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Title: Giordano Bruno

Author: J. Lewis McIntyre

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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIORDANO
BRUNO ***

Title Page

GIORDANO BRUNO

GIORDANO BRUNO

BY

J. LEWIS McINTYRE
M.A. EDIN. AND OXON.: D.SC. EDIN.:
ANDERSON LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF ABERDEEN

London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1903
All rights reserved

To

MY WIFE

PREFACE
This volume attempts to do justice to a philosopher who has hardly received
in England the consideration he deserves. Apart from the Life of Giordano
Bruno, by I. Frith (Mrs. Oppenheim), in the English and Foreign
Philosophical Library, 1887, there has been no complete work in our
language upon the poet, teacher, and martyr of Nola, while his philosophy
has been treated only in occasional articles and reviews. Yet he is
recognised by the more liberal-minded among Italians as the greatest and
most daring thinker their country has produced. The pathos of his life and
death has perhaps caused his image to stand out more strongly in the minds
of his countrymen than that of any other of their leaders of thought. A
movement of popular enthusiasm, begun in 1876, resulted, on 9th June
1889, in the unveiling of a statue in Rome in the Campo dei Fiori, the place
on which Bruno was burned. Both in France and in Germany he has been
recognised as the prophet, if not as the actual founder, of modern
philosophy, and as one of the earliest apostles of freedom of thought and of
speech in modern times.
The first part of the present work—the Life of Bruno—is based upon the
documents published by Berti, Dufour, and others, and on the personal
references in Bruno’s own works. I have tried to throw some light on
Bruno’s life in England, on his relations with the French Ambassador,
Mauvissière, and on his share in some of the literary movements of the
time. I have, however, been no more successful than others in finding any
documents referring directly to Bruno’s visit to England.
In the second part—The Philosophy of Bruno—I have sought to give not a
systematic outline of Bruno’s philosophy as a whole under the various
familiar headings, which would prove an almost impossible task, but a
sketch, as nearly as possible in Bruno’s own words, of the problems which
interested this mind of the sixteenth century, and of the solutions offered.
The first chapter points out the sources from which Bruno derived the
materials of his thinking. The succeeding chapters are devoted to some of

the main works of Bruno,—the Causa (Chapter II.), Infinito and De
Immenso (Chapters III. and IV.), De Minimo (Chapter V.), Spaccio (Chapter
VI.), and Heroici Furori (Chapter VII.),—and contain as little as possible of
either criticism or comment, except in so far as these are implied in the
selection and arrangement of the material. I have adopted this method partly
because Bruno’s works are still comparatively unknown to the English
reader, and partly because his style, full as it is of obscurities, redundances,
repetitions, lends itself to selection, but not easily to compact exposition.
Several phases of Bruno’s activity I have left almost untouched—his poetry,
his mathematical theories, his art of memory. The eighth chapter turns upon
his philosophy of religion, about which there has been much controversy;
while the last attempts to bring him into relation and comparison with some
of the philosophers who succeeded him. I subjoin a list of works and
articles which are of importance for the study of Bruno. Throughout I have
referred for Bruno’s works to the recent Italian edition of the Latin works,
issued at the public expense, 1879 to 1891 (three volumes in eight parts,
with introductions, etc.), and to Lagarde’s edition of the Italian works—
Gotha, 1888. Of the latter there are two volumes, but the paging is
continuous from one to the other, page 401 beginning the second volume.
J. LEWIS M‘INTYRE.

UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN,
16th July 1903.

CONTENTS
PAGE
BIOGRAPHIES, WORKS, AND ESSAYS xiii

PART I

LIFE OF BRUNO 1

PART II

PHILOSOPHY OF BRUNO 119

CHAPTER I
THE SOURCES OF THE PHILOSOPHY 121

CHAPTER II
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 153

CHAPTER III
THE INFINITE UNIVERSE—THE MIRROR OF GOD 180

CHAPTER IV
NATURE AND THE LIVING WORLDS 203

CHAPTER V

THE LAST AND THE LEAST THINGS: ATOMS AND SOUL-
223
MONADS

CHAPTER VI
THE PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY OF BRUNO 252

CHAPTER VII
THE HIGHER LIFE 277

CHAPTER VIII
POSITIVE RELIGIONS AND THE RELIGION OF
294
PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER IX
BRUNO IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 323

INDEX 361

BIOGRAPHIES AND GENERAL WORKS ON
BRUNO

Bartholmèss, Christian, Jordano Bruno, vol. i., Paris, 1846—on the life and
times of Bruno; vol. 2, 1847—on his works and philosophy.
Carrière, Moritz, Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit,
1st ed., 1847; 2nd ed., 1887.
Berti, Domenico, Giordano Bruno da Nola, sua vita e sua dottrina.
Appeared first in the Nuova Antologia, 1867. Some new documents were
published in Documenti intorno a Giordano Bruno da Nola, 1880. A second
edition of the Life, including all the documents, appeared in 1889.
Dufour, G. B. à Genève (1578). Documents inédits: Genève, 1884. Also
given in Berti’s second edition.
Sigwart, Die Lebensgeschichte G. B.’s (Verzeichniss der Doctoren, etc.,
Tübingen, 1880), a paper which is expanded and corrected in his Kleine
Schriften, 1st series (pp. 49–124 and 293–304): Freiburg i. B., 1889.
Brunnhofer, G. B.’s Weltanschauung und Verhängniss: Leipzig, 1882. A
vigorous eulogy of Bruno and his work.
Frith, Life of Giordano Bruno: London, 1887.
Riehl, Giordano Bruno, Zur Erinnerung an den 17. Februar, 1600: Leipzig,
1st ed., 1889; 2nd, 1900.
Kühlenbeck (“Landseck”) Bruno, der Märtyrer der neuen Weltanschauung:
Leipzig, 1890.
Pognisi, G. B. e l’ Archivio di San Giovanni Decollato; Torino, etc., 1891.

Italian biographies and pamphlets are innumerable. Among the best are—
Mariano, G. B. La Vita e l’ uomo: Roma, 1881.
Levi, G. B. o la Religione del Pensiero: Torino, 1887.

Morselli, G. B., Commemorazione, etc.: Torino, 1888. Morselli regards
Bruno as the precursor of all modern philosophy, and as prophet of most of
the scientific discoveries of the 19th century.
Tocco, G. B. Conferenza: Firenze, 1886. On Bruno’s religion and
philosophy of religion.

Of writers in English on Bruno may also be named:—Owen, in his Sceptics
of the Italian Renaissance: London, 1893 (pp. 244–342); Daniel Brinton
and Thomas Davidson, G. B., Philosopher and Martyr, Two Addresses:
Philadelphia, 1890; Plumptre, in his Studies in Little-known Subjects:
London, 1898 (pp. 61–127); Whittaker in Essays and Notices, 1895
(reprinted from Mind, April 1884 and July 1887); the Quarterly Review for
October 1902, “Giordano Bruno in England”; and R. Adamson, The
Development of Modern Philosophy: Edinburgh and London, 1903, vol. 2
(pp. 23–44).

PART I
LIFE OF BRUNO

I

In 1548, at a stormy period of the history of Italy, Bruno
Birth and
was born in the township of Nola, lying within the Family.
kingdom of Naples, which at that time was under Spanish
rule. His father, Giovanni, was a soldier, probably of good family, and in
deference, it may be supposed, to the King of Spain, the son was named
Filippo; the more famous name of Giordano was only assumed when he
entered a religious order. Through his mother, Fraulissa Savolina, a German
or Saxon origin has been claimed for Bruno; there were several inhabitants
of Teutonic name in the village of his birth—suggesting a settlement of
Landknechts,—and the name, Fraulissa, has a German ring;[1] but Bruno
himself nowhere in the addresses or works published in Germany makes
any hint of his own connection with the race, while the name was probably
a generic term for the wife of a soldier, borrowed from the Swiss or German
men-at-arms.[2]
Their home was on the lower slopes of Mount Cicala,
Nola.
which rises above Nola, and amid its laughing gardens
Bruno first imbibed a love of nature, which marked him out from so many
of his contemporaries. The soil of Nola is among the most fertile of all Italy,
and the pleasant plain in which it lies is ringed with hills which lie shadowy
under the clear sky; most prominent and most mysterious is Vesuvius, a few
miles to the south. But the charms of natural beauty in Nola were surpassed
by those of picturesque antiquity: the half-mythical Pelasgians founded it
before the walls of Rome were begun; they were followed by the
Chalcidians of Cuma, from whom the Nolans inherited a Greek spirit, calm
yet quick, eager in the pursuit of wisdom and in the love of beauty, which
down even to the 16th century distinguished them above other Italians.
There followed a chequered history in which the Samnites, the early
Romans, Hannibal, Sulla, and Spartacus, played successive parts. Nola was
the death-place of Augustus, and to that fact owed its greatness in Imperial
times, when its two great amphitheatres and multitude of beautiful temples
topped a great city, shut in by massive walls, with twelve gates that opened
to all parts of Italy. Evil times were to come; Alaric, the Saracens, Manfred,

and others had their will of Nola, and earthquakes, flood, and plague
reduced it by the end of the 15th century to one tenth of its former self. It
had its own martyrs, for the old faith and for the new; one of the latter,
Pomponio Algerio, suffered during Bruno’s lifetime a fate that
foreshadowed his own; accused while a student at Padua of contempt for
the Christian religion, he was imprisoned in Padua, Venice, and Rome, and
finally burnt at the stake. Its sons never lost their love for the mother-town;
Bruno speaks of it always with affection, as to him “the garden of Italy”; of
a nephew of Ambrogio Leone, the historian of its antiquities, we are told
that, on returning to Nola after a few days’ absence, seeming ill with
longing, he threw himself on the earth and kissed it with unspeakable joy.[3]
Perhaps the suggestion of Bartholmèss is not groundless, that the volcanic
soil and air of Nola influenced the character of the people as of the wine.
“Hence the delicacy of their senses, vivacity of gesture, mobility of humour,
and passionate ardour of spirit.”[4]
Of the childhood of Bruno little is to be learned. Cicala,
Childhood of
his home, he describes as a “little village of four or five Bruno.
cottages not too magnificent.”[5] In all probability his
upbringing was simple, his surroundings homely. We need not go further,
and suppose that his surroundings were not only homely, but degraded and
vicious.[6] His father, although a soldier by profession, seems to have been a
man of some culture; at least he was a friend of the poet Tansillo, who
excited the admiration of the young Bruno, and first turned his mind
towards the Muses. Tansillo’s poetry, following the taste of the age, was not
too refined, but its passion called forth a ready reflection in the ardent
nature of the lad. It was perhaps the only door to the higher artistic life of
the time which was open to Bruno; the neighbours, if we may judge from
satiric references in the Italian Dialogues, were of a rough homely type.
Bruno tells, for example,[7] how Scipio Savolino (perhaps his uncle) used to
confess all his sins to Don Paulino, Curé of S. Primma that is in a village
near Nola (Cicala), on a Holy Friday, of which “though they were many and
great,” his boon companion the Curé absolved him without difficulty. Once
was enough, however, for in the following years, without many words or
circumstances, Scipio would say to Don Paulino, “Father mine, the sins of a
year ago to-day, you know them”; and Don Paulino would reply, “Son, thou
knowest the absolution of a year ago to-day—go in peace and sin no more!”

One incident of Bruno’s childhood, which has been thought a promise of
extraordinary powers, he himself relates in the Sigillus Sigillorum.
Describing the different causes of “concentration,”[8] (Contractio), he
instances fear among them:—“I myself, when still in swaddling clothes,
was once left alone, and saw a great and aged serpent, which had come out
of a hole in the wall of the house; I called my father, who was in the next
room; he ran with others of the household, sought for a stick, growled at the
presence of the serpent, uttering words of vehement anger, while the others
expressed their fear for me,—and I understood their words no less clearly, I
believe, than I should understand them now. After several years, waking up
as if from a dream, I recalled all this to their memory, nothing being further
from the minds of my parents; they were greatly astonished.”[9] As well
they might be! It is hardly right, however, to see in the story evidence of
marvellous faculty showing itself in infancy, beyond that of an
impressionable and tenacious mind. No doubt the drama had been repeated
many times by the parents for behoof of visitors.[10]
Superstitious beliefs abounded among Bruno’s fellow-countrymen; many of
them clung to him through life, were moulded by him into a place in his
philosophy, and bore fruit in his later teaching and practice of natural
magic. Thus we are told how the spirits of the earth and of the waters may
at times, when the air is pure and calm, become visible to the eye. He
himself had seen them on Beech Hill, and on Laurel Hill, and they
frequently appeared to the inhabitants of these places, sometimes playing
tricks upon them, stealing and hiding their cattle, but afterwards returning
the property to their stalls. Other spirits were seen about Nola by the temple
of Portus in a solitary place, and even under a certain rock at the roots of
Mount Cicala, formerly a cemetery for the plague-stricken; he and many
others had suffered the experience when passing at night of being struck
with a multitude of stones, which rebounded from the head and other parts
of the body with great force, in quick succession, but did no injury either to
him or to any of the others.[11] It was at Nola that Bruno saw what seemed a
ball or beam of fire, but was “really” one of the living beings that inhabit
the ethereal space; “as it came moving swiftly in a straight line, it almost
touched the roofs of the houses and would have struck the face of Mount
Cicala, but it sprang up into the air and passed over.”[12] To understand the
mind of Bruno, it is necessary to remember the atmosphere of superstition
in which he lived as a child.

One lesson from nature was early implanted which gave
body and form to Bruno’s later views: he had seen from Unity of Nature.
Cicala, the fair mount, how Vesuvius looked dark, rugged, bare, barren, and
repellent; but when later he stood on the slopes of Vesuvius itself, he
discovered that it was a perfect garden, rich in all the fairest forms and
colours, and luxurious bounty of fruits, while now it was his own beloved
hill, Cicala, that gloomed dim and formless in the distance. He learnt once
for all that the divine majesty of nature is everywhere the same, that
distance alters the look but never the nature or substance of things, that the
earth is everywhere full of life,—and beyond the earth the whole universe,
he inferred, must be the same.[13]

II

When about eleven years of age, Bruno passed from Nola
Naples.
to Naples in order to receive the higher education of the
day—Humanity, Logic, and Dialectic,—attending both public and private
courses; and in his fifteenth year (1562 or 1563) he took
1563.
the habit of St. Dominic, and entered the monastery of that
order in Naples. Of his earlier teachers he mentions only two,—“il
Sarnese,” who is probably Vincenzo Colle da Sarno, a writer of repute, and
Fra Theophilo da Vairano, a favourite exponent of Aristotle, who was
afterwards called to lecture in Rome. Much ingenuity has been exercised in
attempting to find a reason for Bruno’s choice of a religious life; but the
Church was almost the only career open to a clever and studious boy, whose
parents were neither rich nor powerful. The Dominican
Order into which he was taken, although the narrowest, The Dominicans.
and the most bigoted,[14] was all-powerful in the kingdom, and directed the
machinery of the Inquisition. Naples was governed by Spain with a firm
hand, and the Dominican was the chosen order of Spain. Just at this time
there were riots against the Inquisition, to which an end was put by the
beheading and burning of two of the ringleaders.[15] The Waldensian
persecution was then fiercer and more brutal than it had ever been; on a day
of 1561 eighty-eight victims were butchered with the same knife, their
bodies quartered, and distributed along the road to Calabria.[16] Plague,
famine, earthquake, the Turks, and the Brigands, under “King” Marconi,
swelled the wave of disaster that had come upon the kingdom of Naples.
Little wonder then that one whose aim was a life of learning should seek it
under the mantle of the strong Dominican order.
The cloister stood above Naples, amidst beautiful gardens,
The Cloister.
and had been the home of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose
gentle spirit still breathed within its walls. In its church, amid the
masterpieces of Giovanni Merliano of Nola, “the Buonarotti of Naples,”
stood the image of Christ which had spoken with the Angelic Doctor, and
had approved his works. Long afterwards, at his trial, Bruno spoke of
having the works of St. Thomas always by him, “continually reading,

studying and re-studying them, and holding them dear.” On his entry into
the order, Bruno laid down, as was customary, the name Filippo, and took
that of Giordano, by which, except for a short period, he was thenceforth
known. After his year’s probation he took the vows before
1572.
Ambrosio Pasqua, the Prior, and in due course, probably
about 1572, became priest, his first mass being said in Campagna.[17]
It was the age of the counter-reformation which had been
Processes for
inaugurated by Loyola, its course set by the decision of the heresy.
Council of Trent “to erase with fire and sword the least
traces of heresy,” and Bruno early began to feel his fetters, and to suffer
from their weight. During his noviciate even, a writing had been drawn up
against him, because he had given away some images of the saints,
retaining for himself only a crucifix, and again because he had advised a
fellow-novice, who was reading The Seven Delights of the Madonna to
throw it aside and take rather The Lives of the Fathers or some such book.
But the writing was merely intended to terrify him, and the same day was
torn up by the Prior.[18] In 1576, however, the suspicions of
1576.
his superiors took a more active turn, and a process was
instituted in which the matter of the noviciate was supported by charges of
later date, of which Bruno never learned the details. He believed the chief
count was an apology for the Arian heresy made by him in the course of a
private conversation, and rather on the ground of its scholastically correct
form than on that of its truth.[19] In any case Bruno left
Rome.
Naples while the process was pending, and came to Rome,
where he put up in the cloister of Minerva. His accusers did not leave him
in peace, however: a third process was threatened at Rome with 130
articles;[20] and, on learning from a friendly source that some works of St.
Chrysostom and St. Hieronymus, with a commentary of the arch-heretic
Erasmus, had been discovered—he had, as he supposed, safely disposed of
them before leaving Naples,—Bruno yielded to discretion, abandoned his
monkly habit, and escaped from Rome. From this time began a life of
restless wandering throughout Europe which ended only after sixteen years,
when he fell into the power of the Inquisition at Venice.

III

Bruno, who resumed for the time his baptismal name of
Noli.
Filippo, journeyed first to the picturesque little town of
Noli, in the Gulf of Genoa, whither a more famous exile, Dante, had also
come. There he lived for four or five months, teaching
1576?
grammar to boys, and “the Sphere”—that is, astronomy
and cosmography, with a dash of metaphysics,—to certain gentlemen.
Thence he came to Savona, to Turin,[21] and to Venice. In
Savona. Turin.
Venice six weeks were spent, probably in the vain attempt Venice.
to find work—the printing offices and the schools were
closed on account of the plague which was carrying off thousands of the
inhabitants; but the time was utilised in printing the first of his books—no
longer extant—on the Signs of the Times,[22] written, like so many other
works of other people, to put together a few “danari.” It was shown to a
reverend Father Remigio of Florence, therefore was probably orthodox, or
its unorthodoxy was veiled. This work may have been the first of Bruno’s
writings on the art of memory or on Lully’s art of knowing. Another work
belonging to this early period was the Ark of Noah. It was probably written
before he left Naples, and was dedicated to Pope Pius V., but is not known
to have been published: its title is that of a mystical writing of Hugo of St.
Victor, but according to the account in the Cena,[23] it was an allegorical
and probably satirical work, somewhat after the fashion of Bruno’s Cabala:
—The animals had assembled to settle a disputed question of rank, and the
ass was in great danger of losing his pre-eminent post,—in the poop of the
Ark,—because his power lay in hoofs rather than in horns; when we
consider Bruno’s frequent and bitter invocations of Asinity, we can hardly
avoid seeing in the work an allusion to the credulity and ignorance of the
monkhood.
“From Venice,”[24] Bruno tells us, “I went to Padua, where
Padua.
I found some fathers of the order of St. Dominic, whom I
knew; they persuaded me to resume the habit, even though I should not
wish to return to the order, as it was more convenient for travel: with this
idea I went to Bergamo, and had a robe made of cheap white cloth, placing

over it the scapular which I kept when I left Rome.” On
Brescia.
his way to Bergamo he seems to have touched at Brescia
and Milan, at the former place curing, “with vinegar and polypod,” a monk
who claimed to have the spirit of prophecy.[25] At Milan he
Milan.
first heard of his future patron and friend, Sir Philip
Sidney.[26] From Bergamo he was making for Lyons, but at
Bergamo.
Chambéry was warned that he would meet with little
sympathy there, and turned accordingly towards Geneva,
Chambéry.
the home of exiled reformers of all nationalities, but
especially of Italians. It is uncertain how the time was
Geneva.
distributed among these places,—possibly Bruno spent a
winter, as Berti suggests, at Chambéry, having crossed the Alps the previous
autumn;—what is certain is, that he arrived at Geneva in April or May of
1579. Under the date May 22, of that year, in the book of
May 1579.
the Rector of the Academy at Geneva, is inscribed the
name Philippus Brunus, in his own hand. On his arrival at the hostelry in
Geneva, he was called upon by a distinguished exile and reformer, the
Marquis of Vico, a Neapolitan. To the court at Venice, Bruno gave the
following account of this visit and of his life in Geneva:—“He asked me
who I was, and whether I had come to stay there and to profess the religion
of the city, to which, after I had given an account of myself and of my
reasons for abandoning the Order, I said that I had no intention of
professing the religion of the city, not knowing what it was, and that
therefore I wished rather to remain living in freedom and security, than in
any other manner. I was persuaded, in any case, to lay aside the habit I
wore; so I had made for myself from the cloth a pair of trews and other
things, while the Marquis himself, with other Italians, gave me a sword, hat,
cape, and other necessaries of clothing, and enabled me to support myself
so far by correcting proofs. I stayed about two months, and attended at
times the preachings and discussions, both of Italians and Frenchmen who
lectured and preached in the city; among others, I heard several times
Nicolo Balbani of Lucca, who read on the epistles of St. Paul, and preached
the Gospels; but having been told that I could not remain there long if I did
not make up my mind to adopt the religion of the city, for if not I should
receive no assistance, I resolved to leave.”[27] When the
inscription of Bruno’s name in the book of the Rector of DidCalvinism?
Bruno adopt

the Academy was found, a doubt appeared to be thrown

upon the truth or frankness of this evidence about himself. The regulations
of 1559 had made it necessary for intending members to accept and sign the
Calvinist confession of faith; but from 1576 onward, it was only required
that they should belong to the community, a condition Bruno fulfilled by
attending the ministrations of Nicolo Balbani at the Italian Church; this
would account also for his name being in the list of the Protestant refugees.
The real cause of his departure from Geneva has, however, been revealed
by the documents which Dufour published in 1884.[28] On
Freedom of
Thursday August 6, 1579, “one Philippe Jordan called speech.
Brunus, an Italian,” was brought before the Council, for
having “caused to be printed certain replies and invectives against M. de la
Faye, enumerating twenty errors made by the latter in one of his lectures.”
De la Faye was then Professor of Philosophy in the
De la Faye.
Academy, of which in 1580 he became Rector, resigning
that post for the theological chair a few years later. His one title to fame is,
that he was the biographer of Béza, and he was in no sense a strong man; all
the more bitter and intense was his anger at the intruding Italian who
criticised his views, and—a far graver crime—disparaged his learning.
Bruno, heard before a body of councillors, and having confessed his fault,
was to be set free on giving thanks to God and an apology to M. de la Faye,
admitting his fault before the Consistory (the governing body of the Church
in Geneva), and tearing up the defamatory libel.[29] But when he did appear,
on August 13, the philosopher adopted a different tone:—“Philippe Brun
appeared before the Consistory—to admit his fault, in so far as he had erred
in doctrine, and called the ministers of the Church of Geneva ‘pedagogues,’
asserting that he neither would excuse nor condemn himself in that, for it
had not been reported truly, although he understood that one, Anthony de la
Faye, had made such a report. Inquired whom he had called pedagogues, he
replied with many excuses and assertions that he had been persecuted,
making many conjectures and numerous other accusations.”——Finally, “it
was decided that he be duly admonished, that he have to admit his fault, and
that, should he refuse to do so, he be forbidden communion, and sent back
again to the Council, who are prayed not to endure such a person, a
disturber of the school; and in the meantime he shall have to admit his fault.
He replied that he repented of having committed the fault, for which he
would make amends by a better conversation, and further confessed that he
had uttered calumny against De la Faye. The admonitions and exclusions

from the communion were carried out, and he was sent back with
admonitions.”[30] Apparently these steps were effective; the required
apology was made, and on August 27 Bruno was absolved from the form of
excommunication passed upon him. No doubt, however, life in Geneva was
made less easy for him, and he left soon after. The sentence of
excommunication passed by the Consistory—the only one within its power
—does not prove that Bruno was a full member of the Protestant
community, nor that he partook of the communion, which at his trial in
Venice he absolutely denied ever having done; but formal excommunication
must have entailed many unpleasantnesses, so that his appeal for remission
is quite comprehensible. His unfortunate experiences in Geneva account,
however, for the extreme dislike of Calvinism which his writings express.
Of the two reformed schools, Lutheranism was by far the more tolerant, and
gave him, later, the more cordial welcome. Calvin, we must remember,
whose spirit continued in Theodore Béza, had written a pamphlet on
Servetus, a “faithful exposition of the errors of Michael Servetus, a short
refutation of the same, in which it is shown to be lawful to coerce heretics
by the sword.” It was more probably, however, Bruno’s attitude towards the
Aristotelian philosophy which brought him into conflict with the
authorities: Geneva was as thoroughly convinced of the all-wisdom of
Aristotle as Rome.[31] Béza had written to Ramus that they had decided
once for all, ne tantillum ab Aristotelis sententiâ deflectere, and Arminius,
when a youth of twenty-two, was expelled from Geneva for teaching the
Dialectic of Ramus.

IV

After a short stay in Lyons, where “he could not make
Lyons.
enough to keep him alive,” Bruno passed to Toulouse,
which boasted then of one of the most flourishing
Toulouse.
universities in the world. In his account of his life before
the Venetian tribunal, he gives two years and a half to Toulouse, but he must
have left it before the end of 1581, so that his actual stay
1579–81
was only two years. While he was holding private classes
on the Sphere, and other philosophical subjects, a chair at the University
fell vacant. Bruno was persuaded to become a candidate; to that end he took
a Doctorate (in Theology), and was allowed to compete. By the free
election of the students, as the custom was, he was chosen for the chair, and
thereafter for two sessions lectured on Aristotle’s De Anima and on other
matters. Part of these lectures is perhaps given to us in the works published
afterwards at Paris. It was fortunate that the University did not require of its
ordinary professors that they should attend mass, as was the case, for
example, at the Sorbonne. Bruno could not have done so owing to his
excommunication, but that he was unconscious of any want of sympathy
towards the Catholic Church is shown by his visit in Toulouse to the
confessional of a Jesuit.
The city was not generally favourable to heretics, and in 1616 Lucilio
Vanini was burnt there for his opinions. A cancelled phrase in the evidence
suggests that Bruno’s departure from Toulouse was owing to disputes and
difficulties regarding his doctrine, but his alleged reason was the civil war
that was then raging in the south of France, with Henry of Navarre in the
field. While at Toulouse, Bruno seems to have completed a work in more
than one volume, the Clavis Magna, or “Great Key,” a general, and as
Bruno thought, a final textbook on the art of memory:—“All the ideas of
the older writers on this subject (so far as we are able to make out from the
books that have come to our hands), their doctrines and methods, have their
fitting place in our invention, which is a superlatively pregnant one, and has
appropriated to it the book of the Great Key.”[32] One volume only, it

appears, was published by Bruno, and that in England, the Sigillus
Sigillorum.
To Paris Bruno came about the close of 1581, and almost at once sprang
into fame. A course of thirty lectures on “The thirty divine attributes” (as
given by Thomas Aquinas) brought him the offer of an ordinary
professorship, but this he could not take, being unable to attend mass.
However, his fame reached the ears of the king, Henry the Third, who
summoned him to his presence, to know among other things “whether the
memory Bruno had, and the art of memory he professed, were natural or
due to magic.” Bruno proved to him that a powerful memory was a natural
product, and dedicated to him a book on the Art of Memory. Henry III. was
the son of an Italian mother, and had a keen, if uncritical and dilettante, love
of learning. At the time Bruno arrived in Paris philosophy was one of the
king’s chief hobbies, and the fact had a great influence on Bruno’s future.
During his stay in Paris Bruno published several works, of
which the first perhaps was the “Shadows of Ideas” (De Works published
in Paris.
Umbris Idearum), 1582, dedicated to Henry III., along
with which, but without a separate frontispiece, was the De Umbris.
Art of Memory (Ars Memoriæ Jordani Bruni); there
followed “The Incantation of Circe” (Cantus Circæus),
Ars Memoriæ.
1582, dedicated to Prince Henry of Angoulême, and edited
by Regnault. The De Umbris gives the metaphysical basis
Cantus Circæus.
of the art of memory, the Ars Memoriæ a psychological
analysis of the faculty, and an account of the theory of the art itself, while
the Cantus Circæus offers first a practical application, and secondly a more
elementary account of the theory and practice of the system. Obscurity was,
in those days of pedantry, one of the safest ways of securing a hearing: there
is nothing of value in Bruno’s art except the philosophy by which he sought
to support it—a renovated Neoplatonism. It has been pointed out, however,
“that the art was a convenient means of introducing Bruno to strange
universities, gaining him favour with the great, or helping him out of
pressing money troubles. It was his exoteric philosophy with which he
could carefully drape his philosophy of religion hostile to the Church, and
ride as a hobby horse in his unfruitful humours.”[33] There can be no
question of Bruno’s own belief in it; it was not, for example, a cipher
language by which he covered his real thoughts: the Copernican theory is

not, as Berti says, absent from the Parisian writings, rather it is forced
obtrusively into them.[34]
In Paris was published also the “Compendious
Architecture” (De Compendiosâ Architecturâ et DeArchitecturâ, Compendiosâ

Complemento Artis Lullii), 1582, dedicated to Giovanni etc.
Moro, the Venetian Ambassador in Paris. It is the earliest
of the Lullian works in which Bruno expounds or comments upon the art of
Raymond Lully, a logical calculus and mnemonic scheme in one, that
attracted many imitators up to and after Bruno’s time. In
Il Candelaio.
the same year appeared a work of a very different stamp, Il
Candelaio, or “The Torchbearer,” “a comedy by Bruno of Nola, Academico
di nulla academia, detto il fastidito: In tristitia hilaris, hilaritate tristis.” It
is a satire upon some of the chief vices of the age—in the forefront
pedantry, superstition, and sordid love. Without great dramatic power—the
characters are personified types, not individuals—it has been judged to be
second to none of the comedies of the time, in spirit, wit, and pert comedy.
It certainly excels in many respects the Cortegiana of Aretino, to which it is
similar in character. It is equally realistic in the sense that it “calls a spade a
spade,” and does not shrink from representing vice as speaking in its own
language. Bruno is not, however, to be blamed for an obscenity which was
de rigueur in the literature of the time. But although the humour is broad
and occasionally amusing, there is no grace, no lighter touch; the picture is
all dark. The attack upon the pedant, however, strikes a keynote of Bruno’s
life; in him he saw the greatest enemy his teaching had to face, and
therefore he struck at him whenever the opportunity offered.
Owing perhaps to some of these works, Bruno was granted
an Extraordinary Readership at the university. There were, The University.
however, two universities in Paris, and it is uncertain at which Bruno
taught: they were the Sorbonne, catholic and conservative, the censorship of
which must have passed his Parisian works, and the College of France—
following the liberal policy of its founder, Francis II., declaring war against
pedantry in general, and the Jesuit Society in particular.[35] As has been
said, Bruno was at this time eager to be taken back into the fold of the
Church, and turned to the Jesuits for assistance, so that the latter college
could hardly have been his habitation; on the other hand, his revolutionary
teaching could not fail in the end to excite the indignation of the Sorbonne

pupils: Aristotle was, here as elsewhere, “divine.” Yet when Bruno returned
to Paris in 1585, and when he was on the eve of a second departure, he
recalled with pleasure the humanity and kindness shown to him by rectors
and professors on his first visit. They had honoured him by “the continued
presence of the more learned at his lectures both public and private, so that
any title rather than that of stranger was befitting him with this kindly
parent of letters.”[36] And Nostitz, one of Bruno’s pupils, remembered with
admiration, thirty-three years later, the skill and versatility of his teacher:
“He was able to discourse impromptu on any subject suggested, to speak
without preparation extensively and eloquently, and he attracted many
pupils and admirers in Paris.”[37]
But Bruno’s evil genius would not allow him rest; whether on account, as
he himself says, of “tumults,”—which may mean either the civil war[38] or
an active resistance to his own teaching on the part of the youth of Paris,—
or because of the attraction of a less bigoted country, he was drawn in 1583
to exchange Paris for London.

V

England under Elizabeth was renowned for its tolerance;
all manner of religious refugees found there a place of England, 1583.
safety: to Italians its welcome was particularly cordial, their language was
the favoured one of the court, and Elizabeth herself eagerly saw and spoke
with them in their own tongue. Florio—an Italian in spite of having had
London for his birthplace, the friend of Shakespeare, of Spenser and Ben
Jonson—was constantly at court; two of Elizabeth’s physicians were Italian,
as were several of the teachers of the universities. Perhaps the happiest days
of Bruno’s troubled life were spent here; he had access to the most brilliant
literary society of the time; he was able to speak, write, and publish in his
own tongue, and in consequence gave all the most polished and brilliant of
his works to the world during this period.
In April, May, and June of 1583 Bruno was in Oxford,
Oxford, 1583.
although the university and college records make no
mention of his name. He must have known it as a
The University
stronghold of Aristotelianism; on its statutes stood “that and Aristotle.
Bachelors and Masters who did not follow Aristotle
faithfully were liable to a fine of five shillings for every point of
divergence, and for every fault committed against the Logic of the
Organon”; and that this was no dead law had been proved a few years
before when one Barebones was degraded and expelled because of an attack
on Aristotle from the standpoint of Ramus. The only living subject of
teaching was theology, there was no real science, and no real scholarship.
This peaceful school was not likely to be gratified by the letter which Bruno
wrote asking permission to lecture at Oxford; it is printed in the Explicatio
Triginta Sigillorum:[39] “To the most excellent the Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Oxford, its most famous Doctors and celebrated Masters—
Salutation from Philotheus Jordanus Brunus of Nola, Doctor of a more
scientific theology, professor of a purer and less harmful learning, known in
the chief universities of Europe, a philosopher approved and honourably
received, a stranger with none but the uncivilised and ignoble, a wakener of
sleeping minds, tamer of presumptuous and obstinate ignorance, who in all

respects professes a general love of man, and cares not for the Italian more
than for the Briton, male more than female, the mitre more than the crown,
the toga more than the coat of mail, the cowled more than the uncowled; but
loves him who in intercourse is the more peaceable, polite, friendly and
useful—(Brunus) whom only propagators of folly and hypocrites detest,
whom the honourable and studious love, whom noble minds applaud.” The
epistle which so begins is the preface to a work on the art of discovering,
arranging, and remembering facts of knowledge, by which Bruno hoped to
commend himself to the English, as he had succeeded in commending
himself to the French universities. He attempted to disarm prejudice by
sheltering under the twofold truth—“if this writing appears to conflict with
the common and approved faith, understand that it is put forward by me not
as absolutely true, but as more consonant with our senses and our reason, or
at least less dissonant than the other side of the antithesis. And remember,
that we are not so much eager to show our own knowledge, as moved by
the desire of showing the weakness of the common philosophy, which
thrusts forward what is mere opinion as if demonstratively proved, and of
making it clear by our discussion (if the gods grant it) how much in
harmony with regulated sense, in consonance with the truth of the substance
of things, is that which the garrulous multitude of plebeian philosophers
ridicule as foreign to sense.”
He was coldly received, however; in common-sense England his new art
could evoke no enthusiasm, and his real and vital doctrines met with
nothing but opposition at the old university—“the widow of true science,”
Bruno calls it. From the 10th to the 13th June the Polish
Alasco of
prince, Alasco, was in Oxford, and disputations were held Poland.
in his honour as well as banquets. Among others, Bruno
disputed publicly in presence of the prince and some of the English nobility.
[40] Alasco appears to have caused some excitement to the Elizabethan
court. According to Mr. Faunt (of the secretary’s office) he had been
General in more than forty fought battles, spoke Latin and Italian well, and
was of great revenues. Mauvissière grumbled in a letter to the French king,
that the Palatine Lasque and a Scottish ambassador seemed to be governing
the court.[41] The real object of the visit was apparently political, to prevent
the traffic in arms between England and Muscovy.[42] Whether Alasco
succeeded in this design or not, he seems to have found life in England too
fast for his purse—“A learned man of graceful figure, with a very long

beard, in decorous and beautiful attire, who was received kindly by the
Queen, with great honour and praise by the nobles, by the university of
Oxford with erudite delectations (oblectationibus) and varied spectacles;
but after four months, being harassed for debt, he withdrew secretly.”[43]
The arrival of this tragic-comic figure in Oxford appears to have gratified
the city and university; he was most hospitably received, and put up at
Christ Church. On the following day there was a dinner at All Souls, at
which “he was solemnlie satisfied with scholarlie exercises and courtlie
fare.” That evening was performed a “pleasant comedie,” the Rivales, and
on the following night a “statelie tragedie,” Dido,[44] and there were in the
intervals shows, disputations in philosophy, physics, and divinity, in all of
which, we are glad to know, “these learned opponents, respondents, and
moderators, acquitted themselves like themselves, sharplie and soundlie.”
Let us hope that Bruno too, who took part in one of these
disputations, made this impression. According to his own The disputation.
account the protagonist put forward by the university could not reply to one
of his arguments, and was left fifteen times by as many syllogisms, “like a
hen in the stubble,” resorting accordingly to incivility and abuse, in face of
the patience and humanity of the Neapolitan “reared under a kinder sky.”
The result was unfortunate for Bruno; it put an end to the public lectures,
which he was giving at the time, on the Immortality of the Soul and on the
“Five-fold Sphere.” The same month he returned to
The Cena.
London, and shortly after published the Cena (Ash-
Wednesday Supper), in which he ridiculed the Oxford Doctors. Inter alia,
he thought they knew a good deal more of beer than of Greek.[45] The
impression this attack produced in his London circle was
The Causa.
apparently not that which he desired, for in the following
dialogue, the Causa, he was much more judicious.[46] He admitted much in
the university that was well instituted from the beginning: “the fine
arrangement of studies, the gravity of the ceremonies, careful ordering of
the exercises, seemliness of the habits worn, and many other circumstances
that made for the requirements and adornment of a university; without
doubt every one must admit it to be the first in Europe, and consequently in
all the world—nay, more, in gentleness of spirit and acuteness of mind,
such as are naturally brought out in both parts of Britain, it equals perhaps
the most excellent of the universities. Nor is it to be forgotten that before
speculative philosophy was taught in any other part of Europe it flourished

here, and through its princes in metaphysics (although barbarians in speech
and of the profession of the cowl) the splendour of one of the noblest and
rarest spheres of philosophy, in our times almost extinct, was diffused to all
other academies in civilised countries.” What Bruno condemned in Oxford
was the undue attention it gave to language and words, to the ability to
speak in Ciceronian Latin and in eloquent-phrase, neglecting the realities of
which the words were signs. As for the knowledge of Aristotle and of
philosophy generally that was demanded for the degree of Master or
Doctor, Bruno suggests an evasion that probably had its origin in the
undergraduate wit of the time. The statute read “nisi potaverit e fonte
Aristotelis,” but there were three springs in the town, the Fons Aristotelis,
Fons Pythagorae, Fons Platonis, and “as the water for the beer and cider
was taken from these springs, one could not be three days in Oxford
without imbibing not merely of the spring of Aristotle, but of those of
Pythagoras and of Plato as well.” Doctors were easily created and
doctorates easily bought. There were of course exceptions, men renowned
for eloquence and doctrine like Tobias Matthew[47] and Culpepper,[48] but
as a rule the nobility and best men generally refused to avail themselves of
the “honour,” and preferred the substance of learning to its shadow.

VI

It was after his return from Oxford that the pleasant and
London.
busy life in London literary society began—the period of
Bruno’s greatest productiveness. In the house of the enlightened and
cultured Mauvissière he found, for the first time since leaving Nola, a
home.[49] Bruno’s position in London has given rise to great difference of
opinion; none of the ordinary contemporary records make mention of him,
or the slightest allusion to his presence in England. At his trial he professed
to have brought letters to the French Ambassador from the King of France,
to have stayed at the house of the former continuously, to have gone
constantly to the Court with the Ambassador, and to have known Elizabeth;
and in his works he claims intimacy with Sidney and Greville. It was
consequently thought that he moved in the highest English society of the
time, and from the Cena that he belonged to a literary coterie, or club, of
which Sidney, Greville, Dyer, Temple, and others were members. Lagarde,
believing Bruno (but on ludicrous grounds)[50] to have sprung from the
lowest of Italian society, could hardly accept this familiar legend of Bruno-
biographies, and more recently, the Quarterly Review has questioned both
the friendship with Sidney and Greville, and the existence of the supposed
Society. As to the last, there was certainly at one time a literary society,
Sidney’s Areopagus, to which Spenser belonged in 1579, but which
concerned itself chiefly with artificial rules of versification, and the merits
of various metres; the habit of meeting may have very well persisted for a
few years, after the first flush of enthusiasm had passed, and the Ash
Wednesday supper may have represented one of these meetings to which
Bruno—the defender of the Copernican theory—may have been invited as
Protagonist. As for Bruno’s position, it must have been that of a secretary or
tutor, perhaps both, in Mauvissière’s employment. The French Ambassador
was constantly in want of funds, and could not very well afford to support
any casual stranger whom the King of France recommended to him. In
November 1584 he complained of absolute penury, of being unable to
obtain money due to him from the King of France (the King paid him by
occasional doles only), of being hard pressed by London and Italian

bankers, while his wife was in ill health. He was not greatly respected either
by the Court, who, with good grounds, believed him to have no influence
with the French King, or by Mary of Scotland and the English Catholics,
partly because of his supposed Huguenot leanings, and partly because of
their distrust of Henry III., or by the French King himself. Mauvissière had
been sent to England as one who could be trusted not to err by way of
undue zeal. Henry had no desire to see the unfortunate Queen of Scots
liberated, although he put out all his diplomatic power to save her life; the
status quo in England suited his policy only too well; there was no need for
active interference. It was Mary of Guise that spurred on Mauvissière to act
as energetically as he did for Queen Mary. We may assume then that Bruno,
when Oxford rejected him, entered the French Embassy as an unofficial
secretary. The words he employed at the Venetian inquiry quite harmonise
with this supposition: “In his house I stayed as his gentleman, nothing
more,” not as friend or guest, but as “his gentleman.”[51] That he went
constantly to Court with the Ambassador, and was introduced to Queen
Elizabeth, would be natural in the case of a secretary—it would be curious
in the case of a mere guest, or of any servant lower than a secretary. Finally,
in the Infinito[52] the grateful remark that Mauvissière entertained Bruno
within his family, “not as one who was of service to him (Mauvissière), but
as one whom he could serve on the many occasions in which aid was
required by the Nolan,” obviously suggests that services were rendered by
Bruno to the Ambassador. A man who was prepared to make a living by
teaching children as readily as by lecturing to students, by setting books in
print as readily as by writing them, was not likely to be an expensive
secretary, and it must have been pleasant to Bruno to escape from the
turmoil of scholastic strife and its bitter antagonisms to the quiet haven of
the Embassy. His host was a well-meaning, kindly, but unfortunate man,
unequal to the great issues that were being decided around him. Although it
was a Catholic family, and mass was frequently said in the house, Bruno’s
religious freedom was respected. He attended neither mass nor any of the
preachings, on account of his excommunication. If one may judge from
Bruno’s enthusiasm, the wife and daughter of Mauvissière must have been
charming companions, the one “endowed with no mean beauty of form,
both veiling and clothing the spirit within, and also with the threefold
blessing of a discreet judgment, a pleasing modesty, and a kind courtesy,
holding in an indissoluble tie the mind of her consort, and captivating all

who come to know her”; the other, “who has scarcely seen six summers,
and from her speech you could not tell whether she be of Italy, of France, or
of England; from her musical play, whether she is of corporeal or
incorporeal substance; from the ripe sweetness of her manners, whether she
is descended from heaven or risen from earth.”[53] For Mauvissière himself,
to whom the three most important of the Italian dialogues are dedicated, no
words that Bruno can invent are too high praise. In the dedication of the
Causa, after comparing his persevering zeal and delicate diplomatic powers
to the dropping of water upon hard stone, and his steadfast support of Bruno
in face of detractions of the ignorant and the mercenary, of sophists,
hypocrites, barbarians, and plebeians, to the strength of the rock against
seething waves, the philosopher adds, “I, whom the foolish hate, the ignoble
despise, whom the wise love, the learned admire, the great honour—I, for
the great favours enjoyed from you, food and shelter, freedom, safety,
harbourage, who through you have escaped so terrible and fierce a storm, to
you consecrate this anchor, these shrouds and slackened sails, this
merchandise so dear to me, more precious still to the future world, to the
end that through your favour they may not fall a prey to the ocean of
injustice, turbulence, and hostility.” The merchandise of which Bruno
thought so highly was the Dialogue itself; we must of course allow for the
grandiloquence of the dedications of the time, and of Bruno’s especially, but
a real gratitude shines through the words.
His account of the Queen must be taken much less
seriously, although his praise of her formed one of the Queen Elizabeth.
many counts against him in Venice. “That most singular and rare of ladies,
who from this cold clime, near to the Arctic parallel, sheds a bright light
upon all the terrestrial globe. Elizabeth, a Queen in title and in dignity,
inferior to no King in all the world. For her judgment, counsel, and
government, not easily second to any other that bears a sceptre in the earth.
In her familiarity with the arts, knowledge of the sciences, understanding
and practice of all languages spoken in Europe by the people or by the
learned, I leave the whole world to judge what rank she should hold among
princes.”[54] In a satirical passage of the Causa, where Bruno is proving that
all vices, defects, crimes are masculine, all virtues, excellences, goodnesses,
feminine, Elizabeth is given as a crowning example:—“than whom no man
is more worthy in the whole kingdom, among the nobles no one more
heroic, among the long robed no one more learned, among the councillors

no one more wise.”[55] Exaggerated as the language is, it is not more so than
was common with the writers who adorned Elizabeth’s Court; and it was
one of his errors which Bruno could easily regret before his judges. “In my
book on ‘the Cause, Principle, and One,’ I praise the Queen of England and
call her ‘divine,’ not as a term of worship, but as an epithet such as the
ancients used to apply to their princes, and in England where I then was,
and where I composed this book, the title ‘divine’ is usually given to the
Queen. I was the more inclined to call her so, that she knew me, as I went
continually with the Ambassador to Court; but I know I erred in praising
this lady, she being a heretic, and in calling her ‘divine.’”
Mendoça.
Through Mauvissière, Bruno made acquaintance with
Bernardino di Mendoça, Spanish Ambassador to England from 1578 to
1584, a much stronger man as well as a more unscrupulous servant of his
king than Mauvissière could be. Bruno says definitely that Mendoça was
known by him at the English Court. So well was he known that Bruno
approached the Ambassador in Paris on the delicate subject of his own
relations with the Catholic Church, and was introduced by him to the Papal
Nuncio. There is absolutely no reason for doubting these statements, and if
true, they are quite compatible with acquaintance, if not friendship, between
Bruno and Sir Philip Sidney, or the others whom he mentions. Mendoça
was not, however a persona grata at Court: he was a thorough-going
supporter of the Scottish Queen, and seems to have had a finger in almost
every conspiracy that was planned or formed by the English Catholics. He
became unbearable to Queen Elizabeth; his recall was demanded and
refused; but in January of 1584 he was compelled to leave England, and a
formal rupture with Spain was the consequence, which became actual war
four years afterwards. Philip of Spain did not desert his champion, in whom
he had the highest confidence. In October of 1584 Mendoça became
Ambassador to France, and there in 1855 Bruno renewed acquaintance with
him.
Like all his contemporaries, Bruno came under the spell of
Sidney.
Sir Philip Sidney’s charm. He had already heard in Milan
and in France of that “most illustrious and excellent cavalier, one of the
rarest and brightest spirits in the world.” To Sir Philip are dedicated the two
chief ethical writings of Bruno, the Spaccio, and the Heroici Furori, with
the expressed assurance that the author is not presenting a lyre to a deaf
man, nor a mirror to a blind. “The Italian reasons with one who can

understand his speech; his verses are under the censure and the protection
of a poet. Philosophy displays her form unveiled to so clear an eye as yours.
The way of heroism is pointed out to a heroic and generous spirit.” Sidney
was one of the first to take an interest in the Italian on his arrival in
England, and when the Spaccio was published, on the eve, as Bruno
thought, of his departure from England towards the close of 1584,[56] Bruno
could not turn his back upon Sidney’s “beautiful, fortunate, and chivalrous
country, without saluting him with a mark of recognition, along with the
generous and humane spirit, Sir Fulke Greville.” There
Greville.
was some disagreement, however, between Greville and
Bruno, “the invidious Erinnys of vile, malignant, ignoble, interested
persons, had spread its poison” between them, in Bruno’s emphatic words.
What the ground of division was we do not know; possibly the tone in
which the Cena spoke of Oxford men, and of English scholars generally,
had offended Greville, and this may have called out the partial retractation
in the Causa. As is well known the friendship of the two men, Sidney and
Greville (with whom Edward Dyer was closely associated), was of the
noblest type. Greville died in 1628 in the fulness of years and of honours,
but had retained the impress of his young friendship fresh to the end.[57] It
may be added that he became an intimate of Francis Bacon, who may
through him have been introduced to Bruno’s works. It
Spenser.
must have been in some such way also that Spenser knew
of Bruno, as it is probable that the Cantos on Mutability (first published
posthumously in 1609, but written probably after his visit to England in
1596) were “suggested” by Bruno’s Spaccio.[58] The “new poet” certainly
could not have met Bruno, for he was in Ireland continuously, as secretary,
from 1580 till 1589, when he came over to publish the first three books of
the Faerie Queen.
It is possible, on the other hand, that Bruno met Bacon,
Bacon.
who was a rising young barrister and member of
Parliament when he arrived in England, and had already achieved some
fame as a critic of Aristotle. The idea, however, that he knew and influenced
Shakespeare, is entirely fanciful. Richard Field, a friend of Shakespeare,
had come to London in 1579, and served his apprenticeship with Thomas
Vautrollier; and Field was Shakespeare’s first publisher,
Shakespeare.
having set up for himself by 1587. It has been suggested
that before this time Shakespeare worked in Vautrollier’s printing office. On

the other hand, it has been universally received that Vautrollier was Bruno’s
publisher in England, and Bruno usually corrected his own proofs. Hence
the two may have met, Shakespeare and Bruno, in a grimy printer’s den.
The idea is charming, but it has to yield before the light of fact.
Shakespeare did not come to London until 1586, and there is no proof that
he worked with Vautrollier. Bruno had left England by the end of 1585, and
there is no proof that Vautrollier was his printer. The suggested analogies
between one or two ideas in Hamlet and Bruno’s conceptions of
transmigration, of the relativity of evil, and the rest, are of the shallowest.
[59] Thomas Vautrollier, a French printer who came to London some years
before, and set up a press in Blackfriars, was said (by Thomas Baker) to
have gained an undesired notoriety as Bruno’s printer, and to have been
compelled to leave England for a period, which he spent in Edinburgh, to
the advantage of Scottish printing. The Triginta Sigilli and all the Italian
Dialogues of Bruno were certainly published in England, although Venice
or Paris was set down as their place of publication. According to Bruno, this
was “that they might sell more easily, and have the greater success, for if
they had been marked as printed in England, they would have sold with
greater difficulty in those parts.” It is doubtful, however, whether
Vautrollier was really the printer; in any case it was not on that account that
he went to Edinburgh.[60]
Of the Italians in England during Elizabeth’s reign the
Florio.
most familiar to us is Florio, whose father had been
preacher to the Protestant Italians in London. Florio had been at Oxford,
from which university he dedicated his “First Fruites” to Leicester in 1578,
so that he was already well known as a scholar when Bruno came to
England and made his acquaintance. This may have occurred through
Sidney; or vice versa, Sidney’s attention may have been called to Bruno by
Florio. The latter was described by Cornwallis as one who looked “more
like a good fellow than a wise man,” yet was “wise beyond his fortune or
his education.” It was long after Bruno’s departure that Florio devoted
himself to the charming translation of Montaigne (published in 1603), of
which a copy has been found bearing Shakespeare’s name, while to
Shakespeare is attributed a sonnet in praise of Florio. Curiously, we find
him in his translation acknowledging assistance from one with whom Bruno
also has casually connected him in the Cena, viz. Matthew Gwinne. Of
Bruno’s more intimate acquaintance in England we know little: there are

two whose names occur in the dialogues, “Smith” in the
Alexander
Cena, and Dicson in the Causa, both sympathetic listeners Dicson.
and adherents of Theophilo, who is Bruno’s representative.
The former it is naturally difficult to place: he may however have been the
poet William Smith, a disciple of Spenser, who published a pastoral poem
“Chloris, or the Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepherd.” Of
Dicson,—“learned, honourable, lovable, well-born faithful friend Alexander
Dicson, whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes,”[61] a little more can be
told. He was the author of a De Umbra Rationis, (1583), obviously inspired
by Bruno’s De Umbris Idearum, and on the same basis of Neoplatonism.
The work is extremely sketchy, occasionally diffuse, and of little value even
were there anything of value in the Art of Memory which it teaches. But it
seems from a reply it called forth (Antidicsonus) to have
Antidicsonus.
had some vogue, and to have been backed by a vigorous
and aggressive school in which Bruno, who is joined in condemnation with
Dicson, may have had a place.[62] The poet Thomas
Watson.
Watson has also connected Bruno with Dicson in his
Compendium Memoriæ Localis, published in 1585 or 1586. Watson also
published a translation of Tasso’s Aminta, in Latin hexameters,—in 1585,
i.e. in the year following the appearance of Bruno’s Spaccio, with its satire
on Tasso’s Age of Gold.[63] Watson had been in Paris in 1581, when he met
Walsingham, and he may of course have met Bruno also: he was a scholarly
poet, although his work lay more in the direction of translation and
imitation of foreign writers, than in that of original verse, but during his
lifetime he ranked as the equal of Spenser and Sidney. The Compendium of
Local Memory is in clear, simple, classical Latin, in strong contrast with the
corresponding works of Dicson and of Bruno; but the principles of the Art
which it describes are those of Bruno, or Ravenna, or of some common
source, more skilfully arranged and more aptly expressed.

