only victim who felt its power. Thomas Campanella, born in Calabria, in
Italy, A.D. 1568, conceived the design of reforming philosophy about the
same time as our more celebrated Bacon. This was a task too great for his
strength, nor did he receive much encouragement from the existing powers.
He attacked scholasticism with much vigour, and censured the philosophy of
Aristotle, the admired of the schoolmen. He wrote a work entitled
_Philosophia sensibus demonstrata_, in which he defended the ideas of
Telesio, who explained the laws of nature as founded upon two principles,
the heat of the sun and the coldness of the earth. He declared that all
our knowledge was derived from sensation, and that all parts of the earth
were endowed with feeling. Campanella also wrote _Prodromus philosophiae
instaurandae_ (1617); _Philosophia rationalis_, embracing grammar,
dialectics, rhetoric, poetry, and history; _Universalis Philosophatus_, a
treatise on metaphysics; _Civitas solis_, a description of a kind of
Utopia, after the fashion of Plato's _Republic_. But the fatal book which
caused his woes was his _Atheismus triumphatus_. On account of this work
he was cast into prison, and endured so much misery that we can scarcely
bear to think of his tortures and sufferings. For twenty-five years he
endured all the squalor and horrors of a mediaeval dungeon; through
thirty-five hours he was "questioned" with such exceeding cruelty that all
his veins and arteries were so drawn and stretched by the rack that the
blood could not flow. Yet he bore all this terrible agony with a brave
spirit, and did not utter a cry. Various causes have been assigned for the
severity of this torture inflicted on poor Campanella. Some attribute it
to the malice of the scholastic philosophers, whom he had offended by his
works. Others say that he was engaged in some treasonable conspiracy to
betray the kingdom of Naples to the Spaniards; but it is probable that his
_Atheismus triumphatus_ was the chief cause of his woes. Sorbiere has thus
passed judgment upon this fatal book: "Though nothing is dearer to me than
time, the loss of which grieves me sorely, I confess that I have lost both