he says, "The clamorous multitude hide their envy of the present under a reverence of antiquity." He also said of his friend, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, "Harvey is the only man I know, that, conquering envy, hath established a new doctrine in his lifetime." Likewise he wrote, when publishing his treatise on Human Nature, "I know by experience how much greater thanks will be due than paid me for telling men the truth of what men are. But the burden I have taken on me I mean to carry through, not striving to appease but rather to revenge myself of envy by increasing it." He waged a fierce war for many years with Wallis on certain mathematical questions. When Wallis-whom he called "the pest of geometry" taunted him with flattering himself and maligning others in his writings, he replied as follows: "A certain Roman Senator, having propounded something in the assembly of people which they misliking made a noise at, boldly bade them hold their peace, and told them he knew better what was good for the commonwealth than all they. And his words are transmitted to us as an argument of his virtue: so much do truth and vanity alter the complexion of self-praise." His strong peculiarities of habit no less than his extraordinary powers marked Hobbes out as a man by himself. Yet, after all his lonely walking, lonely thinking, lonely living, and repelling quarrels, he clung warmly to his friends, had a horror of being left alone in his illness, bequeathed all his property to the faithful servant and friend who had been his amanuensis. He was not afraid of death, but said he should willingly "find some hole to creep out of the world at," and was wont to amuse himself with choosing for the epitaph to be graven on his tombstone, "This is the true philosopher's stone." His toughness of stock and copiousness of force enabled him to weather the storms of nearly a century. His colossal bulk of mind and earnest search for truth removed him from the crowd. He was turned in upon himself still more by the rivalry, envy, hate, slanders, aggravating attacks provoked by his genius, fame, disagreeable speculations, hot partisanship, and personal spleen. In half philosophic, half angry solitude, he sought to foster and defend that reflex idea of himself in whose extension and firmness the essential comfort of life resides for such men, and every assault upon which he naturally resented as a blow at the very vitality of his soul. His life, perforce, was greatly solitary. Yet friendship, for the same reasons, was particularly needful and precious to him, so far as he could get it. The many high compliments he received from the leading thinkers of his age must have thrilled him with a fiery gladness impossible to colder and feebler natures. It is pleasant to think of the pleasure he took in the dedication of Gondibert to him by Davenant; also of what a luxury the flattering and eloquent ode addressed to him by Cowley must have yielded to his sensibility. Nor can the snow which now cold age does shed Upon thy reverend head Quench or allay the noble fires within : But all which thou hast been, And all that youth can be, thou 'rt yet; Enjoy the manhood and the bloom of wit. To things immortal time can do no wrong; And that which never is to die, forever must be young. LEIBNITZ. ALTHOUGH Leibnitz for much of his life held an office at court, and carried on an extensive correspondence with diplomatists, mathematicians, and philosophers, he was a lonely man from his boyhood to his burial. He says: "I always inclined less to conversation than to meditation and solitude." Referring to the time when, a youth of fifteen, he was an academic student, he says: "I used to walk to and fro in a little grove near Leipzig, called the Vale of Roses, in pleasing and solitary meditation, considering the questions of the Schoolmen." Prevented from obtaining the degree of Doctor of Laws, he felt so aggrieved and offended at the machinations of his rivals that he at once left his native city, and never returned to Saxony again, excepting for brief visits. He ever had a high opinion of his own mind and worth, and was easily irritated, though generous and forgiving in his temper. His secretary and intimate associate, Eckhart, says it was characteristic of him "to speak well of every one, put the best construction on the actions of others, and spare his enemies when having it in his power to dispossess them of their places." He was never married, but lived by himself absorbed in gigantic toils. Courtiers and people for the most part neglected him. He was a superior being whom they could not understand. The clergy hated him, because he looked down with pity on their superstitions; and they publicly assailed him as a contemner of the ecclesiastical creed. He said he had a great many ideas which he held back, because the age was not ripe for them, and also because he extremely disliked being misunderstood and misrepresented. In a letter to Burnet he says, in reference to his own situation: "There are many things which cannot be executed by a single isolated individual. But here one hardly meets with anybody to speak to." In connection with this statement it is pleasant to remember the beautiful and impressive incident, that, when he was thirty years old, Leibnitz paid a visit to Spinoza, at the Hague. When these two vastest and loneliest intellects of their century met in that little poor Dutch chamber, did the two brains there together hold more mind than all the rest of Europe? Two years before he died he had formed a distinct plan of a universal language; but, aged, over-occupied, solitary, he failed to complete and publish it. He writes to Remond de Montfort, that he had spoken of it to several persons, and gained no more attention than if he had related a dream. He adds: "I could easily work it out if I were younger, or less busy, or enjoyed the conversation of men who would encourage me, or had by my side young men of talent." This great man died in the midst of as much local indifference as he had lived. His friend Ker, who happened to arrive in Hanover on that day, was grieved, not only by the event, but by the slight notice taken of it. The funeral, Ker testifies, was more like that of a highwayman than of one who had been the 66 ornament of his country." The faithful Eckhart says, that although the whole court were invited to attend the solemnities, no one appeared but himself. The Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin, of which he was the founder and the first president, remained silent. The Royal Society at London, of which he was one of the oldest and most distinguished members, took not the slightest notice of the death of the great rival of Newton. The French Academy alone paid a tribute becoming its own chivalrous character, and worthy of one of the greatest of human minds. But if Leibnitz was neglected by the conspicuous obscurities about him, in the high tasks of his genius he had his place among the most illustrious heroes of humanity. Pilgrims from far-away lands, who stand in the aisle of the church at Hanover, and read beneath their feet the laconic inscription, Ossa Leibnitii, thrill with reverence in memory of him whose powerful thought is vibrating to the ends of the earth, and whose fame will penetrate the remotest future. MILTON. MANY of the chief conditions of spiritual solitude met in a high degree in Milton. A proud and pure mind, devotion to learning, a passion for liberty, a passion for truth and virtue, a passion for lasting fame, a deep and bold dissent from the prevalent theological doctrines and religious forms about him, general neglect, repeated danger, and, at last, blindness. Numerous expressions of this experience are to be found in his writings. He says, referring to the text in Genesis, "Loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good." While yet a young man he wrote to his friend Diodati, "As to other points, what God may have determined for me I know not; but this I know, that if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of any man, he has instilled it into mine. Ceres, in the fable, pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of inquiry, than I, day and night, the idea of perfection. Hence, wherever I find a man despising the false estimates of the vulgar, and daring to aspire to what the highest wisdom through every age has taught us as most excellent, - to him I unite myself by a sort of necessary attachment." The sonnet in which Wordsworth addresses him, and describes his holy seclusion and his noble services, is a household word. Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; The outrageous warfare waged against him by such foes as Du Moulin, Salmasius, and More, must have given him a keen relish for the refuge of a peaceful privacy. And there are repeated passages in his poems which plainly reveal a temperament fitted for the benefits of loneliness, a mind accustomed to enjoy the delights of it. Thus he makes Adam say to Eve, If much converse perhaps Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield; And short retirement urges sweet return. And a perception full of the heartiest feeling of reality pervades the following lines: In sweet retiréd solitude He plumed his feathers and let grow his wings, Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impaired. Johnson wrongfully accuses Milton of a dark revengefulness, a bitter envy. His nature was profoundly sweet, gentle, and regal. His passionate retorts and invectives are not proofs of gall or hate, but either oratoric heats of battle, or weapons wielded in self-defence. He was a man of noble poetic angers, not of mean brooding enmities. When his foes assailed him with ignorance and wrong he repelled their slanderous insolence with contemptuous indignation. |