VII

No fewer than seven works from Bruno’s facile pen were
published in England; the first of these was the Thirty The Thirty Seals.
Seals, and the Seal of Seals (1583) Explicatio Triginta Sigillorum, quibus
adjectus est Sigillus[64] Sigillorum. It was dedicated to Mauvissière, but the
introductory epistle was addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. Bound
along with it, in front, was a Modern and Complete Art of Remembering
which is merely a reprint of the last part of the Cantus Circæus. The work
belongs to the mnemonic and psychological writings of Bruno; the thirty
seals are hints “for the acquiring, arranging, and recollecting of all sciences
and arts,” the Seal of Seals “for comparing and explaining all operations of
the mind. And it may be called Art of Arts; for here you will easily find all
that is theoretically enquired into by logic, metaphysics, the cabala, natural
magic, arts great and small.” (The part called Sigillus Sigillorum was a
volume of Bruno’s Clavis Magna, perhaps the only volume published.) It
was followed by an Italian dialogue, “the Ash Wednesday
Cena de le
Supper,” La Cena de le Ceneri, also dedicated to Ceneri.
Mauvissière. Written in praise of the Copernican theory, it
goes beyond Copernicus himself in its intuition of the infinity of the
universe, of the identity of matter in the earth with the matter of the planets
and stars, and of the possibility that such living beings inhabit them as
inhabit the earth: earth and stars themselves are also said to be living
organisms: so there are not seven planets or wandering stars only, but
innumerable such; for every world, whether of the sun-type or of the earth-
type, is in motion, its motion proceeding from the spirit within it. Finally,
this philosophy is shown to be in complete accord with all true religion, to
conflict only with the false. After the “Ash-Wednesday
De la causa,
Supper” came “Cause, Principle, and Unity” (De la causa, principio et Uno,
principio et Uno), 1584; again dedicated to Mauvissière. 1584.
[65] The first of its dialogues is an apology for the Cena,
which, as we have seen, had caused considerable feeling in Bruno’s circle
of readers, for the severity and irony of its strictures upon Oxford, and
England generally. In the others the immanence or spirituality of all

causation; the eternity of matter; its divinity as the potentiality of all life; its
realisation in the universe as a whole (as a “formed” thing); the infinite
whole and the innumerable parts, as different aspects of the same: the origin
of evil and of death: the coincidence of matter and form in the One: the
source of all individual and finite forms in the one material substance: the
coincidence in the One of the possible and the real, the century and the
moment, the solid and the point: the universe all centre and all
circumference: diversity and difference as nothing but diverse and different
aspects of one and the same substance: the coincidence of contraries:—
these are among the chief topics of this, the freshest and most brilliant of
Bruno’s philosophical writings: “a dialogue worthy of Plato,” Moritz
Carrière has said. In the same year appeared The Infinite
De l’ infinito
Universe and its worlds (De l’ infinito universo et Mondi), universo et
dedicated to Mauvissière.[66] It contained a masterly array Mondi.
of reasons, physical and metaphysical, for the belief that
the universe is infinite, and is full of innumerable worlds of living creatures;
sense and imagination are shown to be at once the source and the limit of
human knowledge. Yet the argument is mainly a priori: the infinite power
of the Efficient Cause cannot be ineffective, the divine goodness cannot
withhold the good of life from any possible being; the divine will is one
with the divine intelligence and with the divine action: all possible
existence falls within the sphere of the divine intelligence, therefore is
willed; but whatever is willed is realised, for the power is infinite; and
whatever is is good, for it is willed by the infinitely good. Whatever really
is, is a substance, and therefore immortal. The substance of us is immutable,
only the outward face or form of it changes, passes away; in the whole all
things are good; where things appear evil or defective, it is because we look
at the part or the present, not at the whole or the eternal.
“The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast,” Spaccio de la
Spaccio de la
bestia trionfante, 1584,[67] was dedicated to Sir Philip bestia trionfante.
Sidney. In form an allegorical, satirical prose poem, it is in
fact an introduction to a new ethical system. A repentant Jupiter resolves to
drive out the numerous beasts that occupy his heavenly firmament—the
constellations—and to replace them by the virtues, with Truth as their
crown. He calls a council of the gods to consider this plan, and in the
discussion that follows numberless topics are touched upon—the history of
religions, the contrast between natural and positive religion, and the

fundamental forms of morality. The Spaccio is, however, preparatory to a
future work, in which moral philosophy shall be treated “by the inner light
which the divine intellectual sun has irradiated into my soul,” says Bruno;
[68] in it, and other dialogues, the whole structure of the philosophy is to be
completed, of which the Bestia is merely a tentative sketch.[69] Jupiter
represents the human spirit; and the constellations, the Bear, the Scorpion,
etc., are the vices of the age, which are to be driven out by Bruno’s
hierarchy of virtues. The work, which is rich in both moral and religious
suggestion, was early regarded as an attack on the Pope or the Church, the
supposed “Triumphant Beast.” Gaspar Schopp, for example, writes to that
effect after witnessing Bruno’s death. It is really an attack upon all religions
of mere credulity as opposed to religions of truth and of deeds. The “Cabal”
(Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, con l’ Aggiunta dell’ Asino
The Cabala,
Cillenico) was published in 1585.[70] It is dedicated to an 1585.
imaginary Bishop of Casamarciano, who represents the
spirit of backwardness, ignorant simplicity, and was not a real person, as
some biographers supposed. It is a still more biting, a merciless satire on
Asinity (i.e. ignorance, credulity, and unenquiring faith in religion). In a
later work[71] there is a remark on the Asinus Cillenicus, “the image and
figure of the animal are well known, many have written on it, we among the
rest, in a particular fashion; but as it displeased the vulgar, and failed to
please the wise, for its sinister meaning, the work was suppressed.”
Whether this refers to the whole Cabala, or to the last part of it, is not
known.
The “Enthusiasms of the Noble” (De gl’ heroici furori),
1585,[72] dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, consists of Heroici Furori,
1585.
sonnets, with prose illustrations, after the model of Dante’s
Vita Nuova. Its theme is that of the Phædrus and Symposium, the rising of
the love for spiritual beauty out of that for sensible beauty, reaching its
height in the divine furor—an ecstatic unity with the divine life, in which
all the miseries and misfortunes of the merely earthly life disappear. Many
of the sonnets are of extreme beauty, although Brunnhofer goes too far
when he speaks of them as surpassing Petrarca’s, except in smoothness of
form, and as equalling Shakespeare’s.

VIII

It may not be amiss to give from these works some
The women of
illustrations of life in England as Bruno found it. England.
England, as in the days of Erasmus, was renowned on the
continent for its beautiful women, and Bruno’s passionate and enthusiastic
nature could not but feel the attraction of “the fair and gracious nymphs of
England.” In the Cena he appeals to the muses of England, “gracious and
gentle, soft and tender, young, fair and delicate, blond-haired, white of chin,
pink of cheek, of enticing lips, eyes divine, breasts of ivory, and hearts of
adamant: how many thoughts do I weave for you in my mind, how many
emotions besiege my spirit, how many passions fill my life, how many tears
pour from my eyes, sighs burst from my breast, fires sparkle from my
heart?”[73] Nature was taking its revenge indeed for the long years of
suppression in the Church. If this dark, slender, “interesting” Italian found
favour with the fair and cultured inhabitants of England, he was the less
successful with the people in general, the Plebs, then as now
uncompromisingly opposed to the “foreigner.” In his belief England “could
boast of a Plebs which for want of respect, rudeness, roughness, rusticity,
savagery, ill training, was second to none in the world.”[74] No doubt he
writes from experience when he describes the greater part of them as
“appearing like so many wolves and bears, when they see a foreigner—one
part of them, the artisans, shopkeepers, knowing you as some kind of
foreigner, screw their noses at you, call you dog! traitor! stranger! which is
with them a term of high abuse, and renders its object liable to all the
injuries in the world, no matter what manner of man he is, young or old, in
gown or in uniform, noble or gentleman. They will come upon you with a
rustic fury, careless of the who or why, where, or how, not referring to one
another, but every one, giving vent to the natural hatred he has for the
foreigner, will try with his own hand and his own rod to take the measure of
your doublet, and if you are not careful to save yourself, of the hair of your
head;—and when at length you think you may be allowed to go to the
barber’s, and to rest your wearied, ill-handled body, behold them so many
executioners and tipstaffs;—if they can pretend that you touched any one of

them, you will have your back and legs as sore as if you had the heels of
Mercury, or were mounted upon the Pegasean Horse, or bestrode the steed
of Perseus, the Hippogriff of Astolfo, the dromedary of Madian, or had
trotting under you one of the giraffes of the three Magicians: by force of
blows they will make you run, helping you forward with their heavy fists,—
better for you were they hoofs of ox, ass, or mule: and will not let you go
till they have you fast in a prison,—and there I take my leave of you.” In
the second dialogue of the Cena, there occurs incidentally, a characteristic
account of the state of Elizabethan London. Fulke Greville had agreed with
Bruno to have a discussion in his house on the Copernican theory, on the
evening of Ash Wednesday. When the day came, no further message
arriving, Bruno concluded that the meeting had been postponed, and after
dinner went out to visit some Italian friends. Returning after sunset, he
found Florio and Guin (Gwynne), impatiently awaiting him: a number of
cavaliers, gentlemen, and doctors, had met to hear the discussion, but the
chief character of the play was awanting. They hurried him off, in the dark,
and thinking to shorten the road, left the straight way and made for the
Thames to get a boat to take them to the Palace. “Arrived at the bridge of
Lord Buckhurst’s Palace, we shouted and cried for ‘oares’—‘id est
Gondolieri’—and wasted as much time as would easily have sufficed to
take us by land to our destination, and to have done some business on the
way. At last from afar two boatmen replied, and slowly, slowly drew up to
the shore; after many interrogations and replies as to the whence, whither,
why, and how much, they rested the bow on the last step of the bridge. Then
one of the two, that appeared like the ancient boatman of the Tartarean
world, gave his hand to the Nolan, while the other, who I think was his son,
although his years were five and sixty or so, received the rest of us.
Although there was no Hercules or Aeneas or Rhadamanth, king of Sarza,
still

... Gemuit sub pondere cimba
Sutilis, et multam accepit limosa paludem....

“The sweet harmony (of its creaking and whistling) like love, invited us to
forget our misfortunes, the times and the seasons, and to accompany the
sounds with song. Florio (recalling his days of love) sang Dove senza me

dolce mia vita, and the Nolan replied with Saracin dolente or Femenil
ingegno, and the like; and so little by little we advanced as the barque
permitted. Although worms and age had reduced it to something like cork,
it seemed from its festina lente all of lead, and the arms of the two ancients
worn out. So with much time we made little way, and before we had
covered a third of the distance—a little beyond the place they call the
Temple—our old fathers, instead of hurrying, ran their prow alongside the
shore. To the Nolan asking if they wished a little breathing time, they
answered that they were not going any further, for this was their stance. In
conclusion, they would not budge for us, and when we had paid them and
thanked them (there is nothing else to do when you suffer a wrong from one
of these canaille), they showed us the direct road for getting on to the street.
Now, oh for your help, Maphelina, muse of Merlin! That was a road which
commenced in a black mud, from which there was no escape even by good
luck. The Nolan, who had studied and practised in the schools more than
we, bade us follow him through a passage, that he thought to see, filthy
though it was. But he had not ceased speaking when he was planted in the
mire so firmly that he could not drag out his limbs, and so with mutual help
we went through the midst of it, hoping that the purgatory would be of short
duration; but by unjust and hard fate he and we found ourselves engulfed in
a slimy passage, that, just as if it were the ‘field of jealousy’ or the ‘garden
of delights,’ was bounded on this side and on that by good walls, and
because there was no light to guide us we could not distinguish between the
way we had come and the way we ought to go, hoping at every step for the
end.” ... “Higher up the street we found a lava which on one side left a
stony place where we could walk dry; step by step we stumbled like drunk
men—and not without danger of breaking a head or a leg. To make a long
story short at last the Elysian fields appeared, viz. the broad, ordinary street
—and then from the houses we discovered we were about twenty steps
from the place where we had set out to find the boatman, and not far from
the Nolan’s rooms!” The temptation to give up the expedition was
overcome, and after sundry adventures with apprentices, servitors, and
bravos of the gentle class, they arrived safely at Fulke Greville’s, where
supper was already in progress.
In the Italian dialogues the personal note of complaint
Hostility in
sounds more highly than in Bruno’s other works, and we England.
may imagine that Bruno himself felt neglected in England

more than in other countries, while English hostility to his teaching was
probably more contemptuous, therefore more galling and more difficult to
overcome. He might repeat as he did, the bold saying that “to the true
philosopher every country is fatherland,” or call himself with Socrates a
citizen of the world; but a touch of despair sounds through the words:—“a
citizen and servant of the world, son of Father Sol and Mother Earth;
because he loves the world too much, he must be hated, cursed, persecuted,
and rejected by it. Meanwhile let him not be idle, nor ill-occupied while
awaiting death, transmigration, change.”[75] Elsewhere there is almost a
savage stoicism; he cries that he is attacked not by one but by many, almost
by all, and the reason is that he hates the people, cares not for the multitude,
adores one thing only:—”That through which he in subjection is free, in
pain content, in necessity rich, in death living, and through which he envies
not those who in freedom are slaves, in pleasure pained, in riches poor, in
life dead, because in the body they have a chain that binds them, in the
spirit an inferno that depresses them, in the soul error that weakens them,
and in the mind lethargy that slays, etc.”[76] Yet the climate of England
seems to have pleased Bruno: “there more than in any other region the
climate is temperate; for the excessive rigour of the snows is driven out by
the earth beneath, and the superfluous fervour of the sun blesses it with a
continuous, a perpetual spring, as is testified by the ever green and flowery
land.”[77] From the Spaccio, it appears that he was struck in England, inter
alia, with the multitude of crows, the richness of the sheep and the
sleekness of the cattle, the stern game-laws, and the land-hunger of the
people.[78]

IX

When Mauvissière was recalled, Bruno in all probability
Return to
sailed with him. It had been decided, unjustly, as France, October
Mauvissière thought, to recall him to France in 1584; but 1585.
owing to his wife’s health and perhaps his claims on the
French treasury, he secured a postponement till the following year, on
condition he should do his best for Queen Mary and her son with Elizabeth,
“but not mix himself up with any of the plots against Elizabeth.” In October
2, 1585, he was still in London, for he wrote to his friend Archibald
Douglas, the Scottish Ambassador, from London on that date; the following
letter, however, was from Paris (Nov. 3, 1585) and told a pathetic story.[79]
On his way across (Bruno with him, we may suppose) he had been “robbed
of all he had in England, down to his shirt, of the handsome presents given
him by the Queen, and of his silver plate: nothing was left, either to him or
to his wife and children, so that they resembled those exiled Irish who
solicit alms in England, with their children by their side.” He had lent
money also to the Queen of Scots, and was in great trouble concerning it,
“for neither her officers nor her treasurer possessed a sou, nor did they
speak of repayment.” The unfortunate ambassador had fallen upon evil
days: he was accused of having spoken ill of his successor, Chateauneuf,
and had to write, as the report went, to Elizabeth, to unsay his insinuations.
In December 1586, he wrote to Archibald Douglas of his wife—the Maria
de Bochetel, whom Bruno praises—having died in childbirth. It would be
interesting to know how Bruno fared in the robbery of Mauvissière’s goods.
At least we may assume that he arrived in Paris with very little worldly
goods, but with part of the manuscript of a great work on the Universe (the
De Immenso) in his possession, during the month of October 1585.

X

“In Paris I spent another year in the house of gentlemen of
my acquaintance, but at my own expense the greater part Paris: Oct. 1585-
June 1586.
of the time: because of the tumults I left Paris, and went
from there to Germany.”[80] So Bruno told the tribunal at Venice; but the
duration of his second visit to Paris was from October 1585 to June 1586.
One of his first steps was to make further efforts towards
The Church.
reconciliation with the Church: he presented himself for
confession to a Jesuit father, while consulting with the Bishop of Bergamo
(the Papal Nuncio), but they were unable to absolve him, as he was an
apostate. What Bruno wished was that he might be received into the Church
without being compelled to return again to the priesthood, and he begged
the Nuncio to write to the Pope Sixtus V. on his behalf. The Bishop,
however, had no hope of the favour being granted, and declined to write
unless Bruno agreed to return to his order. To the same effect was the advice
of the Jesuit father Alfonso Spagnolo to whom he was referred; to obtain
absolution from the Pope he must return to the order—to his bonds, in other
words; and without absolution he could not enjoy the privileges either of
mass or of the confessional.[81] This idea Bruno could by no means
entertain, and therefore he resigned himself to his position as an alien to the
Catholic Church. He had no intention of remaining in Paris, where perhaps
his Italian writings had made him no longer acceptable, but he desired not
to leave it without some recognition of the favour shown him there in the
past. The means he adopted was a public disputation, to be held in the
Royal Hall of the university at Pentecost of the year 1586. These
disputations of the learned were a delight to the youth of the time, and drew
audiences comparable in our own time only to great football or cricket
matches.[82] He drew up one hundred and twenty theses
against the Peripatetic Philosophy, which still formed the The 120 Theses.
substance of the teaching at the Sorbonne; and his side was taken up by the
rival, more modern, college of Cambray (afterwards the College of France),
of which he appears now to have become an associate.[83] It was the custom
of the real propounder of the theses to preside at the debate, leaving it to

another to act as protagonist, and intervening only when the latter’s
discomfiture was imminent. In this case Bruno chose a young Parisian
nobleman of his own following—John Hennequin, a Master of Arts—but
we may well imagine that he did not long keep silent himself. We have no
knowledge of how the debate went, but it cannot have been too favourable
to Bruno, for he left Paris immediately afterwards. Its date was the 25th of
May; Bruno, therefore, left Paris probably in early June 1586.
The articles, with a note of explanation attached to each,
Criticism of
and an introduction to the whole—(Excubitor, the Peripatetic
Awakener)—being the address of Hennequin at the Theory.
beginning of the disputation, but written by Bruno himself
—were published in Paris and again at Wittenberg.[84] They contain a
temperate but powerful criticism of the Aristotelians, by the words of
Aristotle himself, and of Aristotle from the standpoint of Bruno’s own
physical theory, which he believed to be that of the Pythagoreans and
Platonists. The right to criticise the “divine” Aristotle, Bruno claimed on the
same grounds as those on which Aristotle himself enjoyed the right of
criticising his predecessors: we are to him as he to them: their truth, which
to him seemed error, may be right to us again, for opinion, like other
history, moves in cycles. And as to authority, the mass of which was against
Bruno, “if we are really sick, it helps us nought that public opinion thinks
we are really making for health.”[85] “It is a poor mind that will think with
the multitude because it is a multitude: truth is not altered by the opinions
of the vulgar or the confirmation of the many”—“it is more blessed to be
wise in truth in face of opinion than to be wise in opinion in face of
truth.”[86] The new philosophy gives wings to the mind, to carry it far from
the prison cell in which it has been detained by the old system, and from
which it could look out upon the orbs of the stars only through chinks and
cracks:—to carry it out into infinite space, to behold the innumerable
worlds, sisters of the earth, like it in heart and in will, living and life-
producing; and returning, to see within itself—“not without, apart, or far
from us, but in ourselves, and everywhere one, more intimate, more in the
heart of each of us, than we are to ourselves”[87]—the divine cause, source,
and centre of things. Aristotle and the sources of the scholastic philosophy
were occupying Bruno’s leisure almost exclusively at this time: he had
begun the great Latin work, the De Immenso, which was to see the light in
Frankfort; and he published in this year a commentary on the physics of

Aristotle as well as an account of a mathematical and cosmometric
invention of one Fabrizio Mordenti, which seems to be of much less value
than Bruno supposed.[88]

XI

Leaving France for Germany, the Nolan made his first halt
1586.
at “Mez, or Magonza, which is an archiepiscopal city, and
the first elector of the Empire”;[89] it is certainly Mayence.
Mainz.
There he remained some days; but not finding either there
or at “Vispure, a place not far from there,” any means of livelihood such as
he cared for, he went on to Wittenberg in Saxony.
Marburg.
“Vispure” has caused considerable exercise of ingenuity
among Bruno’s biographers. The best explanation seems to be that of
Brunnhofer, that it represents Wiesbaden, which is not far from Mayence,
and is still popularly known as Wisbare or Wisbore; but there may also be a
telescoping of the words Wiesbaden and Marburg. Bruno was certainly at
the latter town, but it is of course a long distance from Mayence. On the 1st
of July 1586, Petrus Nigidius, Doctor of Law and
July 25, 1586.
Professor of Moral Philosophy, was elected Rector of the
university at Marburg. In the roll of students matriculated under his
rectorship stands as eighth name that of “Jordanus Nolanus of Naples,
Doctor of Roman Theology,” with the date July 25, 1586, and the following
note by the rector:—“When the right of publicly teaching philosophy was
denied him by me, with the consent of the faculty of philosophy, for
weighty reasons, he blazed out, grossly insulting me in my own house,
protesting I was acting against the law of nations, the custom of all the
universities of Germany, and all the schools of humanity. He refused then to
become a member of the university,—his fee was readily returned, and his
name accordingly erased from the album of the university by me.” The
name could still be read through the thick line drawn across it, and some
later rector, when Bruno had become more famous, re-wrote the name
above, and cancelled the words “with the consent of the faculty of
philosophy” in Nigidius’ note.[90] The “weighty reasons” for which Bruno
was driven from Marburg may have been merely his description of himself
as a Doctor of “Roman Theology” at a Protestant university; or perhaps an
attack upon Ramus at a place where the Ramian Logic had many adherents;
or the Copernican system taught by him, which was as firmly opposed by

Protestants as by Catholics. In any case “the Knight-Errant
Wittenberg.
of Philosophy” departed sorrowfully and came to
Wittenberg, where he found, for the third time, a respite from his
journeyings. On the 20th August 1586 he matriculated at
Aug. 20, 1586.
the university,[91] and there remained for nearly two years.
Then, as now, the Protestant Church in Germany was divided into two
parties, the Lutheran and the Calvinist or Reformed Churches.
Melanchthon’s attempt to unite the two—he himself belonged to the latter
—brought upon his head the “formula of concord,” better known as the
“formula of discord,” because of the disputes it caused. Among other things
it condemned the views of the Calvinists on the person of Christ, their
denial of his “Real Presence” in the bread and wine of the communion
table, and their doctrine of predestination. When Bruno arrived in
Wittenberg, Lutherans were still in power, as they had been under the old
Duke Augustus. His son Christian I., however, under the influence of John
Casimir, his brother-in-law, of the Palatinate, had gone over to the Calvinist
faction, and was trying with the aid of the Chancellor, Krell, to supplant the
reigning faith and authority. At the university the philosophical faculty was,
in the main, Calvinist, the theological Lutheran; and among the latter party
was an Italian Alberico Gentile, the father of International Law, whom
Bruno had perhaps known in England as a professor at Oxford. Through
him Bruno found favour with the Lutheran party, and received permission
to lecture, on the condition that he taught nothing that was subversive of
their religion. For two years, accordingly, he lectured on the Organon of
Aristotle, and other subjects of philosophy, including the Lullian art, which
he had for a time discarded. The excellent terms on which
he stood with his colleagues is shown by the dedication of Dedication
Lampade.
of De

a Lullian work, De Lampade Combinatoria, to the senate
of the university. He speaks gratefully of their kind reception of himself, the
freedom of access and residence which was granted not only to students but
to professors from all parts of Europe. In his own case “a man of no name,
fame, or authority among you, escaped from the tumults of France,
supported by no princely commendation, with no outward marks of
distinction such as the public loves, neither approved nor even questioned
in the dogmas of your religion; but as showing no hostility to man, rather a
peaceful and general philanthropy, and my only title the profession of
philosophy, merely because I was a pupil in the temple of the Muses, you

thought me worthy of the kindliest welcome, enrolled me in the album of
your academy, and gave me a place in a body of men so noble and learned
that I could not fail to see in you neither a private school nor an exclusive
conventicle, but as becomes the Athens of Germany, a true university.” In
this introduction a large number of the professors are invoked by name,
among them the enlightened Grün, a professor of philosophy, who taught
that theology cannot be detached from philosophy—that they are necessary
complements one of the other.
In Wittenberg was published (1587), the De Lampade
Works
Combinatoria Lulliana, the second of the commentaries on published.
Lully’s art, and representing perhaps the clavis magna of
the De Umbris and other Parisian publications. It was dedicated to the
senatus of the University of Wittenberg. A reprint, however, appeared in
Prague in the following year with a new frontispiece, a dedication to
William of St. Clement, and the addition of a small treatise.[92] The chief
purpose of the work was to furnish the reader with means for “the discovery
of an indefinite number of propositions and middle terms for speaking and
arguing. It is also the sole key to the intelligence of all Lullian works
whatsoever,” Bruno writes with his sublime confidence, “and no less to a
great number of the mysteries of the Pythagoreans and Cabalists.” As in the
earlier work, so in this also, the root ideas are that thought is a complex of
elements, which are to it as the letters of the alphabet are to a printed book;
but thought and reality or nature are not opposed to one another—they are
essentially one. The elements of thought when discovered will accordingly
give us the constitutive elements of nature and the connections in, and
workings of, nature will be understood from the different complications of
these simple elements of thought. In the same year
De Progressu,
appeared the De Progressu et Lampade Venatoriâ 1587.
Logicorum, “To enable one to dispute promptly and
copiously on any subject proposed.” It was dedicated to the Chancellor of
the University of Wittenberg, and was mainly a commentary, without
special references, on the Topics of Aristotle, and doubtless formed part of
the lectures on the Organon, given in Bruno’s first year at Wittenberg. The
simile of the hunt—i.e. the idea that the solution of a problem or the finding
of a middle term is like a quarry that has to be stalked and hunted down—is
a favourite one with Bruno.

Unfortunately for Bruno, the Duke’s party in Wittenberg
1588.
soon gained the upper hand—only for a time, it is true[93]
—and the party to which Bruno himself belonged fell out of power. As a
Copernican, Bruno must in any case soon have fallen foul of the Calvinists,
by whom the new theory had been declared a heresy. He therefore left
Wittenberg in the beginning of 1588, after delivering on the 8th of March
an eloquent farewell address to the university (Oratio
Oratio
Valedictoria). By the fable of Paris and the three Valedictoria.
Goddesses, he indicated his own choice of Wisdom
(Minerva) over riches or fame (Juno), and over worldly pleasure or the
delights of society (Venus):—“Wisdom is communicated neither so readily
nor so widely as riches or pleasure. There are not and there never have been
so many Philosophers as Emperors and Princes; nor to so many has it been
granted to see Minerva robed and armed, as to see Venus and Juno even in
naked simplicity. To see her is to become blind, to be wise through her is to
be foolish. They say Tiresias saw Minerva naked, and was struck blind; who
that had looked upon her, would not despise the sight of other things?
—‘man shall not see me and live.’ ... Wisdom, Sophia, Minerva, beautiful
as the moon, great as the sun, terrible as the marshalled ranks of armies;
like the moon in her fair gracefulness, like the sun in her lofty majesty, like
armies in her invincible courage.... The first-born before all creatures,
sprung from the head of Jove—for she is a breath from the virtue of God,
an emanation of omnipotent brightness, sincere and pure, clear and
inviolate, honourable, powerful, and kind beyond words, well pleasing to
God, incomparable:—pure, because nothing of defilement can touch her;
clear, because she is the brightness of eternal light; inviolate, because she is
the spotless mirror of the majesty of God; honourable, because the image of
goodness itself; powerful, because being one she can do all things, being
permanent in herself, she renews all things; kind, because she visits the
nations that are sacred to her and makes men friends of God, and prophets;
pleasing to God, because God loves only him that dwells with wisdom;
incomparable, for she is more beautiful than the sun and brighter than the
light of all the stars. Her have I loved and sought from my youth, and
desired for my spouse, and have become a lover of her form—and I prayed
that she might be sent to abide with me, and work with me, that I might
know what I lacked, and what was acceptable to God: for she knew and
understood, and would guide me soberly in my work and would keep me in

her charge: ... But wisdom in the highest sense, in its essence as the thought
of God, is incommunicable, incomprehensible, apart from all things.
Wisdom has three phases or aspects or ‘mansions’—first, the mind of God
the eternal, then the visible world itself which is the first-born, and third,
the mind of man which is the second-born of the highest, the true wisdom
unattainable by man. Here among men wisdom has built herself a house of
reason and of thought (which comes after the world), in which we see the
shadow of the first, the archetypal and ideal house (which is before the
world), and the image of the second, the sensible and natural house, which
is the world. The seven columns of the house or temple are the seven Arts—
Grammar, Rhetoric (with poetry), Logic, Mathematics, Physics, Ethics, and
Metaphysics, and the temple was built first among the Egyptians and
Assyrians, viz. in the Chaldeans, then among the Persians, with the Magi
and Zoroaster, third the Indians with their Gymnosophists; ... seventhly, in
our time, among the Germans.” So far has Bruno come from taking the
Germans as mere beer-bibbers, as he had written of them in England.[94]
“Since the empire (of wisdom) devolved upon you there have risen amongst
you new arts and great minds, the like of which no other nations can shew.”
In the category of German temple-builders are Albertus Magnus, Nicolas of
Cusa, Copernicus, Palingenius, Paracelsus; “among humanists many, apt
imitators of the Attic and Ausonian muses, and among them one greater
than the rest who more than imitates, rather rivals, the ancient muses”
(Erasmus). It is not unnatural that, in his own Wittenberg,
Luther.
Luther should be praised, as among the temple-builders or
priests of truth: but Bruno’s words have a ring of sincerity, proving that his
sympathy was really aroused for the Lutherans. “When the world was
infected by that strong man armed with key and sword, fraud and force,
cunning and violence, hypocrisy and ferocity,—at once fox and lion, and
vicar of the tyrant of hell,—infected with a superstitious worship and an
ignorance more than brutal, under the name of divine wisdom and of a God-
pleasing simplicity; and there was no one to oppose or withstand the
voracious beast, or dispose an unworthy and abandoned generation to better
and happier state and condition,—what other part of Europe or the world
could have brought forth for us that Alcides, stronger than Hercules himself,
in that he did greater things with less effort and with fewer instruments,—
destroying a greater and far more deadly monster than ever any of the past
centuries had to suffer? Here in Wittenberg he dragged up that three-headed

Cerberus with its threefold tiara from its pit of darkness: you saw it, and it
the sun. Here that dog of Styx was compelled to vomit forth its poison.
Here your Hercules, your country’s Hercules, triumphed over the
adamantine gates of hell, over the city girt about with its threefold wall, and
defended by its nine windings of the Styx.”
To this temple Bruno, eager in his pursuit of the ever-eluding Truth, had
come,—“a foreigner, an exile, a fugitive, the sport of fortune, meagre in
body, slender of means, destitute of favour, pursued by the hatred of the
multitude and the contempt of fools and the base,” and could on leaving say
to its people that he had become an “occasion, or matter, or subject in
whom they unfolded and demonstrated to the world the beauty and wealth
of their virtues of moderation, urbanity, and kindness of heart.” It was the
last, or nearly the last, spell of happiness that life had in store for him.

XII

The court of the Emperor Rudolph II. was at Prague, in
Prague: 1588.
Bohemia; from there his fame as a Maecenas of the
learned, and especially of those who claimed power to read the heavens or
to work magic, had spread to many countries. Perhaps Sidney, who had
visited him from Elizabeth on the death of Maximilian, may have spoken of
him to Bruno: while two of Bruno’s friends, the Spanish Ambassador St.
Clement and the mathematician Mordentius, were at Prague in 1588.
Thither, accordingly, he now turned in the hope of settled quarters,
introducing himself, as was his frequent habit, with a Lullian work, which
he caused to be printed soon after his arrival, and dedicated to the Spanish
Ambassador.[95] The introductory letter is dated from
June 10, 1588.
Prague, June 10, 1588, and is in praise of Lully, whose
importance to philosophy Bruno values much more highly than his
successors have done: it promised at the same time a future work, the
Lampas Cabalistica, in which the inner secrets of Lullism were to be more
fully revealed. This, so far as we know, never appeared, and Bruno tried to
obtain the Emperor’s patronage by a mathematical work dedicated to him,
of somewhat revolutionary type—“One hundred and sixty articles against
the mathematicians and philosophers of the day.” The Emperor, however,
had few funds to spare for any but the professed astrologists and alchemists
in whom lay his real interest—not at all scientific, although Tycho Brahé
and Kepler profited themselves and the world by it. With three hundred
dollars, which the Emperor gave in recognition of his powers, Bruno left
about the close of the year, and onJanuary 13, 1589,
January 13,
matriculated in the Julian university of Brunswick at 1589.
Helmstadt. This, the youngest university in Germany at the
time, of only twelve years’ standing, had been founded for Helmstadt.
the Protestant cause by the reigning Duke Julius, a breezy
and popular prince, who loved theologians little, Catholics not at all, and
founded a model university on liberal principles. It was not, however, an
unqualified success. Bruno received some recognition from the university,
or from the Duke, and when the latter died in May 1589 he obtained

permission to give a funeral oration some days after the official programme
had been carried through (on the 1st of July)—the Oratio Consolatoria.[96]
Bruno professes as his reason for wishing to speak that he must express his
gratitude to one who had made the university he founded free to all lovers
of the Muses, even to strangers such as Bruno himself was:—an exile from
his Italian fatherland for honourable reasons and zeal for the truth, here he
had received the freedom of the university: in Italy he was exposed to the
greedy maw of the Roman wolf—here he was in safety: there he had been
chained to a superstitious and absurd cult—here he was exhorted to more
reformed rites. What is remarkable in this speech is the bitterness of
Bruno’s personal attack upon Rome, and “the violent tyranny of the
Tiberine beast.” The constellations are allegorically treated as symbols of
the virtues of Julius, or of the vices which he attacked and repressed: among
them “the head of the Gorgon, on which for hair there grow venomous
snakes, representing that monster of perverse Papal tyranny, which has
tongues more numerous than the hairs of the head, aiding and serving it,
each and all blasphemous against God, nature, and man, infecting the world
with the rankest poison of ignorance and vice.” It was indeed strange that
Bruno should have thought of entering Italy after publishing words like
these.
However, he was not to find the Protestants much more
tolerant than the Catholics. In the university archives there Excommunicatio
n of Bruno in
is extant a letter from him to the prorector of the academy, Helmstadt.
appealing against a public excommunication of himself by
the first pastor and superintendent of the church at Helmstadt, Boethius.
According to this letter, Boethius had made himself both judge and
executioner, without giving the Italian a hearing at all: and the letter
appealed to the senate and rector against the public execution of an unjust
sentence, privately passed; it demanded a hearing, so that if any legal
derogation were to be made from his rank and good name, he might at least
feel it to be justly made, and demanded that Boethius be summoned to show
he had not fulminated his bolt out of private malice, but in pursuance of the
duty of a good pastor on behalf of his sheep. The date of
Oct. 6, 1589.
the letter is October 6, 1589. No further records of the
affair have been found, so that the appeal was probably rejected. The
meaning of the excommunication is not quite clear: Bruno does not seem to

have been a full member of either the reformed or the Lutheran church,
although attending services; and in all probability the sentence was a formal
one, which, however, carried serious social inconveniences with it. The
prorector, Hofmann, was not one to sympathise either with Bruno or with
his philosophy; he was unhappy unless attacking some other person’s
opinions: philosophy in general fell under his condemnation, although he
professed knowledge of it. A few years after he drove Bruno from
Helmstadt he himself was dethroned from his place of authority, “ordered to
stick to his last,” and had to leave Helmstadt in the end (1601). No doubt it
is against him that the invectives in De Immenso,[97] are directed:—“This
scholarch, excelling director of the school of Minerva: this Rhadamanthus
of boys, without a shadow of an idea even of ordinary philosophy, lauds to
the skies the Peripatetic, and dares to criticise the thoughts of diviner men
(whose ashes are to be preferred to the souls of such as these).” Later
Boethius also had to be suppressed by the consistory.[98]
1590.
The young Duke, with whom no doubt Bruno stood in
favour, since he presented him with eighty scudi after the funeral oration,
was of the opposite party to Hofmann, but even with this support the Italian
could not struggle against his enemies, and towards the middle of 1590 he
left for Frankfort, “in order to get two books printed.”

XIII

These were the great Latin works he had been writing,
Frankfort.
perhaps begun in England itself;—the De Minimo, and the
De Immenso, with the De Monade as a part of or introduction to the latter.
The printing, however, was not begun till the following year: the censor’s
permission was obtained for the first of them only in March 1591, and it
appeared in the catalogue of the Spring bookmarket. He again sought and
found patronage with an old friend of Sir Philip Sidney, one of the Wechels,
famous printers of their day, in the house of another of whom (André)
Sidney had lived. In the protocol-book of the council of Frankfort, under
the date July 2, 1590, a petition of Jordanus Brunus of Nola is mentioned,
in which he asks permission to stay in the house of the printer Wechel. This,
as the book of the Burgomaster under the same date shows, was roughly
refused:—“Soll man ime sein pitt abschlagen, und sagen, das er sein
pfennig anderswo verzehre”—“his petition is to be refused and he is to be
told go and spend his coin elsewhere.” In spite of this refusal, Wechel found
Bruno lodging in the Carmelite Monastery, where he stayed, working with
his own hands at the printing of his books, for some six months,—until
December, perhaps, of that year. Frankfort was the main centre of the book
world in those days; to its half-yearly book-marts printers and sellers came
from all parts of Europe to see the new books of the world, to dispose of
their goods, to stock their houses. Among others in this year came the
booksellers Ciotto and Bertano, who afterwards were witnesses before the
Inquisition, and who stayed in the monastery probably in September of that
year, where they met Bruno. In the dedication of the De Minimo, of date
February 13, 1591, Bruno’s publishers wrote that “he had only the last
folium of the work to correct, when by an unforeseen chance he was hurried
away, and could not put the finishing hand upon it, as he had done on the
rest of the work: he wrote accordingly asking us to supply in his name what
by chance it had been denied him to complete.” The “unforeseen chance”
may, as Sigwart suggests, have been the final putting into effect of the
Council’s refusal to allow him to stay in the town, which may till then have
remained a dead letter; or it may have been the summons to Zurich. He had

made the acquaintance of a young Swiss squire, Hainzel, an Augsburger by
birth, at whose castle of Elgg in Switzerland a gay and open hospitality was
extended to a number of the bizarre and the learned spirits of the time:
Hainzel had leanings towards the Black Arts,—Alchemy and the rest,—but
had interest to spare for any others about which an air of mystery clung,
such as Bruno’s Art of Memory and of Knowledge. Bruno
Zürich, 1591.
spent a few months with him near Zürich and wrote for
him the De imaginum compositione, etc.—as a handbook of these arts.
Another of the Frankfort pupils would also be in Zürich, the brilliant but
erratic Raphael Eglin, who published in 1609 at Marburg (where he was
professor of theology), a work Bruno had dictated in Zürich,—the Summa
Terminorum Metaphysicorum. Eglin suffered along with his friend Hainzel
from the trickery of the Alchemists, to whom recourse was had in the hope
of repairing the fortunes dissipated by the Squire of Elgg’s hospitality.[99]
The Summa is dedicated in a letter of April 1595 (from Zürich) to Frederic
a Salices, and in a personal reminiscence Eglin remarks on Bruno’s fluency
of thought and speech—“standing on one foot, he would both think and
dictate as fast as the pen could follow: so rapid was his mind, so forceful his
spirit.”
In order perhaps to print the De Imaginum Compositione
March, 1591.
for Hainzel, or to complete the other works, Bruno
returned to Frankfort about the beginning of March, 1591, and on the 17th
of that month obtained permission to publish the De Minimo.[100] It is to
this period probably that he referred when he spoke of himself before the
Venetian tribunal, as having spent six months in Frankfort (Doc. 9). It was a
second period of six months after his return from the Zürich visit, of which
he omitted all mention—no doubt he had good reason for that.[101] At the
autumn book-market his De Monade, De Immenso, and De Imag.
Compositione, were ready[102]—the last works that he published. About the
same time, on an evil day for himself, he responded to the invitation of a
young Venetian patrician, and crossed over to his fatherland,—the last of
his free journeyings.
The Frankfort works are fully dealt with in the chapters on Bruno’s
philosophy that follow: in their order they were (1) the De
De Minimo.
triplici Minimo et Mensura:—“On the threefold minimum
and measurement, being the elements of three speculative and of many

practical sciences”:—dedicated to Duke Henry of Brunswick. It is the first
of three Latin poems, written somewhat after the manner of Lucretius, but
with prose notes to each chapter or section. The style unfortunately seldom
approaches that of Lucretius, either in Latinity or in poetic imagery, but the
works are full of vigorous verse, and the force of the ideas suffers little
from the fact that they are pressed into the Procrustean bed of rhyme and
rhythm. The others were (2) the De Monade, Numero et
De Monade.
Figura:—“On the Monad, number and figure, being the
elements of a more esoteric (secret, or perhaps inward) Physics,
Mathematics, and Metaphysics”; and (3) the De Immenso
De Immenso.
et Innumerabilibus:—“On the Immeasurable and the
Innumerable, or on the universe and the worlds.” Both are dedicated to
Duke Henry. The three works together contain Bruno’s finished philosophy
of God and of Nature, of the universe and of the worlds within it, as well as
a criticism of the prevailing and contrary doctrines of the time.
In Frankfort appeared also, in 1591, (4) the De Imaginum,
Signorum, et Idearum Compositione:—“On the De Imag. Comp.
composition or arrangement, of Images, Signs, and Ideas, for all kinds of
inventions, dispositions, and memory.” It is dedicated to Hainzel, and is the
last of the works published by Bruno himself. It sums up all those published
earlier on the theory of knowledge and on the art of memory. It assumes an
identity between the Mind from which the universe sprang, or which is
expressed in the universe, and the mind of each individual by whom it is
known or approached. It follows that the ideas in our own minds contain
implicitly a knowledge of the inmost nature of reality. Here, however, it is
chiefly the mnemonic corollaries of this thought that are developed—ideas
are to be arranged or grouped about certain images or pictures, in such a
way that when any one occurs to the mind, it may readily call up those
others which are most closely associated with it, i.e. which belong to the
same τόπος or “place” in the mind.

XIV

During the second part of his stay in Frankfort, Bruno
Venice.
received an invitation from a young patrician of Venice,
Giovanni Mocenigo, to come to him there and instruct him in the arts for
which Bruno was famed. To the surprise of all who knew
Aug. 1591.
the circumstances, Bruno accepted, and re-entered, in
August, the Italy which he had left some fourteen years earlier as a refugee.
It was through the bookseller Ciotto that the negotiations were carried on.
Mocenigo appeared in his shop one day to buy a work of Bruno which
Ciotto in his deposition called at first the Heroici Furori, but this name was
cancelled, and De Minimo magno et mensura written in its stead; in all
probability it was neither the Furori nor any of the Latin poems to which
the second (erroneous) title might refer, but one of the Lullian works.
Mocenigo asked at the same time whether Ciotto knew Bruno, and where
he was; and on the reply that he was probably at Frankfort (they had found
lodging in the same monastery there), Mocenigo expressed a wish that
Bruno would come to Venice to teach him the secrets of Memory, and the
others he professed, as shown by the book that had just changed hands.
Ciotto believed Bruno would come if asked; and accordingly, after a few
days, Mocenigo brought a letter for Bruno, which Ciotto undertook to
deliver, and in which he was besought to come to Venice. The message
must have been delivered in the autumn of 1591, and Bruno seems to have
replied by immediate acceptance.[103] A previous letter, however, had been
written, probably before Mocenigo spoke with Ciotto, and sent by another
hand; it may have been the receipt of it which brought Bruno from Zürich
to Frankfort, to hasten the printing of his Latin works. In both letters there
were evidently specious promises of protection.[104]
The motives of Mocenigo were more than questionable. He was of the
noblest blood of Venice, the Doge’s Chair having been seven times filled by
members of his family, and among the patrician youth there was a
fashionable craze for Lullism and kindred much-promising arts at this time.
[105] De Valeriis, another Venetian noble, wrote, in 1589, an Opus Aureum,
which was published at Strassburg along with other Lullian works

(including Bruno’s) in 1609. Again, Bruno believed in, and probably taught,
a kind of “natural magic,” the magic of sympathetic influence from stars,
animals, plants, and stones upon the life of man. Mocenigo, as his conduct
abundantly showed, was shallow, mean, superstitious, weak-minded, and
vain. He was just the type of man to be attracted therefore by anything that
savoured of the black art, of which Bruno was popularly regarded as a
devotee. His real aim may have been to be initiated by Bruno into this,
although he professed the desire merely of having the Lullian mnemonics
and art of invention taught him. His disappointment, when he found Bruno
had nothing new to give him in that direction, might account, in a man of
his character, for the revenge he took. But there may have been worse
behind: Mocenigo had been one of the Savii all’ Eresia—the assessors
appointed by the State to the Inquisition Board in Venice—and was
therefore familiar with the intrigues of that body. He was also under the
influence of his Father Confessor, by whose orders he denounced Bruno.
The proceedings make it extremely probable, therefore, that the Inquisition
laid a trap for Bruno, into which he unsuspectingly walked. It is more
difficult to understand how the latter so calmly entered the
lion’s jaws. Acidalius (Valens Havekenthal), writing to Bruno’s reasons
for returning.
Michael Forgacz from Bologna (January 21, 1592),
expressed the general surprise. “Tell me one thing more: Giordano Bruno,
whom you knew at Wittenberg, the Nolan, is said to be living just now
among you at Padua. Is it really so? What sort of man is this that he dares
enter Italy, which he left an exile, as he used himself to confess? I wonder, I
wonder! I cannot yet believe the rumour, although I have it on good
authority. You shall tell me whether it is true or false.” But
clearly ill rumours were spreading, for on the third of March 3, 1592.
March he wrote in a different tone, “I no longer wonder about that other
sophist, so diverse and incredible are the tales I hear daily of him here.”[106]
Probably Bruno did not understand what manner of reputation he had; he
still regarded himself as belonging to the Catholic Church. Ciotto deposed
he had heard nothing from Bruno’s lips which might suggest a doubt of his
being a good Catholic and Christian. Venice was a free and powerful state,
Mocenigo the son of a powerful house, so that he may well have looked for
safety; and it was his beloved Italy, for which he had never ceased to yearn
since the day he had crossed the Alps.

To Venice, at any rate, he came, living for a time by himself, and spending
some three months also at Padua, the neighbouring university town, where
he gathered pupils about him, and wrote as constantly as before. Some
manuscripts that were bought in Paris a few years ago, and which had
belonged to Bruno, were partly written in the hand of one of these pupils,
Jerome Besler, whom Bruno had known in Helmstadt, and who acted there
as his copyist. Others of his German, and possibly some English friends
were met with at this renowned university.[107] It was only a few months
after he left that Galilei was invited to teach in Padua—“the creator of
modern science following in the steps of its prophet.”[108] The university
was in a state of ferment at the time Bruno arrived, one of the hottest
disputes being that between the students and certain professors, who read or
dictated instead of freely speaking their lectures—Doctores chartacei they
were called—and a fine of twenty ducats was imposed by the senate on
every one who should be found guilty of this crime. Bruno’s memory-art
may therefore, as Bartholmèss suggests, have “supplied a felt want.”
Early in 1592 Bruno took a fatal step, which showed how
Bruno in
little he realised his danger—he gave up his personal Mocenigo’s
freedom and went to live in Mocenigo’s house. There the house.
two opposite natures soon clashed, and the young patrician
began to show his real character. The teaching did not satisfy him, did not
give him the power over nature and man which he no doubt expected. He
approached Ciotto again before the spring book-market, telling him how
Giordano was living in his house at his expense, “who promised to teach
me much, and has had clothes and money in plenty from me, but I cannot
bring him to a point, and fear he may not be quite honest”; and asking him
to make inquiries in Frankfort as to Bruno’s character, and the likelihood of
his fulfilling his obligations. Ciotto returned with an unfavourable report:
Bruno was known to make profession of a memory-art, and of other similar
secrets, but had never been known to do any good with them, and all who
had gone to him for such things had remained unsatisfied; moreover, it was
not understood in Frankfort how he could stay in Venice, as he was held for
a man of no religion. To this Mocenigo replied, “I too have my doubts of
him, but I will see how much I can get of what he promised me, so as not to
lose entirely what I have paid him, and then I will give him up to the
judgment of the Holy Office”—the Inquisition. This estimable frame of
mind no doubt asserted itself in the relations of pupil and master. Bruno had

been introduced by Ciotto to the house of Andrea Morosini, an enlightened
patrician, whose open hospitality a number of the most cultured men of the
time enjoyed; they formed an Academy after the manner of those of
Cosenza, Naples, and other places. “Several gentlemen meet there,” said
Morosini of these gatherings, “prelates among them, for entertainment,
discoursing of literature, and principally of philosophy; thither Bruno came
several times, and talked of various things, as is the custom; but there was
never a sign that he held any opinions against the faith, and so far as I
(Morosini) am concerned, I have always thought him a Catholic, and had I
had the least suspicion of the contrary I should not have permitted him to
enter my house.”[109] The last statement must, of course, be taken cum
grano. At this time Bruno was preparing a work on “the Seven Liberal Arts,
and on Seven other Inventive Arts,”[110] which he hoped to be able to
present to the Pope in order to obtain from him absolution, and have the ban
of excommunication removed, without the compulsion of again entering the
order. Many Neapolitan fathers of the order came to Venice to a meeting of
Chapter, and to some of these Bruno spoke—to a Father Domenico
especially:—he wished to present himself at the feet of his Holiness with
some “approved” work, and his ultimate design, as he told Domenico, was
to go to Rome and live quietly a life of letters, perhaps obtaining some
lecturing in addition.[111] Among others he consulted Mocenigo, who
promised to assist him so far as he could.

