[1][6][7] While he held a church position in south-east France, he also spent much time in Paris, where he was a leader of a group of free-thinking intellectuals.

[9] A youthful prodigy, at a very early age he showed academic potential and attended the collège (the town high school) at Digne, where he displayed a particular aptitude for languages and mathematics.

[13] He lectured principally on the Aristotelian philosophy, conforming as far as possible to the traditional methods while he also followed with interest the discoveries of Galileo and Kepler.

A fragment of the second book later appeared in print at The Hague (1659), but Gassendi never composed the remaining five, apparently thinking that the Discussiones Peripateticae of Francesco Patrizzi left little scope for him.

In 1634 the Cathedral Chapter of Digne had become disgusted at the wasteful behavior of Provost Blaise Ausset, and they voted to replace him.

They obtained an arrêt of the Parliament of Aix, dated 19 December 1634, which consented to his deposition and to the election of Gassendi as provost of the Cathedral Chapter.

During this period he wrote only the one literary work, his Life of Peiresc, whose death in 1637 seemed to afflict him deeply;[22] it received frequent reprintings and an English translation.

[34] Gassendi travelled in the south of France in the company of his protégé, aide and secretary François Bernier, another pupil from Paris.

Henri Louis Habert de Montmor published Gassendi's collected works, most importantly the Syntagma philosophicum (Opera, i. and ii.

The first two comprise entirely his Syntagma philosophicum; the third contains his critical writings on Epicurus, Aristotle, Descartes, Robert Fludd and Herbert of Cherbury, with some occasional pieces on certain problems of physics; the fourth, his Institutio astronomica, and his Commentarii de rebus celestibus; the fifth, his commentary on the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, the biographies of Epicurus, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus, Georg von Peuerbach, and Regiomontanus, with some tracts on the value of ancient money, on the Roman calendar, and on the theory of music, with an appended large and prolix piece entitled Notitia ecclesiae Diniensis; the sixth volume contains his correspondence.

The first book expounds clearly, and with much vigour, the evil effects of the blind acceptance of the Aristotelian dicta on physical and philosophical study; but, as occurs with so many of the anti-Aristotelian works of this period, the objections show the usual ignorance of Aristotle's own writings[citation needed].

[36] His labors on Epicurus have historical importance, but he has been criticized for holding doctrines arguably irreconcilable with his strong expressions of empiricism.

In the book, Gassendi maintains his maxim "that there is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses" (nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu), but he contends that the imaginative faculty (phantasia) is the counterpart of sense, because it involves material images, and therefore is intrinsically material, and that it is essentially the same both in men and brutes.

However, he also admits that the classic qualifier of humanity, intellect, which he affirms as immaterial and immortal, comes to an understanding of notions and truths that no effort of sensation or imagination could have attained (Op.

384), which he says brutes never are able to partake in, though they utilize phantasia as truly as men; the notion of God, whom he says we may imagine as corporeal, but understand as incorporeal; and lastly, the reflex by which the mind makes the phenomena and operations within it the objects of its attention.

[36] The Syntagma philosophicum is divided, according to the usual fashion of the Epicureans, into logic (which, with Gassendi, as with Epicurus, is truly canonic), physics, and ethics.

He states the various proofs for the existence of an immaterial, infinite, supreme Being, asserts that this Being is the author of the visible universe, and strongly defends the doctrine of the foreknowledge and particular providence of God.

At the same time he holds, in opposition to Epicureanism, the doctrine of an immaterial rational soul, endowed with immortality and capable of free determination.

Friedrich Albert Lange[37] claimed that all this portion of Gassendi's system contains nothing of his own opinions, but is introduced solely from motives of self-defence.

Nor is his theory of the weight essential to atoms as being due to an inner force impelling them to motion in any way reconcilable with his general doctrine of mechanical causes.

There remains some controversy as to the extent to which Gassendi subscribed to the so-called libertinage érudit, the learned free-thinking that characterised the Tétrade, the Parisian circle to which he belonged, along with Gabriel Naudé and two others (Élie Diodati and François de La Mothe Le Vayer).

Gassendi acknowledged that while the complete realisation of the continual pursuit of ultimate pleasure through communion with God might not occur in one's lifetime, he argued against the consumption of meat, considering it a significant obstacle to achieving a divine vision.

Gassendi, a Catholic priest, advocated for a plant-based diet without dogmatism, asserting that decisions in this lifetime were crucial for preparing the body and mind for the next.