CÆSALPINUS, Andreas (1519-1603), one of the most distinguished of the Italian natural philosophers of the Renaissance, was born at Arezzo in Tuscany in 1519. Of his family nothing is recorded, nor does he appear to have left any progeny, or to have been married.
We have no account of his life till we find him seated in the botanical chair of the university of Pisa, where also he studied, if he did not teach, anatomy and medicine. His first publication was entitled Speculum Artis Medicce Jlippocraticum, in whHi it were too much to expect he should have released himself from the shackles of his venerable guide ; but he has left evident proofs, in a passage often quoted, of his having a clear idea of the circulation of the blood, at least through the lungs. In botany his inquiries were conducted on a more original plan, and their result was one of the most philosophical works in that science, issued from the press at Florence in 1583, in one volume quarto. The title-page is sufficiently arrogant in tone, De Plantis libri XVI. Andrece Ccesalpini Aretini, Medici clarissimi doctissimique, atque Philosophi celeberrimi ac subtilissimi ; yet Caesalpinus appears to have been the editor, and prefixed, in his own name, an elegant and learned epistle dedicatory to Francis de Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. This book, now rarely to be met with, is not only the unacknowledged source from which various subsequent writers, and especially Morison, derived their ideas of botanical arrangement, but it was a mine of science to which LiniicBus himself gratefully avowed his obligations. Linnaius s copy of the book evinces the great assiduity with which he studied it ; he has laboured throughout to remedy the defect of which Haller complains of the want of synonyms, has subjoined his own generic names to nearly every species, and has particularly indicated those remarkable passages, at pages 13 and 15, where the ger mination of plants and their sexual distinctions are explained. In the former we trace the first rudiments of a natural classification of plants by the differences in their cotyledons, or, in other words, we find the origin of the natural systems of Linnaeus and Jussieu ; in the latter passage we detect the fundamental principle of the Linnean artificial system. Nor were these merely inci dental suggestions of the author. He pursued his in quiries to a conclusion on which the existence of botany as a science depends, and which the no less eminent Conrad Gesner detected about the same time, though his ideas respecting it were not then made public. The principle to which we allude is the classification of plants by their parts of fructification alone. This was afterwards extended, by the greatest writers on the subject, as Ray and Tournefort, and more completely by Linnaeus, to the discrimination of their genera by the same parts, more particularly con sidered and contrasted. To this more extensive conclusion, indeed, the principle directly and inevitably leads. Caesal- pinus used it himself with such success as to develop some of the most important characters for generic dis tinctions, such as the flower being superior or inferior with respect to the fruit ; the heart of the seed situated at its summit or base ; the seeds, or the cells of the seed- vessels, solitary or otherwise; the partitions of certain pericarps parallel or contrary to their valyes. Linnaeus remarks that Caesalpinus, though the first systematical botanist, found out as many natural classes, or orders, as his followers. He did not indeed define well the philoso phical limits of genera in the vegetable kingdom, and therefore his work cannot be regularly quoted throughout for generic synonyms. The want of plates of his own, and of references to other authors, renders, as we have already hinted, some of his names and descriptions unin telligible. Yet Linnaeus has in manuscript filled up many blanks which he had been obliged to leave in his own Classes Plantarum, where the system of Caesalpinus first assumed a synoptical form. The latter might probably have adopted a more clear and methodical mode of arrang ing and explaining the botanical part of his subject, had he not had in view the vague and desultory manner of Pliny, whom he closely imitates in the materials of his numerous chapters, as well as in his style of description. A small and unimportant Appendix to this work, of nineteen pages, appeared at Rome in 1603, which is of very rare occurrence, but may be found reprinted in Boccone s Museo di Piante Hare, p. 125. The herbarium of over 760 plants which he left is said to be still preserved at Florence.
Caesalpinus having been settled at Pisa when the great Galileo first presumed to doubt the infallibility of the Aristotelian philosophy, and, most likely, at the time when that rising philosopher became professor of mathematics in the same university, we can hardly imagine him to have been free from the party-spirit which so disgracefully mani fested itself there. He seems to have retained his pro fessorship till 1592, when he removed to Rome in attendance on Pope Clement VIII. He died in 1603 at the age of eighty-four.
CiEsalpinus printed at Rome, in 1596, a qnavto volume of above two hundred pages, entitled DC Metallicis, dedicated to Pope Cle ment VIII. which, like his botanical publications, is now extremely rare. In the philosophy of this work Aristotle is his guide ; in its method and composition, Pliny. A prefatory address to the pope declares it to have been undertaken in opposition to a certain trea tise on the same subject, which, though written with diligence and elegance, contained many things inconsistent with the principles of philosophy, and subversive of the Peripatetic doctrines, and with the author of which, as being excommunicated by the holy church of Rome, no measures were to be kept.
The Quccstionum Pcripateticarum libri quinquc, published at Rome in 1603, diverge considerably from the pure doctrine of Aris totle, and by the emphasis laid on the universal and common intel ligence inherent in matter, approximate rather to the pantheism of the Stoics.
according to others in 102 B.C., of a family who for many years had held high offices in the state. He was the greatest man of the Roman or perhaps of all the ancient world. It is not without reason that his name has remained among us as the title of sovereignty, or that his memory survives as the standard of commanding greatness ; yet the very completeness of his character makes it difficult to obtain a clear grasp of his individuality. In every relation of life he attained apparently without effort to the highest excellence, as a citizen, a politician, an orator, a general, a companion, a man of letters, and a far-seeing organizing statesman. Yet study will make it clear to us that his greatness has not been overrated, and the more we contemplate his position and his work, the less opportunity we shall find for blame or criticism. He entered into active life at a great crisis of his country s history. A strong national individuality, firmness, and unity of char acter and purpose had gradually won for Rome the supremacy of Latium, of Italy, and of the world. But the qualities which were able to acquire an empire were not able to govern it. The time was now passed when the senate presented an example of dignity and magnanimity, when a sense of law and justice and persistency of aim and object sufficed to extenuate a cruelty which knew no limit but the realization of its will. It was truer now than in the time of Horace that Rome was falling by the weight of its own greatness. The long struggle between the patricians and plebeians for political equality served rather to strengthen than loosen the cohesion of the state. But the nations which lay outside the city could not be assimilated without severe bt niggles. The equality of
Latins and Italians with the citizens of Rome might be