XV

Meantime Mocenigo was putting pressure on Bruno to obtain the secrets he
sought to know, while Bruno at last became aware of his danger. He
pretended he wished to go to Frankfort to have some books printed, and on
a certain Thursday in May he took leave of Mocenigo. The latter, fearing
his prey was about to escape, began to cajole him into staying, but passed to
complaint and finally to threats as Bruno persisted. On the
May 22.
night of the following day (Friday), as Bruno had already
made preparations for leaving, Mocenigo came with his servitor Bartolo
and five or six men, whom Bruno recognised as gondoliers, from the
neighbouring stance, seized the philosopher and locked him up in an attic-
room. Mocenigo promised, if he would stay and teach what was desired—
viz. “the formulæ for memory and geometry”!—to set him at liberty,
otherwise something unpleasant would befal him. This novel method of
drawing instruction being foiled by the self-respect of the prisoner, the latter
was left for the night, transferred the following day to a cellar under the
ground, and during the night was handed over to the servants of the
Inquisition, who brought him to their prison. On the 23rd
of May, Mocenigo denounced him to the Holy Office, with The Inquisition.
a hideous but cunning travesty of some of his opinions, reporting him, for
example, as saying that Christ’s miracles were only apparent, that He and
the apostles were magicians, and that he himself (Bruno) could do as much
or more if he had a mind; that the Catholic faith was full of blasphemies
against God; that the Friars ought to be prevented from preaching, and
should be deprived of their revenues, because the world was befouled by
them—they were asses, and the doctrines of the Church asses’ beliefs, and
so on. The arrest was on the following night (Sunday night), and on the
Monday a second denunciation was entered by Mocenigo,
Second
than which there is no more pitiful self-revelation of Denunciation.
meanness and hypocrisy extant. He confesses or rather
boasts that, on locking up Bruno, he had recited the charges he would make
against him, “hoping to coerce him into revealing his secrets,” i.e. the
Secret Arts. Bruno’s only reply had been to ask for his liberty, to say that he

had not really intended to leave, but was still ready to teach Mocenigo
everything he knew, to work for him (“to be my slave,” said Mocenigo),
without any further recognition, and to give him anything that he had in the
house; only he asked to have returned him a copy of a book of conjurations
that Mocenigo had found among his written papers and had appropriated.
To explain his delay in accusing Bruno, Mocenigo professed not to have
been able to get enough against the latter until he had the philosopher in his
own house two months earlier (viz. in March), “and then I wished to get the
good of him, and by the steps I took I was able to assure myself that he
would not leave without telling me of it. All the time I promised myself to
bring the matter before the censorship of the Holy Office.” These
denouncements were confirmed on oath by Mocenigo, whose age is given
at thirty-four years, so that the excuse of youth falls from him. The
following Tuesday the Holy Tribunal met to consider the
The Venetian
case. It consisted, in Venice, of the Papal Nuncio tribunal.
(Ludovico Taberna), the Patriarch of Venice (Lorenzo
Priuli),[112] the Father Inquisitor (John Gabrielli of Saluzzo, de Salutiis),[113]
along with three assessors or representatives of the State (Savii all’ Eresia),
one of whom was always present, with the right of suspending the meeting
if he thought proper: at the present time the three were Aloysius Fuscari,
Sebastian Barbadico, and Tomaso Morosini. On this day the evidence of
Ciotto and Bertano, the booksellers who had known Bruno at Frankfort as
well as at Venice (Bertano was also at Zürich), was taken; it was in the main
favourable, only Bertano recalled the prior of the Carmelite monastery at
Frankfort having said of Bruno that he spent most of his time in writing,
and went about dreaming dreams and meditating new things, that he had a
fine mind and knowledge of letters, and was a universal man, but that he
had no religion so far as the prior knew, and he quoted a saying of Bruno’s
to the effect that the apostles did not know everything, and that he had the
mind, if he wished, to make all the world of one religion; while Ciotto
reported the common belief in Frankfort that Bruno was a man of no
religion.
The prisoner himself was then brought forward—“A man
First
of ordinary stature, with chestnut-brown beard, of the age examination of
and appearance of forty years”; Ciotto, too, described him Bruno.
as a slender man of small stature, with a small dark beard,
about forty years of age. Bruno of his own accord, before a question was

put, professed his readiness to speak the truth; he had several times had the
threat made to him of being brought before the Holy Office (viz. by
Mocenigo), but had always treated it as a jest, because he was quite ready to
give an account of himself. This he proceeded to do. The biographical part
of his account has been embodied in the preceding pages.
On the 29th Mocenigo made another deposition, the result
of further reflections, at the request of the Father Third deposition
of Mocenigo.
Inquisitor, on the utterances of Bruno against the Catholic
faith. Bruno had said that the Catholics did not act on the model of the
apostles, who taught by example and good deeds, converting through love,
not force; that he preferred the Catholic religion to others, but it also stood
in great need of reform; that he hoped great things from the King of
Navarre; that it was a mistake to allow the friars to remain so rich (in
Venice): they should do as in France, where the nobles enjoyed the revenues
of the monasteries, the friars living on soup, as befitted such “asses.” This
was a powerful stroke of diplomacy on Mocenigo’s part. It was also hinted
that Bruno’s life was not pure, that he said the Church erred in making a sin
of what was of great service in nature, and of what he (Bruno) regarded as a
high merit.
Next day (Saturday) Bruno continued his account of his
The twofold
life, the first note of defence being struck in an appeal to truth.
the famous doctrine of the “twofold truth.” “Some of the
works composed by me and printed I do not approve, because I spoke and
discoursed too much as a philosopher rather than as an ‘honest’[114] man
and good Christian, and in particular I know that in some of these works I
taught and believed on philosophic grounds what ought to have been
referred to the potency, wisdom, and goodness of God, according to the
Christian faith, basing my doctrine on sense and reason, and not upon
faith.” On Tuesday, June 2, a deposition was read from Fra
Fra Domenico.
Domenico da Nocera confirming Bruno’s appeal to him,
and his desire for the favour of the Pope and a reconciliation with the
Church, so that he might be able to live quietly in Rome. The prisoner was
then cross-examined, and submitted a list of his works, published and
unpublished. In these he claimed to have spoken always “philosophically,
and according to the light of nature, having no special regard to what ought
to be believed according to the faith: his intention had been not to impugn

religion, but only to exalt philosophy, although many
Philosophical
impieties might have been uttered on the strength of his and theological
natural light. Directly he had taught nothing contrary to the truth.
Christian Catholic religion; thus in Paris he had been
allowed to vindicate the articles against the Peripatetics and others, by
natural principles, without prejudice to the truth according to the light of the
faith: indirectly, Aristotle’s and Plato’s works were as contrary, indeed much
more contrary, to the faith than the articles philosophically propounded and
defended by him.” He proceeded to give an admirable statement of his
“philosophical” creed which might have fired the hearts of his judges:—“I
believe in an infinite universe, the effect of the infinite
Bruno’s creed.
divine potency, because it has seemed to me unworthy of
the divine goodness and power to create a finite world, when able to
produce besides it another and others infinite: so that I have declared that
there are endless particular worlds similar to this of the Earth; with
Pythagoras I regard it as a star, and similar to it are the moon, the planets,
and other stars, which are infinite, and all these bodies are worlds, and
without number, constituting the infinite all (università) in an infinite space;
while the latter is called the infinite universe, in which are innumerable
worlds; so that there are two kinds of infinity, one in the magnitude of the
universe, the other in the multitude of worlds, by which indirectly the truth
according to the faith may be impugned. In this universe I place a universal
providence, in virtue of which everything lives, grows, moves, and comes
to and abides in its perfection. It is present in two fashions: the one is that in
which the spirit is present in the body, wholly in the whole, and wholly in
any part of the whole, and that I call nature, the shadow, the footprint of
divinity; the other is the ineffable way in which God by essence, presence
and power, is in all and above all, not as part, not as spirit or life, but in an
inexplicable way. Then in the divinity, I regard all attributes as being one
and the same thing. With theologians and the greatest philosophers I assume
three attributes—power, wisdom, and goodness, or mind, understanding,
and love; through these, things have, first, existence by reason of mind; then
an ordered and distinct existence by reason of understanding; third, concord
and symmetry by reason of love. Distinction in divinity is thus posited by
way of reason, not of substantial truth.” God in Himself is one; but three
aspects of this unity may be distinguished, Mind (Will or Force or Power),
Understanding (Knowledge, the Word), and Love or Soul. These three

aspects correspond, of course, to the three Persons of the Godhead, the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit respectively. Bruno confesses, however,
to have doubted, from the philosophic point of view, the becoming flesh of
the Understanding or Word of God, although he did not remember giving
definite expression to this doubt; and as to the Spirit, he did not think of it
as a person, but rather as the soul or life in the universe.[115] “From the
Spirit, the life of the universe, springs, in my philosophy, the life and soul
of everything that has soul and life; and I regard it as immortal, as also
bodies in substance are immortal, death being nothing but division and
congregation: as the Preacher says, ‘The thing that hath been it is that which
shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no
new thing under the sun.’”
Bruno confessed to have doubted the application of the word “persons” to
these distinctions within the Godhead, since his eighteenth year; but he had
read in St. Augustine that it was not an old term, but new at that time. To
none of his doubts as to the distinction of persons or the Incarnation had he
ever knowingly given expression, except in quoting others, Arius,
Gabellius, and the like.... On the same day, in his prison-house, he was
further examined, and repeated that whatever he had written or said
contrary to the Catholic faith was not intended as direct impugnment of the
faith, but was based on philosophic grounds or on the authority of heretics;
he made clearer also his reason for doubting the applicability of the term
“persons” to the distinctions in the Godhead, quoting Augustine’s words,
“Cum formidine proferimus hoc nomen personae, quando loquimur de
divinis, et necessitate coacti utimur.” Especially as to the divinity of Christ
he had been unable to understand how there could be any such relation
between the infinite, divine substance, and the human, finite, as between
any other two things,—soul and body, for example,—which may subsist
together as one reality, but he had only hesitated as to the ineffable manner
of the Incarnation, and not as to the authority of the Holy Scriptures which
says “The Word was made flesh.” Divinity could not be held, theologically
speaking, to be along with humanity in any other fashion than by way of
assistentia (i.e. temporary influence or presence), but he did not infer
anything from this contrary to the divinity of Christ, or of the supposed
Divine Being that is called Christ; the miracles of Christ he had always held
to be divine, true, and real—not apparent miracles; while the miracles of
others were only in virtue of Christ: as to the sacrifice of the Holy Mass and

the Transubstantiation of the flesh and blood of Christ he had always held
with the Church: he had not attended Mass because of his
excommunication, but had been to Vespers and to preachings in the
Churches: in his dealings with heretics, he had always treated of matters
philosophical, and had never allowed anything to escape him that was
contrary to the Catholic Doctrine, and for that reason Calvinists and
Lutherans had always thought of him as having no religion, because he did
not entangle himself with theirs, and had been in many parts without having
communicated, or accepted the religion of any of them. Some of the grosser
charges of Mocenigo were read to him, which he strenuously denied,—and
“as he spoke,” says the faithful record, “he grew exceedingly sorrowful,”
marvelling that such things could be imputed to him. More strenuous grew
his assertion of his orthodoxy—as to the person of Christ, the Virgin
Motherhood, the Sacrament of Repentance; he spoke of his repeated efforts
to obtain absolution, how for his sins he had always asked pardon of God,
and would also willingly have confessed himself had he been able, because
he had never doubted of this sacrament (or of any of the others), being
firmly convinced that impenitent sinners were condemned and that hell was
their portion. Heretic theologians,—Melanchthon, Luther, Calvin and
others,—he condemned and despised, and had read their books from
curiosity merely, although there were others, as those of Raymond Lully,
which he had kept by him because they treated of matters philosophical.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, he had always
Aquinas.
esteemed and loved as his own soul; had his writings
always by him, read, studied, and pondered over them; and had spoken of
Aquinas in one of his works as “The Honour and Light of all the race of
theologians, and of Peripatetics among philosophers.”[116] When he had
spoken of good works as necessary for salvation, he had in his mind not
Catholicism, but the “reformed religion, which is in fact deformed in the
extreme.” One by one Mocenigo’s charges were read, and denied, except
that as to his contrasting the apostles’ method of spreading the Gospel with
that of the Catholic Church,—this charge he evaded. When the grossest of
all, however, was read, alleging him to have said the apparent miracles of
Christ and the apostles were due to the black art, and that he himself could
equally well do them all—he could not restrain himself;—“raising both
hands, and crying, ‘What is this? Who has invented these devilries? I never
said such a thing, it never entered my imagination; oh God! what is this? I

would rather be dead than that such a thing should have been uttered by
me!’” His references to women he admitted an error, but they had been
spoken in lightness amid company and during talk of things “otiose and
mundane.” Threatened with extreme measures if he refused to confess his
errors with respect to the Church, Bruno promised to make a greater effort
to recall all he had said and done against the Christian and Catholic faith,
protested the sincerity of all he said, and was left in peace for a time. This
interview took place in the prison of the Inquisition.
On the following day in the same place the examination was continued—his
neglect of Holy Days and Fastings in England and Germany; his attendance
at heretic preachings (although he emphatically denied that he ever partook
of the communion in any Protestant church); his doubts concerning the
Incarnation, the Miracles, the Sacraments; his familiarity with magical arts;
his praise of heretics and heretic Princes,—these were some of the many
points of indictment which he had to face. The Book of Conjurations, and
others like it, he professed to have had only out of curiosity, although he
despised and discredited sorcery; but he had wished to study the divining
art, and especially the divinatory (prophetic) side of astrology, merely out of
scientific interest, and therefore had such books by him. Heretics he had
praised, only for the moral virtues they had showed, or from convention (as
in the case of Queen Elizabeth). The course of his examination was making
clear to Bruno at last in how great danger he really stood; and on this day he
made, probably in hope of immediate release, a formal and solemn
abjuration of all the errors he had ever committed pertaining to the Catholic
life and profession, all the heresies he had believed and the doubts he had
permitted himself to hold about the Catholic Faith or the decrees of the
Church; and prayed that the Holy Tribunal would receive him into the
bosom of the Holy Church, provide him with remedies proper to his
salvation, and show mercy upon him.
The earlier processes against him at Naples and at Rome were, however,
recalled to mind; and on the following day he was again questioned as to
his familiarity with the magic arts. Three weeks later Morosini was
examined and Ciotto re-examined; in both cases the evidence was wholly in
Bruno’s favour. Then a long interval elapsed. It was not till
July 30.
the 30th of July that the case was again taken up.[117]
Bruno had nothing to add to his defence, except his constant desire to enter

the Church, if he could only do so without undergoing the bondage of
monkhood again. Worn out by anxiety, and possibly by torture, he humbled
himself before his judges: kneeling, he asked pardon of God and of his
judges for all the errors he had committed, and offered himself as prepared
for any penance they might lay upon him. He hoped his chastisement might
exceed rather in gravity than in publicity, whereby dishonour might be cast
upon the sacred habit of the Order which he had borne; and if by the mercy
of God and of “their illustrious lordships,” his life should be granted him,
he promised to make amends for the scandal he had created by equally great
edification.

XVI

This closed the acts of the process so far as the Venetian tribunal was
concerned. The “Sacred Congregation of the Supreme Tribunal of the Holy
Office,” at Rome, was eager to secure the distinguished heretic for itself,
and on the 12th of September the Cardinal San Severina wrote to this effect;
the Venetian tribunal, on the 17th, gave orders that Bruno be sent as soon as
possible to the Governor of Ancona, who would see to his further custody
to Rome. On the 28th this decision was reported to the Doge and Council of
Venice by the Vicar of the Patriarch (the Father Inquisitor and Thomas
Morosini being present), with an account of the charges against Bruno, and
he added, that they did not wish to act without first informing the College
(the Doge and Senators), so that they might give what order they thought
fit, and the tribunal would wait to know what reply should be made to
Rome; but he begged for expedition, since there was at that very time an
opportunity of sending the prisoner in security; to all which the Senate
promised to give due consideration. On the same day the Father Inquisitor
returned, after dinner, to learn the decision of the Signors, adding that there
was a vessel at hand, ready to set out. The State was not so willing,
however, to allow the Church to have its way, and it was replied “that the
matter being of moment, and deserving consideration, and the occupations
of the State being many and weighty, they could not at that time come to a
decision, and his Reverence might for the present let the vessel sail.” On the
3rd of October they wrote to their ambassador (Donato) at Rome, that the
request had been refused, on the ground that it meant an infringement of the
rights of the Venetian tribunal and a menace for the future to their subjects.
Nearly three months elapsed before any further steps were taken. On the
22nd December the Papal Nuncio appeared before the
Dec. 22.
College pressing them to deal with the Friar Giordano
Bruno, described as a publicly known Arch-heretic, whom the Pope desired
to have at Rome, in order to bring to an end the process that was begun
against him in the Holy Inquisition, and their serenities were begged to
permit his being carried to Rome, that justice might be done. His Holiness,
the Pope, had already, in the interval, impressed his desire upon the minds

of the ambassadors at Rome. On the procurator, Donato, who had
meanwhile returned from Rome, pressing the unconstitutional nature of the
act, the Nuncio pointed out that Bruno was a Neapolitan, not a subject of
the Venetian Republic at all; that there were earlier unfinished processes
against him both in Naples and in Rome; and that in similar cases the
accused had been sent to the chief tribunal at Rome. The Senate agreed to
consider the matter, and expressed their desire to give every possible
satisfaction to his Holiness.
On the 7th of January, their procurator, Contarini, reported
on Bruno to the College that “his faults were extremely January 7, 1593.
grave in respect of heresies, although in other respects one of the most
excellent and rarest natures, and of exquisite learning and knowledge”; but,
since the case was begun at Naples and Rome, was one of extraordinary
gravity, and Bruno a stranger, not a subject, he thought it might be
convenient to satisfy his Holiness, as had been done before at times in
similar cases. He also hinted that Bruno himself, on being informed that his
case was to be brought to a speedy conclusion, had said he would send a
writing in which he was to ask to be remitted to Rome, but that this might
have been intended merely to put off time. His report he desired to have
kept secret, both for public and for private reasons.[118] It was successful in
its aim, for on the 7th of January it was decided that “to gratify the Pope,
the said Giordano Bruno be remitted to the Tribunal of the Inquisition at
Rome, being consigned to Monsignor the Nuncio that he may be sent in
what custody and by what means his Reverend Lordship thinks best; that
the Nuncio be notified of this, and that our ambassador at Rome be also
advised thereof to represent it to his Holiness as a mark of the continued
readiness of the Republic to do what is pleasing to him.”[119] The
ambassador, Paruta, was informed of the decision, and asked to present it to
the Pope as proceeding, in the words of the letter, “from our reverend and
filial regard for his Holiness, with whom you should condole in our name
on his indisposition; and if on the arrival of these presents he is in good
health, as with the grace of God we hope, you shall congratulate him
thereupon.” His Holiness, on Paruta’s informing him of the decision, was
highly gratified, and replied with “courteous and kindly words, saying how
greatly he desired to remain always in harmony with the Republic, and how
he hoped it might not give him bones that were very hard to gnaw, in case
others should cast up to him that he yielded overmuch to the affection he

bore it.”[120] Clearly Venice had no desire to quarrel with the Papal
Government just at that time, and the unfortunate Bruno was made a
political sacrifice. The persistency of the Pope’s representative at Venice in
demanding Bruno’s transference to Rome, and the Pope’s evident relief
when Venice yielded, show how important the death or complete
recantation of Bruno had come to be thought by the Catholic party.
On the 27th of February 1593 Bruno entered the prison of the Inquisition at
Rome.[121]

XVII

Bruno’s behaviour before the Venetian tribunal has been regarded as a
signal blot upon his character. In the course of his cross-examination he
entirely changed his attitude, which was at first one of defiant self-
confidence, open confession of his (philosophic) differences from the
Church, and of indirect attacks upon the faith in his writings; insistence
upon his right to use “the natural light” of sense and reason, so long as the
doctrines of the Church were accepted by way of faith. Later he passed
from this attitude to one of anxious and angry denial of all charges of
heterodoxy, of trafficking with heretics, and the like; and finally to one of
almost cringing submission and professed readiness to undergo any
punishment for his misdeeds. It is possible that he began by overrating the
tolerance of the Venetian Republic. In Morosini’s circle, of which Fra Paolo
Sarpi was afterwards a member, he had heard enlightened talk and free
criticism of the Church, and especially of Rome. One of the reputed sayings
of Morosini, “we were born Venetians before we became Christians,”
makes one hesitate to accept as quite honest his evidence before the
tribunal. But Bruno’s trial occurred at a time when tolerance had given way
to diplomacy. Had Bruno been a Venetian or of another nationality the
result would have been different. They had adopted a policy of friendship
towards the Papal government, and in consequence dealt during that period
much more severely with heretical doctrine than with looseness of life.
Bruno may have discovered this in the course of his trial, and changed his
position in order to save his life. Sigwart comes to the conclusion that “it is
impossible to believe in his entire genuineness and truthfulness; it is clear
that he was now trying to save himself and escape condemnation by
submission.” Numberless quotations might be made from his writings
which give the lie to his denials before the tribunal, and his wonderful
memory could not have allowed them to slip from his mind. However, there
is this to be said, that Bruno had never regarded himself as anything but a
Catholic; that his criticisms of that Church were suggestions of reform from
within rather than attacks from without; that he had always retained an
instinctive dislike both of Calvinism and of Lutheranism, in spite of his

exaggerated but conventional praises of Luther at Wittenberg; that he had
never formally compared his philosophy with his traditional faith, but rather
laid that faith aside and worked as a philosopher merely: hence his
reputation in Germany as a man of no religion. When he first became aware
that he was in danger of losing life or at least liberty, and his dream of a
quiet retirement with freedom of work in Italy began to fade, he must have
lost his centre of judgment, and had difficulty in estimating his own past
doings and sayings from the new standpoint. It would be unjust to say there
was the smallest element of hypocrisy in his submission, or of deceit in his
denial of guilt. And in any case, whatever errors he committed before the
Venetian tribunal were amply amended by his behaviour before the Roman.
[122] One thing is certain: he never either then or afterwards recanted or in
any sense withdrew a single proposition belonging to his philosophical
creed.
To Rome there went with him, in all probability, copies of the denunciations
and evidence given at Venice, the works which Mocenigo had marked, and
lists of all his works, including that given by himself, which would be
valuable could it now be found. From January 16, 1593 to January 14, 1599
there is absolute silence concerning Bruno, so far as discovered documents
go. In 1849 an opportunity was obtained of studying the archives of the
Vatican, but the student did not pass beyond November 1598 (beginning
from February 1600), before the opportunity was over.[123] The earliest of
these records of Bruno is, as stated above, of January 14, 1599. To the
congregation (of the Holy Office) “there were read eight heretical
propositions, taken from the works of Fra Giordano Bruno of Nola, apostate
of the order of Preaching Friars, imprisoned in the prison of the Holy
Office, and from the process against him, by the Reverend Fathers
Commissario and Bellarmino. It was decided that selected propositions be
read to him, in order to determine whether he was willing to abjure them as
heretical. Other heretical propositions are to be looked for in the process
and in the books.”
What had happened all these years? Why was Bruno’s life spared so long?
This unusual clemency on the part of the Inquisition points to a great
difference in their estimate of Bruno’s importance from their view of that of
other heretics. In a list of twenty-one prisoners of the Inquisition made on
the 5th of April 1599, only one besides Bruno had been for more than a year

in their hands; the duration of imprisonment for the others could be counted
by months or days. As a general rule they were not slow in striking. Among
the reasons that have been suggested is the time required to go over the four
processes which had already been drawn up against Bruno, if the
documents were extant, and to obtain and read his books and manuscripts.
This may be dismissed at once; Bruno’s books could not be scarce then,
although they became so later, and it could not require six years to find
enough material to condemn him if that were desired. Another suggestion is
that Bruno was a Dominican, and the whole order was concerned in
procuring his recantation, rather than have the scandal which his death in
apostasy would cause. The historians of the order afterwards denied that
Bruno, if really put to death, had been one of their order—“Had he been
one of us he would have remained with us et convictu et sensibus.”[124]
More probable is the idea that Pope Clement had some favour for Bruno,
who had intended to dedicate a book to him, and whose skilful pen and
biting tongue he hoped to win over to the side of the Church. The book on
the Seven Liberal Arts may have been actually completed, and may have
presented a modus vivendi between religious authority and philosophic
freedom, as Brunnhofer suggests. If the hope of winning him over was
really held, it is not likely that they refrained in his case, any more than in
Campanella’s, from the use of torture.
Bellarmino, a Jesuit, to whom along with Commissario the study of Bruno’s
works and of the processes had been entrusted, was one of the most learned
prelates of the day, a keen and ready controversialist, in spite of his reputed
love of peace, and a skilful writer of many apologetic and polemical works.
Beneath the surface of enlightenment there lay hidden a nature of intense
bigotry: it was he who decided that Copernicanism was a heresy; he played
a part later in the process against Galilei, and in the attack upon Fra Paolo
Sarpi; through his agency the Platonist Patrizzi was induced to retract his
heresies, and his works were placed along with those of Telesius, the
apostle of Naturalism, upon the index.
On the 4th of February the congregation again considered
February 4,
Bruno’s case, he having in the interval made some protest 1599.
against the eight propositions selected. His Holiness
decreed that it should be intimated to him by the Reverend Fathers
Bellarmino and Commissario, “that the propositions are heretical, and not

only now or lately declared heretical, but according to the most ancient
Fathers of the Church and the Apostolic See. If he shall admit them as such,
it is well, but if not, a term of forty days shall be set him.” What were the
eight propositions? It is of course almost impossible to say, but probably
Tocco[125] is right in suggesting that they were neither any of those already
withdrawn in Venice (as held “philosophically,” but not theologically), nor
any of the charges of Mocenigo which Bruno had so vigorously denied, but
actual admissions common to his works and to the confessions he had made
at Venice—for example, propositions as to (1) the distinction of persons in
God; (2) the Incarnation of the Word; (3) the nature of the Holy Spirit; (4)
the Divinity of Christ; (5, 6, and 7) the necessity, eternity, and infinity of
Nature; (8) the Transmigration of Souls. It must have been in the last four of
these, or some similar propositions, that Bruno stood fast by his new faith.

XVIII

He was granted more than forty days, however, or the
December 21,
period was renewed, for it was not until the 21st of 1599.
December of that year that the patience or perseverance of
the Inquisition began to be exhausted. On that date—the next on which
there is any record of Bruno—the congregation again reopened the case. In
a rough copy of the report which has been found Bruno is quoted as saying,
“that he neither ought nor will recant, that he has nothing to recant, no
matter for recantation, does not know what he ought to recant.” In the fair
copy the names of the members of the tribunal are given. At their head was
Cardinal Madruzzi, and among them were the fanatical San Severin,
embittered by his failure to secure the Papacy (he had gone so far as to
choose his name—Clement—when his rival was elected in 1592, and
became Clement VIII.), the man who figures in history as having declared
St. Bartholomew’s “a glorious day, a day of joy for Catholics”; the ascetic
Sfondrati; the intolerant Borghese, afterwards Pope Paul V.; and the learned
Bellarmino. After hearing Bruno on his defence, it was decided among them
that Hippolyte Maria, general of the Dominican order, and Paul of
Mirandula, their vicar, “should deal with Bruno, show him what had to be
abjured, that he might confess his errors, amend his ways, and agree to
abjure; and should try to bring him to the point as soon as possible.” Bruno,
however, as they reported, stood firm, denying that he had made any
heretical statements, and insisting that he had been misunderstood by the
ministers of the Holy Office, and by his Holiness; and at the same meeting
(20th of January 1600) a memorial from Bruno to the Pope, who was
present, having been opened but not read, it was decreed “that further
measures be proceeded to, servatis servandis, that sentence be passed, and
that the said Friar Giordano be handed over to the secular authority.” On the
8th of February this decision was carried into effect, and he was placed in
the hands of the Governor of Rome, with the usual recommendation that he
be punished “with as great clemency as possible, and without effusion of
blood”—the formula for burning at the stake. A witness of the passing of
the sentence was Gaspar Schopp, a youthful but none the less fanatical

convert from the reformed religion to Catholicism. It was a year of jubilee
in Rome. Pope Clement was possessed of great diplomatic gifts, he had
gained the submission of Henry IV. of France, had united France again with
Spain, and detached it from England, and had quieted or lulled numerous
disputes within the Church itself. Rome was therefore crowded with
visitors, more so than usual even in a year of jubilee. Of the distinguished
foreigners paying their homage to Clement, Gaspar Schopp was one; facile
of tongue as of pen, he quickly gained the Pope’s favour, was made a knight
of St. Peter, and a count of the Sacred Palace. This adept at coat-turning
sent from Rome a letter to Conrad Rittershausen, which was for long the
sole authority for Bruno’s death, but was held by Catholic writers on Bruno
to be a forgery. In the face of the solid arguments and evidence
forthcoming, Catholic reviewers even at the present day deny that Bruno
was put to death. It is quite needless at this date to enter into the question of
the authenticity of the letter, its assertion of Bruno’s punishment being the
sole ground on which that was ever doubted.[126] We learn from it that
Bruno was publicly reported in Rome to have been burned as a Lutheran;
and one of the aims of Schopp in writing—which he did on the very day of
Bruno’s death—was to prove the falsity of this report. He had heard the
sentence pronounced, and its damnatory clauses he gives as the following:
—(1) Bruno’s early doubts concerning and ultimate denial of the
Transubstantiation, and of the virgin conception; (2) the publication in
London of the Bestia Trionfanti, which was held to mean the Pope; (3) the
“horrible absurdities” taught in his Latin writings, such as the infinite
number of worlds, the transmigration of souls, the lawfulness and utility of
magic, the Holy Spirit described as merely the soul of the world, the
eternity of the world, Moses spoken of as an Egyptian working his miracles
by magic—in which he excelled other Egyptians—and as having invented
the decalogue, the Holy Scriptures a fable, the salvation of the devil, the
Hebrews alone descended from Adam and Eve, other peoples from the men
created the previous day; Christ not God, but an illustrious magician, who
deceived men, and on that account was properly hanged (impiccato) and not
crucified; the prophets and apostles corrupt men, magicians, who were for
the most part hanged. “In fine, I should never have done were I to pass in
review all the monstrosities he has advanced, whether in his books or by
word of mouth. In one word, there is not an error of the pagan philosophers
or of our heretics, ancient or modern, that he did not sustain.” The delay at

Rome, it is suggested, was due to Bruno’s constant promises to retract, but
he was only putting off his judges, and the duration of his imprisonment is
given (officially?) at “about two years.” It is clear that on the occasion of
the sentence being read the denouncements of Mocenigo, as well as all later
evidences dragged from Bruno’s own lips, or picked up from his books,
were recited for the benefit, presumably, of the visitors present. When the
sentence was pronounced Bruno was degraded, excommunicated, and
handed over to the secular magistrates, as we have seen. The whole letter is
redeemed by the reply of Bruno to his judges—“Greater perhaps is your
fear in pronouncing my sentence than mine in hearing it.” These strong
words are almost the last we have of Bruno. At the stake he turned his eyes
angrily away from the crucifix held before him. And so, adds Schopp, “he
was burned and perished miserably, and is gone to tell, I suppose, in those
other worlds of his fancy, how the blasphemous and impious are dealt with
by the Romans!” It is pleasant to know that when Lord Digby was English
ambassador to Spain he caused Gaspard Schopp to be horse-whipped.[127]
For the degradation of Bruno, as we learn from the Register of the
Depository-General of the Pontificate, two scudi of gold were paid to the
Bishop of Sidonia. The memorable words he uttered at the time were
reported by another than Schopp, the Count of Ventimiglia, who was a pupil
of Bruno, and present at his death (perhaps at the sentence also)—“You who
sentence me are in greater fear than I who am condemned”; and before his
death Bruno recommended Ventimiglia “to follow in his glorious footsteps,
to avoid prejudices and errors.”[128]
In the Avvisi and Ritorni of Rome, which represented, however meagrely,
the newspapers of the time, two references to Bruno appeared, with short
garbled accounts of him. In one he was spoken of as a Friar of S. Dominic,
of Nola, burnt alive in the Campo di Fiori, an obstinate heretic, with his
tongue tied, owing to the brutish words he uttered, refusing to listen to the
comforters or others: in another he was reported as saying that he died a
martyr, and willingly, and that his soul would ascend with the smoke to
Paradise, “but now he knows whether he spoke the truth!” The fullest
account, however, of his death, and one which should put to rest all doubts
on the subject, is in the reports of the Company of St. John the Beheaded.
This company—called also the Company of Mercy or Pity (della
misericordia)—was instituted for the purpose of accompanying condemned
heretics to the place of death, encouraging them to repent, to die with

contrition for their sins. The priests bore tablets painted with images, which
were presented to the condemned to kiss, from time to time, till the faggots
were lit. Even the executioner was called to their aid occasionally, and the
cruellest methods adopted to produce at least the appearance of kissing, and
so of repentance. In obstinate cases, on the other hand, the tongue was tied,
so that the heretic could not speak to the people. When the sufferers
repented before death the Company took note of their last wishes, and they
were buried in the tombs of the Cloister donated for that purpose by
Innocent VIII., but if they were impenitent no will was allowed, and the
ashes were abandoned to the winds of heaven. This must have happened in
Bruno’s case, for there is no mention of will or of burial in the report. Its
date is Thursday, 16th February (an error for 17th), and it reads thus:[129]
—“At the second hour of the night it was intimated to the Company that an
impenitent was to be executed in the morning; so at the sixth hour the
comforters and the chaplain met at St. Ursula, and went to the prison of the
Tower of Nona. After the customary prayers in the chapel there was
consigned to them the under-mentioned condemned to death, viz. Giordano,
son of the late Giovanni Bruno, an Apostate Friar of Nola in the Kingdom,
an impenitent heretic. With all charity our brethren exhorted him to repent,
and there were called two Fathers of St. Dominic, two of the Society of
Jesus, two of the new Church, and one of St. Jerome, who, with all affection
and much learning, showed him his error, but he remained to the end in his
accursed obstinacy, his brain and intellect seething with a thousand errors
and vanities. So, persevering in his obstinacy, he was led by the servants of
justice to the Campo dei Fiori, there stripped, bound to a stake, and burnt
alive, attended always by our Company chanting the litanies, the comforters
exhorting him up to the last point to abandon his obstinacy, but in it finally
he ended his miserable, unhappy life.”
So Bruno passed away; his ashes were scattered, his name almost forgotten.
His death was the merest incident amid the great doings of the year of
Jubilee. None of the many bishops and cardinals and distinguished visitors
in Rome, with the single exception of Gaspard Schopp, makes any mention
of the occurrence or of the man; and Schopp did so only because he wished
to point a moral from the case. During his seven years’ imprisonment,
Bruno had almost passed out of the short-lived memory of his fellowmen.
Burnings of heretics were not infrequent spectacles, and required no special
notice. Three years later (August 7, 1603) all his works were placed upon

the Index, and consequently became rare. They were classed with other
dangerous works on the black arts, and Bruno’s name became one to avoid.
This was the death which in happier days he had foreseen for himself
should he ever enter Italy:—“Torches, fifty or a hundred, will not fail him,
even though the march be at mid-day, should it be his fate to die in Roman
Catholic country.” What were the real grounds on which his condemnation
and sentence were founded? The alleged grounds we have already seen, but
they cannot have formed the actual motive of the Pope and the Inquisition.
Neither at Venice nor in Rome can much weight have been laid upon the
evidence of the weakling Mocenigo. The Cardinals cannot have imagined
that Bruno would ever open his heart or even speak freely to so shallow a
nature so utterly different in all things from himself. The mere fact of his
having left his order was not enough, nor his refusal to return to it, nor were
his heretical opinions—defended as they might be, and as Aristotle’s own
teaching had to be defended in the Church, by the subterfuge of the twofold
truth. Had his chief fault been, as some have thought, his praises of
Elizabeth, Henry III., Henry of Navarre, Luther, Duke Julius, and other
enemies, real or supposed, of the Church, he would not so long have
occupied the prisons of the Inquisition. Probably his earliest biographer,
Bartholmèss, was right in suggesting that Bruno was regarded as a
heresiarch—he is several times so described in the documents—the founder
of a new sect, the leader of an incipient but dangerous crusade against the
Church. It was as the apostle of a new religion, founded on a new intuition,
a new conception of the universe, and of its relation to God, that Bruno
died. Had he been won over to the side of the Church, his mind conquered
and his spirit crushed by the long years of waiting, and possibly the days
and nights of physical torture, it would have been a signal triumph for the
papacy. But the heart which had trembled at the beginning, when the
sudden gulf yawned before it, grew more and more steadfast as its trials
increased. We can only re-echo Carrière’s words, that in the soul of such a
man, who after eight years’ confinement in the prisons of the Inquisition
remained so firm, “the governing motives must have been an eternal and
inviolable impulse towards Truth, an unbending sense of right, an
irrepressible and free enthusiasm.” That for which he died was not any
special cult or any special interpretation of Scripture or history, but a broad
freedom of thought with the right of free interpretation of history and of

nature, which in his own case was founded upon a philosophy, one of the
noblest that has been thought out by man.
The fear of death was no part of this philosophy; what we call death, it
teaches, is a mere change of state, of “accidents”—no real substance, such
as the human spirit is, can ever die. One of the highest values of his
philosophy he thought to be this, that it freed man from the fear of death,
“which is worse than death itself.” Strikingly apposite to his own fate is a
passage from Ovid[130] that he quotes—

O’ genus attonitum gelidae formidine mortis,
Quid Styga, quid tenebras, et nomina vana timetis,
Materiam vatum, falsique pericula mundi?
Corpora sive rogus flamma, seu tabe vetustas
Abstulerit, mala posse pati non ulla putetis;
Morte carent animae domibus habitantque receptae.

Bruno himself lived within the sphere of which he writes in the Spaccio,
“surrounded by the impregnable wall of true philosophic contemplation,
where the peacefulness of life stands fortified and on high, where truth is
open, where the necessity of the Eternity of all substantial things is clear,
where nought is to be feared but to be deprived of human perfection and
justice.” His finest epitaph is to be found in his own words, “I have fought:
that is much—victory is in the hands of fate. Be that as it may with me, this
at least future ages will not deny of me, be the victor who may,—that I did
not fear to die, yielded to none of my fellows in constancy, and preferred a
spirited death to a cowardly life.”
No end in history is more tragic, when looked at in all its circumstances,
than that of Giordano Bruno. First a life of endless, unresting struggle,
striving through years of wandering, in many lands, to overcome prejudice
and outworn authority, to proclaim and urge on unwilling minds the
splendid gospel which inspired himself, and by which for a brief time he
may have thought to supplant the old; now admired of kings, and sought
after by the highest in the land, at another time a hunted pedlar of literary
wares; then eight years in darkness from the world, with shame or death to
choose for release. The choice made for the nobler end, the mockeries of
religion he had detested and reviled pursued him to the end to—the very
stake; and the funeral pyre of this martyr for liberty of thought, for the new
light of science, became a spectacle for the gay and thoughtless sight-seers
of the Roman Jubilee year, to all of whom, one sad disciple excepted, it was
but another “damnable and obstinate heretic” who was on this earth, for that
brief spell, foretasting his eternal doom.

XIX

It is not easy to characterise so complex a personality as Bruno undoubtedly
was. The fiery passionate blood of the south ran in his veins, the joy of a
strong-flowing life was in his heart and brain. A child of Nature, he was
almost from the first, “cribbed, cabined, and confined” by the stone walls of
the cloister, as his mind was hampered by the laws and dogmas of the
Church.[131] From Nature herself he drew his first lessons. While his
fellows taught that Nature was a thing of evil, he learnt to love her, and to
turn to her rather than to the authority of man for instruction. He believed
also, as very few of his age did, in the power of human thought to penetrate
the secret nature of things, to reach even to the deepest and highest reality,
so far as that can be known by another than itself. Trusting to his own mind,
to sense and reason, for his theory of the world, he found himself opposed
in all essentials to the general thought of the time.
His purpose from the first was to use his own eyes, to discover truth for
himself, and to hold fast whatever seemed to be right, irrespective of the
opinions of others. “From the beginning I was convinced of the vanity of
the cry which summons us to close or lower the eyes that were given to us
open and upward-looking. Seeing I do not pretend not to see, nor fear to
profess it openly; and as there is continual war between light and darkness,
knowledge and ignorance, everywhere have I met with hatred, abuse,
clamour, insult (ay, not without risk to my life) from the brute and stupid
multitude; but guided by the hand of truth and the divine light, I have
overcome it.” Not that he really formed his theory by induction from sense-
data, or by deductive reasoning; it was rather an inspiration, or an intuition,
springing from his temperament, to which optimism was as necessary as
pessimism repellent; and there were numerous suggestions of it both in
Bruno’s immediate predecessors, Copernicus and the rest, and in earlier
thinkers. Bruno himself found it, as he thought, in the more ancient pre-
Aristotelian philosophies. But, however obtained, this philosophy satisfied
even his boundless enthusiasm, and it became the chief motive of his life to
convince others of its truth, inspire them with the same enthusiasm, and
endow them with the joyous freedom of life of which it seemed to him to be

the source. His philosophy, in other words, became his religion, his inward
religion,—Catholicism remaining a mere habit, a set of formulae to which
he was indifferent, to most of which he was willing to subscribe because he
had not questioned them.
His perfect self-confidence, and belief in the power of
Authority.
human reason (especially his own reason) to penetrate the
mysteries of things, was accompanied by contempt for the argument from
authority in philosophy, contempt for humility, submission, obedience in the
speculative life. To believe with the many because they were many was the
mark of a slave. Bruno, before Bacon, before Descartes, insisted on the
need of first of all clearing the mind from all prejudices, all traditional
beliefs that rested on authority alone, before attempting the pursuit of truth.
They were impediments—burdens that delayed or prevented the attainment
of the goal. The whole of the Cabala is a satire on the quietistic attitude, the
standpoint of ignorant and ignoring faith, which regards sense and reason as
alike misleading and unnecessary guides, for which science and philosophy
are mere troublings of the still waters of life. “Oh, holy asinity”! one of the
sonnets begins, “oh, holy ignorance, holy folly and pious devotion, which
alone makest souls so good that human wit and zeal can no further go;
strenuous watchfulness, in whatsoever art, or invention, or contemplation of
the wise, arrives not to the heaven wherein thou buildest thy mansion. Of
what avail is your study, ye curious ones, your desire to know how nature
works, whether the stars are earth, or fire or sea? Holy asinity for that cares
not, but with folded hands and bended knees awaits from God its fate.”[132]
Having already that touch of vanity in his character which the possession of
a quick mind among sluggards or dullards almost inevitably entails, he was
thrown, by his attitude towards nature and the Church, more and more back
upon himself. At every step he met with a leaden, uncomprehending, but
dogged opposition, until he seemed to himself the one seeing man in a
world of the blind. At times this belief was expressed only too emphatically;
the reader of Bruno must expect to find a passage in almost every work
pointing out that that work is the best of its kind, and dispenses with all
others on the subject; while his opponents in any theory are bedaubed with
epithets to which the amenities of modern party strife are politeness itself.
[133] Boundless was his confidence in himself, in his power of discerning
truth, and in his ability to overcome all difficulties in the way of its

discovery. “Difficulty,” he writes in the Cena, “is ordained to check
poltroons. Things ordinary and easy are for the vulgar, for ordinary people.
But rare, heroic, divine men pass along this way of difficulty, that necessity
may be constrained to yield them the palm of immortality. Although it may
not be possible to come so far as to gain the prize, run your race
nevertheless, do your hardest in what is of so great importance, strive to
your last breath. It is not only he who arrives at the goal that is praised, but
also whoever dies no coward’s or poltroon’s death; he casts the fault of his
loss and of his death upon the back of fate, and shows the world that he has
come to such an end by no defect of himself, but by error of fortune.”[134]
His outward fortunes left Bruno indifferent; it was the opposition to his
philosophy that embittered him, and excited the magnificent invectives
scattered everywhere through his works. Of his own mission Bruno had the
highest conception: “The Nolan has set free the human mind, and its
knowledge, that was shut up within the narrow prison-house of the
atmosphere (the troubled air), whence it could only with difficulty, as
through chinks, see the far distant stars; its wings were clipped, that it might
not fly and pass through the veil of clouds, and see that which is really to be
found there.... But he in the eye of sense and reason, with the key of
unwearied inquiry, has opened those prison-doors of the truth which man
might open, laid bare nature that was covered over and veiled from sight,
given eyes to the moles, enlightened the blind ... loosened the tongue of the
mute, that could not and dared not express their inmost feelings.”[135] It was
not to the many that he spoke, however; there was little in his heart of that
love for his fellowman that was so charming a trait in Spinoza, with all the
latter’s desire for solitude, and under all his persecutions. Bruno, whether a
son of the people or not, had never the slightest respect for that body. We
have already seen what opinion he formed of the English populace, and he
held a similar view of the plebs in general—“Rogatus tumet, Pulsatus
rogat, Pugnis concisus adorat,” he quotes (or misquotes)[136] concerning it.
Distrust of the natural man he had imbibed along with the teaching of the
Church, and doubt as to his capacity for receiving or understanding the
truth. Those who have acquired the truth that he has to teach need not, he
writes, communicate it to all, “unless they will see what swine can do with
pearls, and will gather those fruits of their zeal and labour which usually
spring from rash and foolish ignorance, together with presumption and
incivility, its constant and trusty companions.”[137] Speaking of the doctrine

of the necessity of all human events, as determined and foreseen by God,
and its coincidence with true liberty, he shows how theologians and
philosophers have held it, but have refrained from communicating it to the
vulgar, by whom it could not be understood, who would use it as an excuse
for giving rein to their passions. “Faith is required for the instruction of the
plebs, that must be governed; demonstration (truth) for the wise, the
contemplative, that know how to govern themselves and others.”[138] So
speculation as to the future life must be kept from them, for it is “with the
greatest difficulty that they can be restrained from vice and impelled to
virtuous acts through their faith in eternal punishment: what would become
of them if they were persuaded of some lighter condition regulating the
rewards of heroic and humane deeds, the punishment of wickedness and
sin?”[139] He was an “aristocrat of learning,”—only the wise should have
the government of the world; the people were unfit to judge either of truth
or of men.
Along with this distrust of the vulgar went a far more
Pedantry.
intense dislike of the kind of learning they admired, and of
the type of scholar, the pedant, that most appealed to them. The minds of
the vulgar, it seemed to him, were more readily turned by sophisms, by the
appearances on the surface of things, than by the truth that is hidden in their
substance, and is indeed their substance itself;[140] and the man—too
frequent in the Italian, and generally in the learned world of those days—
most apt to veil a real ignorance by a pretended knowledge, by a show of
externals, by appeal to authorities with whom he had himself no
acquaintance, was the pedant. Bruno himself was not without that touch of
vanity which led him, like others, to mass together quotations and phrases
from Latin and even from Greek writers; to point an argument by forced
analogies from classical mythology; to heap up references, in support of his
theories, to the Neoplatonists, to the mystics, to the Cabbalah, to the older
Greek philosophers: these adornments were quite in the fashion of his time,
and looked at in that light they add to, rather than detract from, the peculiar
charm and spirit of his writings. The true pedant—such as Polihimnio in the
Causa (who has been thought to have suggested Polonius in Hamlet),
Mamphurio in the Candelaio, Prudentio in the Cena—is one that for style
loves long words, learned phrases, irrespective of their context; who, under
pretence of accuracy, delights in trifling, subtle distinctions, sows broadcast
mythological or classical allusions without a hint of relevancy. His favourite

hunting-ground is, however, philosophy, and it is to philosophy, according
to Bruno, that the pedant has done greatest injury. One of the most vigorous
descriptions of him which Bruno gives is in the Causa,[141] where, no
doubt, some of the actual writers of the time are satirised. Curiously, Ramus
and Patrizzi, both reformers of philosophy, are mentioned as “arch-
pedants”; but men have always criticised most bitterly those who stood
nearest to themselves.
Bruno regarded words as the servants of his pen, claimed, and indeed
exercised almost too freely, the right of inventing new words for new
things. Use and wont, he knew, determined the fate of words as of other
things; some which had fallen into decay would rise again, others now
honoured would lapse from use. For the teaching of the philosophers of old
their own old words were the clearest mirror, but for new theories new
words might be sought from the readiest source:—“grammarians are the
servants of words, words are our servants; it is for them to study the use to
which we put our words.”[142]

XX

For such coinage, as for illustrations to his theories, references to old
authorities, material for his satire on pedants, as well as for more doubtful
purposes,—mystical or magical formulæ, or “proofs,”—his prodigious
memory never left Bruno at a loss. But if this memory, in its tenacity,
supplied him with powerful and ready arguments against his opponents in
their appeal to the authority of antiquity, it was also, in its fertility, the
source of the chief defects of his writing, and perhaps also of his speaking.
His imagination runs riot in the pursuit of allegories, metaphors, similes
from mythology. Tiraboschi, the historian of Italian literature, defies “the
most acute intelligence to penetrate into his system, the most patient of men
to endure the reading of it.”
So far was this enormous mass of material from blocking up the spring of
originality in his mind, however, that the ideas in which he may be said to
have “anticipated” modern thought are innumerable. No doubt, in many
cases, they came from the earlier Greek philosophers whom he chiefly
studied; but Bruno invariably gives them a connection with his own theory,
such as precludes us from taking his restoration of them for a happy chance.
Such ideas, for example, are those of the evolution or gradual
transformation of lower organisms into higher (De Umbris, Int. 7), of the
part played by the hand in the evolution of the human race (Cabala, L. 586.
35), of the gradual changes brought about on the surface of the earth, its
seas, its islands, the configuration of the land, the climate of different
countries, by the constant, if imperceptible, operation of natural causes
(Cena, L. 190 ff.): of the true nature of mountains, which are only
excrescences as compared with the real mountains, the larger continents
that slope upwards from the sea (e.g. France): of the true nature of comets,
so far at least as that they are perfectly natural bodies allied to planets[143]
(Infinit. L. 372; De Imm. iv. 9. 51); of the identity of the matter of heavenly
bodies with that of the earth, the universality of movement (even the fixed
stars move, cf. Infinit., L. 350, 351, 400), the possibility (he said rather the
certainty) of other worlds than our own being inhabited by beings similar to
or more highly developed than ourselves (L. 360. 27). He “anticipated” also

the idea of Lessing that myths may contain foreshadowings of truth, and
that they should be interpreted not by their letter, as matters of fact, but by
their spirit, as indications of higher “truths of reason.” The Bible should be
interpreted in the same way: as Spinoza afterwards taught, so Bruno held,
that the Scriptures inculcated moral and practical truths, to which their
seemingly historical statements were entirely subordinate.
Add to this fermenting thought, power of memory, keenness and sureness of
glance, and imaginative force, the fact that Bruno had a deeply poetic
nature, fiery, vivid, passionate in defence of what seemed to him true,
equally passionate in hatred of what seemed to him false, and the sources of
his strength and weakness alike become clear. The Italian writings remain,
in spite of their occasional obscurity, the most brilliant of philosophical
works in that language, while the Latin works are a monument of learning
(too often misapplied or useless), of acute reasoning, and of poetic
enthusiasm.

