLIS, a specimen of invective and irony; serving as a remarkable instance how the greatest genius may come down to us disguised by the arts of an adversary--HOBBES'S n.o.ble defence of himself; of his own great reputation; of his politics; and of his religion--a literary stratagem of his--reluctantly gives up the contest, which lasted twenty years.

The Mathematical War between HOBBES and the celebrated Dr. WALLIS is now to be opened. A series of battles, the renewed campaigns of more than twenty years, can be described by no term less eventful. Hobbes himself considered it as a war, and it was a war of idle ambition, in which he took too much delight. His ”Amata Mathemata” became his pride, his pleasure, and at length his shame. He attempted to maintain his irruption into a province he ought never to have entered in defiance, by ”a new method;” but having invaded the powerful natives, he seems to have almost repented the folly, and retires, leaving ”the unmanageable brutes” to themselves:

Ergo meam statuo non ultra perdere opellam Indocile expectans discere posse pecus.

His language breathes war, while he sounds his retreat, and confesses his repulse. The Algebraists had all declared against the Invader.

Wallisius contra pugnat; victusque videbar Algebristarum Theiologumque scholis, Et simul eductus Castris exercitus omnis Pugnae securus Wallisia.n.u.s ovat.

And,

Pugna placet vertor-- Bella mea audisti--&c.

So that we have sufficient authority to consider this Literary Quarrel as a war, and a ”Bellum Peloponnesiac.u.m” too, for it lasted as long.

Political, literary, and even personal feelings were called in to heat the temperate blood of two Mathematicians.

What means this tumult in a Vestal's veins?

Hobbes was one of the many victims who lost themselves in squaring the circle, and doubling the cube. He applied, late in life, to mathematical studies, not so much, he says, to learn the subtile demonstrations of its figures, as to acquire those habits of close reasoning, so useful in the discovery of new truths, to prove or to refute. So justly he reasoned on mathematics; but so ill he practised the science, that it made him the most unreasonable being imaginable, for he resisted mathematical demonstration, itself![380]

His great and original character could not but prevail in everything he undertook; and his egotism tempted him to raise a name in the world of Science, as he had in that of Politics and Morals. With the ardour of a young mathematician, he exclaimed, ”_Eureka!_” ”I have found it.”

The quadrature of the circle was indeed the common Dulcinea of the Quixotes of the time; but they had all been disenchanted. Hobbes alone clung to his ridiculous mistress. Repeatedly confuted, he was perpetually resisting old reasonings and producing new ones. Were only genius requisite for an able mathematician, Hobbes had been among the first; but patience and docility, not fire and fancy, are necessary.

His reasonings were all paralogisms, and he had always much to say, from not understanding the subject of his inquiries.

When Hobbes published his ”De Corpore Philosophico,” 1655, he there exulted that he had solved the great mystery. Dr. Wallis, the Savilian professor of mathematics at Oxford,[381] with a deep aversion to Hobbes's political and religious sentiments, as he understood them, rejoiced to see this famous combatant descending into his own arena.

He certainly was eager to meet him single-handed; for he instantly confuted Hobbes, by his ”Elenchus Geometriae Hobbianae.” Hobbes, who saw the newly-acquired province of his mathematics in danger, and which, like every new possession, seemed to involve his honour more than was necessary, called on all the world to be witnesses of this mighty conflict. He now published his work in English, with a sarcastic addition, in a magisterial tone, of ”_Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics in Oxford_.” These were Seth Ward[382] and Wallis, both no friends to Hobbes, and who hungered after him as a relis.h.i.+ng morsel.

Wallis now replied in English, by ”Due Correction for Mr. Hobbes, or School-discipline for not saying his Lessons Right,” 1656. That part of controversy which is usually the last had already taken place in their choice of phrases.[383]

In the following year the campaign was opened by Hobbes with ”S??G???; or, _marks_ of the absurd Geometry, _rural Language_, Scottish Church-politics, and Barbarisms, of John Wallis.” Quick was the routing of these fresh forces; not one was to escape alive! for Wallis now took the field with ”Hobbiani Puncti dispunctio! or, the undoing of Mr. Hobbes's Points; in answer to Mr. Hobbes's S??G???, _id est_, Stigmata Hobbii.” Hobbes seems now to have been reduced to great straits; perhaps he wondered at the obstinacy of his adversary.

It seems that Hobbes, who had been used to other studies, and who confesses all the algebraists were against him, could not conceive a point to exist without quant.i.ty; or a line could be drawn without lat.i.tude; or a superficies be without depth or thickness; but mathematicians conceive them without these qualities, when they exist abstractedly in the mind; though, when for the purposes of science they are produced to the senses, they necessarily have all the qualities. It was understanding these figures, in the vulgar way, which led Hobbes into a labyrinth of confusions and absurdities.[384]

They appear to have nearly maddened the clear and vigorous intellect of our philosopher; for he exclaims, in one of these writings:--

”I alone am mad, or they are all out of their senses: so that no third opinion can be taken, unless any will say that we are all mad.”

Four years of truce were allowed to intervene between the next battle; when the irrefutable Hobbes, once more collecting his weak and his incoherent forces, arranged them, as well as he was able, into ”Six Dialogues,” 1661. The utter annihilation he intended for his antagonist fell on himself. Wallis borrowing the character of ”The Self-tormentor” from Terence, produced ”Hobbius Heauton-timorumenos (Hobbes the Self-tormentor); or, a Consideration of Mr. Hobbes's Dialogues; addressed to Robert Boyle,” 1662.

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