Note 93 — Chapter IV · THE NATURE OF LIFE
Reading edition
This is one of the finest passages in Gassendi. The chemists, he says, would laugh at a surgeon who said the body could only be divided as far as anatomy divides it: they would say ‘we can divide still further’; but ‘quemadmodum sit tibi chirurgus ineptus ... sic ipse videaris futurus ineptus ... ineptus, inquam, ipsi Naturae.’ Even this more penetrating analysis cannot get to the bottom of things: ‘utcunque ergo nactus sis huiuscemodi quod dissolvat agens, non magis tamen nactus es agens quod ab eo secreta compingat, quam chirurgus ille organum quod parteis scalpello secretas adunet. Atqui est praeterea in Natura agens quod compingat coadunetque.’
(adunare is Gassendi’s technical term for the producing of unity by composition: it really denotes more than compingere, indicating the view of the result as a whole, while compingere remains at the point of view of the parts as being welded together.)