XXI

Bruno was far from being what we should now call a
Religion.
Rationalist; he felt that cold reason, mere human logic
alone, could not fathom the deepest nature of things, which was God, but
that this deepest nature of things was apart from conditions of time and
space. Whatever occurred under these conditions,—whatever fell within the
actual world,—he claimed for sense and reason, i.e. as a subject of natural
explanation, as accessible in all its aspects to human knowledge. There are
thus two very distinct sides to Bruno’s philosophical character: on the one
side he is a forerunner of modern science, in his love of nature as a whole,
in his desire to understand it, in his application of purely “empirical”
methods to its analysis. To this side belong his rejection of the orthodox
dogmas concerning the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception, and the rest, his
theory of an evolution of man, his idea of a natural history of religions, his
entire rejection of authority however high as an argument for or against a
theory or view of nature. His own religious creed was simple, and he
believed it to be the essence of what was true in all the jarring sects that had
separated man from man, nation from nation, and race from race—“the law
of love—which springs not from the evil genius of any one race, but from
God the father of all, and is in harmony with universal nature, which
teaches a general love of man, that we should love our enemies even,
should not remain like brutes or barbarians, but be transformed into the
likeness of Him who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the bad, and
pours the rain of His mercies upon the just and the unjust. This is the
religion above controversy or dispute, which I observe from the belief of
my own mind, and from the custom of my fatherland and my race.”[144] On
the other side, he had inherited the mysticism of the Neoplatonist school, or
at least it called out a responsive echo from his mind so soon as he came
under its influence. He was full of enthusiasm, as we shall find, for the
divine—in things, in us, in the world, in the universe—a “God-intoxicated
man” far more strikingly than the impassive Spinoza. It was because the
Copernican theory fitted into his mystical thought of the One, as an identity
of the infinitely small, the point, and the infinitely great, the broad, deep,

immeasurable universe, that it appeared to him an inspiration of genius.
Therefore he defended it, extended it further than its originator dared extend
it, and finally died for it and for all that it meant to him. His belief in natural
magic belongs again to this side, or rather to the influence of the one side of
his nature upon the other; owing to their essential unity in God, natural
things have sympathies with one another and with human life, so that a
change in one thing—a stone, a tree—may indirectly cause a corresponding
change in another, a human being. It was characteristic of him that he
sought to give to these beliefs—which, be it remembered, were universal in
his time—a rational basis, a connection with his thought-system as a whole.
The two sides or standpoints are never far apart in Bruno: it is often
impossible to say to which a given theory or mood should be attributed, but
in his earlier life the mystical, in his later the naturalistic, or rationalist
standpoint may be said to have predominated. It is with the more
metaphysical attitude that a certain vein of optimism in Bruno’s philosophy
is connected, the familiar conception of evil, natural or moral, as necessary
for the good of the whole, like the discords by which a harmony is
heightened. No absolute evil, for the consistent Neoplatonist, can possibly
exist in a world which flows from the divine and is an outpouring of His
nature. But Bruno had little or nothing of the practical optimist in his own
character; whatever he thought to be evil, he fought against with all his
might; a victim of intolerance, he had himself no toleration for some points
of view—those, namely, which he felt might weaken the bonds of civil
society and of human brotherhood. “Such evil teachers,” he writes in the
Sigillus (ii. 2. 182), “succeeding time, and a world wise overlate in its own
ill condition, will exterminate as the tares, canker-worms, locust plagues of
their age—nay, as scorpions and vipers.” Bruno saw only too clearly the
evils of the world, and of his age, from the greatest of which—tyranny over
the soul, and suppression of mental liberty—he suffered in his own person;
and his life, as we have seen, was spent in a ceaseless, and for the time
unavailing, struggle against them. But he never lost his faith in the ultimate
victory of his own philosophy, based as it was upon his faith in the essential
goodness, justice, and truth of the eternal source of things. As all things
flow from, so all things tend to return to God. Philosophy goes further than
to teach merely that pain and evil are not absolute facts, not grounded in the
nature of things; it also frees the believer from the burden they impose:
—“the practical test of a perfect philosophy is, when one by the height of

his speculation is so far withdrawn from bodily things as hardly to feel pain.
And there is greater virtue, as we believe, in one who has come to such a
point as not to feel pain at all than in another who feels it but resists. He
who is more deeply moved by the thought of some other thing does not feel
the pangs of death.”[145]

WORKS OF BRUNO PUBLISHED AFTER 1592[146]

1. Summa terminorum metaphysicorum ad capessendum Logicae et
Philosophiae studium, ex Jordani Bruni Nolani Entis descensu manusc.
excerpta; nunc primum luci commissa; a Raphaele Eglino Iconio, Tigurino:
Zurich, 1595. Reprinted in 1609:—Summa Terminorum Metaphysicorum,
Jordani Bruni Nolani. Accessit eiusdem Praxis Descensus seu Multiplicatio
Entis ex Manuscripto per Raphaelum Eglinum Iconium Tigurinum in Acad.
Marpurg. Profess. Theolog. cum supplemento Rodolphi Goclenii Senioris,
Marburg, 1609.[147]
Described by the editor, Eglin, who was with Bruno at Zurich, and
afterwards became Professor of Theology at Marburg, as Bruno’s
“Metaphysical remains.” It represents the fruit of the lectures given by
Bruno at Zurich in 1591,[148] and is one of the earliest philosophical
dictionaries extant. It is on the model of the Fifth Book of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, now known to have been intended by Aristotle as a separate
work, but differs in its choice and arrangement of the terms of philosophy
which are discussed. The first part of the work, which was published by
itself in Zurich, may best be described as a handbook to philosophy
generally, the main reference being to Aristotle’s system, as was natural:
with it Bruno writes for the most part in agreement. The second part,
however, which was not published until the Marburg Edition (p. 73 ff. of
the State Edition), is an “application” of the several terms already defined to
the Neoplatonist philosophy: in its first section (De Deo seu Mente) they are
applied and illustrated by reference to God as the source of the world, of
whom all things are emanations, in a graduated scale of being; in the second
(Intellectus seu Idea) to the world of Ideas—God in the world, the soul in
all things and in everything; and a third section (Amor seu pulchritudo)
should have followed, dealing with God as the end and goal of things, but is
awanting.[149] The document on the Predicates of God which Mocenigo
presented to the Court at Venice was probably the second part of the
Summa, or perhaps only its first section (Brunnhofer, p. 106).

2. Artificium perorandi traditum a Jordano Bruno Nolano Italo,
communicatum a Johan. Henrico Alstedio. In gratiam eorum qui
eloquentiae vim et rationem cognoscere cupiunt. Frankfort, 1612. (Also in
Gfrörer, and State Edition, vol. ii. pt. 3, No. 3).—A summary of, or a
commentary on, the spurious Rhetoric of Aristotle (ad Alexandrum), with
the addition of a second part by Bruno, on which he himself lays no great
stress, on elocution or adornment; he refers his readers, however, to the
orators themselves for complete instruction. It contains chiefly lists of heads
of arguments and of synonyms for rhetorical use. Apparently the work is
printed from notes of Bruno’s lectures in Wittenberg (1587), which came
into the hands of the editor, Alsted, in 1610.

3. Lampas Triginta Statuarum.—First published in the State Edition, vol.
iii. pp. 1–258, from MSS. of the Noroff collection at Moscow. This is in the
hand of Besler, Bruno’s pupil and copyist, and was done at Padua in the
autumn of 1591, although Besler had received the original, which he
copied, in April 1590 at Helmstadt. Another MS. is in the Augustan Library,
and is both more obviously correct and of earlier date than the copy of
Besler (1587); in all probability the work was dictated by Bruno at
Wittenberg, and is that referred to as Lampas Cabalistica in the letter of
dedication prefixed to the De Specierum Scrutinio (Prague, 1588), and as
shortly to be published.[150]
It contains a finished study of philosophy from Bruno’s standpoint,
arranged under thirty and more headings, “Types,” “Statues and Images,”
“Fields,” etc. Under each heading are thirty “articles,” “conditions,”
“descriptions,” “contemplations.” For example, we have first the two triads
—Chaos, Orcus, Nox; and Pater, Intellectus Primus, Lux—typifying the
lowest and the highest principles of things: the first three are Vacuum,
Potency in Appetite, and Matter; the second three Mind or Reason,
Understanding or Soul, and Love or Spirit. At the close of the Statuae there
follows the practical application of them to the scale of Nature—the
outflow of the highest towards the lowest, the gradual transition from
lowest to highest; an account of the thirty predicates of Substance and of
“Nature” in the universal sense; and a logical or methodological illustration
of the uses of the Art under the headings of Definition, Verification,
Demonstration. The general purpose of the whole is to give an instrument
for discovery (“Invention”) of truth, after the model of the Lullian Art, just

as some of the earlier works (e.g. De Umbris) contain a similar instrument
for remembering knowledge acquired.[151] Unfortunately the work is
entirely marred by the artificial distinctions drawn, and the tying down (or
expansion) of the ideas treated therein to the thirty fundamental notions and
thirty applications of each. Thus subjects and predicates are thirty in
number each, and the modes of predication are in classes of fifteen. It is
impossible not to agree with Tocco’s verdict, that “However fine the
analysis employed in distinguishing the subtlest shades of concepts,
however great the number of elevated philosophical thoughts scattered
throughout, expounded with vigour and felicity of imagery, the tractate as a
whole has little value, just as the ars inventiva itself has little—more fit to
blunt than to sharpen the inventive powers.”[152] One gladly re-echoes
Bruno’s words at the close: “Itaque gratias deo agentes, Artem Inventivam
per triginta statuas perfecimus.”

4. Animadversiones circa Lampaaem Lullianam (State Edition, vol. ii. pt.
2).—From the Augustan MSS., dated 13th March 1587. Notes dictated in
Wittenberg, on the Lullian art as a universal instrument for the discovery of
truth.

5. Libri Physicorum Aristotelis, a clariss. Dn. D. Jordano Bruno Nolano
explanati.—From two codices in the Erlangen Library, the second of which
is in the hand of Besler, and was written, presumably, at Helmstadt. The
earlier MS. in a German handwriting points to the commentaries having
been dictated by Bruno during his stay at Wittenberg.[153] The books of
Aristotle treated are the five books of the Physica, the De generatione et
corruptione, the Meteorologica, Book IV. There is an introduction on the
methods of the sciences, and other matters, by Bruno himself; the remainder
follows closely the text of Aristotle, except in the fourth and fifth books,
where Bruno is much less exact.

6. De Magia, et Theses de Magia.—The MS. of this work is in the Erlangen
Codex, by Besler, and also in the Moscow (Noroff) collection, by the same
hand; the former is a copy of the latter, which was dictated by Bruno in the
early part of 1590 at Helmstadt.
It deals with one of the three divisions of Magic, viz. Natural or Physical
Magic (the others being Divine, Metaphysical or Supernatural, and

Mathematical—that of symbols, numbers, etc.). Physical magic is shown to
be a natural consequence, first, of the fact that the same soul, the soul of the
world, is in all things, of which the individual finite soul of each thing is a
temporary mode or phase; hence all things are linked one with another,
through their spiritual identity, in a bond of sympathy; secondly, of the
hierarchy of beings—the principle that all finite things are emanations, in
increasing degree of imperfection, from the Divine. The Theses represent a
summary of the De Magia, and in the latter the headings of the former are
referred to throughout, except in two episodes or excursus not strictly
connected with natural magic (on spirit-charms and spirit-analogies): the
work is referred to in the De Minimo, i. 3. 210 (re the magical influences of
bodies newly dead; “the soul everywhere recognises the matter of its own
body, as we have shown in the book on physical magic”).

7. De Magia Mathematica.—Merely a collection of excerpts from writers
on Magic—Tritemius, Agrippa, Pietro Di Abano, the (Pseudo-) Albertus
Magnus. (Noroff MSS. The title is that of the Italian editors.)

8. De Rerum Principiis et Elementis et Causis.—(Noroff MSS. The writing
was begun on the 16th of March 1590, in Helmstadt, by Besler, to Bruno’s
dictation.)
It contains the theory of the natural and material elements or principles of
things—light and fire, wind or air, water or vapour or darkness, and earth or
the dry, with their “forms,” time and place—leaving the metaphysical and
the immaterial principles (spirit and soul) for consideration elsewhere. It is
not of great scientific value. Bruno makes use of abstract terms even more
readily than Aristotle (e.g. “lux seminaliter est ubique, et in tenebris,” p.
514). The chief aim of the work is to illustrate the magical applications of
the different elements[154] (cf. pp. 516, 525, etc.). Its value mainly lies in the
light it throws on Bruno’s atomic theory, and on one or two other minor
points of his philosophy—the harmony, co-ordination, and sympathy
between all natural things, the doctrines of liberty and necessity, etc.

9. De Medicina Lulliana, partim ex mathematicis, partim ex physicis
principiis educta.—Written immediately after the above (de rerum
principiis), to which it occasionally refers: merely a collection of abstracts
from works of Lully on medicine, as a practical application of the system of

magic contained in the three previous writings. It is accordingly of the
astrological type of mediæval medicine.

10. De Vinculis in genere. Noroff MSS.—A first sketch in Bruno’s own
hand, dating probably from Frankfort; and a later, much more detailed, in
Besler’s, copied at Padua. It in a sense completes the tractates on Magic, by
dealing with “attraction” in general, of which the attractions and sympathies
of natural and mathematical magic are special cases. As it stands, however
(for neither sketch is finished: Bruno’s covers wider ground than Besler’s,
the latter breaks off abruptly before the natural end is reached), it is a
psychological essay on the human passions, and more especially on human
love, from a purely objective, matter-of-fact standpoint. In it the most
grossly material and the highest spiritual sources of love are placed side by
side; and to love, including self-love, are reduced all passions, all effects,
even hate, which is an outcome, a reversion of love.

PART II
PHILOSOPHY OF BRUNO

CHAPTER I
THE SOURCES OF THE PHILOSOPHY

In the school and the monastery at Naples Bruno passed as a matter of
course through a training in the Scholastic Philosophy. Before entering the
monastery of St. Dominic at fifteen years of age he had studied “humane
letters, logic, and dialectic,”[155] and had attended, among other lectures, a
private course by Theophilus of Varrano, an Augustine monk and
distinguished Aristotelian. From him, probably, Bruno received an impetus
towards the study of Aristotle in the original works, if not also in the
original tongue, which stood him in admirable stead when he came later to
attack the foundations of the vulgar philosophy. He was familiar at first
hand with all the main writings of Aristotle.[156] He had read, too, and cites,
most of the earlier commentators—Adrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias,
Porphyry, Themistius, Simplicius, and “Philoponus”[157]—as well as the
later, the Arabians and other Schoolmen. He had accordingly a more
thorough acquaintance with the mind of Aristotle than any of the latter’s
staunchest supporters in his time: the lack of the historic sense prevented
him, however, from taking a just view of the system as a whole: it was not
the Aristotle of Greek philosophy whom he rejected, and against whom he
wielded the powerful weapons of his armoury, but the Aristotle of his own
day,—a living force with which no one could avoid a reckoning, the
influence of which was no longer for good, but which formed, as Bruno
felt, a barrier against the progressive thought and spirit of the time. In the
introductory letter to the Figuratio Arist. Phys. Auditus, Bruno gave three
reasons for undertaking the work:[158]—(1) “that he might not appear, like
so many others, to be taking up the office of censor without a sufficient
knowledge of his subject; (2) that he might present to his opponents the
philosophy of Aristotle as it really was, for the majority of the Aristotelians
admired it rather from their faith in the man Aristotle than from
discriminate judgment concerning the principles of the philosophy; (3) that
he might seem not an audacious caviller against thoughts that were beyond
his depth, but a genuine and legitimate disputant on doctrines that were

clear to himself.”[159] The name of Aristotle was a charm; his opinion final
not in matters of pure philosophy alone, but equally in natural theory; his
natural philosophy had been harmonised with scriptural authority, and was
the accepted doctrine of the Church. The cry which his critic heard had
weight behind it: “You against Aristotle—against so many authorities, so
great names? I would rather be in error along with them, than find truth
with you!”[160] The danger lay not so much in the error of Aristotle’s theory
of nature, or of his metaphysical theories, as in his authority; “many of the
Peripatetics,” Bruno says in the Cena, “grow angry, and flush and quarrel
about Aristotle, yet do not understand even the meanings of the titles of his
books.”[161] It was the influence of this authority that Bruno, in the interests
of true philosophy and science, set to work to undermine. The charge which
he brought against Aristotle was the same as that which Bacon afterwards
brought—that he attempted to explain nature by logical categories. “It is not
strange that from impossible, logical, and imaginary distinctions quite
discordant with the truth of things, he infers an infinite number of other
untruths” (inconvenientia).[162] “Matter is formless only to logical
abstraction, as with Aristotle, who is constantly dividing by reason what is
indivisible according to nature and truth:”[163] “a logical intention (or
concept) is made into a principle (or element) of nature.”[164] However
unfair and indeed absurd the charge must appear when Aristotle is
considered in his actual place within the development of philosophy and
science, and however far Bruno or Bacon or any of the nature-philosophers
of the Renaissance was from avoiding the use in explanation of similar
purely logical or metaphysical conceptions, it was still a great and
necessary step to call attention to the need of observation and experiment
upon nature, and to the value of mathematics as a method of calculating and
correlating the phenomena observed. This was a second
Aristotle’s
objection to Aristotle, that he despised mathematics, rejection of
“being too much of a logician (and stronger in criticism mathematical
than in argument),” yet, Bruno adds, “when he sought to method.
explain any of the more profound facts of nature, he was
often driven by necessity to the repudiated mathematics.” Many of Bruno’s
own mathematical applications savour rather of Neopythagorean mysticism
than of the spirit of modern science, and his geometry was far from
Euclidean, but he at least made a serious attempt to account for the
building-up of bodies and of the universe on mathematical principles. A

third objection, which again we find in Bacon, is as to Aristotle’s treatment
of his predecessors. His depreciation of them is
condemned in the Causa:—“Of all philosophers I do not Histhe treatment of
earlier
know one who founds more upon imagination, or is further Greeks.
removed from nature than he: and if sometimes what he
says is excellent, we know that it does not spring from his own principles,
but is always a proposition taken from other philosophers.”[165] In another
passage he is described as a “dry sophist, aiming with malicious
explanations and frivolous arguments to pervert the opinions of the
ancients, and to oppose the truth, not so much perhaps through imbecility of
intelligence as through the influence of envy and ambition.”[166] So Bacon
speaks of him as imposing “innumerable fictions upon the nature of things
at his own will: being everywhere more anxious as to how one should
extricate oneself by an answer, and how some positive reply in words
should be made, than as to the internal truth of things.”[167] In particular it
was argued that Aristotle confused the various meanings of the same name
with one another:—“He takes the word vacuum in a sense in which no one
has ever understood it, building castles in the air, and then pulling down his
‘vacuum,’ but not that of any other who has spoken of a vacuum or made
use of the name. So he acts in all other cases,—those for example of
‘motion,’ ‘infinite,’ ‘matter,’ ‘form,’ ‘demonstration,’ ‘being,’ always
building on the faith of his own definition, which gives the name a new
sense.”[168]
The close study of Aristotle himself, which was one of the
The Pre-
greatest results of the Humanist movement, had the effect Aristotelians.
of bringing into greater prominence the earlier Greek
philosophers, whose doctrines Aristotle states and criticises in many of his
works—notably the Physics and Metaphysics. The rediscovery of antiquity
included that of ancient philosophy; and Bruno’s dissatisfaction with
Aristotle led him into greater sympathy with the nature-philosophers whom
Aristotle decried. Towards these earlier Greeks, as towards other
philosophers, his attitude is wholly that of an Eclectic: he does not attempt
to appreciate their relative value, nor to discover any evolution of thought
through the successive systems. From each he takes that which agrees or
appears to agree with his own philosophy, and treats it as an anticipation of,
or as an authority for, the latter. The “universal intelligence,” for example,
as the universal efficient cause in nature, is a doctrine ascribed in the Causa

indiscriminately to the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, the Magi, Orpheus,
Empedocles, and Plotinus.[169] The belief in an infinite ether (Heraclitus’
Fire) surrounding the earth, and containing innumerable worlds within it, in
the Cena is attributed, equally without discrimination, to Heraclitus,
Democritus, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Melissus.[170]
Xenophanes represented for Bruno the static aspect of Pantheism—the
Absolute One as in itself, apart from all reference to the finite;[171]
Heraclitus its dynamic aspect—the Absolute as unfolding, revealing itself,
“appearing” in and through the finite.[172] Anaxagoras expressed the
relation between the finite individual and the One,—“All things are in all
things,” for “omnipotent, all-producing divinity pervades the whole,
therefore nothing is so small but that divinity lies concealed in it.”[173]
“Everything is in everything, because spirit or soul is in all things, and
therefore out of anything may be produced anything else.”[174] To
Anaxagoras, as to Bruno, nature was divine.[175] No special distinction was
made by Bruno between the teaching of Anaxagoras and that of
Empedocles: in one passage he attributes to the former the theory of
effluxes and influxes of atoms through the pores of bodies, which really
belongs to the latter,[176] and in another suggests that Empedocles only put
in a more “abstract” way what Anaxagoras had shown “concretely,” that all
things are in all.[177]
With Leucippus and Democritus Bruno might have been
Democritus
expected to claim affinity, through their common atomism
and naturalism: with two cardinal features of the traditional Epicureanism
he was however in entire disagreement. The one was its admission of the
void or vacuum: it explained the constitution of diverse bodies out of atoms
which were all of the same spherical form, by the different positions and
order in which the void and solid parts respectively were arranged, whereas
Bruno could not imagine the corporeal atoms holding together without a
material substance, extending continuously throughout the universe.[178]
The other point of contrast was its denial that anything but corporeal matter
exists, with the corollary that forms are merely accidental dispositions of
matter: Bruno confesses to have been at one time of the same opinion, but
he had been unable wholly to reduce forms to matter, and therefore was
compelled to admit two kinds of substance, forms or ideas, and matter or
body, although these again were modes of a still higher unity, the One.[179]
“The deep thought of the learned Lucretius”[180] early fascinated Bruno, and

Lucretius gave the trend not only to much of his
Lucretius
philosophy but also to the style of his writing. The Latin
poems were suggested by Lucretius’ De rerum natura, to which they are far
inferior, certainly, in literary charm; the philosophical system of the later
writer however is not only bolder and grander in itself, but far more
thoroughly worked out into the detail of exposition and of criticism. In the
Italian dialogues also Lucretius is constantly quoted,—frequently from
memory, as one may judge from the errors made.
But in the first reaction against the now barren Peripatetic
Neoplatonism
philosophy, the school to which Bruno turned, with so
many of his fellow-countrymen, was that which nominally derived from
Aristotle’s immediate predecessor. The revival of Platonism in its secondary
form of Neoplatonism was one of the most marked traits of the time. In
connection with the attempt to unite the Greek and Latin Churches in 1438,
a Greek scholar came from Constantinople,—one Georgius Gemistus
(Gemistus Plethon),—to the court at Florence, and there opened the minds
of the Italians to the beauty of the Platonic philosophy. Its mystical world of
ideas charmed all who were embued with the new spirit—romantic,
adventurous, hopeful, self-confident. The Ideas, it is true, were materialised
and personified in the transition through Neoplatonism, and it was as spirits
of the stars and worlds, demons of the earth and sea, the living souls of
plants and stones, that they appealed to minds fed on the grosser fare of
mediæval superstition. Plethon’s lectures, uncritical as they were, ensured
the spread of Platonism in Italy. Bessarion of Trebizond, Marsilio Ficino,
who became head of the Platonist Academy at Florence, and Pico of
Mirandula followed in his steps. Both Ficino and Pico are mentioned by
Bruno, and his knowledge of Plato, as of Plotinus, Porphyry, and other
Neoplatonists, was derived, almost certainly, from Ficino’s translations. The
teaching of Plato was interpreted in the light of, and confused by admixture
with, the mystical ideas of Philo and Plotinus, of Porphyry and Iamblichus,
of the Jewish Cabala, and the mythical sayings of Egyptian, Chaldean,
Indian, and Persian sages. The new world was struggling for light, and it
rushed towards every gleam of brightness, however feeble. Thus in the
address to the senate at Wittenberg before leaving the university, Bruno
named the foremost of those whom he regarded as Builders of the Temple
of Wisdom: the list begins with the Chaldeans among the Egyptians and
Assyrians; there follow Zoroaster and the Magi among the Persians, the

Gymnosophists of India, Orpheus and Atlas among Thracians and Libyans,
Thales and other wise men among the Greeks,—and so down to Paracelsus
in Bruno’s own century. The fantastic grouping is characteristic of the
uncritical syncretism of this last phase of Neoplatonism: Plethon had
conjoined the dogmas of Plato with those of Zoroaster, and had confirmed
both by illustrations from Greek mythology. Among the most widely read
works were those of Iamblichus the Platonist, who died early in the fourth
century,—the Life of Pythagoras, and especially the Mysteries of the
Egyptians.[181] Another work, in many books, which has not come down to
us, but which penetrated into the literature of the middle ages, was on the
Perfect Theology of the Chaldaeans. To Iamblichus, as to Plotinus, the Ideal
world was a hierarchy of Gods, from the ineffable, unsearchable One,
down, tier upon tier, through successive emanations, to the Gods that are
immanent in the world we know and the things of the world. In the scheme
not only do the Ideas of Plato, the Numbers of Pythagoras, the Forms of
Aristotle, find a place, but also all the Gods of the Greek mythology, of the
Egyptian religion, of the Babylonian and Hebrew esoteric cults. The same
character is to be found in the writings of the so-called Hermes or
Mercurius Trismegistus, to whom Bruno constantly appeals.[182] It was
partly for their cosmology, more in accord with modern thought than that of
the Peripatetics and the Church, that they were read; but still more for the
support their belief in demonic spirits, governing the movements of the
worlds and of all individual things, gave to magical and theurgical
practices, which through the slackening of the rule of the Church were now
universal. “All stars are called fires by the Chaldaeans,” writes Bruno,
“animals of fire, ministers of fire, innumerable gods, divine oracles.”[183]
“The Chaldaeans and the wise Rabbis endowed the stars with intelligence
and feeling.”[184] “There are some who are by no means thought worthy of
a hearing among philosophers,—the Chaldaeans and Hebrew sages, who
attribute body to the omnipotent God, calling him ‘a consuming fire’”:
below Him were innumerable Gods, flames of fire, and spirits of air, which
were subtle, active, mobile bodies: souls too were spirits—that is, subtle
bodies; and Bruno adds, “We do not pursue this mode of philosophising, but
are far from despising it, nor have ever thought that a wise man should
think it contemptible.”[185] The theology or theosophy of
Egyptian
the Egyptians is praised in the Spaccio,[186]—“The magical theosophy.
and divine cult of the Egyptians, who saw divinity in all

things, and in all actions (each manifesting divinity in its own special way);
and knew by means of its forms in the bosom of nature how to secure the
benefits they derived from it—as out of the sea and rivers it gives fish, out
of the deserts wild beasts, and out of mines metals, out of trees fruits, and
out of certain parts of nature, certain animals, certain brutes, certain plants,
are gifted certain fates, virtues, fortunes, or impressions. Divinity in the sea
was called Neptune, in the sun Apollo, in the earth Ceres, in the deserts
Diana, and diversely in each of the other species of things: as divine ideas,
they were diverse deities in Nature, and all were referred to one deity of
deities, one source of Ideas above Nature.” The passage shows clearly the
connection between the revived enthusiasm for the old pagan cults and the
new but dark beginnings of independent study of nature, in Magic,
Divination, Alchemy, and Astrology: equally close was the connection of
both with the revival of Pantheism, the conception of nature as a single
whole throbbing with one life, springing from one single source. So of the
Hebrew Cabala, Bruno writes, “its wisdom (whatever it be
in its kind) derives from the Egyptians, among whom Hebrew Cabala.
Moses was brought up.” “In the first place it attributes to the first principle
a name ineffable, from which proceed, in the second place, four names,
afterwards resolved into twelve, these into seventy-two, these into one
hundred and forty-four, etc., etc. By each name they name a god, an angel,
an intelligence, a power that presides over a species of things,—so the
whole of divinity is reduced back to one source, as all light is brought back
to the first, self-shining light; and the images in the diverse, innumerable
mirrors,—particular existences,—are referred to one formal,[187] ideal
source.”[188]
As might be expected, Plato himself was best known to the school through
one of the least characteristic of his works, the Timaeus, with its fantastic
cosmology and demonology, alongside of which was placed the work of
(the Pseudo-) Timaeus of Locris, a later writing, based upon that of Plato,
although professing to belong to an earlier date: next to these in importance
came the Republic, with the theory of Ideas. It was from the Chaldaeans,
Egyptians, and Pythagoreans that Plato was supposed to have derived his
cosmology. It is, however, with the system of Plotinus that Bruno’s earlier
theory has the closest affinity: he passed far beyond that system, as the
following chapters may show, but many of the ideas that had come down
from the master remained throughout part of the basis of Bruno’s thought:

such are, for example, the idea of the Universal Intelligence,—distinct from
the One, the Highest and Unknowable Being, or God,—as the soul of the
world and the source of the forms of material things;[189] the rationes or
ideas which are contained in it mould and form all things from the seed
onwards: the seed is a miniature world containing implicitly, i.e. in its ratio,
form or soul, the perfect thing.[190] The conception again of the lower,
sensible world, as an imitation of the higher, the intelligible, is derived from
Plotinus, as is that of the seven grades or steps of emanation from the First
Principle to the material world, which correspond to the seven grades by
which the human mind rises from the knowledge of sensible things to that
of the Highest, the Good.[191] The order of knowledge corresponds step for
step with the order of emanation—of creation. Most significant of all for the
development of Bruno’s philosophy was Plotinus’ conception of an
“intelligible matter,” which is common to all the different beings and
species, in the intelligible world, just as brute matter is that which is
common to all kinds of corporeal objects.[192] Again from Plotinus derives
the distinction that the matter underlying the intelligible world is all things
and all together: having in it (implicitly) all forms, there is nothing into
which it may change: whereas the matter of the sensible world becomes all
by change in its parts, becomes at successive moments this and that, is
therefore at all times in diversity, change, movement. Matter of either kind
is never without form, but all forms are in them in different ways—in the
one in the instant of eternity, in the other in the instants of time; in the one
all at once, in the other successively, in the one complicitly, in the other
explicitly.[193] The same idea is attributed in the De Immenso (Book V.) to
the Platonists,—“that God has imbued celestial matter with all forms at
once, but gives them to elemental matter in single moments, just as he has
poured into the nature of the Gods all ideas once for all, but instils them
into animal nature day by day. And as in the order of minds there is an
ultimate principle which is incorruptible, so in the order of bodies. For the
order of bodies follows that of intelligences as a footmark follows the foot,
as a shadow follows the body; hence whatever order is proved to hold of
minds, the same will be found to hold of “bodies.”[194] It only remained to
identify the two kinds of matter, the divine and the “elemental,” the spiritual
and the corporeal, to obtain the pure Pantheistic naturalism of the middle
period of Bruno’s philosophy: at that stage he was no longer in sympathy
with the Neoplatonist psychology, and denied the doctrine of a separate

intelligence or understanding in man, an intelligence, that is, of different
origin from sense, and therefore of different kind; he rejected also their
view that the imagination which is the source of instinct in animals, differs
from human imagination, and their assertion of a difference in kind between
reason and intellect in man. For Bruno, as the order of nature was
throughout the same in kind, constituted of similar elements, so the order of
thought or knowledge was one in kind, from its lowest phase in sense, to its
highest in the divine ecstasy. In the Heroici Furori (as again in the
posthumous De Vinculis in genere) the Platonic doctrine of the ascent to the
ecstatic vision and love of divine beauty, from sense-perception and the
material feeling for sensible beauty, is the essential topic throughout: and in
both Bruno is largely indebted for his symbolism to the Neoplatonist
mystics.
The renewed passion for physical science brought another school of
philosophy into prominence—the Arabian.[195] The chief commentaries of
this school on Aristotle, as well as many of their original writings, were
translated and published before the middle of the sixteenth century. Their
interest being directed rather towards the physical and metaphysical
writings of the master, than towards the logical, they helped to satisfy and
to foster the growing spirit of inquiry, and at the same time to spread abroad
a more exact knowledge of the real Aristotle than was to be derived from
the Christian commentators, whose philosophy was much less in sympathy
with Aristotle’s than was imagined. The general trend of the Arabian school
in metaphysics was towards a modified Aristotelianism, leavened by the
Neoplatonist conception of the essential unity of all being and all thought,
particular things and particular ideas being a free outflow from the One,
into which they of necessity return again without affecting its fundamental
nature. Bruno was familiar with Avicenna,[196] Avempace,[197] Avicebron,
[198] Algazel,[199] and above all Averroes. Avicebron or Avencebrol was the
author of the famous Fons Vitae, “the Source of Life,” which gained a quite
undeserved notoriety for its supposed materialism. Bruno did not know it at
first hand, but through quotations in the translated Arabian writings,[200] and
criticisms in the Scholastics. Accordingly his idea of it is by no means
accurate.[201] He knew that Avicebron had spoken of matter as divine, that
he had reduced even the “substantial forms” of Aristotle to transitory phases
of matter—“the stable, the eternal, progenetrix, mother of all things,”[202]
and had shown the logical necessity of assuming a matter, or ground, out of

which corporeal nature on the one hand, incorporeal or spiritual on the
other, are differentiated.[203] It is clear that this underlying matter was not
material in the ordinary sense, but a unity which in itself was neither
corporeal nor spiritual, yet in its different aspects was both at once. That is a
conception which formed one of the main theses in Bruno’s philosophy.
Directly or indirectly, he drew from the Fons Vitae the thought of a
common something which runs through all differences, which is their basis,
and gives them reality, which stands to them in the relation of Aristotle’s
matter to forms: under the differences of bodily objects there lies one
common matter, under the differences of spiritual beings another, and under
the differences of these two secondary “matters” lies a primary matter in
which both are one. So too the progress of thought is from the most
complex, or composite, material bodies,—through the less complex, the
spiritual,—to the highest and simplest, the One.[204] Of Algazel’s Makacid
—a resumé of the chief philosophical systems, which were criticised in a
second part of the work—a translation was published in 1506. Although an
orthodox theologian, he taught Bruno that the Sacred Books had as their
end not so much truth or knowledge about reality “as goodness of custom,
the advantage of the civil body, harmonious living together of peoples, and
practice for the benefit of human intercourse, maintenance of peace,
increase of republics”;[205] in other words, that the Bible claimed no
authority in regard to matters of historical fact or of natural science, but
contained a revelation of moral or practical rather than of speculative or
theoretical truth.[206] For Averroes, Bruno has the highest
respect:[207] he constantly speaks of him as “the most Averroes:—Ibn
Roschd (1126–
subtle and weighty of the Peripatetics”; “Averroes, though 1198).
an Arab and ignorant of Greek (!), is more at home in the
Peripatetic doctrine than any Greek I have read: and he would have
understood it better, had he not been so devoted to his deity Aristotle.”[208]
This blind faith in Aristotle was the weak spot in Averroes’ armour, and the
cause of many of his subtleties. “He could not believe that Aristotle, whose
knowledge was co-extensive with creation, could have erred; rather than
deny Aristotle, he refused to believe his own senses.”[209] In philosophical
theory there were at least two points of contact between Bruno and the great
Arabian—one was the doctrine that forms, i.e. individual particular objects,
are sent out from and therefore originally contained in matter, or, in modern
phrase, that the evolution of natural objects is from within outwards, not

imposed upon nature by an alien and separate creator:[210] the other was the
theory of a universal intelligence pervading and illuminating all human
minds, yet remaining one and the same in all, itself an emanation from the
Divine, and the lowest in the order of intelligences.[211] Bruno did not,
however, speak of it as separate from the finite minds, but as immanent in
them: nor did he regard it as the only immortal element in man.
Of the Scholastics proper, from whom much at least of
Albertus
Bruno’s terminology is derived, two seem to have Magnus.
influenced him most strongly:—Albert the Great, whose
interest in natural science entitled him to a place in the temple of wisdom:
“He had no equal in his time, and was far superior to Aristotle, whose
school, in which he ranked according to the conditions of his age, was
unworthy of him”;[212] and Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, “honour
and glory of all and every race of theologians and of Peripatetic
philosophers.”[213] Generally speaking, however, the Scholastic is to Bruno
the pedant, the dabbler in words, as contrasted with the student of nature or
of reality.[214] Under this condemnation fell two of the greatest innovators
upon the Aristotelian philosophy of his own time,—Ramus, and Patrizzi.
The great logician was merely “a French arch-pedant, who has written The
School upon the Liberal Arts, and the Animadversions against Aristotle. We
may admit that he understood Aristotle, but he understood him badly; and
had he understood him well, he would perhaps have been minded to make
honourable war upon him, as the judicious Telesio has done.”[215] The
fashionable philosopher and Platonist is “un altro sterco di pedanti, an
Italian who has soiled so many quires with his Discussiones Peripateticae;
we cannot say he understood Aristotle, either well or ill, but he has read and
re-read, stitched and unstitched, and compared with a thousand other Greek
authors, friendly and unfriendly to Aristotle, and in the end has undergone
great labour, not only without any profit, but also with very great disprofit,
so that he who would see into what presumptuous folly and vanity the
pedantic habit may plunge a man, let him look at that book, before the
memory of it is lost.” Tocco has laid his finger upon the reason for Bruno’s
dislike of these moderns, and it explains his objection to the Scholastics
generally:—it was that they attempted to remodel and reform the Logic and
Rhetoric of Aristotle, the very parts of his work which Bruno regarded as
the most perfect,—and neglected the physical works, the theory of which

had so powerful an authority to back it, and therefore all the more required
the energies of the stronger minds of the time to be directed upon it.[216]
One of the mediæval writers Bruno associated so closely
Lully, 1235–
with himself, that his indebtedness might easily be 1305.
exaggerated: this was Raymond Lully, whose grim figure
stands out from the shadowy thirteenth century,—the author of the
celebrated Art of Reasoning.[217] The object of the Art was to tabulate the
primary forms or elements of thought, and their modes of combination,
from which data, it was believed, any process of reasoning, however
complex, might be carried out, without greater expenditure of energy than
in performing an arithmetical operation with any of the first nine numbers.
There was no question of a possible divorce between thought and reality.
The result of any such process of rational calculus properly carried out was
truth. Bruno thought with Lully that the ultimate ideas within reach of
human thought were at the same time substantial elements in reality and
that the completest knowledge of reality—short of the Absolute—was
within the power of human reason to achieve. Lully included in this rational
sphere the dogmas of Christian theology: faith was for the many, who must
be driven to believe; reason for the few, the wise. Lully’s method attracted,
and his teaching influenced nearly all the greater minds of the later middle
ages, and of the Renaissance. They became a source of as bitter contention
as the doctrines of Aristotle himself. Bruno speaks of Lully as “almost
divine”; Agrippa, after being an ardent follower, came to see the vanity of
the system, and Bacon called it a method of imposture. At different times
Bruno expounded, criticised, and expanded the Art. He claims[218] to have
“embellished the method of him whom the best leaders among philosophers
admire, follow, imitate.” Duns Scotus (“Scotigena”), Nicholas of Cusa,
Paracelsus, Agrippa, are named, unjustly, as having drawn their chief
doctrines from this source: Lefevre and Bouillé[219] cited among his most
recent followers. The art was taught “by some divine genius to a rude
uncultured hermit, and although it seems to issue from one too dense and
stupid, yet it excels the teaching of any famous Attic orator in this kind, as a
crop of wheat excels one of barley. It seemed to us unfitting that this work,
struggling upwards to the light, against the envy of oppressing darkness,
should be suffered to perish and be lost.”[220] Yet Bruno by no means
thought Lully’s exposition perfect. Of his own Lullian work, the De
Compendiosa Architectura,[221] he says that it “suffices for the

understanding, estimating, and prosecuting of the art of Lully, by those who
are skilled in the vulgar philosophy. For in it is expressed in one whole, all
that is in Lully’s many ‘Arts,’ in which he always seems to be saying the
same thing; you have there all that is in the Ars Brevis, the Ars Magna, and
other books bearing the name of Arbor Scientiae, Inventionis, Artes
demonstrativae, mixtionis principiorum, Auditus cabalistici, or any other of
that kind, in which the poor fellow strove always to express the same
thing.”
It was the dream of universal knowledge that attracted Bruno and others to
Lullism, just as the dream of universal power over nature attracted the
greater minds of the Renaissance to the pseudo-science of Alchemy. The
same idea is at the root of both. All things are in all things, i.e. the one
fundamental nature is in each and every individual thing, therefore out of
any one may be produced any other. So in the idea of any one thing, the
knowledge of all and any others is necessarily contained, requiring only a
proper method for its extraction, as out of the seed may be brought the great
tree. Therefore, to Bruno, the hermit Lully seemed “omniscient and almost
divine,” his method an inspiration from above.[222] There is little, however,
to connect Bruno with the substantive teaching of Lully, apart from the
method. He explicitly rejects, for example, the main contention of Lully,
that the Christian dogmas are capable of demonstration by reason.—“Those
relations (i.e. between God and man), which have been revealed to the
worshippers of Christ alone, are contrary to all reasoning, philosophy, other
faiths and superstitions, and allow of no demonstration but of faith only, in
spite of what Lully in his madness (delirando) attempted to do, in face of
the opinion of the great theologians.”[223]
Foremost of all, however, of the influences which directed
Nicolaus
Bruno’s thought was that of the Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa Cusanus.
(Nicholas Chrypffs). A “pre-reformation reformer,” he
stands both in theology and philosophy between the old and the new eras,
summing up in his own theory the purest theology and the most refined
philosophy of the Middle Ages, yet inevitably pointing forwards to a
scientific and religious reform which should transcend both. “Where,” cried
Bruno in his oration at Wittenberg, “will you find his equal? and the greater
he is the fewer are they to whom he is accessible. Had not the robe of the
priest infected his genius it would have been not merely equal to but far

superior to that of Pythagoras.”[224] “He knew and discerned much, and is
truly one of the most gifted natures that have ever breathed the air of
heaven; but as to the apprehension of truth, he was like a swimmer in
tempestuous waters, cast now high now low, he did not see the light
continuously, openly, clearly; did not swim as in calm and quiet waters, but
interruptedly, at intervals, for he had not cast off all the false principles
which he had received from the common doctrine—his starting-point.”[225]
A sketch of the philosophy of the Cusan will show in how close a relation
Bruno stands to him, yet how great is the difference in outcome between the
two philosophies. Clemens, whose sympathies are with the orthodox
theologian, does not hesitate to say that this is “the real and direct source
from which Bruno drew with both hands, the philosophy to which he owes
many of the main principles of his nature-philosophy, and which he has to
thank for all the essentials of teaching said to be peculiar to himself”; and
Falckenberg is equally inclined to underrate the originality of the Italian in
preference to the German philosopher. The outset of Cusanus’ philosophy is
from a theory of knowledge which he held from Platonist traditions:—
Knowledge is posterior both in time and in value to Being, or Reality, of
which it is at best a copy or a sign, hence Reality can never be wholly
comprehended by it. Every human assertion is at best a “conjecture,” a
hypothesis or approach to truth, but never the absolute truth itself. Only in
the Divine spirit are thought and reality one; the Divine thought is at the
same time creative, human only reflective, imitative, thus the Ultimate
Being is and must remain incomprehensible for human minds. So Bruno
also taught. The Cusan did not, however, reject on this account all human
knowledge. On the contrary, reason approximates ever more and more
closely to the Divine mind, as a polygon approaches more and more to the
form of a circle when the number of its sides is increased; as it never
becomes an actual circle, so the Divine reason may be known ever more
and more truly through human reason, but never quite truly. It is the
knowledge of this our essential ignorance of the Divine that brings us
nearest to it.[226] Thus although from one point of view all that is best in
human experience may be attributed to the Divine nature in a higher form
(positive theology), from another every predicate, even the highest, may be
denied of it (negative theology), or from still a third standpoint (mystical
theology), contrary predicates equally hold or do not hold of the Divine.
This “coincidence of contraries,” suggested perhaps by the tradition of

Heraclitus and Empedocles, was in the Cusan a principle of knowledge
merely. The Divine was at once the greatest and the least; greatest because
we could not imagine it added to, for it was the all; least because, being
truly existent, we could not imagine anything taken away from it. It is
owing to the limits of human thought, therefore, that God is at once greatest
and least, equal and unequal, many and one; God Himself is free from all
contradiction, the apparent contraries of our understanding are in Him one
and the same. So, to our imagination, the infinite circle coincides with the
infinite straight line, and a top spinning with its fastest movement appears
to stand still.
Bruno extols the greatness of this discovery—“Considering it physically,
mathematically, morally, one sees that the philosopher who saw into the
coincidence of contraries made a discovery of the highest importance, and
that the magician who knows to seek it where it is is no feeble
practician.”[227] Yet, although he made use of the same geometrical
illustrations, and believed himself to be substantially following Cusanus, his
theory was widely different. The coincidence springs in Bruno, not from the
limitations of the human mind, but from the fulness of the Divine nature. It
is not in God as the transcendent unknowable Being that the coincidence
inheres, but in the infinite universe as one with God, which is in itself at
once the greatest and the least, the maximum and the minimum. Since
nature is permeated by God, in everything, in the least of things, is God the
greatest; the least is the greatest, has in it the nature of the whole, and so,
too, the greatest is the least. In Bruno it is a pantheistic, in the Cusan a
theistic, doctrine. The same conception occurs again in its different
meanings, when both compare God to an infinite circle in which centre and
circumference are one; in Cusanus it is to our knowledge that He so
appears, in Bruno He really is infinite, and is with His whole nature at any
point or centre, as well as in the whole, the circumference.
With the Cusan the threefold nature of the Highest Being is
The Trinity.
deduced as a necessity of Reason: it is (1) unity eternal; (2)
sameness or equality eternal; and (3) the union of unity and equality. As
there cannot be three eternal and highest beings, these three are necessarily
one—the Unity (the Father) produces or begets from itself the same (the
Son), and out of both springs their union (the Holy Ghost), yet each of these
in the One is one and the same.[228] In the universe, the created world, there

is also a Trinity, since it is a copy or reflection of the Divine. (1) Possibility
or Matter, the unlimited, indeterminate, but capable of being limited and
determined, corresponds to the unity of the eternal; (2) Actuality, or Form,
the limiting or determining something, that which limits, corresponds to the
sameness or equality of the Eternal; and (3) the unifying movement by
which the possible receives actuality, matter receives form, implying a spirit
of union, of Love, corresponds to the Absolute Union, the Holy Ghost.[229]
At a later stage of his philosophy, however, the Cusan gave a second
deduction of the Trinity.[230] God is both Absolute Possibility, Absolute
Power or Potency (the Creative Word, the Son), and the union of both in
Absolute Reality; yet these are merely different aspects or points of view of
the Eternal Being. Again, God is the identity of knowing, or intellect, the
knowable or intelligible (the Word), and love, as the inter-relation of each
with each, the striving of the knowing after the knowable, its highest good.
[231] Bruno also adopts the Trinity of Possibility or Matter, Potency or Form,
and Reality, but it is applied at once to God and to Nature as two sides of
the same thing. As the Divine potency is infinite, so is nature, its
expression, infinite; matter and form do not in their origin stand opposed to
one another, as if separated from one another, any more than power and
possibility are separate in God; all that can be is realised; matter has in itself
all possible forms, and produces these out of itself in the successive
moments of time; the universe is eternal, therefore, in order that the infinite
power may in it be realised. In all these respects Bruno transforms the
orthodox Cusanus’ conception of a created and finite world; although
nowhere perhaps has the idea of a creation been more skilfully woven into a
profound philosophical system than in the Cardinal’s quaint dialogues. The
Cusan does not attempt the impossible, to account for the fact of creation
—“God comprehends (or contains) all things, for all things are in Him, and
He unfolds all things out of Himself, for in all things He lives”; but the
essence and the process of the comprehension and the unfolding are
unknowable by us, just as we can never understand how chance comes to
be united with necessity (creation) in the world. It is to this
incomprehensible partnership that the imperfections of created things are
attributed. In its reality the universe is finite, limited; in its possibility (i.e.
its idea) it is infinite, but only privatively infinite—that is, God could still
call a more perfect universe into existence than it has actually pleased Him
to do. Only He, as the Absolute Greatest, is infinite in the full negative

sense, i.e. that which can neither be nor be thought greater than it is. Here
Bruno’s theory is in complete contrast with that of the Cusan. There are,
however, many consequences that both alike have drawn, as that no two
things in the universe are wholly and in all respects alike (the identity of
indiscernibles); each thing expresses the nature of the whole in a special
way, but all things may be arranged in graduated scales from the lowest to
the highest, or from any one to any other, i.e. there are no absolute
differences, only differences of degree. Nor are there absolute centres in the
universe, or in any of the worlds, nor perfect figures—thus there are no
perfect circles described, e.g. by the planets, in nature. A further corollary
was that the whole is mirrored in each of the parts, as each particular thing
partakes of the soul or creative force of all; each does not, however, mirror
or reflect the Divine nature with the same adequacy as every other; some do
so more perfectly than others, man most perfectly of all.[232] Cusanus did
not definitely accept the suggestion of a soul of the universe, analogous in
its relation to the world to the soul of man in the body; still less did he
identify it with God, as Bruno tended more and more to do. Hence he
escaped the fantastical consequences of the belief in Universal Animism,
which were drawn without reserve by the Renaissance writers—the
consequence, e.g. that if one soul, one nature, pervades all things, and is the
life of all things, then out of each may be produced any other—out of lead,
gold, etc. On the other hand, the four elements at least were different forms
of the same fundamental being, and might be produced each out of the
other; and, in common with Bruno, Cusanus held the pre-Aristotelian belief
in Atomism:—there cannot be division of anything, cube or surface, or line
—ad infinitum; ultimately there must in each kind be a minimum,[233] an
atom, beyond which we cannot in fact go, although to thought it may be
still further divisible; so there is in every figure, in every kind of thing, a
definite number of atoms. It was partly this thought, partly also the mystical
value from time immemorial given to the different numbers and geometrical
figures, that led both Cusanus and Bruno to look to mathematics and
geometry for the true method or organon of natural science. “Number is the
natural and fruitful principle of the understanding’s activity; irrational
beings do not number. But number is nothing but the unfolding of the
understanding. Without it the understanding would have none of the results
to which it attains.... Nothing can exist before number, for all that goes
beyond the simplest unity is in its fashion a composite, and, therefore,

without number is unthinkable, for multitude, difference, and relation of
parts arise from number.”[234] In both again human knowledge proceeds
inversely as creation (or emanation) from number, the many, back through
successive grades of simplicity to the one highest, most simple, God, in
whom are all things complicitly (without number). “What appears to us as
after another, successive, is by no means after in Thy Thought, which is
eternity itself. The single thought, which is Thy word, embraces (complicat)
all and each in itself, Thy single word cannot be manifold, opposite,
changeable.... In the eternity in which Thou thinkest, coincides all the after
another of time, with the now of eternity. There is, therefore, no past nor
future where future and past coincide with the present.”[235] The merely
logical understanding, that which is based upon sense and requires sense-
images for its material, is inadequate to this highest knowledge, gives
approximation merely, and we are thrown back upon mystical intuition on
the one hand, reasoned faith on the other, for our insight into the true nature
of the One and the All.[236]
Other influences which gave direction to Bruno’s genius
Agrippa of
belong rather to physical science and pseudo-science than Nettesheim.
to philosophical theory. Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim
(1487–1535), the scholarly adventurer, the Faust who acquired all the
knowledge and most of the arts of his time, wrote a compendium and
justification (from Neoplatonist philosophy) of magical practices,[237] and at
the close of his life the great declamation “on the uncertainty and vanity of
all sciences and arts,”[238]—a plea for the simple life and the simple gospel.
The De occulta philosophia is the chief source from which Bruno drew the
fantastical lore of the De Monade.[239] The satires upon Asinity, as the chief
human virtue, in the Spaccio and the Cabala, directed as they are against
blind faith without works or wisdom, found their occasion at least in
Agrippa’s praise of the Ass (in the De Vanitate) as the mouthpiece of God in
the story of Balaam, and the bearer of Christ in the New Testament history.
Paracelsus[240] proposed a reform of medicine on
Paracelsus.
Neoplatonist principles, attacking the Galenian doctrine of
the Four Humours, which was based on the four elements of the
Aristotelians (the warm and the cold, the moist and the dry). His own more
“natural” theory made salt, sulphur, and mercury the (chemical) elements of
all things—those which in living organisms were vivified and directed by

an inner spirit (e.g. the Archaeus in man), a direct emanation from the soul
of the universe. Through their common constitution, and the spirit that
infused all things alike, there was a subtle, mysterious sympathy between
the microcosm and the macrocosm, the individual body and the universe,
and it was by the study of the relations (magical, astrological, and the rest)
between the stars and the things of earth, between the different metals and
the body of man, that Paracelsus proposed to reform the art of medicine.
Bruno, in the Causa,[241] praises Paracelsus for his “philosophical”
treatment of medicine, that he did not rest content with the three chemical
principles alone for explanation of the different vital phenomena, but sought
the true principle of life everywhere in a spirit or soul. He is one of the
builders of the temple of wisdom,—ad miraculum medicus.[242] In his
magical writings and in the De Monade, Bruno is largely indebted for
materials to Paracelsus. The same general tendency, the
Cardanus.
desire for a return to nature and to sense-observation as
opposed to the authority of Aristotle, and to the cult of logical or
grammatical subtleties, is found also in Cardan.[243] In his work there is the
same mixture of mathematics and physical science with theology, magic,
and Neoplatonism, and to him Bruno owes many of his superstitions. The
more profound Telesio also (who before Bruno “made
Telesio.
honourable war upon Aristotle”)[244] attempted,
independently of all authority, from sense-knowledge and induction alone,
to penetrate the mysteries of nature.
Only one name remains with which that of Bruno is
Copernicus.
indelibly associated—that of Copernicus, whose De
orbium coelestium Revolutionibus was published in 1543. It was his theory
of the solar system, coinciding as it seemed with that of the most ancient
philosophers, that gave the decisive trend to Bruno’s thought, holding him
fast to the one all-important fact that the earth is not the centre of the
universe but one of its humblest members. Without the solid arguments of
Copernicus, Bruno’s superb conception of the cosmic system would have
remained a dream, an intuition of genius, rather than a well-grounded
forecast of modern scientific discovery. “There is more understanding,” said
Bruno, “in two of his chapters than in the whole philosophy of nature of
Aristotle and all the Peripatetics.[245] Grave, thoughtful, careful, and mature
in mind, not inferior to any of the astronomers that went before him—in
natural judgment far superior to Ptolemy, Hipparch, Eudoxus, and all the

others that have walked in their footsteps—a height he attained by freeing
himself from the prejudices, not to say blindness, of the vulgar philosophy.
Yet he did not get beyond it; being more a student of mathematics than of
nature, he was unable wholly to uproot all unfitting, vain principles, to
solve all contrary difficulties, liberate both himself and others from so many
vain inquiries, and fix their contemplation on things abiding and sure. With
all that, who can sufficiently appraise the greatness of this German, who
paid little heed to the foolish multitude, and stood solid against the torrent
of opposing belief. Although almost destitute of living reasons for weapons,
he took up those cast-off and rusty fragments that he could get to his hand
from antiquity; repolished them, brought the pieces together, mended them,
so that through his arguments—mathematical rather than physical though
they were—he made a cause that had been ridiculed, despised, neglected, to
be honoured and prized, to seem more probable than its contrary, and
certainly more suitable and expeditious for calculation.”[246] Copernicus
had put forward the theory as a hypothesis merely, and had shown how
much more simply the different positions of the sun and planets as seen
from the earth could be explained by it, and how much more accurately
they could be calculated. In the Epistle prefixed to his work (said by Bruno
not to be by Copernicus himself), the reader was warned of the folly of
taking this hypothesis as true. To Bruno the contrary of the hypothesis was
absurd. Bruno did not appreciate the mathematical proofs of Copernicus,
and constantly spoke of him as too much of a mathematician, too little of a
physicist: his own mathematical demonstrations were, however, much less
successful than those of his predecessor.[247]

