PUFENDORF, SAMUEL (1632-1694)

This article appears in Volume V22, Page 636 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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PUFENDORF, SAMUEL (1632-1694) , German jurist, was born at Chemnitz, Saxony, on the 8th of January 1632. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and he himself was destined for the ministry. Educated at Grimma, he was sent to study theology
at the university of

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

. Its narrow and dogmatic teaching was profoundly repugnant to him, and he soon abandoned it for the study of public law. He went so far as to quit

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

altogether, and betook himself to Jena, where he formed an intimate friendship with Erhard Weigel the mathematician, whose influence helped to develop his remarkable independence of character. Pufendorf quitted Jena in 1637 and became a tutor in the family of Petrus Julius Coyet, one of the resident ministers of Charles Gustavus, king of Sweden, at Copenhagen. At this time Charles Gustavus was endeavouring to impose upon Denmark a burdensome alliance, and in the middle of the negotiations he brutally opened hostilities. The anger of the Danes was turned against the envoys of the Swedish sovereign; Coyet, it is true, succeeded in escaping, but the second minister, Steno Bjelke, and the whole suite were arrested and thrown into prison. Pufendorf shared this misfortune, and was subjected to a strict captivity of eight months' duration. He occupied himself during this time in meditating upon what he had read in the works of Grotius and Hobbes. He mentally constructed a system of universal law; and, when, at the end of his captivity, he accompanied his pupils, the sons of Coyet, to the university of Leiden, he was enabled to publish, in 1661, the fruits of his reflections under the title of Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis, libri duo. The work was dedicated to Charles Louis, elector palatine, who created for Pufendorf at Heidelberg a new chair, that of the law of nature and nations, the first of the kind in the world. In 1667 he wrote, with the assent of the elector palatine, a tract, De statu imperii germanici, liber onus. Published under the cover of a pseudonym at Geneva in 1667, it was supposed to be addressed by a

gentleman

GENTLEMAN (from Lat. gentilis, " belonging to a race or gens," and " man "; Fr. gentilhomme, Span. gentil hombre, Ital. gentil huomo, in its
original
- ORIGINAL
and strict signification, a term denoting a man of good family, the Lat. generosus (its invariable transl

of Verona, Severinus de Monzambano, to his brother Laelius. The pamphlet made a great sensation. Its author directly arraigned the organization of the Holy Roman Empire and exposed its feebleness, denounced in no measured terms the faults of the

house

of Austria, and attacked with remarkable vigour the politics of the ecclesiastical princes. Before Pufendorf, Philipp Bogislaw von Chemnitz, publicist and soldier, had written, under the pseudonym of " Hippolytus a Lapide," De ratione status in imperio nostro romano-germanico. Inimical, like Pufendorf, to the

house

of Austria, Chemnitz had gone so far as to make an appeal to France and Sweden. Pufendorf, on the contrary, rejected all idea of foreign intervention, and advocated that of national initiative. In 167o Pufendorf was called to the university of Lund. His sojourn there was fruitful. In 1672 appeared the De jure naturae et gentium, libri octo, and in 1695 a resume of it under the title of De officio hominis et civis.
In the De jure naturae et gentium Pufendorf took up in great measure the theories of Grotius and sought to complete them by means of the doctrines of Hobbes and of his own ideas. His first important point was that natural law does not extend beyond the limits of this life and that it confines itself to regulating external acts. He combated Hobbes's conception of the state of nature and concluded that the state of nature is not one of war but of peace. But this peace is feeble and insecure, and if something else does not come to its aid it can do very little for the preservation of mankind. As regards public law Pufendorf, while recognizing in the state (civitas) a moral person (persona moralis), teaches that the will of the state is but the sum of the individual wills that constitute it, and that this association explains the state. In this a priori conception, in which he scarcely gives proof of historical insight, he shows himself as one of the precursors of J. J. Rousseau and of the Contrat social. Pufendorf powerfully defends the idea that international law is not restricted to Christendom, but constitutes a common bond between all nations because all nations form part of humanity.
In 1677 Pufendorf was called to Stockholm as historiographer-royal. To this new period belong Einleitung zur historic der vornehmsten Reiche and Staaten, also the Commentarium de rebus suecicis, libri XX VI., ab expedition Gustavi Adolphi regis in Germaniam ad abdicationem usque Christinae and De rebus a Carolo Gustavo gestis. In his historical works Pufendorf is hopelessly dry; but he professes a great respect for truth and generally draws from archives. In his De habitu religionis christianae ad vitam civilem he traces the limits between ecclesiastical and civil power. This work propounded for the first
PUFF-BIRD 635
time the so-called " collegial " theory of church government (Kollegialsystem), which, developed later by the learned Lutheran theologian Christoph Mathaus Pfaff (1686-176o), formed the basis of the relations of church and state in Germany and more especially in Prussia.
This theory makes a fundamental distinction between the supreme jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters (Kirchenhoheit or jus circa sacra), which it conceives as inherent in the power of the state in respect of every religious communion, and the ecclesiastical power (Kirchengewalt or jus in sacra) inherent in the church, but in some cases vested in the state by tacit or expressed consent of the ecclesiastical body. The theory was of importance because, by distinguishing church from state while preserving the essential supremacy of the latter, it prepared the way for the principle of toleration. It was put into practice to a certain extent in Prussia in the 18th century; but it was not till the political changes of the 19th century led to a great mixture of confessions under the various state governments that it found universal acceptance in Germany. The theory, of course, has found no acceptance in the Roman Catholic Church, but it none the less made it possible for the Protestant governments to make a working compromise with Rome in respect of the Catholic Church established in their states.
In 1688 Pufendorf was called to the service of Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg. He accepted the call, but he had no sooner arrived than the elector died. His son Frederick III. fulfilled the promises of his father; and Pufendorf, historiographer and privy councillor, was instructed to write a history of the Elector Frederick William (De rebus gestis Frederici Wilhelmi Magni). The king of Sweden did not on this account cease to testify his goodwill towards Pufendorf, and in 1694 he created him a baron. In the same year, on the 26th of October, Pufendorf died at Berlin and was buried in the church of St Nicholas, where an inscription to his memory is still to be seen.
Pufendorf was at once philosopher, lawyer, economist, historian and statesman. His influence was considerable, and he has left a profound impression on thought, and not on that of Germany alone. But the value of his work was much under-estimated by posterity. Much of the responsibility for this injustice rested with Leibnitz, who would never recognize the incontestable greatness of one who was constantly his adversary, and whom he dismissed as " vir parum jurisconsultus et minime philosophus." It was on the subject of the pamphlet of Severinus de Monzambano that their quarrel began. The conservative and timid Leibnitz was beaten on the battlefield of politics and public law, and the aggressive spirit of Pufendorf aggravated yet more the dispute, and so widened the division. From that time the two writers could never meet on a common subject without attacking each other.
See H. von Treitschke, " Samuel von Pufendorf," Preussische Jahrbucher (1875), xxxv. 614, and xxxvi. 61;

