le by the methods of science. But the actions of all its
parts being rigidly determined by their connections and relations, and
these being brought into play by a single motive power, then though
this last prime mover may elude me, I am still able to comprehend the
machinery which it sets in motion. We have here a conception of the
relation of Nature to its Author, which seems perfectly acceptable to
some minds, but perfectly intolerable to others. Newton and Boyle
lived and worked happily under the influence of this conception;
Goethe rejected it with vehemence, and the same repugnance to
accepting it is manifest in Carlyle. [Footnote: Boyle's model of the
universe was the Strasburg clock with an outside Artificer. Goethe,
on the other hand, sang:

'Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen.'

See also Carlyle, 'Past and Present,' chap. v.]

The analytic and synthetic tendencies of the human mind are traceable
throughout history, great writers ranging themselves sometimes on the
one side, sometimes on the other. Men of warm feelings, and minds
open to the elevating impressions produced by nature as a whole, whose
satisfaction, therefore, is rather ethical than logical, lean to the
synthetic side; while the analytic harmonises best with the more
precise and more mechanical bias which seeks the satisfaction of the
understanding. Some form of pantheism was usually adopted by the one,
while a detached Creator, working more or less after the manner of
men, was often assumed by the other. Gassendi, as sketched by Lange,
is hardly to be ranked with either. Having formally acknowledged God
as the great first cause, he immediately dropped the idea, applied the
known laws of mechanics to the atoms, and deduced from them all vital
phenomena. He defended Epicurus, and dwelt upon his purity, both of
doctrine and of life. True he was a heathen, but so was Aristotle.
Epicurus assailed superstition and religion, and rightly, because he
did not know the true religion. He thought that the gods neither
rewarded nor punished, and he adored them purely in consequence of
their completeness: here we see, says Gassendi, the reverence of the
child, instead of the fear of the slave. The errors of Epicurus shall
be corrected, and the body of his truth retained. Gassendi then
proceeds, as any heathen might have done, to build up the world, and
all that therein is, of atoms and molecu