CHAPTER II
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE[248]

It is the object of this chapter to give some account of the speculations on
nature and spirit which occupied Bruno during his first year in England, and
which show how hard he was striving to pierce through the shell of
mediæval thought in which his mind was encased. However fiercely he
struggled to gain his freedom, it was impossible that he should do so quite
at once. With all his contemporaries, he was imbued in Aristotle’s ways of
thought, and the problems he set himself to answer were largely determined
for him by Aristotle. The categories with which he wrought,—“principle,”
“cause,” “form,” “matter,” “potency,” “act,” “subject,” were those of the
Stagirite, and were open, therefore, to the same charge of unfruitfulness. On
the other hand, while the outward form of Bruno’s philosophy, and to a
certain extent its matter also, were essentially Aristotelian, the spirit which
infused it all was not so; the emotion and enthusiasm with which he wrote
savoured rather of the fire of Plato than of the logical mind of his successor;
and throughout, the new conception of nature and of mind which belongs to
modern philosophy was struggling to the light.
From his Platonist masters Bruno had learned that the Highest or First
Principle was unknowable to man, being beyond the reach of his senses and
of his understanding alike: a complete systematisation of knowledge was
therefore impossible. A philosophy of nature had to seek only for physical
(i.e. real or “immanent”) causes or principles; these might depend, indeed,
upon the highest and first principle or cause, but the dependence was not so
close that the knowledge of the former gave us knowledge of the latter: no
single system of knowledge could embrace both. Knowing the universe, we
yet knew nothing of the essence or substance of its first cause, any more
than that of the sculptor Apelles could be inferred from the statue he had
made. The things of nature, although effects of the divine operation, became
the remotest accidents, when regarded as means to the knowledge of the
divine supernatural Essence. “We have still less ground for knowing it than
for knowing Apelles from his finished statues, for all of these we may see,

and examine, part by part, but not the great and infinite effect of the divine
potency.”[249] The First Principle is, therefore, the concern of the moralist
and of the theologian, as revealed to them by the gods, or declared to them
through the inspired knowledge of diviner men and of the prophets. On the
other hand, in the universe we have the infinite image of God, and it is,
therefore, possible through it to obtain an approximate knowledge of Him:
“the magnificent stars and shining bodies, which are so many inhabited
worlds, and animate beings or deities, worlds similar to that which contains
ourselves, must depend, since they are composite and capable of
dissolution, upon a principle and cause; and consequently, by their
greatness, their life and work, they show forth and preach the majesty of
this first principle and cause.”[250] Thus the starting-point of Bruno’s mature
philosophy is nature as the vestige or imprint of divinity, and divinity is
considered only “as nature itself or as reflected in nature”: the presence of a
transcendent principle above and beyond nature is, indeed, premised to the
discussion of the Causa, but it is no longer admitted that its study falls
within the philosopher’s scope, nor does it ever hamper or in any way
influence the course of the argument. So far from that, we find, at the
completion of the dialogue, that we have arrived at an immanent principle
or divinity, which renders the transcendent superfluous.
The purpose of the Causa,[251] Bruno’s first purely philosophical work, was
to determine what are the creative and constitutive principles of the natural
world,—its efficient cause, its end, its form, its matter, and its unity; or, in
other words, to lay down the “foundations of knowledge,” to give an
outline-picture of reality the details of which it was left to experience and
observation to fill in. Bruno begins by laying down certain distinctions,
which, however, do not, in the end, prove very binding.
First, a principle (principio) is that which enters, Principle: Cause.
intrinsically, into the constitution of a thing, while a cause concurs from
without in its production; thus, matter and form, which are principles rather
than causes, are the elements of which a thing is composed and into which
it is resolved. A cause, on the other hand, remains outside of the resultant
object—for example, the efficient, creating cause, and the end or final cause
for which the thing is ordained. Principle is the more general term, for “in
Nature, not everything that is principle, is also cause: the point is principle
of the line, not cause; the instant, of the event; the starting-point, of the
movement; the premisses, of the argument.”[252] God is both principle and

cause, but from different points of view: “He is first principle in so far as all
things are posterior to him in nature, duration, or dignity; he is first cause in
so far as all things are distinguished from him as effect from efficient, thing
produced from producer. The points of view are different, for not always is
the prior and more worthy a cause of that which is posterior and less
worthy; and not always is the cause prior and more worthy than that which
is caused.”[253] There are really two marks of a principle given by Bruno,
priority in worth, and internality; but, generally, a principle is that without
which a thing could not come into being, and which if taken away would
take away also the being of the thing. To a cause the latter half of this
description would not apply, as it remains outside of the effect. Thus God as
principle is immanent in all things, and is the higher source from which
they proceed. This twofold interpretation of the relation of God to nature
and to natural things was already inherent in the Neoplatonic doctrine
which formed Bruno’s starting-point, since God as the source of emanation
was outside of the emanations themselves, and was unaffected by them; on
the other hand, the gradations in the different stages of emanation, and the
possibility of rising from the lowest to the highest, to the One above all,
implied the existence of somewhat of the One as a common nature in all.
The two points of view were, however, held apart, and the contradiction
between them was not consciously perceived, so that the coincidence of
nature between God as the source, and matter as the lowest emanation,
never suggested itself; on the contrary, their complete opposition was
maintained until Bruno put forward his theory of the “divinity of matter,”
which forms the real theme of the Causa.
The efficient cause of the natural world is the universal
Efficient cause
intelligence, “the first and principal faculty of the soul of of nature.
the world.” This intellectus universalis is to natural things
as our intellect to the thoughts of our mind, and Bruno identifies it with the
Demiurge of the Platonists, and the “seed-sower” of the Magi, for it
impregnates matter with all “forms”: it is an artefice interno, for it works
from within in giving form and figure to matter, as the seed or root from
within sends forth the stem, the stem the branches, the branches the formed
twigs, and these the buds; “from within leaves, flowers, fruit are formed,
figured, patterned; from within again in due time the sap is recalled from
leaves and fruit to twigs, from twigs to branches, from these to stem, from
stem to root.... But how much greater an artificer is he that works not in any

single part of matter alone, but continually and in all.”[254] The intellectus is
both external and internal to any particular being; i.e. it is not a part of any
particular existence, is not exhausted by it, therefore is so far external to it;
on the other hand, it does not act upon matter from without, but from
within,[255] the efficient cause is at the same time an inward principle.
The formal cause of nature is the ideal reason; before the
intelligence can produce species or particular things, can Formal cause of
nature.
bring them forth from the potentiality of matter into reality,
it must contain them “formally,” i.e. ideally, in itself, as the sculptor cannot
mould different statues without having first thought out their different
forms.[256] This ideal reason is the Idea ante rem of the Scholastics. The
ideas of the intelligence are not, as such, the things of nature, they are the
models by which the intellect guides nature in its production of individual
things. The final cause which the intellect sets before itself
Final cause.
is the perfection of the universe, i.e. that all possible forms
may have actual existence in the different portions of matter; from its joy in
this end proceeds its ceaseless activity in the production of forms out of
matter.[257]
Among constitutive principles or elements of things, the
Form.
intellectus again takes the foremost place as the form; for,
as we have seen, it is both extrinsic and intrinsic to the nature of things, ...
“the soul is in the body as the pilot in the ship; in so far as he is moved
along with it, he is part of the ship, but in so far as he governs and guides it,
he is not a part but a separate agent; so the soul of the universe, in so far as
it animates and gives form to things, is intrinsic formal principle; in so far
as it directs and governs, it is not part, nor principle, but cause.”[258] As
external, the soul of the world is independent of matter, and untouched by
its defects: it is only the perfections of the lower that are present in the
higher being, and that to a higher degree. As internal it constitutes the soul
in all things—down to the very lowest, although in these it is repressed or
latent. This all-presence of soul does not mean, however, that each
particular thing, e.g. a table or garment, is, as such, a living and sensible
being, but only that in everything, however small or insignificant, there is a
portion or share of spirit, animating it, and this, “if it find a properly
disposed subject, may extend itself so as to become plant or animal, and
may receive the limbs of any body whatsoever, such as is commonly said to

be animate.” Even the smallest material body, therefore, has in it the
potentiality of life and mind.
It follows that there are, strictly speaking, only two
Substance.
substances, matter and spirit: all particular things result
from the composition in varying degrees of these two—are therefore mere
“accidents,” and have no abiding reality. Bruno joins issue in this with the
Peripatetics, to whom the “real man,” for example, is a composite of body
and soul, or the true soul is the perfection or actualisation of the living
body, or is a resultant from a certain harmony of form and of limbs.[259]
Death or dissolution would mean to them the loss of their being; whereas
neither “body nor soul need fear death, for both matter and form are
constant abiding principles.”[260] This theory of substance and of
immortality was regarded by Bruno as one of the cardinal points of his
philosophy,[261] and one in which he differed most widely from Aristotle, as
interpreted by him, and from the Aristotelians. Its statement, and the
criticism of the Peripatetics, occur again and again throughout the works,
and he believed the removal from man of the fear of death to be one of the
greatest results of his teaching.—“This spirit, being persistent along with
matter—and these being the one and the other indissoluble, it is impossible
that anything should in any respect see corruption or come to death, in its
substance, although in certain accidents everything changes face, and passes
now into one composition, now into another, through now one disposition,
now another, leaving off or taking up now this now that existence.
Aristotelians, Platonists, and other sophists have not understood what the
substance of things is. In natural things that which they call substance, apart
from matter, is pure accident. When we know what form really is, we know
what is life and what is death; and, the vain and puerile fear of the latter
passing from us, we experience some of that blessedness which our
philosophy brings with it, inasmuch as it lifts the dark veil of foolish
sentiment concerning Orcus and the insatiable Charon, that wrests from us
or empoisons all that is sweetest in our lives.”[262]
There is a certain ambiguity in the description of substance. Whether is the
spiritual unity which is placed over against matter itself substance, or is it
rather the particular souls which are part of it, and which are thus immortal,
changing only the form of composition into which they enter? In this
dialogue it seems Bruno is speaking only of the world-soul,[263] but in later

works, especially in the Spaccio and De Minimo, the substantiality and
immortality of the individual soul are categorically asserted. In the Causa
however, Bruno maintains quite clearly the substantiality of the universal
soul alone, the finite individual being merely one of the modes of its
determination in matter.[264]
Having shown that no part of matter is ever entirely without “form,” Bruno
leaves aside for the present the question whether all form (Spirit) is equally
accompanied by matter. The form or world-soul is not more than one, for all
numerical multiplication depends on matter. It is in itself unchanging; only
the objects vary, the different portions of matter into which it enters: and
although in the object it is the spirit or form which causes the part to differ
from the whole, yet it does not differ in the part or in the whole. There are
differences of aspect only, according as it is regarded as (a) subsisting in
itself, or as (b) the actuality and perfection of some object, or as (c) referred
to different objects with different dispositions.[265] That is, Spirit in itself,—
the universal Spirit,—the Spirit or Soul of a particular animate being, the
Spirits or Souls of a number of different beings (a system of beings), these
are all the same thing looked at from different points of view. It is the same
unique Spirit which determines the life of the human individual, the
development of the human race as a whole, and the persistence of the
world; the soul of Caesar and the spirit of humanity are one with the soul of
the universe. The relation of spirit to matter in Bruno’s philosophy is more
difficult to understand. Spirit is said to be neither external to nor mixed with
matter, nor inherent in it, but “inexistent,” i.e. associated with or present to
it. Moreover it is defined and determined by matter, because having in itself
power to realise particular things of innumerable kinds, it “contracts” or
limits itself to realise a given individual; and on the other side the potency
of matter, which is indeterminate, and capable of any form whatsoever, is
“determined” to one particular kind; so that the one is cause of the
definition and determination of the other. Thus particular bodies are modes
(determinations) of spirit and also of matter. As the universal form, spirit is
all-present throughout the universe, not however materially or in extension,
but spiritually, i.e. intensively. Bruno’s favourite illustration is that of a
voice or utterance—“imagine a voice which is wholly in the whole of a
room, and in every part of it; everywhere it is heard wholly, as these words
which I speak are understood wholly by all, and would be even if there
were a thousand present; and if my voice could reach to all the world, it

would be all in all.”[266] So the soul is individual, not as a point is, but,
analogously to a voice, or utterance, filling the universe. It is clear from
these passages that the finite soul has no more reality in this phase of
Bruno’s pantheism than in Spinoza’s; not only is the world-soul one as
unique, but it is also one as indivisible—there are no parts of it: it is wholly
in each of the parts of the universe—in each of its realisations. The finite
individual, as this particular soul in this particular body, is accordingly a
mere accident, and passes away as all accidents do; its existence is due
chiefly to matter, by the varying “dispositions” of which the universal form
is “determined” to this or that particular form; matter is in general the
source of all particularity, all number and measure. The difficulty
underlying this attribution of diversity to a matter which is supposed to be,
apart from the form, undetermined and undifferentiated, has been referred to
above. It is emphasised in the argument to this part of the Causa given in
the introductory epistle,[267] where matter, although formless in itself, is
spoken of as “consisting in diverse grades of active and passive qualities?”
Bruno seems, however, at this time unconscious of the difficulty. Certainly
from pure matter and pure form, body and spirit, standing over against one
another, no start could be made. Diversity had to come into the world
somehow.
We have not yet solved the problem as to the relation between these two
principles themselves—matter and form. Bruno confesses to have held at
one period the “Epicurean view that matter was the only substance, the
forms being merely accidental dispositions of it; but on further
consideration he was compelled to recognise a formal as well as a material
substance.”[268] In fact, however, both form and matter tend as the
philosophy develops to coincide in a higher unity which is at last the
ultimate reality. The “proof” of “Matter” is from the
analogy between Nature and Art. All who have attempted, The deduction
matter.
of

said Bruno, to distinguish matter from form have made use
of the analogy of the arts (e.g. the Pythagoreans, Platonists, Peripatetics).
Take some art such as that of the wood-worker; in all its forms and all its
operations it has as subject (or material) wood—as the iron-worker has iron;
the tailor, cloth. All these arts produce each in its own material various
pictures, arrangements, figures, none of which is proper or natural to that
material. So Nature, which art resembles, must have for its operations a
certain matter (material); for no agent intending to make something can

work without something of which to make it, or wishing to act can do so
without something on which to act; there is therefore a species of subject or
material, of which and in which nature effectuates its operation, its work,
and which is by it formed in the many forms presented to the eye of
reflection. And as wood by itself has not any artificial form, but may have
any or all through the action of the wood-worker, so the matter of which we
speak, of itself and in its own nature, has not any natural form, but may
have any or all through the agent, the active principle of nature. This natural
matter or material is imperceptible, differing so from the material of art,
because the matter of nature has absolutely no form, whereas the matter of
art is a thing already formed by nature. Art can operate only upon the
surface of things formed by nature, as wood, iron, stone, wool, and similar
things; but nature operates from the centre so to speak, of its subject, or
matter, which in itself is wholly devoid of form. The subjects of the arts are
many—of nature one; for those being diversely formed by nature, are
different and various, while the latter, not being formed at all, is entirely
indifferent,—every difference and variety being due to the form.[269] As it is
absolutely formless, this matter cannot be perceived by the senses, which
are the media of natural forms, but only by the eye of reason. As visible
matter, that of art, remains the same under countless variations of form,—
the form of a tree becoming that of a trunk, of a beam, of a table, a chair, a
stool, a comb, its nature as wood continuing throughout; so in nature that
which was seed becomes herb; the herb, corn in the ear; the corn, bread; the
bread, bile; bile, blood; blood again seed, an embryo, a man, a corpse, earth,
stone, or other things, and so through all natural forms. There must then be
one and the same thing which in itself is not stone nor earth, nor corpse, nor
man, nor embryo, nor blood, nor anything else.[270] So the Pythagorean
Timaeus[271] inferred, from the transmutations of the elements one into
another,—earth into water, the dry into the moist,—a tertium quid, which
was neither moist nor dry, but became subject now of the one, now of the
other nature. Otherwise the earth would have gone to nothing and the water
come from nothing, which is impossible. Thus nothing is ever annihilated
but the accidental, the exterior, material form, both matter and the
substantial form, i.e. spirit, being eternal.
The argument has proved that there is a something, the “I
Natural forms.
know not what” of Locke, which is the substance of all
natural things, “natural forms.” We have now to see in what relation this

substance stands to the forms, the differences, which are on its surface. All
natural forms dissolve in matter, and come again in matter, so that nothing
is really “constant, firm, eternal, or deserving of the name of a principle, but
matter: besides that the forms have no existence without matter, in it they
are generated and decay, from it they issue, into it are received again;
therefore matter, which remains always the same and always fruitful, must
be regarded as the only substantial principle, as that which always is and
always abides; and the forms but as varying dispositions of matter, which
come and go, cease and are renewed; therefore they have no claim to be
principles.”[272]
The matter or material of which Bruno here speaks is what afterwards was
called extension, or the extended substance, and the natural forms are the
various individual shapes or bodies of nature: both from the transformations
of one into the other, and again from the fact that the particular forms come
into being and cease to exist, it was argued that there must be an underlying
something, material indeed, but different from all the things we know or
see, indifferently capable of becoming any one of them, persisting
throughout their becoming, their change, and their ceasing to exist,—i.e. a
permanent reality.
Matter, however, meant not only “subject” or substrate, but
Matter as
also “potentiality,” or possibility: and we have to consider potentiality.
it in this light also. Everything that exists is therefore
possible, and the possibility of coming into existence,—“passive
potency,”—implies that of bringing into existence—“active potentiality or
power”; the one is never without the other, not even in the first principle.
Thus the first principle is all that which it has the
possibility of being—in it reality and possibility are one; Firstabsolute.
principle or

whereas a stone, e.g. is not all that it has the possibility of
being, for it is not lime, nor vase, nor dust, nor grass. That which is all that
it can be, the Absolute, is also all that any other thing is or can be: it
embraces all being within itself. Other things are not thus absolute, but
limited to one reality at a time, i.e. one specific and particular existence.
They can be more only through succession and change. “Every possibility
and actuality that in the (first) principle is as it were complicate, united,
one, in other things is explicate, dispersed, many. The universe, which is the
great simulacrum and image (of the first principle) is—it also—all that

which it may be in its kinds and principal members, as containing all
matter, to which no element of the whole (the universal) form can be added,
in which no phase of that form is ever wanting; but it is not all that which it
may be in its differences, its modes, properties, and individuals; thus it is a
mere shadow of the first reality, and first potency, and so far in it reality and
possibility are not the same absolutely, that no part of it is all that which it
may be: besides that, as we have said, the universe is all that it may be only
in explicitness, dispersion, distinctness, whereas its principle is so unitedly
and indifferently, for in it all is all, and the same, simply, without difference
or distinction.”[273]
Bruno works out at considerable length the paradoxes to which this identity
of all possibility and all reality in the first principle lead. Thus, in
magnitude it is both greatest and least, and as in magnitude, so in goodness,
in beauty; the sun would fitly represent such a principle if it were at the
same moment in all parts of the universe, if its motion were so swift that it
was everywhere at once, and therefore motionless. God, however, is not
only all that the sun may be, but also all that everything else may be
—“potency of all potencies, reality of all realities, life of all lives, soul of
all souls, being of all beings.” That which elsewhere is contrary and
opposite, is in Him one and the same.[274] Bruno has brought us back in a
curious way to the very first principle which he proposed to exclude from
contemplation: it can be understood, it is true, only by negations, for our
intellect cannot measure itself with the immeasurable: we can form no
image or idea of a great that might not be greater. But here follows one of
the most vital steps in his philosophy:—As the absolute possibility, the first
principle becomes itself matter, and as there is no possibility without an
actuality, present or to come, the absolute possibility is also absolute reality,
or matter and form coincide in the One.[275] We approach
this conclusion first from the consideration of matter as Matter and form
are one.
“subject” (substrate). From the changes of one natural
substance into others we inferred a universal substrate, undifferentiated,
which formed at once the basis of the community of nature in things, and
the ground of their difference.[276] But the spiritual and the
Matter or
corporeal worlds, also, as distinguished from one another, substrate of the
imply a common “subject” or substrate in which they are spiritual world.
one or identical. Bruno refers, as we have seen, to
Plotinus[277] as having held that distinction and difference imply a common

ground or unity, and that “intelligible” distinctions are not exempt from this
rule. “As man quâ man is different from lion quâ lion, but in the common
nature of animal or of corporeal substance they are one and the same, so the
matter of things corporeal, as such, is different from the matter of things
incorporeal, as such: but from another point of view it is the same matter
which in dimensions or extension is corporeal matter, and which when
without dimensions or extension is an incorporeal substance. In things
eternal (spiritual) there is one matter in one simple realisation, in things
variable (corporeal) matter has now one, now another; in the former, it has
at one time and all together all that which it can have, and is all that it may
be; in the latter, at many times, on different occasions, and in succession.
The former has all species of figure and dimension, and because it has all, it
has none: for that which is so many diverse things, cannot be any one of
them in particular. That which is all must include every particular existence.
[278] In it, absolute potency and absolute actuality, matter and form, do not
differ at all; it is the extreme of purity, simplicity, individuality, and unity,
because it is absolutely all. It is individual in the highest sense. Being both
matter and form, it is neither: as matter, it has all dimensions and none; as
form, it has all formal existence or qualities and none. The corporeal matter
is contracted to this or that dimension, whereas spiritual matter is free
(absoluta) of dimensions, therefore is both above all, and comprising all.
Thus matter in itself, being without dimensions, is indivisible: it acquires
dimensions according to the nature of the form it receives: the dimensions
under the human form differ from those under the horse form, and from
those under the olive or the myrtle form. But before it can be under any of
these forms, it must have in faculty all their dimensions, as it has the
possibility or potency of receiving all the forms. In itself it includes rather
than excludes all dimensions, because it does not receive them as from
without, but sends them, brings them forth, from itself, as from the
womb.”[279] In other words, Nature, under one aspect, is a spiritual unity, in
which are comprised all possible differences, or all separate existences:
under another it is these many existences themselves, in each of which, in
succession, all differences are “realised,” all modes come into being: and
finally, under another aspect, it is the force which brings forth the separate
forms or existences out of the formless, indeterminate, undifferentiated
unity of being, or God.

The two kinds of matter, or potentiality, the lower and the higher, are thus
essentially one; so we reach the notion, not indeed of “the highest and best
principle,” as Bruno is again careful to remind us, but of the soul of the
world, as reality of all, and potency of all, and all in all. Thus in the end,
although individuals are innumerable, all things are one; and the knowledge
of this unity is the goal and limit of all philosophy of nature.
This unity, which embraces all the knowable, is the subject
The unity of
of the fifth dialogue of the Causa. The steps by which we spirit and body.
have reached it are:—first, the identification of a common
nature, or substratum in things corporeal,—corporeal matter, that which is
common to all physical existences; secondly, the recognition that there must
similarly be a corresponding matter, or common ground of things spiritual;
there also differences exist and demand an identity; and finally, corporeal
matter and spiritual matter must themselves coincide in ground; there must
exist that which is indifferently either, or which is the potency of both, and
their “subject” or substratum. To the objection that to have dimensions is
characteristic of matter, it is answered that each kind of matter has
dimensions, only the latter has them absolutely, i.e. it has all indifferently,
and therefore none, while the other is always “contracted” to one or other at
each instant, but has all successively. We have seen that at the close of the
fourth dialogue Bruno refers again to the first principle, unknowable, or
knowable only by faith, and professes to abstain from any consideration of
it. It is quite clear, however, that Bruno could not have said of it anything
other than he says of this unity of the corporeal and the spiritual itself. That
which is implicitly all reality in such a manner that it is at the same time
none of the particular forms of the real, is all things and none—could not be
other than the highest principle. Further, this unity already has the
distinction applied formerly to the Highest Intelligence,—it “is all,” and at
the same time it “creates all,” in producing the forms out of itself. The unity
then is only the world-soul from a special point of view, or the world-soul is
at once the unity of itself and of the corporeal world.[280] This means that of
the spiritual and the corporeal worlds each is a unity in itself, and each only
a special aspect of a final unity which embraces both. It is no wonder then
that Schelling found a congenial spirit in Bruno. The reality of this final
matter or unity is moreover higher, truer, than that of any of the forms to
which it gives birth, and finally it is divine. Little more is wanting to prove
the entire superfluity of the theological highest principle. The unity (or

matter) is by no means an “abstract” identity, but a concrete whole, which
contains all differentiation in itself, and a “dynamic” being, which
produces, or realises, its own modes. “Determinate, sensible, explicate
existence is not the highest characteristic (raggione) of actuality, but is a
thing consequent, an effect of the latter; thus the principal essence of wood,
e.g. the characteristic of its actuality, does not consist in its being ‘bed’; but
in its being of such a substance and consistency that it may be bed, bench,
beam, idol, or anything formed of wood. Nature, however, from its material
produces all things, not as art, by mechanical removal or addition of parts,
but by separation, birth, efflux, as the Pythagoreans understood,”—Bruno
adds Anaxagoras, Democritus, the Wise Men of Babylon, Moses! “Rather,
then, it contains the forms and includes them, than is empty of them, or
excludes them; and matter, which makes explicit what it contains implicitly,
ought to be called a Divine thing: it is the substance of nature.”[281] Thus
the One is the only ultimate reality; it is neither matter nor
Coincidence of
form, yet both together,—implicitly. And it has no parts, or all things in the
all parts, for all parts coincide in it, the smallest with the One.
greatest, in it all particular things coincide with one
another, and all differences. It has all possible existence and is therefore
unchangeable, it has all perfections and therefore is infinitely perfect.
“The universe is one, infinite, immovable. One is the absolute possibility,
one the reality. One the form or soul, one matter or body. One the thing, one
the ens. One the greatest and best, which can not be comprised, and
therefore can neither be ended nor limited, and even so is infinite and
unlimited, and consequently immovable. It does not move locally, for there
is no place outside of itself, to which it might transport itself (for it is the
all). Of it is no generation, for there is no other existence which it can desire
or expect, for it has all existence. Of it is no corruption, for there is no other
thing to which it can change; it is everything. It cannot grow less or greater,
for it is infinite; it cannot be added to, and it cannot be subtracted from, for
the infinite has no proportional parts. It cannot be subject to mutation in any
quality whatever, nor is there anything contrary to, or diverse from it, which
may alter it, for in it all things are in harmony.”[282] In it height is not
greater than length or depth; hence by a kind of simile it may be called a
sphere. It has no parts, for a part of the infinite must be infinite, and if it is
infinite it concurs in one with the whole; hence the universe is one, infinite,
without parts. Within it there is not part greater and part less, for one part,

however great, has no greater proportion to the infinite than another,
however small; and therefore, in infinite duration, there is no difference
between the hour and the day, between the day and the year, between the
year and the century, between the century and the moment; for moments
and hours are not more in number than centuries, and those bear no less
proportion to eternity than these. Similarly, in the immeasurable, the foot is
not different from the yard, the yard from the mile, for in proportion to
immensity, the mile is not nearer than the foot. Infinite hours are not more
than infinite centuries, infinite feet are not of greater number than infinite
miles.[283] Thus, Bruno frankly draws the conclusion,
Indifference of
which is inherent in all pantheistic thought, that in the all things in the
infinite all things are indifferent; there are no proportional Infinite.
parts thereof—in it one is not greater nor better than
another: “In comparison, similitude, union, identity with the infinite, one
does not approach nearer by being a man than by being an ant, by being a
star than by being a man. In the infinite these things are indifferent, and
what I say of these holds of all other things or particular existences. Now if
all these particular things in the infinite are not one and another, are not
different, are not species, it necessarily follows that they are not number
(i.e. not distinct)—the universe is again an immovable, unchangeable one.
If in it act does not differ from potency, then point, line, superficies and
body do not differ in it (for each is potency of the other—a line by motion
may become a surface, a surface a body). In the infinite, then, point does
not differ from body; since the point is potency of body, it does not differ
from body, where potency and act are one and the same thing. If point does
not differ from body, centre from circumference, finite from infinite, the
greatest from the least, then the universe, as we have said, is all centre, or
the centre of the universe is everywhere; or, again, the circumference is
everywhere but the centre is nowhere.” Thus, not only are the particular
existences indifferent in the infinite: they have also in it no true reality, i.e.
their existence is a purely relative one.
We have now to consider the relation of particular things one to another. It
follows from the argument that all things are in all; each particular thing has
the possibility of all reality, has all reality implicit in itself, but only one
mode is at any particular time realised, and the life of particular things
consists in their constant transmutation from one mode to another. While
the universe comprehends all existence and all modes of existence,—of

particular things, each has all existence, but not all modes of existence, and
cannot actually have all circumstances and accidents, for many forms are
incompatible in the same subject, either as contraries or as belonging to
diverse species. The same individual subject (supposito) cannot be under
the accidents of horse and of man, under the dimensions of a plant and of an
animal. Moreover, the universe comprehends all existence wholly, because
outside of and beyond infinite existence there is nothing that exists, for
there is no outside or beyond: of particular things on the other hand, each
comprehends all existence, but not wholly, for beyond each are infinite
others. But the ens, substance, essence of all is one, which being infinite
and unlimited in its substance as in its duration, in its greatness as in its
force, can neither be called principle nor resultant; for as everything
concurs in its unity and identity, it is not relative, but absolute. In the one
infinite, immovable, which is substance, ens, there is multitude, number;
and number, as “mode” of the ens, differentiates thing from thing; it does
not therefore make the ens to be more than one, but to be of many modes,
forms, and figures. Hence “leaving the logicians to their vain imaginings,”
we find that all that makes difference and number is pure accident, pure
figure, pure “complexion”; every creation of whatsoever sort it may be is an
alteration, the substance remaining always the same, for there is only One
Being, divine, immortal.[284]
Thus all things are in the universe, the universe in all
Beauty,
things; we in it, it in us; and so all concurs in a perfect harmony,
unity. Therefore, cries Bruno, we need not be troubled in permanence of
spirit, nor be afraid; for this unity is one, stable, and nature.
always abides; this one is eternal; every aspect, every face,
every other thing, is vanity, is as nought; all that is outside of this One is
nought. These philosophers have found the wisdom that they love, who
have found this unity. Wisdom, truth, unity, are the same. All difference in
bodies, difference of formation, complexion, figure, colour, or other
property, is nothing but a varying aspect of one and the same substance,—
an aspect that changes, moves, passes away, of one immovable, abiding,
and eternal being, in which are all forms, figures, members, but indistinct
and “agglomerated,” just as in the seed, or germ, the arm is not distinct
from the head, the sinew from the bone, and the distinction or
“disglomeration” does not produce another and new substance, but only

realises in act and fulfilment certain qualities of the substance, already
present.
The coincidence of Bruno’s doctrine with some of Spinoza’s principal
positions is striking, although their terms are different. The indeterminate
all-comprising unity of Bruno is that which was afterwards called by
Spinoza substance; its two aspects, material and spiritual—substances with
Bruno,—are attributes in Spinoza, and finally, the innumerable finite and
passing modes with both are mere accidents, and therefore do not determine
any change in the one reality itself. In a subsequent chapter other more
detailed resemblances will be pointed out in their bearing on the history of
Spinoza’s development.
The concluding portion of this dialogue and of the work is
Coincidence of
taken up with the doctrine of the Coincidence of Contraries.
Contraries, which derives from that of the unity and
coincidence of all differences, and which, although it was undoubtedly
contained in his own system, Bruno obtained directly from Nicholas of
Cusa. It is an indirect proof, from the side of particular things themselves,
of the identity of all in the One. The first illustrations are geometrical.[285]
The straight line and the circle, or the straight line and the
“Signs.”
curve, are opposites; but in their elements, or their minima,
they coincide, for, as Cusanus saw, there is no difference between the
smallest possible arc and the smallest possible chord. Again, in the
maximum there is no difference between the infinite circle and the straight
line; the greater a circle is, the more nearly it approximates to straightness
... as a line which is greater in magnitude than another approximates more
nearly to straightness, so the greatest of all ought to be superlatively, more
than all, straight, so that in the end the infinite straight line is an infinite
circle. Thus the maximum and the minimum come together in one
existence, as has already been proved, and both in the maximum and in the
minimum, contraries are one and indifferent.
These geometrical illustrations are “signs” of the identity of contraries,
those which follow are called by Bruno “verifications,”[286] the first of
which is taken from the primary qualities of bodies. The
element of heat, its “principle,” must be indivisible—it “Verifications.”
cannot have differences within itself, and can be neither hot nor cold,
therefore it is an identity of hot and cold. “One contrary is the ‘principle’ or

starting-point of the other, and therefore transmutations are circular,
because there is a substrate, principle, term, continuation and concurrence
of both.” So minimal warmth and minimal cold are the same. The
movement towards cold takes its beginning from the limit of greatest heat
(its “principle” in another sense). Thus not only do the two maxima
sometimes concur in resistance, the two minima in concordance, but even
the maximum and the minimum concur through the succession of
transmutations. Doctors fear when one is in the best of health; it is in the
height of happiness that the foreseeing are most timid. So also the
“principle” of corruption and of generation is one and the same. The end of
decay is the beginning of generation; corruption is nothing but a generation,
generation a corruption. Love is hate, hate is love in the end; hatred of the
unfitting is love of the fitting, the love of this the hatred of that. In
substance and in root, therefore, love and hate, friendship and strife, are one
and the same thing. Poison gives its own antidote, and the greatest poisons
are the best medicines. There is but one potency of two contraries, because
contraries are apprehended by one and the same sense, therefore belong to
the same subject or substrate; where the principle (i.e. the source, or
faculty) of the knowledge of two objects is the same, the principle (i.e.
elementary form) of their existence is also one. (Examples are the curved
and the plane, the concave and the convex, anger and patience, pride and
humility, miserliness and liberality). In conclusion:—“He who would know
the greatest secrets of nature, let him regard and contemplate the minima
and maxima of contraries and opposites. Profound magic it is to know how
to extract the contrary after having found the point of union.” Aristotle was
striving towards it, but did not attain it, said Bruno; “remaining with his
foot in the genus of opposition, he was so fettered that he could not descend
to the species of contrariety ... but wandered further from the goal at every
step, as when he said that contraries could not co-exist at the same time in
the same subject.”[287] There is a naïve but at the same time a bold realism
in this demand of Bruno’s that reality shall correspond even to the simpler
unities of thought—unities which after all are mere limitations. It is only
because we cannot distinguish in imagination between an infinite circle and
a straight line that their identity in actual existence is postulated, and so the
minimal chord and minimal arc coincide to our limited imagination only.
Admittedly in the case of sense-qualities the argument is from oneness of
faculty knowing to oneness of things known. These, however, are only, as

we have said, “signs” and “verifications” of a metaphysical truth which is
arrived at by other methods.
A corresponding passage in the De Minimo[288] explains more fully the
coincidence of contraries in the minimum:—“In the minimum, the simple,
the monad, all opposites coincide, odd and even, many and few, finite and
infinite; therefore that which is minimum is also maximum, and any degree
between these.” Besides the coincidence of contraries in God as the monad
of monads, the examples are given of the indifference of all dimensions in
the universe, and the ubiquity of its centre; the indifference of the radial
directions from the centre of a particular sphere; the indifference of all
points in the diurnal rotation of the earth, so that any point whatever is east,
west, north, or south; the “subjective” coincidence of concave and convex
in the circle (“subjective” meaning “in the thing itself”); the coincidence of
the acute and the obtuse angle in the inclination of one line to another; that
of smallest arc and chord as of greatest arc and chord, “whence it follows
that the infinite circle and the infinite straight line, also the infinite
diameter, area, and centre are one and the same.” Lastly, we have the
coincidence of swiftest motion with slowest, or with rest, “for the
absolutely swift (swift ‘simpliciter,’ i.e. in its highest possible
manifestation, without any degree of the contrary, slowness) which moves
from A to B, and from B to A, is at once in A, and in B, and in the whole
orbit, therefore, it stands still.”
These coincidences are again of two kinds: some “subjective” in the
modern sense, e.g. the coincidences of directions in the globe; any one may
be taken as depth according to the spectator’s standpoint; others are
“objective,” e.g. when in God the one and the many are said to coincide.
According as the stress is laid on one or on the other, the theory may be
regarded as either dualistic (as Cusanus’ really was) or as pantheistic. There
is no doubt, however, that it was in the latter sense that Bruno held the
coincidence of contraries.

CHAPTER III
THE INFINITE UNIVERSE—THE MIRROR OF
GOD[289]

In the contemplation of the infinite, writes Bruno, man attains his highest
good. All things aspire to the end for which they are ordained, and the more
perfect its nature the more nobly and effectively does each aspire. Man
alone, however, as endowed with a twofold nature, pursues a twofold good,
—“on the boundary line of eternity and time, between the archetypal world
and the copy, the intelligible and the sensible, participating in either
substance.”[290] Human effort can find satisfaction in none but the highest
and first truth and goodness. Neither our intellect nor our will ever rests. It
is clear therefore that their end lies not in particular goods or truths which
lead us on from one to another and to another, but in universal good and
truth, outside of and beyond which no good or truth exists. So long as we
believe that any truth is left to know, or any good to gain, we seek always
further truth, desire always further good. The end of our inquiry, therefore,
and of our effort cannot be in a truth or in a good that is limited. In each and
all is the desire in-born to become all things. Such infinite desire implies the
existence in reality of that which will satisfy it. If “Universal Nature” or
Spirit is able to satisfy the appetite of each “particular nature” or mode of
itself, and that of itself as a whole, then the understanding and desire which
are innate, inseparable from and co-substantial with each and all shall not
be in vain, nor look hopelessly to a false and impossible end. Again, were
universal nature and the efficient cause content with finite truth and good,
they would not satisfy the infinite aspiration of particular things. It is true
that even the desire for continuance of our present life is not satisfied; a
particular mode of matter cannot realise all “forms” or ideas at once, but
only in succession and one by one; it knows and therefore desires only that
which is present to it at any given time: by force of nature, therefore, it
comes in its ignorance (which arises from the “contraction” of the form to
this or that particular matter and the limitation of matter by this or that

form) to desire to be always that which it now is. The wise soul, however,
will not fear death, will indeed sometimes wish for it, since there awaits
every substance eternity of duration, immensity of space, and the realisation
of all being. “Whatever the good be for which a man strives, let him turn his
eyes to the heavens and the worlds; there is spread before him a picture, a
book, a mirror, in which he may behold, read, contemplate the imprint
(vestigium), the law, and the reflection of the highest good—and with his
sensible ears drink in the highest harmony, and raise himself as by a ladder,
according to the grades of the forms of things, to the contemplation of
another, the highest world.”[291] The contemplation of the extended infinite
and “explicate” or unfolded nature is thus only a means by which we may
rise to the contemplation of the infinite in itself, “implicate” nature, God. “It
is no frivolous or futile contemplation, but one most weighty and worthy of
the perfect man, which we pursue, when we seek the splendour, the fusion,
and the intercommunication of divinity and of nature not in an Egyptian,
Syrian, Greek or Roman individual, not in food, drink, or any ignoble
matter, with the gaping many, but in the august palace of the all-powerful,
in the immeasurable space of the Ether, in the infinite potency of twofold
nature, all-becoming and all-creating. So from the eternal vast and
immeasurable effect in visible things, we comprehend the eternal and the
immeasurable majesty and goodness. Let us then turn our eyes to the
omniform image of the omniform God, and gaze upon the living and
mighty reflection of Him.”
The three characteristics of the universe as a mirror of God which Bruno
sought to drive home to the minds of men were its infinite extent, the
infinite number of its parts, and its uniformity, or the similarity of its
constituent elements throughout its whole extent. His illustrations and his
arguments would in many cases cause a smile if they were put forward
seriously at the present day, but no absurdities can outbalance his
enthusiasm, the readiness and thoroughness of his polemic against Aristotle
and the old cosmology, and the fertility of imagination by which he is able
to look, and to make others look, at things from his new, and therefore, at
first, confusing point of view.
Bruno’s arguments rest partly on inferences from sense-knowledge, partly
on the principle of sufficient reason. Thus the infinity of
The universe
extent is evidenced, first, by the teaching of sense, in the infinite.

constant change which our circle of vision undergoes as we move from one
place to another. There always appears to be an ultimate limit, but no sooner
do we move than the limit is seen to have been only apparent; so, it may be
inferred, could we transfer ourselves with our senses to any of the distant
stars, we should still seem to ourselves to be in the centre of a closed
sphere,—the very same appearance which is presented to us on this earth.
Aristotle’s theory of the limitation of space by the ultimate sphere of the
heavens was open to objections, many of which were raised in the early
schools. The “subtle Averroes” had endeavoured to avoid some of these by
the doctrine that beyond this outer sphere is the divine being, the eternal
self-sufficient Mind.[292] “But how,” asks Bruno, “can body be bounded by
that which is not body? The divine nature is no less nor in any other manner
within the whole than without; it is neither place nor in place.”[293] Space
therefore is always bounded by space, body by body, that is, each is infinite
in extent. Were divinity that which bounds space, it would itself be space
under another name.[294] Aristotle’s theory implied that the universe as a
whole was not in any place or space. The “place” of each body, he had said,
is the containing surface of the sphere above it; the outermost sphere,
therefore, as there is no other beyond it, is itself uncontained and without
place. The theory implied also the identity of body and space, and was the
ground of Aristotle’s rejection of the vacuum in nature. For a truer
conception of Space, Bruno turned to an earlier commentator (or group of
commentators—“Philoponus”) on Aristotle, who defined it as “a continuous
physical quantity in three dimensions, in which the magnitude of bodies is
contained, in nature before and apart from all bodies, receiving all
indifferently, beyond all conditions of action and passion, not mixing with
things, impenetrable, without form or place.”[295] It is called physical,
because it can not be separated from the existence of natural things. It is
itself not contained, because it equals with its dimensions those of body as
the transparency of a crystal has the same dimensions with the crystal itself.
Neither body nor space can be thought of the one apart from the other.[296]
Granted the infinity of space, that of matter necessarily follows by an
inverse of the principle of sufficient reason:—for there is no reason,
according to Bruno, why this small part alone of space, where our earth is,
should be filled; the eternal operation is not distinct from the eternal power,
nor could it be the will of God to cramp nature, which is the hand of the all-
powerful, his force, act, reason, word, voice, order and will.[297] “There is

one matter, one power, one space, one efficient cause, God and Nature,
everywhere equally, and everywhere powerful.—We insult the infinite
cause when we say that it may be the cause of a finite effect; to a finite
effect it can have neither the name nor the relation of an efficient.”[298]
The corresponding argument from the capacity of our human imagination to
think always of a greater than any given magnitude, i.e. its inability to rest
short of the infinite, is expanded elsewhere. Our imaginative faculty is the
umbra or shadow of nature; its power, therefore, of adding quantity to
quantity, ad infinitum, must have something in nature to which it
corresponds; nature does not give a faculty for which there is no
satisfaction. There is then in truth an infinite universe, such as our
imagination demands. Bruno notices the objection that on this theory
anything whatever might be said about the universe, e.g. that it is infinite
man, since one can imagine a human form filling the universe; and he
replies, “it is infinite man, or infinite ass, or infinite tree, each and all, since
in the infinite all particular things are one and the same.”[299]
The arguments we have traced are:—(1) What appears to be a limit to our
senses always proves to be imaginary, when we are able to test it, therefore
we may infer that it is imaginary in other cases; (2) the very notion of
space, implying that it has neither form nor place, means that it is infinite,
limitless; (3) we cannot imagine a portion of space than which there is not
another greater, and so ad infinitum: but reality cannot fall short of thought,
therefore space is infinite. The arguments of Aristotle
Aristotle.
against the infinity of the world are taken up in detail in
the second book of the De Immenso. As the controversy, however important
at the time, has lost much of its interest for us, we need only give a brief
sketch of its main lines. The first argument was drawn
1. The primum
from the assumption of an ultimate sphere or primum mobile.
mobile which moved about the earth as a centre.[300] It was
clear that if the universe were infinite the radii of this sphere would be
infinitely prolonged, and therefore the termini of any two given radii at an
infinite distance one from another. The motion of the sphere would thus be
inconceivable, for it would require infinite time in which to pass from one
point to another. The answer of Bruno was that the universe as a whole was
not moveable at all, nor had it any centre; only its parts were moved and
each of these had its own relative and finite centre. The apparent motion of

the sphere was due to the real movement of the earth about its axis. A
similar answer was given to the argument from the
movements of bodies according to their elements. As to us 2. The elements.
on the earth, the earth appears to be the centre of the universe, so to the
inhabitants of the moon, the moon will appear to be such. Matter rising
from the earth to the moon would appear to the inhabitants of the latter to
fall. These distinctions were relative to the finite worlds, but might not be
referred to the whole universe. As the earth is one world, the moon another,
so each has its own centre, each its own up and down: nor can these
differences be assigned absolutely to the whole and its parts together, but
only relatively to the position and condition of the latter.[301] In his third
argument Aristotle sought to prove that infinite body in
3. The whole
general was impossible.[302] If the whole is infinite its and its parts.
simple elements must be so also. These must be either of
an infinite number of kinds, different from one another, or of a finite
number of kinds, or all of the same kind. But the first of the alternatives is
impossible on the a priori ground that each element must have a special
kind of movement corresponding to it, and the kinds of movement are
actually few in number; the second and third, because the movement of the
elements should then be infinite, whereas in the actual universe motion is
limited both in centre and circumference. The arguments, however, do not
apply to Bruno’s theory of the universe. Motion is always from one definite
point to another; we do not set out from Italy in order to go on ad infinitum,
but to go to some definite point. He does not, as Epicurus did, regard all
minima as in infinite motion downwards through the universe; there is no
down, no centre, no up, all is simply and generally in flux. It is not the
elements that are innumerable in kind, but the composite bodies, the stars,
which are constituted by them; and of these the parts move about their
natural body, as the parts of the earth towards the earth, and those of the
moon toward the moon in their own regions; all motion is therefore limited,
—each world has, as it were, margins of its own. The idea that if any of the
elements, as fire or water, were infinite, there would be infinite lightness or
gravity, and hence that the universe would move as a whole upwards or
downwards, is equally at fault. To the universe as a whole the terms heavy
and light do not apply, but only to its parts, the finite and determinate
bodies consisting of finite and determinate elements. These elements,

whether they be taken as of one or more kinds, since they cannot move
outside of the universe, must have finite movements.
The fourth argument[303] was based upon the impossibility
4. Action
of action between an infinite body and a second body between the
whether finite or infinite. An infinite cannot act upon a infinite and the
finite because the action would necessarily be timeless. finite.
Were it in time we could then find a finite body which in
the same time would produce the same effect; but there can be no such
equality between the finite and the infinite. Similarly action between two
infinites would occur in infinite time; in other words, would not take place
at all. The conclusion is that neither fire nor earth nor any of the elements
can be infinite in quantity. Bruno suggests, in the first place,[304] that a
change may be produced timelessly; thus if a body in a large circle cover a
certain space in the minimum of time, a body in a smaller circle will cover a
less space in no time, for nothing can be smaller than the minimum.[305] In
the second place, no action of the whole or effect upon the whole exists, it
is only the finite bodies within it, each with its finite force, that act upon
one another. Even if two infinite bodies, over against one another, were
supposed, their action would not be of one whole upon another, but of the
parts on the contiguous parts.[306] Force is exerted by bodies not intensively
but extensively, because as, where one part of a body is, there another is not,
so at the point where one part of the body acts another does not.[307]
A difficulty, not unknown to recent philosophy, occurred as
5. Proportion of
to the relation of infinites to one another. Whatever is an parts to whole in
element of the infinite must be infinite also; hence both the infinite.
earths and suns are infinite in number. But the infinity of
the former, said Bruno, is not greater than that of the latter; nor, where all
are inhabited, are the inhabitants in greater proportion to the infinite than
the stars themselves.[308] Each sun is surrounded by several earths or
planets, but the one class is not greater in respect of its infinite than the
other. A single sun, earth, constellation, is not really a part of the infinite nor
a part in it, for it can bear no proportion to it. A thousand infinities are not
more than two or three, and even one is not comprehensible by finite
numbers. In the innumerable and the immeasurable there is no place for
more or less, few or many, nor for any distinctions of number or measure.
[309] The matter of the stars is immeasurable, and no less immeasurable is

that of the fiery type or suns than of the aqueous type or earths. Nor does
the fact that these infinities are not given to sense disprove their existence,
as Aristotle had maintained. To imagine there is nothing beyond the sphere
which limits our range of sight, is to be like Bruno as a child, when he
believed there was nothing beyond Mount Vesuvius because there was
nothing to strike his senses.[310] Though each class be infinite, we have seen
that the infinite does not act infinitely, that is intensively, but acts finitely,
i.e. extensively. Each individual and species is finite, but the number of all
individuals is infinite, and infinite are the matter in which they consist and
the space in which they move. Everywhere, therefore, limit and measure are
only in the particular and the individual, which, compared with the
universe, are nothing.
A further argument was derived from the necessity of
6. Figure and
figure in body and from the relation of body to space.[311] body.
Every body is known to us as of a certain and definite
figure, whereas infinite body would necessarily be unfigured. In this case,
said Bruno, Aristotle is confounding body with space, although he
elsewhere separates the two notions. That space is something other than the
bodies which fill it, that it is more than limit or figure, is evident from the
fact that always between any two corporeal surfaces, between any two
atoms, there is space. Nor is space merely an accident of body, a special
quality of it, as colour is, for example, for we cannot think of colour without
a body in which it exists, and when the body is abstracted the colour goes
also, whereas space may be thought of apart from body, and body, when
removed does not take with it its space. Perhaps we should say that space is
really the continuous ether or light which penetrates throughout the
universe, and seems to fill space more continuously than wood, stone, or
iron, in which there is an admixture of vacuum. Must all bodies be figured,
then the figure of the infinite is the sphere. The dimensions of space
coincide with those of body, and the definition given of body as tri-
dimensional quantity applies also to space:—there cannot be any body
which is not in place, nor can its dimensions exist without equal dimensions
of the containing space.
A seventh argument, closely related to some of the others,
7. The centre of
is drawn from the old belief in the earth as the centre of the earth, etc.
gravity, the heaviest body in the universe, and in the

empyrean as the outermost limit and the lightest body.[312] But, as we have
seen, there is in the universe no centre—as the stars and their inhabitants
are heavenly beings to us, so are we and our earth to them. “Just as the earth
knows no centre or downward direction proper which is away from its own
body, but only a centre of its mass, a central cavern of its heart, from which
the precious life is diffused through the whole body, and which we may
believe to be the chief seat of the soul; so there must be in the moon and
other bodies a centre which connects all parts, to which every member
contributes, and which is nourished by all the forces of the living body.”
The old belief, therefore, that if there were inhabitants at the antipodes they
would be apt to fall downwards into space, or that the parts of the moon and
its living beings might fall upon our earth, was absurd, for the face of the
earth always looks upward in the direction of the radii from the centre to the
superficies.[313]
The last argument was that drawn from the supposed
perfection of the universe.[314] Aristotle defined the perfect 8.theThe perfect as
self-limited.
as that which was limited by itself, not by another. Hence
the immeasurable would not be perfect, while the world was perfect
because limited by its own terminus. Again body does not pass over into
any other kind of quantity, but it is the limit into which the line and the
point flow. The first argument, said Bruno, would hold of any fragment of
body, while the second would apply to any animal or member of an animal,
for these also are self-contained and do not pass over into any other kind.
Perfection has no reference to quantity, nor to limitation by self, which is a
geometrical determination.[315] For this mechanical idea of perfection,
Bruno substitutes a teleological; the perfect is that which consists of a
number of parts or members, working together towards the end for which
the whole is ordained: the universe is perfect “as adorned by so many
worlds, which are so many deities, and as that in and to which, as a unity
embracing the perfection of all, innumerable things perfect in their kind are
reduced, referred, united.”[316]
The infinity of space or ether and of matter being proved,
it follows again, by the principle of sufficient reason, that Infinite number
of worlds.
the “worlds” are “innumerable” or infinite in number.—As
it is good that the world exists, and would be bad did it not exist, so in a
similar space, and where similar causes are, it is good that there be a world,

and bad should there not be one. If the world is single, then there is a single,
finite, particular good, and infinite wide-spread universal evil. He who is
able to produce good, and does not do so, without cause, is evil; “as not to
be able is privatively evil, to be able and to be unwilling would be so
positively, and God in regard to the finite effect would be a finitely good
cause, in regard, however, to the repression of infinite realisation, would be
infinitely evil.”[317] Perfection does not belong to our world, our system,
taken by itself, since there are innumerable other possible worlds which
cannot be contained in it. Given a man endowed with all human perfections,
the existence of other men subordinate to him is not excluded, but rather
demanded in order that he may fulfil the harmony of his being. So the best,
the first, of the monads,—which comprises all particular things in itself,—
embraces, in spite of its unity, innumerable worlds, without limit, under its
corporeal aspect. One does not suffice, for the productive mind diffuses
itself throughout the whole universe, wholly in every part, in equal
goodness and power, and fills the void in order that its great image may be
presented throughout the whole.[318] Nature thus puts forth an infinite
mirror of itself and a fitting reflection; its substance is infinite and its force
eternal, there is an explicit immeasurable, as God is implicitly in the whole
and everywhere wholly.[319] To the infinite nothing finite bears any
proportion, nor can be a fitting product of it. Hence if it communicate itself
at all to corporeal things, or unfold its magnitude in corporeal existences
and in multitude, the reflection of its essence and imprint of its power must
be infinite in magnitude and without number. “Although, when we consider
individuals singly, under that proximate and immediate respect in which
they are particulars, they must be referred to a finite principle and cause
(since a finite effect demands a finite power), in the consideration of the
universe, however, each and all the innumerable existences in immeasurable
space point to an infinite first cause.”[320]
In the simplicity and unity of God’s being, all attributes are
one, therefore knowledge, will, and power coincide. The Argument from
God to the
consequences of this doctrine Bruno unfolds in a series of world.
aphorisms or propositions—which are interesting as
anticipating Spinoza’s method of “proof”:[321]—1. The Divine essence is
infinite. 2. As the measure of being, so is the measure of power. 3. As the
measure of power, so is the measure of action. 4. God is absolutely simple
essence or being in which there can be no complexity nor internal diversity.