Bluntschli

BLUNTSCHLI, JOHANN KASPAR (18o8—1881)

, Deutsches Staats-Worterbuch, viii. 424, and Geschichte des allgemeinen Stastsrechts and der Politik, p. Io8; Lorimer, The Institutes of the Law of Nations, i. 74;

Droysen

DROYSEN, JOHANN GUSTAV (1808—1884)

, " Zur Kritik Pufendorfs," in his 74;

Droysen

DROYSEN, JOHANN GUSTAV (1808—1884)

, Kritik fenor in his Abhan
lungen zur neueren Geschichte; Roscher, Geschichte der National-Oekonomik in Deutschland, p. 304; Franklin, Das deutsche Reich nach Severinus von Monzambano.
PUFF-BALL, in botany, the common name for a genus of fungi (known botanically as Lycoperdon), and so called because of the cloud of brown dust-like spores which are emitted when the mature plant bursts. They are common in meadows and woods and on heaths or lawns, and when young resemble white balls, sometimes with a short stalk, and are fleshy in texture. If cut across in this state, they show a compact rind enclosing a loose

tissue

TISSUE (Fr. tissu, tissue, participle of tisser, Lat. texere, to weave)

, in the interspaces of which the spores are developed; as the fungus matures it changes to yellowish-brown and brown and when ripe the rind tears at the apex and the spores escape through the aperture when any pressure is applied to the ball. When white and fleshy the fungus is edible. The' fibrous mass which remains after the spores have escaped has been used for tinder or as a styptic for wounds. The giant puff-ball, Lycoperdon giganteum, reaches a foot or more in diameter.
PUFF-BIRD, the name first given, according to W. Swainson (Zool. Illustrations, 1st

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

, vol. ii., text to pl. 99), by English residents in Brazil to a group of birds now placed in the sub-family Bucconinae, which with the Galbulinae or jacamars form
the family Galbulidae of Coraciiform birds

standing

STANDING

between the trogons (q.v.) and barbets, for a long time confounded, under the general name of barbets, with the Capitonidae of modern systematists. Each group has formed the subject of an elaborate monographthe Capitonidae being treated by C. H. T. and G. F. L. Marshall (London, 187o-1871), and the Bucconidae by P. L. Sclater (London, 18791882). The Bucconidae are zygodactylous birds confined to the neotropical region, in the middle parts of which, and especially in its sub-Andean sub-region, they are, as regards species, abundant; while only two seem to reach Guatemala and but one Paraguay. As with most South American birds, the habits and natural history of the Bucconidae have been but little studied, and of only one species, which happens to belong to a rather abnormal genus, has the nidification been described. This is the Chelidoptera tenebrosa, which is said to breed in holes in banks, and to lay white eggs much like those of the kingfisher and consequently those of the jacamars. From his own observation Swainson writes (loc. cit.) that puff-birds are very grotesque in appearance. They will sit nearly motionless for hours on the dead bough of a tree, and while so sitting " the disproportionate size of the head is rendered more conspicuous by the bird raising its feathers so as to appear not unlike a puff-ball. . . . When frightened their form is suddenly changed by the feathers lying quite flat." They are very confiding birds and will often station themselves a few yards only from a window. The Bucconidae almost without exception are very plainly-coloured, and the majority have a spotted or mottled plumage suggestive of immaturity. The first puff-bird known to Europeans seems to have been that described by G. de L. Marcgrav, under the name of " tamatia," by which it is said to have been called in Brazil, and there is good reason to think that his description and figurethe last, comic as it is in outline and expression, having been copied by F.

Willughby

WILLUGHBY, FRANCIS (1635—1672)

and many of the older authorsapply to the Bucco maculatus of modern ornithologya bird placed by M. J. Brisson (Ornithologie, iv. 524) among the kingfishers. But if so, Marcgrav described and figured the same species twice, since his " Matuitui " is also Brisson's " Martin-pescheur tachete du Bresil."
P. L. Sclater divides the family into, 7 genera, of which Bucco is the largest and contains 20 species. The others are Malacoptila and Monacha, each with 7, Nonnula with 5, Chelidoptera with 2, and Micromonacha and Hapaloptila with r species each. The most showy puff-birds are those of the genus Monacha, with an inky-black plumage, usually diversified by white about the head, and a red or yellow bill.

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