As I am quite aware that some of my black-eyed, blue-eyed, and gray-eyed readers are pretty sharp critics, and understand geography, I must qualify these remarks. In speaking of cold countries here, I have alluded particularly to those which belong to what is called the Temperate Zone; those which lie between the burning tropics and the frigid regions toward the poles. I know that the latter are occupied by short and squalid races of Laplanders, Esquimaux, and Samoides. The extreme winter in these regions seems to stint and degrade the human species.
Yet these polar people believe they are the happiest in the world. Sheltered in their icy dwellings, feasting upon blubber oil, and skimming over the vast snowy plains upon sledges drawn by dogs or reindeer, they deem themselves blessed above the rest of mankind. They probably enjoy their existence quite as much as do the languid and voluptuous inhabitants of the tropics.
A drunken fellow, being reproved by some of his friends for having sold his feather bed, replied, “As I am very well, thank God, why should I keep my bed?”
Pierre Ramus.
Pierre de la Ramée, more generally known by the name of Ramus, was born in 1515, in a village in Normandy. His parents were of the poorest rank; his grandfather being a charbonnier, a calling similar to that of our coalheaver, and his father a laborer. Poverty being his consequent inheritance, Ramus was early left to his own resources; no sooner, therefore, had he attained the age of eight years, than he repaired to Paris. The difficulty he found there of obtaining common subsistence soon obliged him to return home: another attempt, which he afterwards made, met with no better success.
Early imbued with a strong love and desire for learning, he suffered every misery and privation, in order to obtain the means necessary for its acquirement. Having received a limited aid from one of his uncles, he, for a third time, set out for Paris, where, immediately on his arrival, he entered the college of Navarre in the capacity of valet; during the day fulfilling every menial task, but devoting his nights to his dear and absorbing study.
This extreme perseverance and application, regardless of difficulties, obtained its consequent reward. Being admitted to the degree of master of arts, which he received with all its accompanying scholastic honors, he was enabled to devote himself with more intensity to study. By the opinions which he promulgated, in the form of a thesis, respecting the philosophy of Aristotle,—a doubt of whose sovereign authority at that time was considered a profane and audacious sacrilege,—he attracted the attention of the scholars of the time, and ultimately their enmity. With the uncompromising hardihood of his character, he continued to deny the infallibility of the favorite code of philosophy, and published, in support of his opinions, two volumes of criticisms upon Aristotle’s works.
Ramus was at first persecuted merely with scholastic virulence, but, on his further irritating his opponents, a serious accusation was brought against him, before the Parliament of Paris; and to such lengths had the matter gone as to call for the mediation of Francis the First.
Ramus was found guilty, and sentenced, in 1543, to vacate his professorship, and his works were interdicted throughout the kingdom. This severe sentence, however, did not produce the effect desired by the Sorbonne; for, in the following year, he was appointed to a professorship in the college of Presles, and, in 1551, received the further appointment of royal professor of philosophy and rhetoric. His opinions had, however, attracted the attention and enmity of a more powerful body than that of the Sorbonne. To contest the infallibility of Aristotle, at the same time that it attacked scholastic prejudices, was sufficient to provoke a revolution even in theology. The consequence to Ramus was implacable hatred from the ecclesiastical body, who seemed intent upon his destruction.