5. Consequently in him, being, power, action, volition, and whatever can be
truly attributed to him, are one and the same. 6. Therefore the will of God is
above all things, and can be frustrated neither by himself nor by another. 7.
Consequently the Divine will is not only necessary, but is necessity itself,
and its opposite is not only impossible but impossibility itself. 8. In simple
essence there cannot be contrariety of any kind, nor inequality: will,
therefore, is not contrary to, nor unequal to, power. 9. Necessity and liberty
are one, hence what acts by the necessity of nature acts freely; it would not
act freely at all did it act otherwise than is demanded by necessity and
nature, or by the necessity of nature.[322] 10. There is not an infinite power,
unless there be an infinite possible; i.e. there is not that which is able to
create an infinite unless there be that which is able to be created. What is a
power which is impossible of realisation or which is relative to an
impossible? 11. As there is a world in this space, so also there is able to be
one in any space similar to that which, were this world removed, would
remain equal to the world. 12. There is no ground for denying, outside the
world, a similar space to that in which the world is, nor any for regarding it
as finite.[323] 14. It is better to be than not to be; it is more worthy to create
what is good than not to create it. To posit (create) being and truth is
incomparably better than to allow not-being or nothing. 15. The potency of
nature ought not to be frustrated, nor space remain unfilled for infinite
duration, for then potency would be relative to an impossible. 16. That
infinite potency (whether extensive or intensive) should be frustrated of
existence means that infinite evil should be actually posited, as space is
actually infinite. 17. As this space can receive this world and be adorned
thereby, so also any similar space whatever, indiscernible from it, a similar
principle being present, could have received a similar world.[324] 19. Of
God and of nature we should think as highly as possible. 20. Of the greatest
things nothing should be rashly asserted which is contrary to sense and
reason.
The infinite number of worlds is thus made to depend for its proof upon the
identity of power and will, of will and knowledge, i.e. thought, in God.
Whatever is in the mind of God is realised in the universe.
Knowledge of
Before God past, present, and future are one, present, and God.
eternal;[325] he is unable to change his purpose or to deny
himself. What he wills and what he can are one and the same; nor can he do
what he wills not, for fate is the Divine will itself. Hence, as he cannot be

other than he is, so nothing can be done by him otherwise than as it is done.
The nature of God is a simple substance; however many names be
predicated of it, they signify, one and all, the same thing.[326] Infinite virtue,
if limited neither by itself nor by another, acts by the necessity of its own
nature, not by a necessity alien to itself and to its will; it is itself necessity.
The necessity by which it acts, therefore, can be frustrated neither from
within, by itself, nor from without, by another: not the former, for it cannot
be both one thing and another, nor the latter, because its necessity is the law
of all other things. There can be nothing which may prevent this nature,
necessity, will, power, from proceeding according to its whole power, which
is goodness itself, according to its whole goodness, which is power itself,
and both are infinite, and diffuse themselves infinitely. Man’s liberty of
action is expressed imperfectly, and sometimes in an imperfect object, is
continually being disturbed by passion and ignorance of things; for if we
acted without any disturbance of the will, or course of thought, without
ignorance, or passion, then our action would be determined always towards
the better of two opposed ends. Before we act we stand between the two
ways and deliberate, and at last determine, but in uncertainty and
perturbedness of spirit; while God, as in nature most perfect, acts in the one
of two ways that is the most fitting. Nor is it an imperfection of nature to be
determined in one direction only, away from that which may lead to error.
Thus we may not refer the will and action of God to a liberty of this kind, of
being equally or unequally disposed to two contradictory volitions or acts—
a liberty of indifference—but his liberty is of the kind which is identical
with necessity. Over it is nothing greater, in the way of it there is nothing
equal, all things in all and throughout all serve it. God’s knowledge is not
discursive, involves no effort. To be in the mind of God is to be realised
(species concepta deo est effectio resque). Thus as the perfect monad, he is
intrinsically and extrinsically the whole, sustaining all things. There is on
the one side infinite goodness and infinite desire for its realisation, on the
other infinite desire of being realised; the result must be perfect satisfaction
and perfect good.
In order to understand how far Bruno has moved at this,
Abstract ideas.
the final stage of his philosophy, from the Neoplatonism of
its beginnings, the ninth chapter of the last book of the De Immenso must be
taken into account.[327] It is interesting in view of the relation of Spinoza to
Bruno, as well as of the consistency of Bruno’s own thought. In it the

existence of abstract ideal types is contended against,—“Nowhere is
essence apart from existence;—nature is nothing but the virtue that is
immanent (insita) in things, and the law by which all things fulfil their
course. There is no abstract that subsists in logical reason but not in reality,
no justice by which things are just, no goodness through which they are
good, wisdom through which they are wise, nor are deitas and feritas the
ground of existence of gods and beasts: nor is it light by which shining
bodies shine, nor shadow by which folly, darkness, fictions, nonsense come
to exist.” The student of nature must not suppose form and matter, light and
colour and motion, to exist separately by themselves because they may be
conceived or defined by themselves. There is then no archetypal world to
which the Creator looked in fabricating this of ours, but nature produces all
things from within itself, without thought or hesitation. “Study to know
where Nature and God are, for there are the causes of things, the life of
principles, the source of elements, the seeds of the things that are to be
brought forth, the typal forms, active potency producing all things, ... there
is also matter, the underlying passive potency, abiding, present, ever coming
together into one as it were, for it is not as if a creator came from on high,
to give it order and form from without. Matter pours forth all things from its
own lap, Nature itself is the inward workman, a living art, a wondrous
virtue which is endowed with mind, giving realisation to a matter which is
its own, not foreign to itself; not hesitating, but producing all things easily
out of itself, as fire shines and burns, as light spreads without effort through
space.... Nature is not so miserably endowed as to be excelled by human art,
which is directed by a kind of internal sense, while several kinds of animals,
guided by their inward mind, show an innate foresight of a wonderful kind,
—ants and the industrious bees, which have no type or model spread before
them. For there is a nature which is more than present to, which is
immanent in things, remote from none as none is remote from being, except
the false: and while only the surface of things without changes, deeper in
the heart of all than is each to itself it lives, the principle of existence,
source of all forms, ... Mind, God, Being, One, Truth, Fate, Reason,
Order.”[328] Natura naturata is thus not a resultant or outcome of natura
naturans with Bruno; they are one and the same thing under different
aspects, and both are one with God, the living force in things.
The arguments of Aristotle against the plurality of worlds are in the seventh
book set out one by one, and controverted from Bruno’s own standpoint, at

times with great fulness and subtlety. It would be
Aristotle on
unprofitable to enter far into this debate, where the plurality of
advantage lay so obviously on one side. We have already worlds.
seen that Bruno was able to lay his finger upon the weak
spot in Aristotle’s system, the definitions of space and time. There is no
absolute norm of time, said Bruno, whether arithmetical, geometrical, or
physical; for in this kind we cannot fix a minimum, and least of all on
Peripatetic principles; there is always a less than any given period of time,
hence we cannot lay down any true measure of time, i.e. all time is relative
to the individual. In any case the daily movement (of the outermost sphere,
as Aristotle thought, but in fact) of the earth, is not really circular. There are
as many moving agents as there are stars, as there are souls, or deities.[329]
But “if we must assume some one presiding over the infinite number of
agents, we must ascend above all or descend down to the centre of all, to
the absolute being, present above all and within all ... more intimate to all
things than each is to itself, not more distant from one than from another,
for it is equally the nearest to all.”[330] Several of the
Perfection.
arguments of Aristotle were drawn from abstract
conceptions of unity and perfection, and evidently raised interesting
problems for the time of Bruno. They are, briefly, that a plurality of worlds
would be irrational, since no reason could be given for one number rather
than another, that it is more in accordance with the perfection of the monad,
that all reality should be massed together in one world, that the economy of
nature does not admit of the multiplication of goods, that the passive
capacity (matter) is not equal to the active power (the form), that the perfect
is by its very nature unique. Bruno answers that there is no definite, but an
infinite, number of worlds, and that if the former were the case no reason
could be put forward why there should be only one, which in Bruno’s sense
of world is no doubt true. As to the monad, the true monad is that which
embraces all number or plurality in itself. “We are not compelled to define a
number, we who say that there is an infinite number of worlds; there no
distinction exists of odd or even, since these are differences of number, not
of the innumerable. Nor can I think there have ever been philosophers who,
in positing several worlds, did not posit them also as infinite: for would not
reason, which demands something further beyond this sensible world, so
also outside of and beyond whatever number of worlds is assumed, assume
again another and another?”[331]

That there are more worlds than one is due to the presence
One life in all
everywhere throughout space of the same principle of life, the worlds.
which everywhere has the same effect; just as within one
of these worlds, the earth, we find different species of the same animal—of
man, for example—which cannot be descended from the same parentage.
There are “men of different colours, cavemen, mountain-pygmies, the
guardians of minerals, the giants of the South,” each of which races must
have been produced independently in its own place. And finally, although it
is true that nothing can be added to the perfect, why may not the perfect be
multiplicable? Though the perfect man is one, nature may produce several
within the same species. “Everywhere is one soul, one spirit of the world,
wholly in the whole and in every part of it, as we find in our lesser world
also. This soul ... (should the kind of place and of element not conflict)
produces all things everywhere; so that for the generation of some even
time is not required.... The infinite universe, and it only under God, is
perfect. Nothing finite is so good that it could not be better; whatever may
be better has some degree of evil and defect, as what is not absolutely bright
is not without some signs of obscurity.... Therefore the perfect, absolutely
and in itself, is one, infinite, which cannot be greater or better, and than
which nothing can be greater or better. This is one, everywhere, the only
God, universal nature, of which nothing can be a perfect image or
reflection, but the infinite. Everything finite therefore is imperfect, every
sensible world is imperfect, as good and evil, matter and form, light and
darkness, joy and sadness concur in it, and all things everywhere are in
alteration and movement; but all of them, in the infinite, are as in unity,
truth, and goodness, and in this aspect the infinite is rightly called the
universe.”[332] In the infinite, as we have learned from the Causa, all
contraries are one. The universe is perfect, not because of its quantity, but
because it contains all other things in it.[333] Within the limits of their kind
small causes can produce small effects with some perfection; much more
effective is that immeasurable and more general cause, of which nothing
stands in the way. It is a harmony of the many in one, the only corporeal
image of the divine mind. The finite, however, is imperfect only when taken
apart from the whole to which it belongs, i.e. evil and defect are
appearances only. Although in nature not all things are of their best, and
more species than one produce monstrosities, yet we may not find fault with
the great building of the mighty architect, for even the small, weak, and

diminutive contributes its part to the nobility of the whole. Is a picture most
beautiful when it is blazoned all over with gold and purple? Does it not
shine out best from a dull background? Can there be any part which, in its
order and place within the whole body, is not good, and the best in the end
and in the whole? A harmony in music is better the greater the variety
within it of length, accent, pause, and the like.[334]
The perfect may be either (1) “the perfect absolutely, or (2) the perfect in its
kind.” The former again is twofold, according as it is (1) “that which is
wholly in the whole and in every part, or (2) that which is wholly in the
whole but not in the part.” Of these the one is divinity, the intellect of the
universe, absolute goodness and truth, the other the immeasurable corporeal
reflection of the divine. As within the universe there are many things perfect
in their kind, which it combines in its unity, containing in itself the
perfection of all, it may in a second sense be called the absolutely perfect.
For no one world singly, nor system of worlds, nor any number of systems,
can be brought into comparison with God, except indirectly, through the
immeasurable wisdom, power, and goodness. “Nothing is absolutely
imperfect or evil, for the highest nature exists in a certain sense in the
meanest and lowest, as on the palette of a painter colours are thought little
of which presently, unfolded into the scheme of the picture, shall seem to
be, along with the painter himself, of chief importance.”[335] Moral evil,
itself, as we shall find, has no reality for Bruno’s pantheism. Justice and
goodness, not existing as abstract entities, have their only ground in the
divine will, i.e. in the course of nature.[336] On the other hand, it is not in
the part, the detail, the trivial or minute existence, that the divine will is
most adequately declared, but in the whole, its plan and its law. “What is
best and most glorious, most beseeming the goodness of His nature, is to be
attributed to His will. It is impious to seek this in the blood of insects, in the
mummied corpse, in the foam of the epileptic, under the shaking feet of
murderers, or in the melancholy mysteries of vile necromancers;[337] it must
be sought rather in the inviolable, intemerate law of nature, in the religion
of a mind directed duly by that law, in the splendour of the sun, in the
beauty of the things which are brought forth from this our parent, after His
true image, as expressed bodily in the beauty of those innumerable living
things, which, in the immeasurable sweep of the one heaven, shine and live,
have sense and intelligence, and sing praises to the One, the highest and
best.”[338]

CHAPTER IV
NATURE AND THE LIVING WORLDS

We have found that, according to Bruno, the universe is infinite in extent,
and that there are innumerable worlds within it: it remains to know what are
the materials that constitute the universe, and the moving principles that
govern its changes and direct the worlds in their courses.
Nature, he said, is the same in kind, in its substance, and in
Uniformity of
its elements, throughout its whole extent—a daring Nature.
conception for a time when the empyrean and all space
beyond it were still regarded as the special abode of divinity. He reminded
his opponents of his own childish experiences:—when from Cicala he
looked towards Mount Vesuvius, he thought it dark, gloomy, bare of trees
and flowers; but when he approached it, he found it fairer than Cicala itself,
while now the latter looked bare and dark.[339] The Aristotelians were
committing a similar error in judging the distant stars and the firmament to
be in reality as they appeared to our eyes, and in denying the existence of
that which was not visible to us. “As the philosopher must not believe what
cannot be demonstrated by evidence, so neither must he foolishly despise or
find fault with what cannot be disproved by reason.”[340] Had men, instead
of bending so long over the books of Aristotle and his commentators, the
nebulosa volumina, but turned their eyes to the book and light of nature,
they would have formed a far different conception of the constitution of the
heavens than that of the eight, nine, ten, or more spheres and innumerable
epicycles of the Ptolemaic system. Bruno showed how as we rise from the
surface of the earth our horizon becomes wider, while in detail less vivid,
and he supposed himself to continue the ascension upwards to the surface
of the moon.[341] A few miles away tree and mountain would not be
distinguishable from the rest of the earth, but we should perceive only a
wide circle of light with dark spots, the appearance of sea and of land
respectively. As the distance increased the form of the earth would become
more visible while it lost all appearance of opacity, and the whole would
seem continuous light. As we neared the moon, the earth would come to

appear exactly as the moon does to us from the earth. The moon also
revolves round its own axis, and from it, as with us, the universe will appear
to revolve round it as centre. It had been said that the appearance of the
heavenly bodies had always been and continued to be the same, but Bruno
points to the fact that although a mountain, when seen from at hand,
changes its face from day to day, and from season to season, yet from a
distance it seems always the same.[342] It is owing to the distance that the
face of the moon appears to us never to change, although it is certainly
subject to as many alterations as the earth itself; and to the dwellers on the
moon the earth will appear equally changeless. The light and shadow seen
on the surface of the moon are due to the variety of sea and land in it, the
one reflecting light, the other absorbing. On the moon, as on the earth,
Nature is in continuous change: for example, the relative positions of sea
and land are ever altering; but the magnitude of the distance renders these
invisible, and more especially the minuteness and gradual nature of the
changes themselves. The lunar spectator will be presented with eclipses of
the earth, and, according to the position of sea and land, i.e. of light and
shadow, with phases of the earth.[343] In the same way Bruno applied his
principle of similarity to show that from distant stars the earth would appear
of uniform magnitude and unvarying position, while in the neighbourhood
of other suns it and all the other planets would disappear. As matter is the
same in kind throughout the universe, so it is subject everywhere to the
same law of unceasing change:—“The sun in its rising never seeks twice
the same point, all things by stress of the continuous flux are renewed, nor
ever seek again the haunts they have left, nor is there any part of the earth
which does not pass through every region, and a like force now carries each
part in one direction or another, now drives it away; and if by chance any
one revisit the centre, it is no longer in the same form, nor in the same
connection (ordine).”[344] Not even the whole can ever be twice the same,
since the order and arrangement of its parts are continuously changing.
Even in things that seem ever to present the same face there is a latent
alteration which time will bring to light. There would otherwise be nothing
to prevent the whole of Nature being fixed, petrified, as it were, to all
eternity. Yet the substance of things—the atom—is unchanging.[345] “All
things are in flow; the parts of the earth, seas, and rivers vary their
positions, by a certain ebbing and flowing order of Nature. As matter
wanders, flowing in and out, now here, now there, so the forms travel

through matter. For there is not any form which, once occupying a portion
of matter, retains it always, nor any matter which, once obtaining a certain
form, maintains it for ever. Hence it is that, matter always taking up one
form or another, and having equal capacity for all, consequently by virtue of
its eternity it must sometimes fall in with that which is able to bind it to
itself for ever; if this were to happen, all things would be so constituted that
there would be no alteration or difference in them.”[346]
The universe to Bruno is transfused with spirit, soul or life,
The Ether.
“the soul of the universe,” which animates its every part.
“The seat or place of God is the universe, everywhere the whole
immeasurable heaven, empty space, of which He is the fulness.” The
material aspect, or, as Bruno sometimes seems to say, the body of this spirit
is the ether, a subtle fluid distinguished from the air we breathe by the
absence of moisture. The ether is a purely passive, non-resisting medium,
permeating the universe, without quality, and unimpressionable by force or
action; thus it is penetrated by the heat of any radiating body without
diminishing its force. It took the place, for Bruno, of the mythical Fifth
Essence, which had so long fed the dreams of philosophers—“Divine yet
corporeal, material yet without matter, a form without privation, conjoining
act with potency, neither heavy nor light, suffering neither generation, nor
corruption, nor alteration, neither increase nor decrease; beyond which no
sensible existence is, first-born and creatrix of Nature, simplest of beings,
all-containing, most powerful, most active, most living, most perfect of
existences, endowed with life and intelligence, of its own nature moving
circularly, etc., etc.—all this is at length proved to have been a most
portentous shadow without body.”[347] Heaven is either empty space, or it is
an ethereal substance, “a very subtle kind of air, which is the first and most
universal occupant of space.”[348] Again, the ether is described as a vapour
or smoke, a nebulous matter, penetrating throughout the depths of the void,
interpenetrating all things and embracing all; as not entering into movement
of its own accord, for it is but an exhalation of the wind—a kind of
continuous vapour such as is contained in the bowels of the earth: in it is
neither heat nor cold nor any similar effect (passio), but it is the medium
through which these are borne. All these require moisture: moisture alone
can “fix” light or darkness or combine atoms into a concrete body and
prevent their random flight through the air.[349] It has been claimed that in
this and other passages Bruno anticipated the modern theory of the ether; it

must be noted, however, that he expressly denies to its parts any kind of
motion—it is only the composite body which moves—and that he speaks of
this heaven or ether as the soul which is at once immanent in and
comprehends the stars, i.e. as the soul of the universe.
Of the strictly material elements of the universe, the most
Moisture.
important is moisture or water. It is moisture which gives
concreteness and therefore weight to things. Nothing has weight which has
not been formed into one by the union of innumerable parts under the action
of water.[350] Consistently with this, Bruno believed the heaviest bodies, as
the metals, to be the most solid and concrete, and therefore to contain most
moisture. It is moisture also which, penetrating through the arteries, veins,
and bones of the earth, gives to it both variety of aspect and the power of
life. The visible moisture on the earth’s surface, the seas and lakes, is a
mere nothing as compared to that which is diffused through its interior—is
but the sweat, as it were, of the earth’s body.[351] Bruno’s passion for
homogeneity led him to understand that in its surface the land under the sea
is similar to that above it, with which the former is continually changing
place, and it is divided up into plains, mountains, valleys, the islands and
rocks of the sea being the tops of the mountains:—a remarkable intuition of
the truth, however arrived at. As to the familiar elements,
Earth: Fire.
earth and fire, Bruno could neither allow a special place or
sphere nor a special direction of movement to either, as in the Aristotelian
cosmology. The earth was not the centre of the universe, and there were
earths or similar planets everywhere. To the several arguments of the
Peripatetics[352] for the centrality of the earth,—from the heaviness, the
darkness, solidity, composite character of the earth’s matter, and the
movements of its parts, from the idea that contraries shun one another so
that the coldest element, for example, should be in the centre, the hottest at
the extreme,—Bruno opposed the common-sense answers that his own
theory suggested to him. His appeal was always from “fictitious order” to
the evidence of “sense and reason.” The argument has no longer any interest
in itself, and to pursue it into detail would hardly be edifying; but so full is
it, so weighty and so vigorous, that one wonders how even the
“Peripatetics” failed to be convinced by it. Bruno’s very errors are
interesting. Fire for example, far from being the outermost, lightest, subtlest
element, was regarded by him as a body of which the substance, (light and
heat being accidents) was water mixed with earth;[353] and in general, he

maintained, no element was ever found in isolation. As to the supposed
coldness of the central element,—the earth,—he believed, again
anticipating future discoveries, that the centre of the earth was not cold, but
hot, the source of terrestrial warmth; but the theory loses something of its
value, scientifically, from the imagined vitality of the planet, by which it is
supported.[354] It was natural that the coincidence of contraries should be
brought to do duty against the maxim on which the Aristotelian view was
really based—namely, that contraries tend to rest at the greatest possible
distance from one another, against which Bruno marshalled a whole army
of facts. Away from the shadow of the earth there was perhaps no light but
that of the sun, too strong for our eyes, for the daylight arose from a mixture
of the light of the sun and the darkness of the earth; we could see other
colours by it, for the reason that they were similarly composed—mixtures
of light and darkness. The heat of the sun also was only bearable when
tempered by the coolness of the earth or other planets. The body of the
earth, great as it is, can bear this heat only through its swift revolution. As
to the objection that if the earth moved we should feel its motion, Bruno
remarked that when we are carried in a smoothly and continuously moving
vehicle, not striking against any object, we do not perceive that we are
moving, except by comparison with some object known to us to be fixed.
Thus sense furnishes its own correction.[355] The differences in the
distances of the planets from the sun, as seen from the earth, are explained
much more readily by the assumption that they and the earth itself are
moving about the sun, than by that of the centrality of the earth, which
compelled astronomers to the complicated device of the epicycles.[356] The
fact that the moon always turns the same face towards the earth disproved
the Ptolemaic theory: were it on an epicycle, as was supposed, this would
be impossible. According to the old doctrine, the earth was fixed
immovably in the centre of the universe, while about it circled the spheres
of sun, planets, and fixed stars. With Bruno, on the other hand, the centre of
the universe is everywhere, or nowhere,—in other words it is relative to the
body on which the spectator is supposed to stand.
The principle of continuous change was employed to explain, among other
matters, the variation of the equinoxes, which was already known to occur;
but the continuous change was itself accounted for on teleological grounds.
—“The motion which causes the poles to tremble, and the equinoctial and
solstitial points to vary irregularly, is on account of the variations which are

always taking place in parts of the earth; for the frigid zones may not
always be frigid, nor the torrid, torrid; all parts must rest and have holiday
from each kind of ‘affect,’ and consequently take up every kind of
disposition successively.” ... “The centre of the earth, therefore, and its
position relatively to the poles, will vary.”[357] No star ever repeats one day
the revolution of the previous, or any one year that of another.
Mathematical exactness, as we have seen, is never found in the material
world: the earth may not always present the same face to the sun, so that
one pole must at length pass into the place of the other—a change which
must occur sensibly and continuously, and irregularly, as natural bodies and
elements of bodies are naturally in continuous alteration and movement.
“The same composite body is never in exactly the same state at any two
moments, nor consists of quite the same parts, for from all sides and
everywhere there is, necessarily, an unceasing influx and efflux of
elementary bodies.”[358] The stars and planets are compared to a flock of
birds, which float hither and thither in the clear ether, guided only by their
desires.[359] Never does the flock present precisely the same appearance
twice. In nature the law is vicissitude and succession, so that each thing
may in actual fact come to be all things.[360]
All the stars consist of the same elements, since water
cannot subsist without earth, nor fire without water; but in Earths and Suns.
some stars the aqueous element predominates (planets), in others the
igneous (suns). From sameness of appearance and of effects (accidents) we
may infer sameness of substance. It is clear therefore to Bruno that moon,
planets, stars, are all of precisely the same substance as the earth. It is
unnecessary to point out by how long a period this brilliant philosophical
faith preceded the slower if surer march of science. The great worlds of the
universe are of two kinds—the suns, in which fire is the predominating
element, and from which light is diffused; and the earths or planets, in
which water predominates and which reflects light. To the first class belong
the so-called fixed stars, from which our sun would appear no larger and no
brighter than they appear to us; to the second belong the moon, Mercury,
and other planets, all in one and the same ethereal space, suspended in free
air and balanced by their own weight as is our earth. In all are seas and
woods, rivers, men, cattle, reptiles, birds, fishes, as on the earth, and in all
the same continuous changes occur.[361] No one is in the centre of the
universe rather than another, for about all equally extends immeasurable

space with its innumerable stars. Of these “first bodies” one kind could not
exist without the other, for it is by the concourse of contraries and opposites
that nature provides for movement, life, and growth in things. About each of
the scintillating stars, or suns, which we see, there must circle planets which
are for the most part invisible to us, but which may become visible.[362] In
the same way, both on account of the smallness of their bodies, and
especially on that of the less intensity of reflected light in comparison with
light of original force, the planets which are about our fixed star, the sun,
would not be seen from any of the others. The discovery in the last half-
century of what is almost certainly a satellite of Sirius confirms in this also
Bruno’s “anticipation of nature.” Another of these was his
Comets.
theory of comets,[363] which he held to be of the same
nature as planets, and to move in similar orbits. He believed also that there
were other solar planets which never appeared to us because their position
in the heavens precluded their reflecting any of the sun’s rays to us:—a
belief to which the reported eclipses of the sun by occult bodies has given
some support. The shape of the comet, with its appendages, was only
apparent, Bruno said, and was due to the angle made by the light reflected
from its surface. In another reference, however, he compares it with the
oblique reflection of light from a mirror, or from the surface of water; it is
the watery matter, the vapours which are drawn out by the warmth of the
sun, that give the unusual reflection.[364] This shows how nearly he
approached the modern theory. In the true spirit of the Renaissance,
however, he appealed to the authority of the ancients, of Aeschylus and
Hipparchus of Chios, who, according to Aristotle, regarded the comets as
planets.[365] The comets of the sixteenth century,[366] so far as observed,
went wholly against the received view that their orbits must lie within the
sphere of the moon, and proved that the substance of bodies beyond that
sphere was the same as the elementary substance of the earth, as well as that
there was penetrable space beyond. Both of these to Bruno were important
consequences. Still greater, however, was their importance for humanity, in
removing the grounds of the terror which comets and other heavenly
wonders had hitherto inspired. “There are some,” said Bruno, “who rest
their faith in a virtue above and beyond nature, saying that God, who is
above nature, creates these appearances in the heavens in order to signify
something to us: as if those were not better, nay the very best, signs of
divinity which arise in the ordinary course of nature; among which are

those of which we speak, for they also are not apart from this order,
although their order is hidden from us.”
To account for the many appearances which seemed to conflict with his new
view of the universe, Bruno had recourse to several slight experiments and
analogies of daily observation such as a schoolmaster might employ at the
present day before his class,[367] but by which even a man of Kepler’s
intelligence refused then to be convinced; at least he would not openly
profess his conviction. Among other fruitful suggestions which Bruno
makes is that the sun may perhaps turn on its own axis, and again that it
may contain vapour and earth.[368] He had a curious theory that the heat of
the sun is only directed outward from the surface, not inwards; that this is
the general course of radiation; and that it leaves an inner surface of the sun
cold, on which solar animals live; finally that meteors are “animals”
expelled from the sun! So always the fruitful idea is accompanied by the
absurd.
From the principle of the identity of nature it follows that bodies which are
remote from us are the same in kind with those that are with us and near us;
nothing may be denied of the former which is affirmed of the latter, and
vice versa. There can be no doubt, therefore, of their similar composition
and similar parts. Thus if here on the earth we nowhere see fire subsisting
without earth, nowhere earth without water or fire, while their composites
are both contained in and penetrated by air and void, then the same is
necessarily the case in the upper world also; neither sense nor reason
compels us to assert or suspect otherwise.[369] Bruno has grasped, however
confusedly, the idea that each individual, each being in the universe, is as it
were an epitome of the universe itself; that each therefore stands in a
peculiar relation to it, differing from it only in the “proportion” in which the
elements are composed into unity. It is impossible not to see in this idea the
germ of the most important development of Leibniz’ philosophy, whatever
the source may have been through which it came to the latter. It is true that
here, at least, Bruno’s conception appears much less spiritual than that of
his successor, inasmuch as he is thinking rather of the actual physical
elements which go to make up a body (and in which all bodies are similar to
one another). On the other hand, the formation of the body is, in his view,
the work of the soul, and it is in the last resort the identity of the universal
soul of nature in all its members that brings each of these into

correspondence with all others. It is true, also, that Bruno has no definite
explanation of what constitutes an individual, and his readers are exposed to
the dilemma either of regarding the physical atoms as themselves
“beseelt,”—a view which Bruno nowhere sanctions,—or, on the other hand,
of accepting a dualism of spirit (the soul of the universe or God) and matter
(the material atoms, moisture, fire, and ether). Yet the tenour of Bruno’s
philosophy is wholly opposed to such a dualism. As a corollary of this
theory, Bruno suggested an explanation of what has been called
“spontaneous generation,” supported, however, by tales of the credulous
rather than by actual observation. “Dust that has been heated by the sun, as
soon as moisture falls upon it, becomes a frog, the whole substance of dung
goes into worms or flies, the body of a horse will turn into wasps, the
provident bee rises from the body of an ox!”[370] As each thing is in its
inner nature identical with every other, so it may, and in the natural course
does, become every other, as we have learned from the Italian works.
Nevertheless, the outward appearances of things do not cease to be different
from one another. “That is more latent in one subject which is more
unfolded in the remainder.” “The subject of all is one (monas), and all
things are in truth one, although in individuals they seem to be many.”
The movements of the earth and of other free-moving
Movements of
bodies are always attributed by Bruno to an “internal bodies; their
principle or soul.” Movement from without could only soul-principle.
take place through direct contact, and the liquid air or ether
is too light to move these heavy bodies.[371] “It is taking things by the
wrong end to say that the loadstone attracts the iron, the amber the straw,
the sun the sunflower. In the iron there is a kind of sense, awakened by a
spiritual (i.e. a subtly material) virtue diffused from the loadstone, ... and
generally everything that desires and has intelligence moves towards the
thing desired, converts itself into it as far as possible, beginning with the
wish to be in the same place.” By the same principle are explained the
phenomena of gravity, which is defined as impulse towards the place of
preservation, such as the earth is to the stone that has formed part of it; its
opposite, “levity,” is impulse away from the contrary or the injurious.
“Gravity and levity are nothing but the impulse of parts to their place, where
they may either move or be at rest, or to a place through which it is
necessary for them to go (in the circular movement of all material things).”
Thus the motions of the heavy and the light are merely relative movements;

the same kind of motion does not belong always to the same kind of
substance or element.[372]
The movement of the stars is determined not by considerations of place
only, but also by the necessity that bodies of one kind are under of deriving
sustenance from those of another,—the suns from the earths and the earths
from the suns. It is through the soul that their needs are felt, and the soul
directs their movements as does the human soul those of the human body.
There are, however, no fixed limits to their movements: they are governed
only by the convenience of life, as perceived by the sense and mind, which
are inborn in each. By this fantastic principle Bruno explained what he
thought to be the fact, that all heavenly bodies whatsoever are in movement;
or perhaps we should say he inferred the fact from the principle:—which
was first in the order of his thought it would be impossible to know. Like
most of his contemporaries he looked upon the conception of a soul in all
things with peculiar reverence—

Porgimus haec paucis, vulgus procul esto prophanum,
Ne liceat laico sacrum conscendere montem.

The method by which Bruno sought to know the nature of the souls of the
worlds is one which the course of modern philosophy has rendered familiar
to us in other connections. It rests upon the argument from the part to the
whole. “Whatever we find in a part of the world belongs, in a higher sense
(sublimius), to the whole, and must be attributed to it. All the capacities of
each part are attributed to the whole—that is, their perfections and
activities, not the qualities they possess as parts, and as less than the whole
in any respect.” Thus the hindrances to which lesser individuals are
exposed, the necessity of taking in and giving out matter as their forms
change, exist in the greater individual in a minimal degree. But in all parts
of the earth Bruno found signs of life, sensation, and even intelligence.
Stones of different kinds were universally believed to have a kind of
sensibility and instinct: to move of their own accord, attract other bodies to
themselves, act upon our human spirits and senses. The phenomena of
animal instinct were a constant object of interest to Bruno, who saw in them
the expression of a deeper intelligence than the merely human. It is true the
observations on which he built may not always have been exact; but that

does not detract from the value of his principle. Thus the porcupine (istrix)
moved his admiration because of its careful storing up of a stock of darts in
its back, with which to protect its life; it could, with unerring aim, cast one
at its enemy, hearing, it is said, with its skin; and its precision far surpassed
all that the cunning of man, with his many instruments, could do. With
perfect skill it threw its darts, yet sparingly, so that no part of its body was
ever defenceless, the spirit directing all its actions from one centre, to
which, from every part of the body, report was made! “With how much
higher reason will the star be endowed, of the body of which animals are
made, by whose spirit they flourish? So the earth from one centre directs all
its actions and those of its parts; it never errs, neither it nor any of the
worlds which dwell in the immeasurable ether.”[373]
Bruno rejected[374] the popular notion that the behaviour of ants, spiders,
and other animals does not spring from their proper foresight and artifice,
but from divine, unerring intelligence acting upon them from without,
giving them those “thrusts” (spinte) which are called “natural instincts”—a
term which he regarded as meaningless. “Is this ‘natural instinct’ sense or
intellect? If the former, is it internal or external? Clearly it is not external;
but if internal, where is the internal sense from which they could have their
foresight, their arts and artifices, their precautions, expeditions, to meet
various conditions, both present and future? There must be some proximate
principle, i.e. a form of intelligence peculiar to each animal, which
determines its actions. The divine and universal intelligence is merely the
principle that gives it intelligence, through which it understands.”[375] The
action of animals of a given kind were supposed to be after one perfect
model, and to be undeliberate. Bruno therefore placed their intelligence
higher than that of man, nearer the level of that of the world-souls. “The
swallow makes its nest, the ants their cave, the spiders their web or nets, in
one way only, than which they could not make them more admirably or
suitably.... Who knows whether the spirit of man is rising upwards, that of
others moving downwards? At least it is to be referred to a defect of light
and divine force that men hesitate and deliberate in all that belongs to the
means of life, the modes of worship and defence, for if all knew perfectly,
all would be governed in the best, and consequently in one way only.” It is,
then, on the analogy of these supposed higher, unerring faculties of animals
that Bruno considers the souls of the worlds to think and act. They have
perfect freedom, since their life and soul are their own, not borrowed, as

ours. “Thus as we breathe, see, sleep, without labour or anxiety, and while
our soul performs the function of life, the vital humours and spirits
continually circulate, so these, the chief members of the world, divine
animals, have no need to undergo any anxious toil, for all things with them
are done for the best.” Their fixed aim of life defines for them certain
determinate orbits, “in which they move freely by the force of that soul
which is much more certainly present in these high, perfect, divine bodies
than in us, of more ignoble condition, who draw from them spirit and body,
come forth living out of their bosom, are nourished by them, and at length
are dissolved and received back into them.”[376]
It is to the internal spirit also that the spherical form of the worlds is due.
The so-called mountains of the earth do not in the least detract from its
spherical form. Bruno anticipated modern science in his discovery or
intuition that the real mountains are not those we are accustomed to call
such, but immense tracts of country,—the whole of France, for example. “I
find the whole country of France to be one mountain, which rises gradually
from the North Sea to Auvergne, where is its summit, marked on the west
by the Pyrenees, where the Garonne flows, on the east by the Rhone, on the
south by the Mediterranean Sea.”[377] The whole earth is, however, as
smooth in reality as is to us the pumice stone, which to the ant seems
furrowed with mountains and valleys. It is on teleological grounds that
Bruno accounts for this sphericity. Composite things are preserved through
the harmony and union of their parts, while decay arises from dissolution.
But such harmony and union are best secured by the spherical form:
towards this form, then, every soul aspires in the moulding of its body. The
most perfect animals, the stars, having fewer limitations, have the greater
advantages; being almost independent, free, self-sufficient, they are most
closely united in themselves, i.e. tend most nearly to the purely spherical
form.[378]
However perfect they are, the stars are yet of mortal stuff. “You may say if
you will that the worlds change and decay in old age, or that the earth
seems to grow grey with years, and that all the great animals of the universe
perish like the small, for they change, decay, dissolve. Matter, weary of old
forms, eagerly snatches after new, for it desires to become all things, and to
resemble, as far as may be, all being.” The efflux and influx of atomic
matter into the great bodies is continuous, and this is the only kind of

motion which is unceasing.[379] “As the conflux of native matter is greater,
so the bodies grow more and more, and increase up to a certain limit, on
touching which they grow weary and become subject to a contrary order; as
about the seed atoms are gathered and added continuously until the body
and its limbs reach their maturity, when the same parts are cast out from the
centre, and the breaking up of the composite is presented to our eyes.”
Hence there are atoms innumerable roaming through the void, while infinite
changes succeed one another in bodies. Those in one region receive the
atoms repulsed from another: there is no danger of their straying infinitely
without reaching a goal, for everywhere are great bodies to receive what is
expelled from other stars.
Composite as the worlds are,—capable, therefore, of dissolution and
destruction,—yet, as Timaeus had suggested, the power and providence of
the divine purpose may maintain them eternally as they are.

CHAPTER V[380]
THE LAST AND THE LEAST THINGS: ATOMS
AND SOUL-MONADS

The reaction against Aristotelianism had, as one of its results, a renascence
of the atomic theory of Democritus and Lucretius; and one of the earliest
adherents of the renovated doctrine was Bruno. Although a complete
presentation of the theory was not given until his later works, the De
Minimo and the Articuli adv. Mathematicos, appeared, yet already in the
Italian dialogues there were frequent references to it. In the Cena,[381] for
example, it is said that in the physical division of a finite body infinite
progress is impossible, and, as we shall afterwards find, in Bruno there is no
distinction between physical and mathematical division. Again, in the Cena
an animistic atomism is suggested, which presents a curious anticipation of
some of Leibniz’ characteristic views. “It is more than probable, as all
things partake of life, that many or innumerable individuals live not only in
us, but in all composite things; when anything “dies,” as is said, we must
believe it to be not death, but change only; the accidental composition or
concord ceases, the things that enter into it remaining always immortal; and
this is truer of those things we call spiritual than of those we call corporeal
or material.”[382] Thus every body or organism, for all bodies are organisms
to Bruno, is itself constituted by other living beings, the atoms—living
atoms—being alike the origin and the end of all. So Leibniz wrote:
—“Every living body has a presiding entelechy, which is the soul in the
animal; but the members of this living body are full of other living beings—
plants, animals,—each of which, again, has its entelechy or presiding
soul.”[383] In the Infinito Bruno refers to the continuous changes of all
composite bodies as arising from the ceaseless flux of atoms out of and into
each body, even the greater “animals,” the stars and planets, sending out
particles, which wander through the universe from one to another.[384]
Again, when discussing the four elements, he ascribes to water the power of
holding together the atoms of earth, or “the dry.” “If from the earth all water

were to be removed, so that there remained purely dry matter, this
remainder would necessarily be an incoherent, rare, loose substance, easy to
be dispersed through the air, in the form of innumerable discontinuous
bodies; for while the air or ether makes a continuum, that which makes a
coherent continuum is water or moisture.”[385] These indivisible “prime
bodies,” of which the worlds are originally composed, are spoken of as
flying throughout space from world to world, in infinite movement,
entering now into this, now into that “composition.”[386] Finally, in the
Spaccio, we are reminded that “every trifle, however worthless, is of value
in the order of the whole, the universe, for great things are composed of
little, little things of the least, and these of the individuals (or indivisibles)
or minima.”[387] In its main outlines, accordingly, Bruno’s atomic theory
was already formed in his mind when he wrote his earlier philosophical
works, and even some of his peculiar applications of it had already
suggested themselves. It is hardly possible, therefore, to find any very
marked development in this regard between the London and the Frankfort
periods. There is elaboration and completion rather than development in
any definite direction;[388] and, as we have seen, the writing of the larger
works, containing the developed system, was projected in London, and even
carried out to a certain extent before Bruno left England.[389] In the
Acrotismus, which occupies a middle place between the two periods, the
doctrine is equally in evidence, in reference both to the atoms and to the
continuous ether in which they move. “There is a limit to the division of
nature—an indivisible something; the division of nature arrives at ultimate
minimal parts, unapproachable by human instruments. Of these minimal
bodies every sensible body is composed, and such a body, resolved into its
minima, can retain no semblance of complexity; for these are the first
bodies out of which all others are made, and which are, in the truest sense,
the matter of all things that have corporeal existence. Resolved into these
parts, stone has no look of stone, flesh of flesh, bone of bone; in their
elements, bone, stone, and flesh do not differ, but only when formed out of
these, compounded, compacted, and arranged in diverse manners, do flesh,
stone, and bone and other things become different one from another.”[390]
And Bruno describes how, between the heavenly bodies, there is a
substance, “ingenerable and incorruptible, the immeasurable air, a kind of
spiritual body”—the ether.[391]

Its full extension, however, the theory receives in the De
Object of De
Minimo, where the atom, or corporeal unity, is not the sole Minimo.
minimum discussed. The full title of the work is:—“On the
threefold minimum, and measure, being the principles of the three
speculative sciences and of many practical arts.” We find nowhere any
distinct statement as to what Bruno meant by the “threefold minimum,” and
the three speculative sciences to which its several members refer. It was
supposed that the minima were (1) the monad or unity which is the unit of
number, (2) the point, which is the unit of the line, and (3) the atom, which
is the unit of body. But arithmetic and geometry can hardly be called
speculative sciences, and Tocco has shown that Bruno had in view the triad
of God, the soul and the atom—the three kinds of simple substance, each
immortal and indestructible:—God as the supreme and most simple unity,
Monad of Monads; soul as that which lives in each composite being and
holds in unity the atoms which from time to time enter into its composition;
and the atom, the most simple of material substances, in the sum of which,
with their containing ether, the material universe consists. Had Bruno
carried out his subdivision of the speculative sciences, he would probably
have referred God, as the substance of all reality, to a speculative theology,
of Neoplatonist type; soul as the simple substance of animate beings to
metaphysics proper; and the atoms, the substance of body, to a speculative
physics, dealing with the metaphysical presuppositions of the general
theory of nature, which was set forth in the De Immenso. The scheme,
however, was never fully carried out,[392] the times being not yet ripe for
the complete separation of the speculative and the experimental or
observational sciences. In referring the atomic theory to
Atomism a
metaphysics, Bruno showed a true instinct, for while in metaphysical
one sense atomism is a scientific hypothesis capable of doctrine.
furnishing laws which explain the interaction of bodies,—
the corpuscular theory,—and as such has proved its value by the brilliant
developments of recent years, on the other hand, it is also a presupposition
of knowledge, a ground of the possibility of our knowledge of body, and
therefore has its place in speculative theory, or metaphysics, in the widest
sense. Both points of view are presented in Bruno’s doctrine, but that from
which he starts is the epistemological, following in this the guidance of
Nicholas of Cusa.

Knowledge is measurement, and all measure implies a
Knowledge
minimum in each kind of being. Were it possible to implies the atom.
subdivide anything ad infinitum, the half would be
potentially equal to the whole, and measurement frustrated. There must be a
limit to division, an ultimate part, which itself has no parts, and which is the
substance of the composition into which it enters, the composition on the
other hand being an “accident” of this minimum. As it is
Relativity of
primarily a condition of measurement, the minimum minimum.
differs in the different spheres of measure or knowledge to
which the category of quantity applies. In magnitudes of one or two
dimensions it is the point, in bodies the atom, in numbers the monad or
unity. Thus number is accident of the monad, monad is the essence of
number, as composition is accident of the atom, atom is essence of the
composite. Again, the “sensible minimum” must be far greater than the
natural or real minimum, for in so far as minimum is qualified by sensible,
it is implied that the minimum is not absolutely such, but is a composite.
The minimum of taste, touch, etc., must possess certain qualities, by which
it has relation to sense, and these can derive only from some form of
composition. In their primary form the minima of nature must be without
difference; therefore that some are sensible, others not, must be due to some
addition in the former.[393]
Thus each species of existence, as light, moisture, vital force,[394] has its
own minimum, and the minimum is relative in this sense also, that there are
different kinds of existence not resolvable one into another: the absolute
minimum would be God, who is also the absolute maximum. The relative
minimum, accordingly, is determined either by the thought and design of
the observer, or by the species of existence to which the subject belongs;
nature has set limits, both lower and upper, within which the individual of
any species must stay, or cease to belong to that species. Accordingly, what
one regards as great and composite, another may take as first and
minimum: the unit of one science may be analysed in another into further
elements. “Pythagoras in his philosophy started with the monad and
numbers; Plato with atoms, lines and surfaces; Empedocles with the four
elements; the physicians with the four humours, and so on; but the
Pythagorean monad is prior to the placed monad (the atom), Plato’s matter
of bodies to the qualified bodies of Empedocles, the four simple bodies of
Empedocles to the four first combinations of these, the four humours. So to

the universe the whole solar system, the sun and all its planets, may be a
simple unit.”[395]
Here Bruno suggests two principles for the classification and systematising
of the sciences, to which it would have been well had he himself and his
successors faithfully adhered. The one is, that the modes of measurement,
i.e. the methods and laws of the sciences, must differ for the different kinds
of existence studied: that a biological law, for example, cannot be adopted
as an explanation of mental phenomena, nor the atomic theory account for
the phenomena of life. On the other hand there are orders of existence,
according to the complexity of the subjects involved. If we regard the
science which deals with the more concrete subject as “higher,” then each
higher science (e.g. psychology) must take for granted the principles and
results of each lower science (biology, physics, mathematics),—each must
adopt and retain a unit for itself, which it has not further to analyse.
In the same way the minima offer a ground for the
distinction of the more abstract sciences one from another. The “minima” in
the classification
The term “individual nature” (atoma natura) may, of sciences.
according to Bruno, have one of several uses. It may be
applied either “negatively or privatively, and if negatively, then either
accidentally or substantially.” His instance of the accidental use is a voice
or sound, which expands spherically, is wholly wherever it is, i.e. the full
content of the sound is heard, wherever its influence extends, not a part
here, a part there, although the intensity may vary in degree. Of the
substantial use examples are the spirit, which is wholly in the whole body
of man, or that spirit which is in the whole extent of the life of the earth, by
whose life we live and in which we have our being, or, above this
substantial nature or individual soul, that of the universe, and supreme
above all, the mind of minds, God, one spirit completely filling all things.
[396] The atom-nature is privatively so-called, when it is the element and
substance of a magnitude which is the same in kind with it, and may be
reduced to it, and it is distinguished from the atom negatively so-called,
because it is not divisible, either in genus or in species, either per se or per
accidens. Examples are, (1) in discrete quantities:—unity to the
mathematician, the universal proposition to the logician, the syllable to the
grammarian; and (2) in continuous quantities, varying with the species of
continuum:—the minimal pain, sweetness, colour, light, triangle, circle,

straight line, curve; in duration, the instant; in place, the minimal space; in
length and breadth, the point; in body, the least and first body.
In the second place, the atom or minimum is also a
Minimum as
metaphysical ποῦ στῶ; not only is it the last result of substance.
analysis, but it is also the permanent substance of being,
and again it contains all being in itself—it is essence of being. Thus such an
individual nature “never comes into existence by way of generation, nor
passes out of it by way of corruption or dissolution; only per accidens may
we say that it now is, now is not.”[397] Certain of them, however, the souls,
deities, God, are in their intrinsic nature eternal, immortal, indissoluble. Of
these it was Bruno’s intention to treat at large in a Metaphysics and a De
Anima which he purposed to write “if God granted him time.”[398]
Unfortunately, it was willed otherwise.
Nothing that becomes, changes, decays, is real (ens). It is by meditating on
this perpetual unity of nature, by conforming ourselves, and preserving
ourselves in likeness to it, that we come to partake in the life of the gods,
and to deserve the name of substance. That which time, movement, fate
bring to us is nought; for while they are, they are not. “Let us then,” cries
Bruno, “supply the mind with material, in the contemplation of the
minimum, through which it may exalt itself to the maximum.”[399] Since the
real minimum, whether atom or soul, is immortal and indestructible, we
know, as Pythagoras saw, that there is no death, but only transition; death is
a dissolution which can occur only to the composite, for the composite is
never substance, but is always adventitious. Otherwise we should be
changing our substance every moment with the continuous influx of atoms
into our bodies. Only by the individual substance of the soul are we that
which we are; about it as a centre, which is everywhere in its whole being
(ubique totum), the disgregation and aggregation of atoms takes place.
According to a law of the soul-world, all bodies and forces tend to the
spherical form; God, as monad of monads, is the perfect or infinite sphere,
of which the centre is at once nowhere and everywhere; and in Him (as in
all minima, simple substances, monads) all opposites coincide, the many
and the few, finite and infinite; therefore that which is minimum is also
maximum, or anything between these, each is all things, the greatest and the
whole.[400] Therefore, if contemplation is to follow in the footsteps of
nature, it must begin, continue, and end with the minimum.[401] In other

words, the minimum in each sphere of being contains implicitly in itself the
whole reality of that sphere. The minimum is its substance, not merely the
ultimate of analysis, but the actual source, the dynamic origin of reality, as
God is implicitly the whole universe and also the source of the universe as
it actually exists. It is because the minimum is all reality, is the maximum,
that the knowledge of it gives us that of the whole.
In the third place the atomic theory offers an explanation
Uniqueness of
of the uniqueness of each natural existence, which Bruno’s all things.
philosophical theory already assumed. The ever moving
atoms present a mechanism by which the infinite diversity and infinite
succession of change in things may be brought about. The appearance of
similarity, exactness, etc., is, as we have found, an illusion. Mathematically
exact figures or bodies—a true circle, for example—are unattainable by
sense, even if they exist in nature; but they do not exist in nature. Sense is
the primary faculty, through which the material of all
Sense and
others must pass, so that what has not entered through that knowledge.
window of the soul cannot be known at all. But a single
point out of place on the circumference of a circle makes it cease to be a
true circle, and our sense-apprehension is necessarily so confused and
indistinct that we cannot distinguish between the true and the false, where
truth depends upon so inappreciable a difference.
Relativity.
Moreover sense-knowledge is relative to the knowing
subject, or to the subject’s position with regard to the object. What to the
eye of one is too large is to another too small; a sound which is pleasant to
one ear is not so to another; the food which to the hungry man tastes sweet,
to the full man is nauseous; the ape to the ape is beautiful, but to the man is
of laughter-inspiring ugliness. Hence the circumspect will not say “this has
a good odour, taste, sound, this has a beautiful appearance,” but will add “to
me,” “now,” “sometimes.” Nothing is good or evil, pleasant or painful,
beautiful or ugly, simply and absolutely; but the same objects in relation to
individual subjects receive from the senses contrary denominations, as they
in fact produce contrary effects. In deciding what is to be called good or
bad, honourable or base, nature and custom have been the chief agents, and
alterations have issued from the slow rise and victory of different opinions.
Among the Druids and Magi certain things were performed publicly at
sacrifices which now, even when committed in privacy, are regarded as
execrable, and are so by way of law, and in the present condition of affairs.

Philosophy, as it teaches to abstract from particulars, to bring the nature and
condition of things as far as possible under an absolute judgment, must
define differently the useful and good in an absolute sense, from the useful
and good as contracted to the human species. Objectively there is no
definitely good or definitely evil, definitely true or definitely false, so that
from one point of view we may say that all things are good; from another
that all things are evil; from a third that nothing is good or evil, as neither of
the contraries is true; from a fourth that all things are both good and evil, as
each of the contraries is true. No sense deceives or is deceived: each judges
of its proper object according to its own measure. There is no higher
tribunal to which to refer its object, nor can reason judge of colour any
more than can the ear; sensible truth does not follow any general or
universal rule, but one which is particular, mutable, and variable. In the
working of an external sense there may be different degrees of perfection or
defect, but not of truth or falsity, which consist in the reference of the
subject and predicate to one another. The faculty by which we judge this or
that to be true colour or light, and distinguish from apparent colour or light,
is not in the eye. To affirm that man is an animal, we must know both man
and animal, know that animal nature is in man, and other things which, as
means or circumstances, concur directly or indirectly in this knowledge.
External sense can apprehend only one species or image of the object; from
the colour and figure to pass to its name, its truth, its difference from other
objects, belongs to a more inward faculty. Yet the latter is
always based upon sense;—a deaf man can neither Judgment based
upon sensation.
imagine nor dream of sounds which he has never heard,
nor a blind man of colours and figures which he has never seen.[402] This
digression on the relativity of knowledge, and on the different functions of
sense and reason, in which Bruno follows partly the teaching of Lucretius,
partly the Peripatetic doctrine of knowledge, shows that even if a true or
perfectly exact geometrical figure existed in nature, none of the faculties
with which we are endowed could apprehend it, since it is not given by
external sense.[403]
But in the second place[404] reason tells us that no true
circle, or other figure, is possible in nature: for there is in Nosimilarity
exactness or
in
nature no similarity except in the atoms; a true circle composites.
would imply the equality of all lines from the centre, but
no two lines in nature are entirely and in all respects equal to one another.

The circle or part of a circle which appears most perfect to us—the rainbow
—is an illusion of the senses, due to the reflection of the light of the sun
from the clouds; so the circles made by a stone falling into water cannot be
perfect, for this would mean that the stone itself is perfectly spherical, that
the water is everywhere of the same density, that no wind is playing upon
its surface. Sound is not equally diffused owing to differences in the density
and rarity of the air, nor is the horizon ever a perfect circle, owing to
differences of clearness in different directions. Object and faculty alike are
in continuous change; all natural things are continually altering their form
or changing their position; therefore although they seem to sense to remain
fixed for a time, we know that this is impossible, from the nature of things.
[405] Whatsoever falls in the scope of sense-perception, even the distant
sphere and stars, we judge to consist of the same elements, therefore to be
subject equally to perpetual variability and vicissitude. Thus—the atoms
alone being simple, and remaining ever the same—no composite thing can
be the same for one moment even, as each is being altered continually in all
parts and on all sides by the efflux and influx of innumerable atoms.[406]
“Hence nothing is perfectly straight, nothing perfectly circular among
composites, nothing absolutely solid but the atoms, nothing absolutely void
but the spaces between them.” The facet of a diamond appears to be a
perfect plane, perfectly compact, yet in reality it is rough and porous.[407] In
matter no two lines or figures are entirely equal, nor can the same figure be
repeated twice.[408] No man is twice of the same weight, the very
instruments by which we measure and weigh things are themselves in
constant change, and the flux of atoms is never equal, but now denser, now
rarer. In general no two things are of the same weight, length, sound, or
number, nor are two motions or parts of motion ever the same. To say that
ten trees are equal to ten others is to speak merely from a logical point of
view, for in fact each is one in a peculiar and special sense.[409] “Equality is
only in those things which are permanent and the same; changing bodies are
unequal to themselves at any two instants.”[410] “Nothing variable or
composite consists at two moments of time wholly of the same parts and the
same order of parts, since the efflux and influx of atoms is continuous, and
therefore not even from the primary integrating parts will you be able to
name a thing as the same twice.”[411]
Number itself is not an absolute, but a relative determination: it does not
touch the nature of the thing itself. Nature has no difference of number, as

we have, of odd and even, tens and hundreds; nor do the gods, spirits, or
other rational beings define the numbers and measures of objects by the
same series of terms. Both numbers and the methods of numbering are as
diverse as are the fingers, heads, and mental equipment of the numberers.
That which fits in with the numbers of nature will therefore never fit in with
our numbers. Thus ten horses and ten men, although determined
arithmetically by one and the same number, are in nature, or physically,
wholly unequal to one another.[412]
In order that men’s minds may be better disposed for the
The atoms.
reception of truth, it is necessary first to demolish the
foundations of error;[413] Bruno accordingly sets himself to disprove the
infinite divisibility of the continuum.[414] It was the common belief that
there were no limits set to the dividing power of either nature or art, so that,
however small a part might be arrived at, it was possible to divide it into yet
smaller parts, on the analogy of the division of a fraction into tens of
thousands of parts. Bruno denied this analogy to be justifiable, as in the
latter case we are concerned not with division but with multiplication or
addition, not with a continuum, but with discrete quantities, and it was part
of his general theory that the addition of discretes might be carried on ad
infinitum; the inverse process he denied. He thus held opinions directly
contrary to those of Aristotle, with whom the mass of the universe was
finite, limited by its enclosing sphere, the parts of the universe unlimited.
Aristotle had an upper but not a lower limit; Bruno a lower but not an
upper. So time and space, which Aristotle had treated as
finite in duration or extent, but as infinitely divisible, like Time and space.
the universe itself, are regarded by Bruno as unlimited in their dimensions,
but as consisting of discrete minimal parts. “In every point of duration is
beginning without end, and end without beginning”; it is the centre of two
infinities. Therefore the whole of duration is one infinite instant, both
beginning and end, as immeasurable space is an infinite minimum or centre.
“The beginning and source of all errors, both in physics and in
mathematics, is the resolution of the continuous in infinitum. To us it is
clear that the resolution both of nature and of true art, which does not
advance beyond nature, descends from a finite magnitude and number to
the atom, but that there is no limit to the extension of things either in nature
or in thought, except in regard to the form of particular species. Everywhere
and always we find the minimum, the maximum nowhere and never. The

maximum and minimum, however, may in one sense coincide, so that we
know the maximum to be everywhere, since from what has been said it is
evident that the maximum consists in the minimum and the minimum in the
maximum, as in the many is the one, in the one the many. Yet reason and
nature may more readily separate the minimum from the maximum than the
maximum from the minimum. Therefore the immeasurable universe is
nothing but centre everywhere; eternity nothing but a moment always;
immeasurable body an atom; immeasurable plane a point; immeasurable
space the receptacle of a point or atom.”[415]
The chief source of error on the part of the Peripatetics was their failure to
distinguish between the minimum as a part, and the minimum a terminus or
limit. Hence their idea that no combination of physical minima would give
a magnitude, since two or more would touch one another with their whole
surface, i.e. would coincide:—otherwise the minimum would have parts, a
part of each touching the other, and a part not touching. On their theory it
would follow that magnitudes do not consist of parts, or at least not of
elementary parts. This is inconsistent with nature, for existing magnitudes
must have been built up out of nature’s elements, and with art, for art can
measure only on the assumption of first parts. It is true that what is posited
as first part in one operation may be the last result in another, for the
minimum, as we have seen, is a relative conception, but some first part is
always assumed in any operation. And as the operation of art is not infinite,
so neither is there infinite subordination of parts.[416] When two minima
touch one another, they do not do so with their whole body, or any part of
it, but one with its terminus or limit may touch several others; no body
touches another with the whole of itself or a part, but with either the whole
or the part of its limiting surface. The terminus of a thing is therefore no
part of it, and by implication not a minimal part. Hence there are two kinds
of minima concerned—that of the touching body, or part, and the minimum
of that by which the contact is effected, the terminus.[417] The atom, which
is the minimal sphere, touches in the absolutely minimal point, the smallest
terminus. Other spheres do not touch in a point simply, but in more than
one, or in a plane circle.[418] By adding limit to limit we never obtain a
magnitude; the terminus is no part, and therefore if in contact it would
touch with its whole self, so that magnitude is not made up of termini,
whether points, atoms, lines, or surfaces which are termini; and this was the
false ground on which the Aristotelians denied the possibility of the atom. It

remained to ask if the termini were infinite, since the atoms were not; but it
was clear that their number was determined by that of the atoms. For two
limits do not touch one another:—“They do not cohere or make a quantum,
but through them others in contact with one another make a contiguum or
continuum.”[419] It may be added that if the parts of a divisible body were
infinite in number, the parts of the whole would be equalled by the parts of
the half, for in the infinite there can be no greater and less. In the infinite, as
we have seen above, there is no difference between palms, digits, miles,
between units and thousands, nor in the infinite time that has elapsed are
there more months than years, more years than centuries. If any one set of
these were less than the others it would be finite, and if one finite number
may be applied to the whole, then the whole is finite.[420] The force of the
Achilles dilemma was derived from the false idea that the minimum of one
kind had some relation to that of another kind, e.g. that of time to that of
motion, that of impulsive force to that of the motion produced. A thing of
one kind does not define or measure a thing of another, and the duration of
one does not compare in the same sense with the duration of another. Parts
of different things are only equivocally called parts, and minima are minima
only according to their proper (and diverse) definitions; therefore one is not
measured by another, except in a rough way, for practical purposes.[421]
As the atoms come into contact with one another, not in all
The vacuum.
points of their surface, but in a definite number, it follows Atoms spherical.
that there is a space between them, in the interstices; it was
this thought which led Democritus to posit a vacuum.[422] The figure of the
corporeal minimum must be spherical, for any mass which has projections
can always be thought of as smaller, when these projections have been
removed; and nature itself suggests this, by the gradual rounding off of
substances through time, and the apparent roundness and smoothness of
rough and jagged bodies when the observer is at a distance.[423] Diversity of
forms of composite bodies results easily from spherical atoms, through
differences in situation and order, differing amounts of vacuum and solid;
but a simple vacuum with solid bodies is not sufficient,—there must be a
certain matter through which the latter cohere together.[424] Although all
other determinations may be abstracted from, figure at least must be
predicated of the atoms; quantity cannot be asserted of that which is thought
to be unfigured. These determinations of the minimum, though not given to
sense, may nevertheless be made object of thought, by analogy or inference

from the combinations of sensible minima in larger composites, the same
forms of aggregation being repeated in the higher which occur in the lower
forms.[425]
From the consideration of mathematical figures as consisting of minima,
Bruno attempted both to remodel and to simplify the existing mathematical
theory, and, unfortunately fell foul of the new analytical mathematics, the
theory of rationals and of approximations, which at that time was receiving
marked extensions, and which has since justified itself so completely by
results. It is true he did not entirely reject it, but he regarded it as merely an
artifice for rough practical measurements. The true measure is always the
minimum, inferred by analogy from the combinations of greater parts,
which are perceived by sense. Thus the minimal circle, after the atom itself,
consists of seven minima, the minimal triangle of three, and the minimal
square of four, and as each figure increases not by the addition of one atom
merely, but by a number determined by the original number of atoms in the
figure, it follows that no one figure is ever equal to another. Thus the second
triangle is of six minima, the second square of nine, the second circle of
nineteen. The “squaring of the circle” is therefore impossible,[426] although
it may be approximately reached through the ultimate coincidence of arc
and chord, by which the circle becomes equal to a polygon with an infinite
number of sides.[427] This, however, is only an approximation of sense,
which fails to observe the infinitesimal differences that are caused by the
existence of a few atoms, more or less, in a figure. They are visible to the
eye of reason, which comprehends that no two figures in nature are ever
exactly equal. In exact geometry the number of one species of figure has
nothing in common with that of another. It is clear, however, that even on
his own ground Bruno was in error in this regard; for example, the seventh
triangle and the fifth square are each composed of thirty-six minima.[428]
But it is hardly necessary to take seriously his teaching in this respect. He
was wholly governed by the belief in the infinite diversity of nature, and the
absolute incommensurability of any member of one species of beings with
one of a different species. “Since a definite minimum exists, it is not
possible either in reality or in thought for a square to be equalled by a
circle, nor even a square by a pentagon, a triangle by a square, nor in fine
any species of figure by a figure of another species; for difference in the
number of sides implies also difference in the order and number of parts. As
figures in this respect are as numbers, and one species of number cannot be

equalled by another either ‘formally’ or fundamentally (i.e. either in idea or
in fact), we can never make an equilateral figure of any kind equal to one of
another by first parts.”[429] Where this transformation is apparently carried
out, as where a cube of wax is moulded to another figure, the result is due
to the varying degrees of density in the different parts of the material; no
solid parts are added or subtracted, but the disposition and extent of the
pores or vacua are altered. But no argument can be drawn from this rough
method, for the principles of practice are different from those of science.
[430]

The latter principles are then applied boldly to geometrical science: thus it
is shown that an angle, although it may be multiplied indefinitely, can be
divided only into two parts; all its lines, it is understood, consisting of fila
or rows of atoms;[431] that the circle has not an infinite number of radii, for
from the circumference to the centre only six such lines can be drawn;[432]
that not every line can be divided into two equal parts, for the physical line
or filum may, naturally, consist of an odd number of atoms;[433] in any case
geometrical bisection can at best be a near approximation,—though the two
halves be apparently equal, they may really differ by many atoms. On this
basis, in the fourth and fifth books of the De Minimo, Bruno offers a
simplification of the geometry of Euclid. As nature itself is the highest
unification of the manifold, and the monad is the unity and essence of all
number, so we are taught to pass “from the infinite forms and images of art
to the definite forms of nature, which the mind in harmony with nature
grasps in a few forms, while the first mind has at once the potentiality and
the reality of all particular things in the (simple) monad.”[434] In accordance
with the method of simplification suggested by this doctrine, Bruno sets
himself to show that the greater part of Euclid may be intuitively presented
in three complicated figures, named respectively the Atrium Appollinis,
Atrium Palladis, and Atrium Veneris. He hoped that by this means, “if not
always, for the most part at any rate, without further explanation, the
demonstration and the very evidence of the thing might be presented to the
senses of all, without numbers,—not after the partial method of others, who
in considering a statue take now the foot, now the eyes, now the forehead,
now other parts separately,—but explaining all in each and each in all.”[435]
It is no part of the purpose of this book to go at length into the mathematics
of Bruno, which unfortunately have not yet met with a competent
exposition. Apart from the difficulty of the matter itself, the poetical form

and setting of his theorems is an additional stumbling-block in the way of
understanding. Bruno was put to many shifts in order to give a poetical
colouring to the most prosaic of subjects.
We have gone thus fully into the detail of Bruno’s atomic theory, more so
perhaps than its intrinsic value seems to demand, because this aspect of his
doctrine is the most important philosophically, and has exercised the
greatest influence upon the course of speculation. It also provides most
clearly an exemplification of the return which was made, or thought to be
made, by the Renaissance to the older pre-Aristotelian philosophy and
science. The rejection by Aristotle and his scholastic followers of the atomic
theory of Leucippus and Democritus had been based upon the identification
of space and body. The possibility of a vacuum in the corporeal world was
denied, on the ground that discreteness was inconsistent with the continuity
which was felt to be a necessary condition of space. Accordingly, the
reintroduction of the atom was possible only in one of two ways—either by
the distinction between body and space, or by the application of the atomic
constitution of body to space itself. The former and truer solution was not
open to Bruno. His time was still too much under the domination of
Peripatetic thought for him to be able to take the important step of critically
separating these two notions. The latter way, therefore, was that which he
followed. Hence the curious attempt to remodel mathematical theory on the
basis of the atom, which we have described above, and the reduction of
mathematical certainty to an illusion of sense. Figure is to be found only in
the combinations of atoms; and owing to the spherical form of the atom, the
infinite number of them existing in any body which is presented to sense,
and the space which lies between their surfaces, mathematical equality and
exactness are impossible. Neither straight line, therefore, nor perfect circle
are to be found in reality. Mathematics, which should be based upon, or
which presupposes, continuity, is confounded with physics, which
presupposes the analysis of body into discrete, impenetrable atoms.
Physical atomism finds its justification in the experienced fact of resistance,
which is the primary quality of body as perceived by our senses. In
mathematical space, on the other hand, we abstract from all qualities except
that of dimension only. Resistance would be inexplicable were it possible to
proceed ad infinitum in dividing matter; it implies an ultimate irreducible
and indestructible unit, whether we regard this unit as a centre of force or as
an inert substance merely.

The same influence of Aristotelian thought led Bruno to posit a subtle
matter, the Ether, as filling up the interstices between the atoms. Space and
body having been identified, it was seen that a vacuum was inconsistent
with the nature of things. The Aristotelian plenum was reintroduced in this
form, that there might be some reality where the discrete atoms were not.
The bolder step of asserting the fact, and indeed, the necessity of a vacuum
as a presupposition of knowledge of the material world, was not taken until
there appeared the work of Gassendi, by whom the final blow was given to
the old conception of body and space, and through whom the critical
separation of the one from the other was first rendered possible. It is curious
that Bruno did not think of applying to the continuous ether any geometrical
measure; had he done so, he would have understood the value of the new
theory of infinitesimals and irrationals which he opposed so strongly.
Again, had he carried out more fully the distinction which he draws
between the atom and the terminus or limit, the same result would have
followed. Pure geometry is the geometry of the limit; for the limit is not
only between atom and atom, or body and body, but also between atom and
vacuum or ether. In this sense it is both continuous and figured, the
compatibility of which qualities Bruno had denied; the continuous is
measured, not by making it discrete, but by making the number, the
measure, fluid or continuous.
Lasswitz has shown that there are in Bruno’s theory three distinct aspects,
not, however, clearly separated one from another, of the atomic hypothesis:
they may be named severally the metaphysical, the physical, and the critical
aspects. From the metaphysical point of view the atom is
Metaphysical
the ultimately simple, indeterminate substance of things; atomism.
its conception results from the effort to find the real
substance which is outside of, and unaffected by, the change and decay
apparent on the surface of things, but felt to be unreal. Simplicity, unity,
substance, is that which is sought, an abiding somewhat underlying the flux
of the universe, which is regarded as an illusory appearance to sense. From
this aspect it is that the identity of minimum and maximum, of the least with
the greatest, is to be explained. Number, plurality, and diversity no longer
apply to the absolutely simple: all are determinations of human and finite
origin which are here no longer valid. In the simple all contraries coincide,
for the very reason that it has no determinations in itself; even the highest
qualities which men would attribute to God, for example,—justice and

goodness,—are improperly predicated of him, for as in him the greatest and
the least coincide, so do goodness and evil and all other contrary qualities.
In this respect Bruno was following closely in the footsteps of Nicolaus of
Cusa.
From the second point of view, that of physical atomism,
Physical
the atom is nothing more than a hypothesis to explain the Atomism.
constitution and qualities of nature as we experience it. We
seek to account for the differences in material bodies and in their ways of
acting upon one another by the interaction of ultimate elements of which
the nature and laws may be variously interpreted. Of this point of view also
there are traces in Bruno, although for it he had least regard. He does not
attempt, for example, to apply the theory of the atoms to explain the four
elements which had come down from Aristotle. He leaves them practically
intact, and we have seen that they form a standing difficulty in the way of a
consistent theory. The earth alone is atomic in its nature; water, air, and fire
seem alike fluid and continuous in quality, but wherein their difference from
one another consists he was unable, or did not care, to make clear. Perhaps,
if we take his view at its best, we should say that all three represent strata,
varying in density, of the one fluid and all-pervading ether. Had he worked
out this conception, which was evidently present, on occasions, to his mind,
he would have given an example of what is meant by physical atomism. But
this was left for another century to fulfil. From the third or
Critical
critical point of view, which inquires into the Atomism.
presuppositions or the possibility of knowledge, Bruno
may be regarded as being, to some extent, a forerunner of Kant, in the stress
he lays upon the relation of the minimum to measure or knowledge, and in
his doctrine of the relativity of the conception of the minimum. The
minimum, instead of a last of division, becomes a first of composition—a
ground which we must necessarily assume in order to account for the
experienced fact of composition. To know a composite is to measure it, and
measurement implies the minimum or first part, without which quantity in
any form cannot be explained. As the comparison of numbers with one
another, their determination as greater or less, is only possible on the
assumption of a unit, a common measure to which each may be referred, so
the comparison of bodies with one another, as to quantity and quality alike,
demands a corporeal minimum, to which their differences must be reduced.
This relation to knowledge carries with it the relativity of the minimum

according to the subject-matter with which the knower is for the time being
concerned. If all knowledge is of the same type, then in each application of
it—each subdivision of knowledge as a whole—there is presupposed the
corresponding minimum. That which is least in one sphere may be greatest
in another; that which is element of one science may be that which another
seeks to analyse into lesser constituents. The celestial body, which is a
highly complex combination of elements, may be the unit of astronomical
science. The phrase, which is the unit of the rhetorician, is analysed by the
logician and the grammarian into terms and words; these are analysed by
another science into syllables and letters; these by the mathematician into
lines and points. Thus every science has its own (relative) minimum. Only
one minimum is absolutely so named,—God as the monad of monads. It is
to be noted that the relativity of the monad is dependent upon the origin of
its conception, in the conditions of knowledge; it is because quantity is
universal that a minimum is necessary, and it is because quantity differs in
kind, in each subject of knowledge,—because it is, in scholastic phrase,
equivocally applied in the different cases,—that the minima differ from one
another. The minimal number is no measure of the minimal body nor of the
geometrical figure, and the numbers which are in use among men are not
those which may be employed by other and higher rational beings. Thus,
even number itself is a relative determination; ten horses, said Bruno, are
not really equal to ten men, but only conventionally.
The ancient atomism upon which Bruno founded his theory was, at any rate
in its traditional rendering, frankly materialistic. It admitted nothing but
atoms and the void, all things else being dependent upon the composition of
atoms, which itself, and all that results from it, is merely an appearance to
sense, without corresponding reality in nature. All physical operations were
explained by mechanical arrangement and movement of the atoms. The
method which was pursued thus unscientifically, without consciousness of
the extent of its validity, modern atomic theory has followed scientifically,
with full comprehension of its bearings, and perhaps without due
consideration of its limits. Bruno tells us that he had at one time been an
adherent of Democritus’ atomic theory, but on reflection had been unable to
rest satisfied with his materialistic account of the nature of things. In this
case also he showed himself unable to get rid of the ties which bound all the
thought of his time—even that thought which most believed itself to be
free.

Aristotle’s distinction of form and matter in nature, of pure activity and pure
passivity, had still sufficient influence to render even in Bruno’s time a
purely mechanical treatment of nature an impossibility. The opposing
school, the Neo-Platonism which attracted so many minds of that period,
because of its supposed inconsistency with Aristotle’s system, was itself an
offshoot, to some extent, of that system, and was still less scientific in its
tendency. Mysticism, of which it was partly a cause and partly an effect,
lent its weight also against any mechanical interpretation of nature. Thus
even while apparently governed by scientific aspiration, Bruno gives a
teleological scheme of the universe which renders any scientific explanation
of it impossible. Not only, as we have seen, is the ether identified with the
first substance, spirit, or soul of the universe, but also the greater and lesser
organic bodies are governed each by its individual soul, which is somehow
distinguished from the universal spirit, and within each of these is an
infinite number of smaller living bodies. In other words, the atoms
themselves are animated virtually, if not actually. This animistic
interpretation is in direct conflict with the mechanical interpretation which
science has followed, and which it must continue to follow if it is to
produce any result. Thus, motion and the changes of composition that
derive from motion are explained not by the mechanical impact of atoms
and bodies upon one another, but by the action of the intrinsic soul in each
being, which causes the motion of the body, in accordance with its need and
desire of self-preservation. All motion, even the slightest, is thus explained
by a final cause. In the whole universe also, the constantly occurring
changes and transformations are due to a similar final cause—the need for
each thing to become explicitly that which it already is implicitly, i.e. the
whole of reality. It required once more a critical separation of the spheres of
validity of the respective conceptions of nature and spirit, such as Kant
attempted, before full scope could be given to mechanical interpretation on
the one side, and teleology restricted to the domain of spirit only on the
other.

CHAPTER VI
THE PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY OF BRUNO

The distinctively ethical teaching of Bruno is contained in the two dialogues
—the Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante, and the Heroici Furori. The latter
describes the struggles and aspirations of the “heroic” or generous human
soul in its pursuit of the infinitely beautiful and good—its efforts towards
union with the divine source of all things. To this more constructive work,
in which moral philosophy was to be treated according to “the inward light
with which the divine sun of intelligence had irradiated” the soul of the
writer, the Spaccio was to form an introduction. “It seemed well to begin
with a kind of prelude, after the manner of musicians; to draw some dim
and confused lines, as painters do; to lay deep bases and dark foundations,
as do the great builders; and this end seemed best achieved by putting down
in number and in order all the primary forms of morality which are the
capital virtues and vices.”[436] The Spaccio, with its shorter appendage, the
Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, contained a bitter attack upon the prevalent
forms of Christian religion; it especially attacked the doctrine of the all-
sufficiency of faith, which, interpreted as it then was, might stand as the
formula of mediaeval corruption and stagnation; and it was upon this
dialogue, almost solely, that the reputation Bruno long enjoyed—that of
being an atheist—was based. It is therefore well to remember the
introductory nature of the work. Had not “atheism” been frequently
synonymous with “unorthodoxy,” the Heroic Enthusiasms would have
shown on how shallow a foundation the charge rested, for that dialogue
breathes the purest religious emotion and aspiration. Bruno had, however, a
premonition of the fate that was to befall his memory. He protested, perhaps
with a touch of sarcasm, that nothing in his work was said “assertively,”—
that he had no wish either directly or indirectly to strike at the truth, to send
a shaft against anything that was honourable, useful, natural, and,
consequently, divine.[437] His own religion was that which had its
beginning, its growth, and its continuance in “the raising of the dead,
making whole the sick, and giving of one’s goods”; and not that in the spirit

of which the goods of others were seized, the whole maimed, and the living
put to death.[438] The conclusions of the Spaccio were not therefore to be
regarded as presenting a finished system, but as mere suggestions, to be
tested “when the music should be given in concert, the picture finished, the
roof put on the building.” On the other hand, it is clear also that in the
Spaccio Bruno intended to present a popular moral philosophy, or to point
out the degree of virtue which might be attained without the influence of the
divine afflatus described in the Enthusiasms. As in the philosophy of
Aristotle before Bruno, and in that of Spinoza after him, the perfection of
this customary morality formed at the same time the ante-chamber through
which alone entrance was to be gained into the inner chamber of divine
love. This is the real meaning that underlies the bizarre and at times
extravagant humour of the dialogue: it points out the purification to which
the human soul must submit before it can become a fitting vessel for the
divine enthusiasm.
Before a purer morality can be taught to any avail, there
must exist a desire for it in the minds of those to whom it Faith and works.
shall be revealed. In the way of Bruno’s proposed reformation there stood
the attitude of the Church and of the religious orders towards “faith” and
towards “works” respectively. Faith meant merely professed belief in, or
acceptance of, their doctrines, and conformity with their practices—blind
acceptance and unreasoning conformity—in contrast with which an earthly
life that was simply moral was held to be of no value towards the blessed
life hereafter. Under the influence of this spirit the worst vices were
practised, condoned, and pardoned, even in Bishops and Cardinals, not to
speak of the ordinary priests and monks. It is only as embodying this
conception that Bruno attacked the Church. Thus Jupiter, in the Spaccio,
complains that his powers are decaying:—“I have not vigour enough to pit
myself against certain half-men, and I must, to my great chagrin, leave the
world to run its course as chance and fortune direct. I am like the old lion of
Æsop—the ass kicked it with impunity, the ape played tricks upon it, the
pig came and rubbed its dusty paunch upon it, as if it were some lifeless
log. My noble oracles, fanes, and altars are thrown down, and most
unworthily desecrated; while altars and statues are raised there to some
whom I am ashamed to name, for they are worse than our satyrs, fauns, and
other half-beasts, viler than the crocodiles of Egypt; for these at least
showed some mark of divinity when magically guided, but those are quite

the scum of the earth.”[439] Bruno is ironically contrasting the Christian
ideal, as he interprets it, with that of the Greeks and Egyptians. The former
is that of a being only half-human, half-free; on one side of his nature he is
reduced to the level of the beast, the ass, the bearer of burdens,
unquestioning, faithful. Again, one of the constellations, the Corona
Borealis, is to be left in the heavens, escaping the general fate,[440] until the
time when it shall be given in reward to “the invincible arm that shall bring
peace, the long-desired, to a miserable, long-suffering Europe, cutting down
the many heads of that worse than Lernean monster that is scattering its
fateful poison of manifold heresy, and sending it through every portion of
her veins.”[441] To this decision of Jupiter, Momus, the critic and wit of the
assembly, adds that it would be enough “if a certain sect of pedants could be
rooted out, who, doing no good themselves, as the divine and natural law
bade, yet thought themselves, and desired to be thought by others, pious and
pleasing to the gods; they said that to do good was good, to do evil, evil; but
that men gained grace and favour with the gods, not through the good that
they did, but through hoping and believing in accordance with their
catechism. As if the gods, said Mercury, were anxious about nothing but
their own vainglory, cared nothing for the injury caused to human society.
And they defame us, Momus continued, by calling this an institution of
heaven, decrying effects or fruits; while all the time they are doing no work
themselves, but living on the works of others, who instituted temples,
chapels, hospices, hospitals, colleges, universities, for quite other men than
they. These others, even if they are not perfect, will not, like their usurpers,
be perverse and pernicious to the world; they will be useful to the state,
skilled in speculative science, studious of morality, fanning zeal and
enthusiasm for doing good to one another, and maintaining the common
weal for which all laws are ordained. The usurpers are worse than grubs,
caterpillars, or destroying locusts, and should be exterminated
accordingly.”[442] How is it possible, we read elsewhere, that men should
regard that as the highest type of religion which holds behaviour, the doing
of good deeds, to be unimportant, or even to be vice and error; or pretends
that the gods do not care for good deeds—that through such, however great
they are, men are not justified?[443] This creed was a disease that ran
through a man’s nature and poisoned it for ever. “When one turned from
any other profession or faith to this, his liberality was exchanged for
avarice, mildness for insolence, humility for pride; formerly open handed

with his own goods, he now became a robber and usurper of those of others;
a good man became a hypocrite; a sincere one, cunningly evil; a simple one,
malicious; he who was once conscious of his own defects became the most
arrogant of men; he who was ready to do any good action, to learn any new
knowledge, became prone to every kind of ignorance and ribaldry; he who
had merely the makings of a rogue became the worst possible of men.”[444]
Miracle-working was the universal means by which the supremacy of faith
was maintained. Momus therefore proposed to send Orion upon the earth.
“He can do miracles—can walk upon the waves of the sea without sinking
or wetting his feet; let us send him among men to make them believe
everything we would have them believe—that black is white, that the
human intellect is blind where it thinks itself to see best; that what to reason
appears excellent, good, best, is vile, wicked, evil in the extreme; that
nature is a strumpet, the law of nature a ribaldry; that nature and divinity
cannot work together for one and the same good end; that the justice of the
one is not subordinate to that of the other, but that they are as contrary as
darkness and light.”[445]
The attitude of mind which formed the ideal of the Church
Asinity.
for its members Bruno typified frequently enough, as we
have seen, by the Ass, after Cusanus’ Docta Ignorantia and Agrippa’s praise
of Asinity in his work on The Vanity of all Sciences. But they were in
earnest: Bruno bitterly ironical. In his Cabala Asinity is given the two
places left vacant in the heavens by the council of the gods in the Spaccio:
the place of Ursa Major is taken by Asinity in the abstract, that of Eridanus
by Asinity in the concrete. The whole work is in praise of “the pure
goodness, royal sincerity, magnificent majesty of ignorance, learned
foolishness, divine Asinity.”[446] Asinity is in the sphere of practice as
submission to authority in that of speculation, or pedantry in that of
teaching. Against all of these Bruno casts the shafts of his irony, now broad
and heavy, now fine, light and piercing.[447] The list of virtues which Bruno
gives as adorning the soul of the renovated man does not present any
novelty, except perhaps in the order assigned to the different virtues.[448]
Along with each mythical figure of the constellations he names the various
vices that are expelled, and into the place of which the virtues come. The
Bear, the highest constellation in the heavens, is replaced by Truth, the
Dragon by Prudence, Cepheus by Sophia, or Wisdom. The following table

shows some of the virtues which occupy the different posts vacated by the
mythical beings of the heavens, and their contrary vices.

CONSTELLATION. VIRTUE. VICES.

1. Ursa Truth. Deformity, Falsity,
Defect,
Impossibility,
Contingency,
Hyprocrisy,
Imposture, Felony.
2. Ursa Major The place is left
vacant, to be filled
in the satire of the
Cabala by “Asinity
in the abstract.”
3. Draco Prudence. Cunning,
Craftiness, Malice,
Stupidity, Inertia,
Imprudence (Envy).
[449]

4. Cepheus Wisdom. Sophistry,
Ignorance (of evil
disposition), foolish
Faith (Hardness).
5. Bootes Law. Prevarication,
(Arctophylax) Crime, Excess,
Exorbitance
(Inconstancy).
6. Corona Borealis Judgment. Iniquity.
7. Hercules Courage. Ferocity, Fury,
Cruelty, Slackness,

Debility,
Pusillanimity
(Violence).
8. Lyra Mnemosyne, and
the Nine Muses, Ignorance, Inertia,
her daughters,— Bestiality
the branches of (Conspiracy).
knowledge.
9. Cygnus Repentance. Self-love,
Uncleanness,
Filthiness,
Immodesty,
Wantonness.
10. Cassiopeia Simplicity. Boastfulness on the
one side,
Dissimulation on
the other (Vanity).
11. Perseus Diligence or Torpor, Idleness,
Solicitude. Inertia, Foolish
Occupation,
Perturbation, Vain
solicitude.
12. Triptolemus Humanity or Misanthropy, Envy,
Philanthropy. Malignity.

There follow as “virtues”:—Sagacity, judicious election or choice,
affability, magnanimity (Aquila); divine enthusiasm or rapture (Pegasus);
hopefulness, faith and sincerity (the Triangle); virtuous emulation,
tolerance, sociability (and friendship—the Pleiades); love (peace and
friendship—Gemini); conversion or emendation, heroic generosity (or
magnanimity, again—Leo); continence, equity (and justice—Libra);
sincerity (observance of promises—Scorpio); contemplation, the love of
solitude (freedom of mind), temperance (Aquarius); just reserve and

taciturnity, tranquillity of mind, industry, prudent fear, vigilance for the
state, kindliness, liberality, judicious sagacity (Hydra); divine magic (and
soothsaying), abstinence (the Cup!), the divine parable (the sacred mystery,
—Chiron); sincere piety and wise religion (the Altar); honour, glory, and,
finally, health, security and repose, as the due reward of the virtues, and
remuneration for zealous work and endurance.[450]
It will be seen that the list is redundant, and it is more so in the text, where
several virtues are usually given under each head. Several of the names do
not denote virtues in the ordinary sense (e.g. knowledge of magic, ability to
interpret the divine parables): they are merely qualities which it is desirable
for the good man to have. Others refer to qualities which could not be
acquired by any one destitute of them (e.g. hope, love, piety), while others
represent rather the outcome of the virtuous life than any one of its
constituent elements, e.g. Knowledge, Divine Enthusiasm, Contemplation,
Honour. There remain the familiar virtues of Greek philosophy:—Courage;
prudence and sagacity; temperance (continence and abstinence); wisdom
(or the love of truth); justice, including submission to law, active justice or
judgment, and equity; sincerity, with truthfulness, simplicity, faith, the
observance of promises; sociability and friendliness, with humanity,
affability, tolerance, kindliness; liberality; magnanimity and heroic
generosity; tranquillity or gentleness. More modern are the virtues of
solicitude, diligence or industry, of emulation, and of love of solitude, or
“Monachism.” There is accordingly nothing of value to be derived for
systematic ethics from this or from any other work of Bruno. It is in the
digressions from the main argument that his philosophy of practical life is
revealed.[451]
The two things which seemed to Bruno for his time the
Peace and
most desirable were peace and freedom—freedom alike of liberty.
thought and of speech. The characteristics of the Church
which he consistently condemned were on the one hand its violence, the
dissension and strife it stirred up, on the other its tyranny over mind and
tongue. Hence the aim of the moral life, from the lower plane on which we
stand in the Spaccio, is to secure the prosperity of the state, the peaceful
common life of its members, and the avoidance of all interference with the
individual, except where the positive end, security, appears endangered. Of
the nine muses, the daughters of Mnemosyne,[452] Ethica is at once the last

born and the most worthy. Her task is to institute religions, to establish
ceremonies, to posit laws, to execute judgments, with prudence, sagacity,
readiness, and generous philanthropy; to approve, confirm, preserve, defend
whatever is well instituted, established, posited, executed; adapting, as far
as may be, both passions and actions to the worship of the gods, and the
common life of men.—The function of Law, the daughter
Law
of wisdom, is to prevent the powerful from making undue
use of their pre-eminence and strength, and in other respects vigorously to
protect the common life and civil intercourse of men.[453] “The powerful are
to be sustained by the weak, the feeble are not to be oppressed by the
strong, tyrants are to be deposed, just governors and kings ordained and
confirmed, republics fostered; violence shall not tread reason under foot,
ignorance not despise knowledge, the poor shall be aided by the rich,
virtues and studies necessary or useful to the community be promoted,
advanced, maintained. No one is to be put into a place of power that is not
superior in merits, by force of virtue and talent, either in himself, which is
rare and almost impossible, or through communication with and counsel of
others, which is due, ordinary and necessary. The two hands by which any
law is strong to bind are justice and possibility, one moderated by the other,
for although many things are possible that are not just, nothing is just that is
not possible. Whether it come from heaven or from the earth, no institution
or law ought to be approved or accepted which does not tend to the highest
end, viz. the direction of our minds and reform of our natures so that they
produce fruits necessary or useful for human intercourse.”[454] Judgment
shall make a scale of virtues and of crimes, the greatest in
Judgment.
either class being that which affects the Republic as a
whole; next that which affects other individuals than the agent; a crime
committed between two who are in accord is hardly a crime, while there is
no crime if the fault remains in the individual—does not proceed to bad
example or to bad deed. Repentance is to be approved by it, but not set
upon the same level as innocence;[455] belief and opinion, but not placed so
high as deeds and work; confession and admission of fault, but not as
correction and abstention. It shall not place one who to no purpose
mortifies the flesh on a level with one who bridles his spirit, nor compare
one who is a useless solitary with another who is in profitable
intercourse[456] with his fellows, nor applaud so highly one who, perhaps
unnecessarily, subdues his desires, as another, who refrains from evil-

speaking and from evil-doing; not make so great a triumph over one who
has healed a base, useless cripple, worth little if any more when whole than
maimed, as over another who has liberated his fatherland, or reformed a
mind diseased.[457] The Roman people was the type of the best-governed
state, “more bridled and restrained from the vices of incivility and barbarity,
more refined and willing for generous undertakings than any other; and as
their law and religion were, so were their customs and deeds, so their
honour and happiness.” How different from the pedants of the Church, who
flourish throughout Europe: while saluting with peace they bring wherever
they enter in the sword of division, and the fire of dispersion; taking son
from father, neighbour from neighbour, citizen from fatherland, and causing
other divorces more abhorrent and contrary to all nature and law; calling
themselves ministers of one who raises the dead and heals the sick, they
more than all others on the earth are maimers of the sound, and slayers of
the living, not so much with fire and sword, as with the tongue of malice.
[458]

Under the Scales, Bruno describes some of the reforms he
The scales.
believes necessary: in courts, offices and honours are for
the future to go by merit; “in republics, the just are to preside, the wealthy
to contribute, the learned to teach, the prudent to guide, the brave to fight,
those that have judgment to counsel, those that have authority to command;
in states, the scales represent the keeping of contracts of peace,
confederations, leagues, the careful weighing of action beforehand; in
individuals the weighing of what each wishes with what he knows, of what
he knows with what he can, of what he wishes, knows, and can with what
he ought; of what he wishes, knows, can, and ought, with what he is, does,
has, and expects.”[459]
Underlying this cult of humanity one cannot but feel the robust naturalism
of the Renaissance, which in Bruno’s mind is apart altogether from the
mystical exclusive intellectualism of his more characteristic philosophy. It
is with man as a natural being, living out his earthly life, and gathering such
fruits as may be of kindliness and love from his fellow-creatures, that the
practical philosophy is concerned. The religion attacked was one that struck
at the root of this human love, and made of earth a purgatory for the sake of
the uncertain life to come. Hence the emphasis laid on
Sincerity.
sincerity, faithfulness, or truthfulness, as high among the

virtues. “Without it every contract is uncertain and doubtful, all intercourse
is dissolved, all social life at an end.” Bruno is as rigid as Kant in regard to
the keeping of faith; even promises made to the wicked may not be broken.
It was “a law of some Jew or Saracen, brutal and barbarian, not of civilised
and heroic Greek or Roman, that sometimes, and with certain kinds of
people, faith might be pledged for individual gain, and for an opportunity of
deception, making it the servant of tyranny and treachery.”[460]
The antipathy of Bruno towards the Jews is to be explained by the same
principle of social life and progress; it is not, as Lagarde supposes,[461] an
offspring of his hatred towards the Church, regarded as a direct descendant
of Judaism. So far as it is not an expression of an unreasoning anti-Semitic
wave of feeling, such as occasionally overwhelms some of the European
peoples, it may have had three grounds: the reputed avarice of the Jew:[462]
his exclusiveness, unsociability;—“a race always base, servile, mercenary,
solitary, incommunicative, shunning intercourse with the Gentiles, whom
they brutally despise, and by whom in their turn, and with good reason, they
are contemned”:[463]—or his religion, which appeared to Bruno a corruption
of the nobler Egyptian religion. Thus in Spaccio[464] the punishment of the
children for the sins of the fathers is said to be found only among
Barbarians, and first among the Jews, “a race so pestilent, leprous, and
generally pernicious that it should be effaced from the earth.”[465]
Temperance, as a virtue, is rather the peace of mind that
Temperance.
goes with civilisation—urbanity—than the more physical
virtue: its opposites are intemperance, excess, asperity, savagery, barbarity.
“It is through intemperance in sensual and in intellectual passions that
families, republics, civil societies, the world, are dissolved, disordered,
destroyed, swallowed up.”[466] Again, Bruno’s unorthodox standpoint with
regard to the vows of chastity and of celibacy taken by nuns and priests is
part of a healthy reaction towards naturalism from the false sentiment which
condemned as unholy whatever pertained to the natural man. The place of
Virgo is taken by chastity, continence, modesty, shame; the contrasting vices
being lust, incontinence, shamelessness. “It is through these,” Bruno adds,
“that virginity becomes a virtue. In itself it is neither virtue nor vice, implies
no goodness, dignity, or merit, and when it resists the command of nature it
becomes a wrong, an impotence, a folly, madness express; while if it is in
compliance with some urgent reason, it is called continence, and has the

essence of virtue, because it participates in that courage and contempt for
pleasure which is not vain or worthless, but benefits human intercourse and
brings honourable satisfaction to others.”[467] “The laws of the wise do not
forbid love, but irrational love; the sycophancies of the foolish prescribe,
without reason, limits to reason, and condemn the law of nature; the most
corrupt of them call it corrupt, because by it they are not raised above
nature to become heroic spirits, but are depraved, contrary to nature and
below all worth, to become brutes.”[468]
In the third dialogue of the Spaccio is a digression on
Otium, Idleness, and the Golden Age, which had been The Golden Age.
brought into popularity by the pastoral poem of Tasso, the Aminta, and its
imitators (e.g. Guarini in the Pastor Fido). Otium presses its claim to a
place in the heavens as being more truly a virtue than solicitude or
strenuous effort, to which the place of Perseus had been given. Its chief
argument is that through it the golden age had been instituted and
maintained, by the law of idleness which is the law of nature, while it was
through solicitude, with its following of vainglory, contempt of others,
violence, oppression, torment, fear, and death, that the age had departed.
“All praise the fair age of gold, when I kept minds quiet and peaceful, safe
from this virtuous goddess of yours. For their bodies, hunger was sufficient
sauce to make a delicious and satisfying repast out of acorns, apples,
chestnuts, peaches, and roots, which benign nature administered at a time
when such food was the best nourishment for them, gave them most
pleasure, and kept them longest in life, which the many artificial sauces that
industry and zeal have discovered cannot do.”[469] Industry had introduced
property, and divided up not only the earth, which is given to all its
children, but also the sea, and perhaps the air as well; so that instead of
sufficiency for all there is too much for some and too little for others. It had
introduced an unnatural inequality, and confused together peoples whom
nature had intended to live apart, with the consequence that the vices of one
race were being implanted upon those of others. The right of the stronger
had taken the place of the law of nature, violence that of the peace of
nature, which are the law and peace of God.

O bella etá de l’oro
Non gia perche di latte
Sen corse il fiume, et stilló mele il bosco.

* * * * *

Ma ’n primavera eterna
Ch’ hora s’ accende et verna
Rise di luce, et di sereno il cielo,
Ne porto peregrino
O’ guerra, o merce a’ l’ altrui lidi il pino.

* * * * *

Ma legge aurea et felice
Che natura scolpi. S’ ei piace, ei lice[470]

Bruno was no imperialist. Nature seemed to him to have fixed definite
boundaries to the extension of the different races, by which the special
genius of each was kept pure. In the Cena (126. 9) Tiphys and his
successors (Columbus, Vespucci, and others are meant, although not
named) are said to have “discovered means of disturbing the peace of
peoples, violating the natural trend of the genius of countries, confounding
what foreseeing nature had distinguished, doubling, through commerce, evil
feelings, adding the vices of one race to those of another, propagating new
incitements, instruments, methods of tyranny and assassination, which in
time, by the natural vicissitude of things, would recoil upon our own
heads.”[471] It was really, he thought, for the advantage of men themselves
that the world-regions should be kept as distinct in their usages and customs
as they are physically distinct by the natural divisions of mountains and
tracts of sea. From region to region, vice and the poison of perverse laws
and religions, the materials of discord and extermination, were propagated
and disseminated to the suffocation of every good fruit; there were no
advantages which could compare with these evils.[472] It should be
remembered that the colonists of the day were the Spaniards, with the

corruption and cruelty of whose rule Italians were only too familiar; and
their misdeeds were far greater in the new world.
The age of gold, however, of idleness, and peaceful
Progress.
happiness, was far from Bruno’s ideal; the reply of Momus
to Otium showed that it had not made men virtuous in the golden age any
more than the brutes were virtuous now—that men were perhaps originally
more stupid than many of the latter; but in their emulation of divine actions
and their attempts to satisfy spiritual desires, difficulties had arisen and
needs sprung up; through these their minds were sharpened, industries had
been discovered, arts invented; and so from day to day out of the depth of
the human intellect necessity brought forth new and marvellous inventions.
[473] Thus more and more they advance, through pressing and earnest
occupation, from the bestial nature, and approximate more and more nearly
to the divine. That injustice and vice increase along with industries is only a
corollary of the increase of justice and of virtue. If oxen or apes had as
much virtue and spirit as man, they would have the same apprehensions, the
same passions, and the same vices. So in men those that have in them
somewhat of the pig nature, or of the ass or ox nature, are certainly less
wicked, not infected by so criminal vices as more highly developed men
might be; but they are not for that more virtuous, unless the brutes also are
more virtuous than men, being infected with fewer vices.[474] In this
generous conception of human progress, and of its spur—solicitude,
necessity, pain—Bruno is quite at one with modern theories of human
evolution; it can hardly be said, however, that he
Evolution.
anticipated the evolution theory so far as it involves an
identity of origin for human beings and lower animals. The idea that
different human beings express different animal types was not a new one. It
means in Bruno that such men have animal souls, but this is not because
their bodies have reverted to the animal type. It is the soul that moulds the
body and gives, in these cases, the animal expression to the face—the look
of wolf, or bear, or fox, or serpent. There is no question of a physical
continuity between animal and man, but there is a psychical continuity,
since a soul which is that of an animal in one generation may become that
of a man in another.[475] A much nearer approach to the
Man and the
evolution-theory is to be found in the Cabala,[476] where it animals.
is said that if a serpent could have its head moulded into
that of a man, its tongue widened, its shoulders broadened, arms and hands

branching out from it, and, where the tail now is, a pair of legs, it would
think, look, breathe, speak, work, and walk just as a man does, for it would
be nothing but a man. Or if the reverse process occurred, in a man
(involution), in place of talking he would hiss, in place of walking he would
creep, in place of building a palace he would hollow out a hiding-place for
himself. This is not, however, because the body of the one had been
transformed into that of the other animal, function following structure; the
soul with all its qualities is unchanged—it is one and the same in both; the
differences are only in the power of expression. A serpent or any other
animal might have a higher intelligence than man, yet remain inferior to
him through poverty of instruments. If man had not hands, but two feet in
their stead, however high his intelligence, family and social life would have
been no more enduring with him than with the horse, the deer, or the pig; it
would only have exposed him to greater danger and more certain ruin; and,
in consequence, there would have been none of the institutions of doctrine,
the inventions of discipline, the congregations of citizens, the raising of
edifices and other things that represent human greatness and excellence, and
make man the invincible superior over all other species. All this is referred
not so much to his mind as to his hand, the organ of organs.[477] It is in the
development of the hand, also, that modern anthropology has sought one of
the chief conditions of human development. It is clear, however, that in
these theories there are two positions not distinctly separated: one that the
soul gives form to the body, the other that all difference comes from the
body, the soul remaining apart, and in its essence untouched by the changes
its body undergoes. We shall have to return to this question in the following
chapter.
Another digression occurs under Hercules,[478] where
Riches and
Riches, Poverty, and Fortune contend for the place of poverty.
honour that is finally given to Courage or Fortitude. Such
personifications of the virtues had been familiarised in Italian philosophy
by Petrarca (Remedium utriusque fortunae), but Bruno refers back to
Crantor’s discussion of the relative value for the soul of Riches and other
goods.[479] In our dialogue Riches is decided to be neither good nor bad in
itself; it may be indifferently either, according to its possessor: therefore it
is to incur neither disgrace nor honour, neither be condemned to Hades, nor
raised up to Heaven, but to wander from place to place. It shall be found by
no one who has not first repented of his good mind and healthy brain; he

must give up, according to Momus, all thought of prudence, “not trusting in
Heaven, regarding not justice or injustice, honour or shame, calm or storm,
but committing all to chance. As a general rule Riches are to go to the most
insensate, the most foolish, careless, silly—to beware of the wise as of fire.
Poverty, on the other hand (in inferior or corporeal goods), may be
conjoined with riches in goods of the mind, as riches in inferior goods may
never be, for no one that is wise or wishes to gain knowledge can ever
achieve great things by their means. To philosophy Riches are an
impediment, while Poverty offers it a safe and easy road. He will be great
who in poverty is rich because he is content; and he is a slave who in riches
is poor because he has not enough. Not he that has little but he that desires
much is really poor. The friends of Poverty are open, the enemies of Riches
are secret; the poor man by repressing desire may rival Jove in happiness;
the rich, ever spreading more and more widely the nets of cupidity, is
plunged more and more into depths of misery. Avarice is
Avarice.
the dark side, the shadow, of both Riches and Poverty, ever
fleeing Poverty and pursuing Riches, but ever eluded by the latter, and ever
caught by the former; far from Poverty in reality, she is ever close by it in
imagination; it is this darkness or shadow that make Poverty and Riches
alike to be evil. One may be poor in virtue of affect
Fortune.
(feeling, emotion) as well as in virtue of effect (actual,
material want). Fortune also is rejected, in spite of her claim to be
absolutely just; as all things are ultimately or really one, no part of the
world, she claims, should be treated as more worthy or unworthy than
another, and fortune regards all equally, or does not respect any particular
person more than another, which is really justice!
To the place for which these have striven succeeds
Courage.
Fortitude, the servant of the higher virtues: “Constant and
brave must be he that administers judgment, with prudence, by the law, and
according to truth. He shall be guided by the book in which is the catalogue
of the things the brave man ought not to fear, viz.: those which do not make
him worse, as hunger, nakedness, thirst, pain, poverty, solitude, persecution,
death; and that of other things which, as they make him worse, must be
avoided at all cost,—gross ignorance, injustice, infidelity, lying, avarice,
and the rest.”[480] Beside Fortitude may be placed
Simplicity.
Simplicity,[481] between the vicious extremes of
Boastfulness on the one hand and Dissimulation on the other, the latter

being the less hateful of the two: “sometimes even the gods must make use
of it, and to escape envy, reproach, outrage, Prudence is wont to cover Truth
with her vestments.” Simplicity is pleasing to the gods, for
Self-
it has in a manner the likeness of the divine countenance, consciousness.
being always the same and unconscious of itself. That
which reflects upon or is conscious of itself, makes itself in a sense to be
many, to be other and other, becoming both object and faculty, the knowing
and the knowable, whereas in the act of intelligence many things concur in
one. The most simple intelligence does not know itself, by reflection,
because it is absolute, pure light: and again it alone knows itself, negatively,
for it cannot be hidden.[482]
The transition from ordinary morality,—the virtue of the
Solicitude.
everyday life of human society,—to the divine aspiration
of the “heroic” soul, is to be found in the virtue of Solicitude, and the
primary triad of Truth, Prudence, and Wisdom. On the feet of Solicitude
(Diligence, Endurance) “are the winged sandals of the divine impetus,
through which she leaves beneath her the vulgar good, and contemns the
soft caresses of pleasures, that, like insidious sirens, try to delay her in the
pursuit of the works she seeks.” On labour and fatigue she nurses the
generous mind,—enables it not only to subdue itself, but to attain the
highest state—that of not feeling fatigue, or pain, when fatigue or pain must
be undergone. In noble work fatigue is pleasure and not fatigue to itself, but
in other than in such work or virtuous activity, it is not pleasure to itself, but
intolerable fatigue. “Be with me” Solicitude concludes, “generous, heroic,
anxious Fear, stimulate me that I do not perish from the number of the
illustrious before I perish from that of the living. Before torpor or death take
from me my hands, grant that the glory of my works may not be in their
power to take. Anxiety, grant that the roof be finished before the rain come:
that the windows be whole before the winds of treacherous and unquiet
winter blow. Memory of a well-spent life, thou shalt make old age and death
destroy my soul before they disturb it. Fear of losing the glory acquired in
my life shall make old age and death not bitter to me, but dear and
desirable.” The end which this strenuous virtue seeks is
Truth.
that of the intellectual triad placed in the highest part of the
heavens by the gods,—Truth, Prudence and Wisdom, which in reality are
one and the same.[483] Truth is the unity which stands above the all of
things, and the goodness which is pre-eminent over all things, for being,

goodness, and truth are one:—in other words, it is the Eleatic One,—the
“implicit universe,”—of the metaphysical works.[484] It is before things as
cause and principle, and things have dependence upon it: it is in things, as
their substance, and through it things subsist: it is after things, for through it
things are known without error. These three aspects represent metaphysical,
physical, and logical truth respectively. What is presented to our senses and
may be grasped by our intelligence, is not the highest truth, but only the
figure, image, resplendence, or appearance of it. Prudence also is both
above and in us. It is above as Providence, when it is also truth itself, and
there Liberty, Necessity, Essence, Entity, all are one, the Absolute. In us
Prudence is the virtue of the consultative and deliberative faculty,—“it is a
principal form of reason dealing with the universal and the particular,[485]
has for its maid-servant dialectics, and for guide acquired wisdom, vulgarly
called metaphysics, which deals with the universals of all things that fall
within human knowledge.”[486] So too Wisdom, Sophia, is at once supra-
mundane,—when it is one with Providence itself, light and eye in one,—
and mundane, inferior, not truth itself, wisdom itself, but participant in truth
and in wisdom,—an eye that is illuminated by a foreign light. The first is
invisible, infigurable, incomprehensible; the second is figured in the
heavens, reflected in finite minds, communicated by words. The earthly or
inferior forms, however, as Bruno makes clear, are of value only for the
sake of the higher unity, to attain which is the real end of the philosophic
life. “He who pretends to know what he does not know, says Wisdom, is a
wanton Sophist: he who denies knowing what he knows, is ungrateful to the
Active Intelligence, insults truth, and outrages me, as do all those who seek
me—not for myself, or for the supreme virtue and love of that divinity
which is above every Jupiter and every heaven,—but either to sell me for
money, honour, or other gain, or to be known rather than to know, or to
detract from and be able to destroy the happiness of others.... They that seek
me for love of the supreme and first truth are wise, and therefore
blessed.”[487] Bruno’s Summum Bonum is therefore knowledge, an
intellectual comprehension of the All of things, as it is in the supreme Unity
or source of the world. It is for the sake of this end of the few, the wise, that
the many, the vulgar, and foolish, are to be kept at peace, in harmony with
one another, following obediently their higher guides in religion or in the
state. There is not in Bruno any more than in Spinoza any sense of the
infinite worth, or the infinite pitifulness of man as an earth-born creature of

hopes and fears, creeping towards the light, with the clogging darkness
behind, groping in childish terror and childish trust, for the hand of a
loving, human God. Therefore, although he lived in the midst of the
Reformation, its true meaning passed him by.

CHAPTER VII
THE HIGHER LIFE

We now turn to the higher moral life, which is at the same time the religious
life, of the heroic soul in its struggle towards perfection. This perfection
consists in comprehension of the world as infinitely perfect, in the union
with God as the source from which the world flows, the spirit in which it
lives, and in the Love of God as at once infinite beauty and infinite
goodness.
We have seen that there are to Bruno, as to Plato and to Aristotle, two
classes of men, the “vulgar” and the “heroic,”[488] the lower or subject, and
the upper or ruling classes: as in each of us there are two principles, a
higher, intellect or reason or mind, and a lower, sense and sensual passion.
The danger is as great to the world when the lower class attempts to usurp
the place of the higher, as it is to the individual soul when passion
overwhelms reason. The spread of pedantry, in the universities and in the
churches, greater in his time and more menacing to human progress than it
had ever been, was an illustration to Bruno’s eye of the results ensuing
when lower minds tampered with divine knowledge.[489]
The heroic soul is raised by the divine spirit within it out of the turmoil of
the constant change and vicissitude, to which the vulgar soul is, in common
with all living things, subjected. “The beginning, middle, and end, birth,
growth, and perfection of all earthly things are from contraries, through
contraries, in contraries, and to contraries; and where there is contrariety,
there is also action, reaction, movement, diversity, multitude, order,
degrees, succession, change.” “There is never any pleasure,” we read
elsewhere, “without some bitterness;—nay, if there were not the bitter in
things, there would not be the pleasurable, for fatigue makes us to find
pleasure in repose, separation causes us to find joy in union, and so
everywhere we find that one contrary is the reason of another being desired
and pleasing:”[490] and so it is with pain. None, therefore, are ever satisfied
with their state, except the unfeeling or the foolish who have no knowledge

of their own ill, but enjoy the present without fear of the future, can find
rest in what is, and have no feeling or desire for what might be: “in short
have no sense of contrariety, which is figured by the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil.[491]” Ignorance is the mother of sensual happiness and joy;
hence “the heroic love (in its beginning) is a torment, for it does not rest in
the present, as does sensual love, but feels ambition, emulation, suspicious
fear for the future, the absent, the contrary.” Yet the wise man is neither
happy nor miserable,—knowing that good and evil are alike relative, alike
fading and temporary things, he is neither dismayed nor elated, but becomes
continent in his inclinations, and temperate in his pleasures. Pleasure is not
really pleasure to him, for he has present to him its ceasing; pain is not pain,
for he has by force of thought its termination before him: all mutable things
therefore are to him as things that are not.[492]
Owing to the ever-moving cycle of change, the ordinary soul must of
necessity fall back, in the course of the eternal process of its life, to the
lowest stage, however high in the scale it may have risen; but this, although
an evil for it, does not prejudice the whole, in which all things work
together for good. Some few, however, may escape this danger, through
becoming united with the eternal Mind or Source.[493] They then cease to be
subject to mutation,—Mind being immutable,—and persist in eternal
blessedness and love. For such favoured ones of heaven, the greatest evils
of this life are converted into goods, correspondingly great. It is suffering
that compels the labour and the striving which lead most frequently to the
glory of immortal splendour. Death in one age makes to live in all others.
[494]

There are, however, two kinds of furori (or inspiration).
Kinds of furor.
“In some there is only blindness, stupidity, unreasoning
impulse; others consist in a certain divine abstraction by which some men
become better in fact than ordinary men. These again are of two kinds, for
some becoming the habitation of gods or of divine spirits, say or do
miraculous things without themselves or others understanding the reason;
these for the most part are promoted to this state from one of rudeness and
ignorance: the divine sense and spirit enters into them as into a house swept
and garnished, they being void of any spirit or sense of their own. Others
being more habituated to or skilled in contemplation, and having innate in
them a lucid and intellectual spirit, are moved by an internal impulse and

natural fervour, with love of divinity, justice, truth, glory; by the fire of
desire, fanned by the breath of purpose, they give edge to their senses, and
in the sulphur of the thinking faculty enkindle the light of reason, by which
they see further than ordinary men. These come in the end to speak and
operate not as vases or instruments, but as principal artificers and agents—
the first have worth or dignity, the second are worthy: or the first are worthy
as an ass that carries the sacraments, the second as a sacred thing. In the
first we see divinity in effect—we admire, adore, obey it; in the second we
see the excellence of our own humanity.”[495]
The steps towards the highest peak of human excellence
are compared, after Neoplatonist example, to the degrees Ascent towards
union with the
in intensity of light, as we proceed from darkness, in which divine.
it is entirely absent, to shadow, then to the colours in their
order from black to white, next to the brightness diffused from polished or
transparent bodies, the rays outflowing from the sun, finally to the sun
itself, in which light is most truly and most vividly itself.[496] First of all it
is needful for the soul to turn to the light, “by act of conversion to present
the light of intelligence to its eyes, so to regain its lost virtue, to strengthen
its sinews, to terrify and put to rout its enemies,”—the lower, sense-feelings
and passions. The conversion seems to arise as by an act of grace from
above; or, to express this in other words, the soul or spirit tends towards that
with which it has greatest affinity, as the sun-flower tends towards the sun,
and this affinity in the human soul is Love.[497] The symbol of love is fire,
for love converts the object of love into the lover, as fire is of all elements
the most active, the most potent to transform others into itself.[498] It is the
divine in man that makes him or impels him to love God as He is in reality,
and the goal or aim of that love is to take God into himself, to become one
with God. No really divine or heroic love can ever rest satisfied in anything
but spiritual beauty. For there are three kinds of love, as there are three
kinds of Platonic rapture—the contemplative, the practical, the idle or
voluptuous. One from the perception of corporeal form and beauty rises to
the thought of the spiritual and divine; another enjoys the vision of beauty
for itself, and for the grace of the spirit that is reflected in the grace of the
body; while still another enjoys only the material pleasure that beauty
provides; the last is the love of barbarous natures, incapable of raising
themselves to love that which is really worthy of love.[499]

To the two higher kinds of love correspond the two kinds
Beauty.
of beauty—sensible and intelligible. That in the body
which calls forth love—its beauty—is a certain spirituality, which consists
not in definite dimensions, “nor in determinate colours or forms, but in a
certain harmony and consonance of members and colours.” Corporeal
beauty is not, however, true or permanent beauty, and therefore cannot call
forth true or permanent love. The beauty of bodies is accidental, “shadowy,”
and like other qualities is absorbed, altered, and decays through the change
of the subject-body, for the latter frequently from beautiful becomes ugly,
without any change taking place in the soul. Reason, however, apprehends
the more truly beautiful by conversion to that which makes beauty in body,
the source of the beauty, and that is the soul, which has so moulded and
formed it. Intellect rises still higher, sees that while the soul is incomparably
beautiful above the beauty of bodily things, it is not beautiful in itself, or
primitively, otherwise there could not exist the diversity that is found in
souls—some being wise, lovable, beautiful, others foolish, hateful, ugly.
Hence it must rise to that higher intelligence which of itself is beautiful and
of itself is good. That is the One, the Supreme Captain, who when presented
to the eyes of the thoughts militant, illuminates them, encourages,
strengthens, and leads them to victory in the contempt of every other
beauty, and repudiation of every other good. Its presence, therefore, is that
which enables us to overcome every difficulty and conquer every force.[500]
The Intelligence which is the truest beauty attainable by us, is not yet
Divinity itself, but only the highest “intelligible species,” or form, the
highest Idea. Divinity itself is the final, the most perfect object of thought
and love, not attainable in our present state, in which God cannot become
object to us, except through some image.[501] No image of the Divine,
however, even the most inadequate, can be abstracted or otherwise derived
by the senses, from corporeal beauty or excellence. Such can be formed
only by the intellect, and on such the human intellect feeds, in this lower
world, until it be allowed to behold with purer eyes the beauty of divinity
itself. In a fine simile Bruno describes how one may come to some
mansion, most exquisitely adorned, and as he goes about observing now
this, now that, is pleased and happy, filled with delight and noble wonder.
But if then he sees the living Lord of these beautiful forms, of beauty
incomparably greater, he lets go all care or thought of them, intent wholly
on this one, their source. Such is the difference between the earthly state,

when we see the divine beauty in intelligible or abstract forms, derived
from its effects, its works, masterpieces, its shadows and similitudes, and
the perfect state, when we are allowed to behold it in its real presence.[502]
The “intelligible species” of this conception, which Bruno derives from
Neoplatonism, are simply the ideas of the “speculative sciences,” which
include, however, what would now be called the natural sciences. Human
Perfection consists in a form of knowledge, a system of thought, by which
the knower becomes one with the mind in which this thought-system
originated, the mind of God. Our knowledge—that is, our perfection—can
never, however, be complete, since the object, the knowable, can never be
perfectly comprehended. But it may be made complete so far as our vision
extends; and herein lies a saving clause for the “ordinary” man. Few can
reach the goal, but all may run; it is enough that each do his best possible.
The generous spirit prefers to fail nobly in the pursuit of the highest rather
than to succeed in inferior and baser enterprises.[503] Acteon typifies the
human intellect in its pursuit of the divine wisdom and capture of divine
beauty.[504] The wild beasts whom he tracks down are the “intelligible
species” or ideal forms, rarely sought, and rarely seen by those that seek
them. His dogs are the thoughts that issue outwards in search of goodness,
wisdom, beauty beyond himself. The fate of Acteon—his death under the
fangs of his own hounds—represents how the generous spirit, coming into
the presence of that highest beauty, is ravished out of itself, is converted
into the very prey which it pursued: itself is now the prey of its own
thoughts, for it has contracted divinity into itself, has no longer to seek it
outside of itself: as love converts into the thing loved.[505] His death means
that he ends his life according to the world of folly, of sense, of blindness
and of fancy, only to commence the new intellectual life, the life of the
gods.[506]
The first step, however, in the desire of the infinitely beautiful is but the
beginning of an endless series; the heart goes out on an
The infinite
endless quest, while the intellect cannot but follow. For the process.
intellect cannot rest in any definite or finite idea or object,
but is driven ever forwards towards the source of all ideas, the ocean of all
truth and goodness. Whatever form may be presented to it and
comprehended by it, it judges that there must be a greater above and beyond
that. Hence it is in constant discourse and movement, for whatever it
possesses is seen to be a measured thing, and therefore cannot be sufficient

in itself, nor good in itself, nor beautiful in itself. It is not the universe, not
absolute Being, but Being “contracted” to this or that nature, species, form,
represented to the intellect, and presented to the mind (animo). Thus always
from beauty comprehended, and therefore measured or limited,—the
beautiful by participation,—we progress towards that which is truly
beautiful, beautiful without any limit or margin.[507] On the other hand,[508]
this infinite process is not in vain, for it is not from imperfect to perfect, but
a “circular movement about the degrees of perfection, in order to arrive at
the infinite centre which is neither formed nor form.” This paradox Tansillo
(taking the part of the Nolan) refuses to explain. It probably hints at the
idea, as familiar in Bruno as the infinite process itself, that in each form or
degree of perfection, the infinite with all its perfection, is wholly present. It
is a centre which is at the same time the circumference.
In a subsequent dialogue[509] the object alike of intellectual pursuit and of
the heart’s desire is described as a positive or “perfective” infinite. The will
cannot rest satisfied with a finite good; but if there is other good beyond,
desires it, seeks it, because, as the common saying goes, the acme of one
species is the foot and the beginning of the next higher species. The highest
good being infinite, it is communicated infinitely, but also according to the
nature of the things to which it is communicated. Neither to the universe,
e.g. as regards mass and figure, nor to the intellect, nor to the heart, are any
definite limits fixed; yet the intellect and the heart may still become perfect
through or by their object, for that object is not merely a “privative
infinite[510]” or potentiality, but a perfective or positive[511] infinite as being
itself actuality and perfection. When the intellect conceives truth, or light,
the good, the beautiful, within the whole capacity of its nature, and the soul
drinks of the divine nectar and of the source of eternal life, so much as its
vessel can hold, it is seen that the light (of truth) extends beyond, and that
the intellect may go on and on, penetrating more deeply into it. The nectar
and the source of living water are infinitely productive; the soul may
quench its thirst in it again and again.[512]
Thus the blessed or perfect life for Bruno meant a permanent, continuous
absorption of the individual soul in the divine goodness—a permanence or
eternity which was also one with the instant of time. There was no greater
value at any later moment than at the first union of the soul with its divine
object: the soul was thereby removed, once for all, out of the constant flux

of things, the incessant renewal and rebirth of the soul throughout the ages,
and lifted up into the calm of the eternal and immutable.
Even the heroic soul, however, is, as other souls, on the
Soul and body.
border line between corporeal and incorporeal nature; in
part it tends to rise towards the upper world, in part inclines towards the
lower world. If sense ascends to imagination, imagination to reason, reason
to intellect, intellect to mind, then the soul is wholly converted into God,
and its dwelling-place is the intelligible world. In the contrary direction it
descends through conversion to the sensible world, by way of intellect,
reason, imagination, sense, and the vegetative faculty. Mind (the highest
faculty in Bruno’s psychology:—the intuitive perception of unity with the
supreme ideal world) is oppressed by its conjunction with the more material
faculties of the soul; knowing of a higher state to which the soul might rise,
it despises the present in favour of the future. If a brute had sense of the
difference between its condition and that of man, and between the baseness
of its state and the nobility of that of man, to which it did not feel it
impossible to rise, it would prefer death which should put it on the way to
that state, to life which held it fast in its present one. So the soul, compelled
by its loftier thoughts, as if dead to the body, aspires upwards. Although
living in the body, it “vegetates” there as dead—is present in it so far as
animation is concerned, but absent from it in its proper action.[513]
Thus the heroic soul, although present in the body, is absent from it with the
better part of itself, and unites itself in an indissoluble bond with divine
things. It feels neither love nor hatred of mortal things, considering itself
too great to be the slave and servant of its body: the latter it regards simply
as a prison-house within which its liberty is closed in; a snare that holds its
wings entangled; a chain that binds its hands; fetters that hold its feet fast; a
veil that bewilders its vision. Yet it is neither slave, nor captive, nor
entangled, nor chained, nor held fast, bound nor blind, for the body cannot
tyrannise over it further than itself allows. It has spirit allotted to it
proportionally to its nearness to divinity, since the corporeal world and
matter are subject to divinity and nature. So it may make itself strong
against fortune, magnanimous against injustice, bold in face of poverty,
disease, and persecution.[514]
The soul of man, in Bruno’s psychology, as in Aristotle’s,
The soul.
performs a double function:—“the one is to vivify and

actuate the body, and the other to contemplate the higher world. It has a
receptive faculty towards the spiritual, an active faculty towards the
corporeal. Body is as dead, a thing privative towards the soul, which is its
life and perfection, and the soul is as dead, a thing privative to the higher
illuminating intelligence from which its intellect derives both its tendency
or nature, and its actual form, its realisation.”[515] The soul is not locally in
the body, but is related to it as intrinsic form, and as extrinsic giver of form:
moulding the members, and giving shape to the composite result from
within and from without. “Body is in soul, soul in mind, and mind either is,
or is in God, as Plotinus said.”[516] The dualism of nature and divinity, of
corporeal and spiritual, intellect and sense, permeates the ethical as it
permeates the earlier philosophical thought of Bruno: nowhere is the
Neoplatonist effort to overcome the dualism inherent both in Plato and in
Aristotle less effective than here. Thus the body remains—
Distraction of
in spite of the continuity seemingly maintained between the body.
the highest and the lowest of the emanations from the
supreme, or the identity asserted between sense, imagination, reason,
intellect,—the chief hindrance to the aspiration of the soul. For the body is
in continual movement, change, alteration, and its faculties are conditioned
by its inherent nature, its operations by its faculties. “How then can
immobility, subsistence, entity, truth, be understood by that which is always
different from itself, always acting and becoming in different ways? What
truth, what representation can be depicted or impressed when the pupils of
the eyes are dispersed into water, the water into vapour, the vapour into
flame, the flame into air—that into other things and again other, the object
of sense and sense-knowledge passing endlessly through the infinite cycle
of changes?” Thought and passion take their character from their object, or
the sense-data on which they are based: but “that which has always before it
now one thing now another, now in one way now in another, must
necessarily be quite blind in regard to that beauty which is always one, and
in one manner, which is unity itself, entity, identity.”[517]
Into the very life of the generous soul there enter, accordingly, the
contrarieties by which on a lower plane the soul is governed:—“the
skilfulness and art of nature cause it to faint with desire for that which
destroys it, to be content in the midst of torment, to be tormented in the
midst of all content. For nothing derives from principles of peace, but
everything from contrary principles, through the victory and dominance of

one side of the contrariety. There is no pleasure of generation on one side
without the pain of corruption on the other; and the things that are
becoming and those that are decaying are conjoined in one and the same
composite being. The sense of joy and the sense of sorrow go ever together;
it is called joy rather than sorrow if the former predominates and has greater
force to solicit the sense.”[518] The life in death of the more divine soul is
only an extreme instance:—“it is the death of lovers from an extreme of joy,
the Cabalist mors osculi, and is at the same time eternal life, such as man
may have potentially, in disposition, in this world, but actually, in effect, in
eternity alone.”[519] Again it is the contrast of infinite desire and finite
power:—“the weakness of the human mind which is intent on its divine
enterprise, and suddenly is engulfed in the abyss of incomprehensible
excellence. Sense and imagination are confused and absorbed, the soul can
neither go forward nor backward, nor know where to turn, but loses its
being just as a drop of water vanishes in the sea, or a little vapour thins out
and loses its proper substance in the spacious immeasurable air.”[520]
As the height of our intelligence, so is the depth of our
love or passion; the higher, i.e. the more comprehensive, Intelligencelove.
and

the object of knowledge, the more absorbed become
feelings and emotions in its contemplation.[521] The most complete
absorption is that of the heroic mind in its infinite and all-comprehensive
object. That is not perfect divine heroic love which feels the spur or the
bridle, or regret or grief for any other love; but that which is entirely
without sense or feeling of other passions. It is so deep in its delight that
nothing can displease or divert it or cause it to stumble in the least, and this
is to reach the highest blessedness in our present state—to have pleasure
without any sense of pain.[522] The loss of sense is caused by the absorption
of the whole being in virtue, in the truly good, and in felicity. Regulus,
Lucretia, Socrates, Anaxarchus, Scaevola, Cocles, are instanced as noble
human beings who had no feeling or sense of the greatest tortures, or what
would be such to baser human natures.[523] “A keener joy, or fear, or hope,
faith, or indignation, or contempt, turns the mind away from any present,
less vivid, passion.” “One who is more deeply moved by the sight of some
other thing, does not suffer the pangs of death. The truly wise and virtuous
man, not feeling pain, is perfectly happy, so far as the present life admits, at
least in the eye of reason.”

In its aspiration the soul need not go beyond itself, need only enter into the
depths of its own mind (mens); “for this it is unnecessary to open the eyes
wide upon the heavens, to raise aloft the hands, to wend one’s way to the
temple, to intone to the ears of idols, that one may best be heard; rather we
should enter into the innermost heart of ourselves, for God is near to us,
with us, within us, more truly than we are in ourselves; being soul of souls,
life of lives, essence of essences.” Divinity is not more nor less present in
the other worlds than in our own or in ourselves.[524] Therefore the heroic
soul withdraws from the many, neither hating them nor seeking to be like
them, associating only with those whom it may make better, or who may
make it better; but aiming ever to be self-sufficient in its
Aspiration.
own wisdom. “The soul must come to the point when it no
longer regards but despises fatigue, and the more the contest of passions
and vices rages within, the struggle of vicious enemies without, the more it
must aspire and rise, and pass, with one breath (if it may be) over this
mountain of difficulty. Here there is no need for other arms or shield than
the grandeur of an invincible mind, the endurance of a spirit which
maintains the even tenor of its life, proceeds from knowledge, and is
regulated by the art of speculating upon things high and low, divine and
human, in which its highest good consists.”[525]
To the love in the human soul there corresponds love in the
Love of God.
divine nature, because love is of the essence of divinity. It
precedes, in the mythology of the ancients, all the other gods. Hence there
is a natural instinct or tendency of all things towards the beautiful and good.
Love is that by virtue of which all things are produced, which is in all
things, and is the vigour of all things; by its guidance souls rise to
contemplation, by the power of flight it inspires, the difficulties of nature
are overcome, and men become united with God.[526] To see God is to be
seen by God; to be heard by divinity is to hear the voice of divinity; to be
favoured by its grace is the same thing as offering oneself to it. The divine
potency that is wholly in everything does not offer nor withdraw itself
except through the conversion of the other, its object, to it, or aversion from
it.[527] To love God is to be loved by God. It is only through love, again, that
we can approach the inmost nature of God; we cannot reason or even think
of the divine without detracting from it rather than adding to its glory.[528]
To think of God is to limit Him, and, therefore, as we have seen, every
conception of Him is inadequate: the deepest, the highest knowledge of

divine things is by way of negation, never by affirmation. For the divine
beauty and divine goodness can never fall within our understanding (our
conceptual knowledge), but are ever beyond and beyond in absolute
incomprehensibility. No finite intelligence ever perceives the substance of
divinity, but always its similitude, its image; even the highest intelligences
are, in the language of the schools, not formally, but only denominatively,
gods, or divine,—divinity and the divine beauty remaining one and exalted
above all things.[529] Being itself eternal, unchangeable, the divine truth
reveals itself to the few to whom it is revealed—not as in the physical
sciences, which are acquired by the natural light of sense and reason,
proceeding from the known to the unknown, in successive stages, but—
suddenly and at one stroke. There is no need of expense of time, laborious
study, active inquiry, to secure it; but it enters into us as readily as the solar
light is present, without lapse of time to him who turns to it, and lays
himself open to receive it.[530] When the soul is thus wholly turned to God
—to the Idea of Ideas—the mind is lifted up to the unity above essence, and
becomes all love, all simplicity and unity. The soul is permeated at once
with the desire or love of the divine beauty in itself, “without similitude,
figure, image, or form”—a desire or love which is its own realisation.

CHAPTER VIII
POSITIVE RELIGIONS AND THE RELIGION OF
PHILOSOPHY

The hostility which the Italian and some of the Latin writings of Bruno
showed towards the positive religions of his day, alike the Catholic, the
Reformed, the Jewish, and the Mahomedan, had two grounds: his belief that
religious or sectarian strife was the chief cause of the evils of war and civil
discord that were rife throughout Europe, and the fact that one and all of
these Churches claimed the right of limiting thought as well as of dictating
practice, and in their exercise of this right formed an unendurable barrier in
the way of human progress. Of the Roman Catholic Church, to which all his
life Bruno belonged in spirit if not in outward conformity, he never
expressly denied any of the essential doctrines, as he maintained before the
Inquisition at Venice. On the other hand, he admitted that he had
occasionally made indirect criticism of these doctrines, speaking or writing
“philosophically,” not “theologically.” To the doctrine of the Trinity, for
example, he had given a rationalist, half-mystical interpretation, seeing in it
a figure or metaphor of the coincidence in God of the three highest
principles—Mind (the Father), Intellect (the word, the Son), and Love, the
creating, vivifying force of the Universe (the Comforter or Holy Spirit). It is
quite clear that he did not accept as “philosophically” true the distinction of
Persons, or the special divinity of Christ. Only once, perhaps, does he write
seriously of Christ as the Son of God, and that in one of the posthumous
works, the Lampas Triginta Statuarum.[531] “Charity is the most perfect and
consummate harmony, by which the soul in us becomes so harmonious in
itself that it is attuned both to God and to all men equally, not only to
friends but even to enemies; to this perfection we are drawn, impelled,
invited by the Son of the almighty God, to raise us up to the likeness of the
Father, ‘who maketh His sun to rise upon good and evil, and sends His rain
upon the just and the unjust,’ uplifting us from the savage condition of life
common to brutes and to the uncivilised, who love their friends and

neighbours, but hate strangers and enemies.” On the other hand, this very
law is elsewhere spoken of as coming not from the “evil spirit or genius of
any one race,” but from God, the Father of all, as being in harmony with
universal nature, and as teaching a general philanthropy; “that we should
love our very enemies, not be like brutes and barbarians, but transform
ourselves after the image of Him who makes His sun to rise upon good and
evil, and makes the rain of His mercies to fall upon just and unjust. This is
the religion which I observe, as beyond all controversy, and above all
disputation, both from the conviction of my mind, and in accordance with
the custom of my fatherland and race.”[532]
What Bruno rejected in Christianity was the whole mass of doctrine which
suggested a miraculous or supernatural interference with the order of
nature, for the benefit either of a particular person, or of a particular race.
That is the nerve, for example, of his satire upon the popular idea of
Providence in the Spaccio.[533] There Mercury, on one of his visits to
Sophia, relates a number of things he has to see carried out, by the order of
Providence, about the little hamlet of Cicala. They are none of the cleanest
—the number of melons that are to ripen in Franzino’s garden and that are
not to be gathered till over-ripe, of jujubes that are to be picked from
Giovanni Bruno’s tree, that are to fall to the earth, or that are to be eaten by
worms; how Vasta, in curling the hair on her temples, is to overheat the iron
and burn fifty-seven of them, but is not to scorch her head—and so on.
These unpleasant details, however, are only a prelude to a philosophical
conception of the divine action. God, it is said, does not provide for this and
that individual as occasion arises.[534] He “does all things without
deliberation, anxiety, or perplexity: provides for innumerable species and an
infinite number of individuals, not in any order of succession, but at once
and all together: He is not like a finite agent, doing things one by one, with
many acts, an infinite number of acts for an infinite number of things, but
does everything, past, present, and future, with one simple and unique
act.”[535] So the knowledge of God is simple, containing implicitly in itself
all things that are or happen in the extended universe (the explicate unity).
It is only to our confused vision that this divine government does not appear
just and holy. Mercury advises Sophia to put more strength and warmth into
her prayers, for to the mind of the infinite the small is as important as the
great! “The least things are just as much a care to the gods as the principal
things, for the greatest and chiefest cannot subsist without the least and

lowliest.” The minutest trifle in the order of the universe is important, for
great things are composed of little, little things of least things, and these of
atoms and minima.[536] The act of the divine knowledge is the substance of
all things: all are therefore known, ordained, foreseen. “Divine knowledge
is not as human, which comes after things, but is before and in all things,
and if it were not so, things could not be causes or agents, either proximate
or secondary.”[537]
Thus the order of nature is fixed and eternal, ordained and foreknown from
all time. We have seen that Bruno rejected the superstitious idea that comets
and other heavenly wonders had a supernatural meaning; and that he found
the truest signs of divinity in the orderly course of nature.[538] Miracles he
explained either through imposture or through sympathetic magic. Along
with these he rejected also what may be called the morbid side of mediæval
Christianity—its constant dwelling upon the physical, sensational aspects of
Christ’s life, sufferings, and death,[539] its appeal to the hysterical in man.
Against a religion of incoherent personal emotion and brute ignorance, he
would set one of humane love and of reasoned knowledge. The chief value
of the New Testament, in his eyes, was its preaching of “the Gospel law of
mutual love,” which the tyranny of Rome had violated.[540] The religion to
which he gave his adherence was that which raised the dead, healed the
sick, gave to the poor; not the contrary form to which the Inquisition had
brought the Church in Catholic lands.
With great boldness Bruno drew from his conception of
Man and God.
the Infinite the consequence that there can be no action of
the finite upon the infinite, no change or effect in God produced through
man. A practical corollary of this was the argument for freedom of thought.
The virtue of Judgment, in the Spaccio, has entrusted to it the defence of the
true law, and the removal of unjust or false laws, dictated by enmity to the
peace and happiness of the human commonwealth. It shall kindle and fan
the appetite for glory in the human breast, as the only sure stimulus for
inciting men to the heroic deeds that increase, maintain, or strengthen
republics. But it shall not pay heed to what men imagine or think, provided
their words and deeds do not corrupt the peace of the realm. Deeds are its
only concern, and it has to judge the tree, not by the fineness, but by the
goodness of its fruits. Heaven is not interested in any way in what does not
interest man; it is moved and angered, not by anything done, said, or

thought by men, except in so far as the welfare of republics is endangered.
Gods would not be gods if they were either pleased or displeased, grieved
or delighted, by what men did or thought; they would be more needy than
men, would be as dependent on men as men are on themselves for utility
and profit.[541] The gods are beyond all passion: they have active anger and
pleasure only, not passive. Therefore they do not threaten punishment or
promise reward for good or evil that results in them, but for that committed
on peoples and in the human societies which they foster by their divine laws
and statutes, since human laws do not suffice. The gods do not seek the
reverence, fear, love, worship, or respect of men, for any other end or utility
than that of men themselves. Glory cannot be added to the gods from
without; they have made their laws not to receive glory but to communicate
glory to men. The sole sphere of justice is the moral actions of men with
regard to other men; inward sins are sins only so far as they have outward
effect, and inward justice is not justice without outward practice.[542] In the
Cena Bruno had already made practical use of this
principle in maintaining that the Scriptures teach not Thescience Bible,—not
but
science, but an ideal of conduct, and therefore that any morality its aim.
argument from them as to the actual constitution of the
world is devoid of compelling force, while, on the other side, no scientific
theory or hypothesis can be ruled out simply because it is contradicted by
any statement in the Scriptures. They were written, not in the service of our
intellect to instruct us in philosophy, but for the grace of our mind and
heart, ordaining by their laws what should be our behaviour in the moral
life. The Scriptures were written in the language and adapted to the
intelligence of the vulgar, the people of the time. “A historian making use of
words which the ordinary man could not understand, would be absurd; and
still more so would be one who desired to give to a whole people a law and
model of life, if he were to employ terms which he alone or very few could
understand, and should waste time over matters indifferent to the end for
which the laws were ordained. For this reason Alghazel said that the
function of the books of the law was not so much to probe the truth of
things, or speculation, as to promote good customs,” and to provide for the
welfare of republics and of humanity. To use the terms of science where
there is no need, is to ask that the vulgar, the foolish many, from whom only
conduct is required, shall have a special comprehension,—to ask that the

hand shall have the eye, whereas it is not made by nature to see, but to
work, and to obey the eye.[543]
The revelation of the Scriptures is accordingly reduced to that of a moral
ideal, to be enforced upon the ordinary man by the threat of future
punishment and promise of future reward; but it is an ideal which the wise
man would acquire by the light of reason alone, and which he would pursue
for its own sake.
On the other hand, the ceremonies and worship of the Church were never
attacked by Bruno, nor did he ever place himself in open hostility to it;
while he submitted, formally at least, to the rites of the Protestant churches
in Geneva and Helmstadt. The grounds of this outward conformity may
have been various: Bruno had no interest in speculative theology, and
probably kept an open mind towards the prevailing dogmas and the
ceremonies that symbolised the truths contained in them. He believed with
Pomponazzi, and others after him, that religion is a good thing for the
many, the foolish and ignorant of the world, while knowledge or philosophy
takes its place with the wise. The former must be governed by laws which
they have blindly to obey, hence the supernatural sanction required; the
latter pursue the true good without this stimulus, by virtue of reason. But for
the sake of the many, the few must conform in outward practice with the
religion of their state.[544] Brunnhofer goes so far as to see in this the idea of
Lessing, that religion is a means whereby men are gradually educated
upwards to a true knowledge of God,—leading them from the state of
darkness and savagery to that of moral behaviour, at which point only the
full light of science and philosophy takes the place of religion.[545] There
was a religion, however, for the few as well as for the many, for the wholly
civilised as well as for the semi-barbarians of Europe,—the philosophical
religion of the Heroici Furori. Another reason for his conformity was that
Bruno regarded the historical religions as allegories, or metaphors, of truth.
Not that it was for every one to say what was metaphorical merely, what
truth or fact: in the hands of Jews, Christians, and Mahomedans, and the
many sects of each, the same Scripture met with as many interpretations as
the number of the sects.[546] The interpretation of the divine words, uttered
by inspired prophet or poet,—for the divine inspiration was not given at one
place or one time only,—was again the work of the wise few.

Bruno’s own leaning was towards Rationalism,—as in his interpretation of
the Trinity, of Creation, of the Incarnation, of Immortality, of Providence.
[547] In this he was only following Lully and Nicolaus of Cusa, who also
“demonstrated” some of the deepest of Christian doctrines, interpreted in
their own way. Yet Bruno was by no means a thorough Rationalist: there
remained always a sphere within which Faith only was available, to which
neither reason nor intellect could penetrate. We remember that he ridiculed
Lully for attempting to demonstrate some of the particular doctrines which
“are revealed to the worshippers of Christ (Christicoli) alone, are contrary
to all reason, philosophy, other faiths or superstitions, and are capable of no
demonstration, but admit of faith only.”[548] It is improbable that any
ironical meaning should be read into the words; for the distinction between
faith and knowledge or science, between theological and philosophical
discussion, between the supernatural light and the light of nature or reason,
occurs again and again, not only in Bruno’s replies to the Inquisitors of
Venice, but in the published works. Here and there he deprecates the taking
of his statements, should they conflict with or tend to weaken the accepted
faith, as “assertively” made, and claims, like Copernicus, the right of
arguing for any thesis which is “more in harmony with our sense and
reason, or at least less out of harmony with them than the contradictory
thesis,” however high the authority of the latter may be.[549] Discreet
theologians would fix no limit to natural reasonings, however far these
went, provided they did not determine against the divine authority, but
subordinated themselves to it.[550] Even the Heroici Furori disclaims any
supernatural reasoning or revelation. “If there is another order, above the
natural, which either destroys or corrects the latter, I believe in it, and may
not dispute about it, for I do not reason in any other than a natural spirit.”
He is dealing with Philosophy, not Theology.[551] In other words, Bruno
refuses to dogmatise, just as he condemns dogmatism in others; philosophy
or science should be allowed to pursue its own course, irrespective of
religion, and untrammelled by the Church, so long as it does not attack the
authority of the Church, and thereby weaken the forces that make for peace
and harmony among men.[552] Short of that, entire freedom of thought
should be allowed. Sometimes it might be well that the wise and heroic, as
well as the others, should submit and humble the light of reason received
from God, “the mark of divinity hidden in the substance of our nature,” if
some higher light forbid or warn. But,—“In matters of philosophy at least,

by whose free altars I have taken refuge from the threatening waves, I shall
listen only to those doctors who bid us not close the eyes but open them as
widely as we may.”[553] It has been suggested that Bruno, like many others
who were unstable in the Church, made use of the subterfuge of the twofold
truth;[554] in other words, that he professed to disbelieve theologically what
he accepted as philosophical truth: or that he held one and the same
proposition to be true to sense and reason, i.e. to harmonise with all other
“natural” knowledge, and yet to be false to faith, i.e. inconsistent with
revealed truth. But no theologian denied more strenuously than Bruno, in
spite of occasional lapses, the possibility of two kinds of truth. There were
indeed two kinds of evidence: “one from the light of our own senses and
rational inference, such as we require in speculative sciences, in the arts,
and in practical life, where true and false, good and evil, are apprehended
by human reason and natural light;” the other, from light of a foreign,
namely, a divine source. For as God neither deceives nor is deceived, and is
not envious, but good in the highest degree—is indeed truth and goodness
itself; so, when he speaks to us of occult things, of mysteries, it must be
evident that everything he proposes for our belief is true, and that
everything he proposes for our doing is good. But God is also the Author of
nature, of our senses, of our eyes, and of that truth and evidence which is in
them and according to them; truth does not contradict truth, goodness is not
opposed to goodness. The word of God that is spread through the parts of
nature, His hand and instrument,—for Nature is either God himself, or the
divine force manifest in things,—is not opposed to the word of God, from
whatever other part or principle it springs.[555] There could be no clearer
assertion of the right of philosophy and science to pursue their own way in
the discovery of truth. Nothing revealed from above can conflict with truth
acquired by the discursive, slow-moving human reason, nor on the other
hand can any real truth arrived at by science ever contradict the pure,
genuinely-revealed, word of God. The sphere of faith is separated from that
of reason; faith follows the authority of revelation, is an infallible certainty
equal to, if not greater than, that of sense-knowledge and the intuition of
first principles. Revealed truths are outside the sphere of sense and reason,
not, however, as opposed or contrary to the truths belonging to that sphere,
but as above them. While philosophical faith enables us to act according to
reason and human nature, guiding us by principles innate in ourselves, to
the perfection of our natural condition, theological faith leads us by

supernatural principles to a supernatural end, to become formed in the
likeness and in the knowledge of God.[556] Neither must we call to the bar
of reason what is above reason, summon before our tribunal “cases” of
eternity,[557] nor on the other hand must faith be allowed to prejudice the
discovery of truth by natural methods: if so, it becomes a danger and a
snare.[558] Bruno was therefore a Rationalist only in a limited sense: while
he claimed for the philosopher entire freedom of interpretation of religious
dogmas or legends, the interpretation was to be governed not by the facts of
ordinary knowledge, but by the mystical intuition of divine truth, given, in
inspired moments, to the heroic soul. There were two types of rationalism in
mediaeval philosophy—that of Averroes, which sought to supplant the
positive religions by a religion of philosophy, and that of Scotus Erigena,
which aimed at upholding popular faiths while allowing the philosopher
freedom of thought in interpreting the doctrines these faiths involved.
Bruno’s rationalism is clearly of the second type, although personally he
disliked all prevailing religions for the reasons already given.[559] All
positive religions expressed for him one and the same truth, some more,
some less adequately,—that the supreme end of human activity is the union
of the soul with God, whereby it becomes one with God and is raised above
the sphere of sense and reason, above nature, out of the ordinary cycle of
human life and human death. That which of all others most
Egyptian
nearly approached his ideal was the half-mythical religion religion:
of the Egyptians, from whom indeed he believed the later Animism.
religions, as well as the earlier philosophies, to have been
inspired. The Egyptian worship of the gods in the form of living animals
was symbolic of the truth that God is in all things: “Animals and plants,”
says Jupiter in the Spaccio, “are living effects of nature, and nature is
nothing but God in things. Diverse things represent diverse deities, and
diverse powers.”[560] God is in all things, but not fully expressed in each,
“in some more, in some less excellently,” in some one divine attribute or
power predominates, in some another. Thus the viper or the scorpion
represents Mars, the cock or the lion the Sun, because of their greater
affinity, respectively, with these deities, or rather with the divine powers
which the deities embody. For as divinity is communicated in a divine scale
downwards to nature, so from the light that is reflected in natural things we
may rise to the divine life that is above them. It was on these sympathies
between animals, plants, metals, on the one hand, and the various attributes

of divinity on the other, that genuine magic and divination depended. The
Magi ascended by the same scale of nature to the highest divinity, by which
that divinity itself descended to the least of things, in its self-
communication. Their ceremonies were not vain imaginations, but living
voices that reached the very ears of the gods. “These wise men knew God to
be in things, divinity to be latent in nature, acting in and scintillating
diversely from diverse subjects, and making them to participate in itself, as
in its being, life, and intelligence.”[561] Of Jupiter, Venus, and the rest is said
what Bruno no doubt thought of Christ, and other founders of religion, that
they had been mortal human beings. What men adored was not Jupiter, as a
divine being, but divinity, as expressed in Jupiter: in this or that man were
worshipped the name and symbol of a divinity which in their birth
communicated itself to men, and with their death was thought to have
completed its work and to have returned to heaven.[562] But divinity is
communicated not only through these divinely chosen human vessels, but
through earth, and sun, and moon, the planets, the stars, and all that is in
them: one divinity under innumerable names, according to the innumerable
modes in which it is diffused. Endlessly varied also are the methods by
which it must be sought, under conditions appropriate to each thing, while it
must be honoured and worshipped with endlessly different rites, because
the kinds of favour we seek to obtain from it are beyond number. Later
religions had transformed for the worse what to the Egyptians was merely a
fable or metaphor, by which a mystery above the reach of sense was
expressed, or presented to the mind in a sign or symbol.[563]
How Bruno understood the relation of the finite human
The finite and
soul to the divine mind, or to the soul of the universe, it is the infinite.
not easy to determine, and it is doubtful whether he ever
made it clear to himself. Men, as natural beings, enter into the determinate
order of Nature, which, as we have seen, is the divine power that moves
matter to life. This divine power is the soul in all things, everywhere “one
mundane spirit, wholly in the whole and in every part of it, producing all
things in each according to the conditions of matter, time, and place.” Men,
for example, are not descended from one parent only, but have come to life
in the ordinary course of nature, in different places and at different times;
hence the difference between the races.[564] We have seen that Bruno also
reverts repeatedly to the idea that various men present in their expressions
various animal characters, which are an index to their inward nature, and at