ing than works of metaphysics usually are; and this he does by digressions, by ridicule, by eloquence, and a liberal introduction of sonnets. Sometimes his very vivacity becomes wearisome. The reader is stunned and bewildered by the remorseless torrent of substantives and epithets which pours from his too prolific pen. There is nobody to rival him, but Rabelais, in this flux of words.* His great butts are the clergy, and the philosophers. He reproaches the former with ignorance, avarice, hypocrisy, and the desire to stifle inquiry and prolong the reign of ignorance. The philosophers he reproaches with blind adherence to authority, with stupid reverence for Aristotle and Ptolemy, and with slavish imitation of antiquity. It should be observed that he does not so much decry Aristotle, as the ido.atry of Aristotle. Against the pedantry of that pedantic age he is always hurling his thunders. "If," says he, in one place, characterizing the pedant, "he laughs, he calls himself Democritus; if he weeps, it is with Heraclitus; when he argues, he is Aristotle; when he combines chimeras, he is Plato; when he stutters, he is Demosthenes." That Bruno's scorn sprang from no misology, his own varied erudition proves. But while he studied the ancients to extract from them such eternal truths as were buried amidst a mass of error, they, the pedants, only studied how to deck themselves in borrowed plumes. Turning from manner to matter, we must assign to Bruno a place in the history of philosophy, as a successor of the NeoPlatonists, and the precursor of Spinoza, Descartes, Leibnitz, and * To give the reader a taste of this quality, we will cite a sentence from the dedicatory epistle to Gli Eroici Furori: "Che spettacolo, o Dio buono! più vile e ignobile può presentarsi ad un occhio di terso sentimento, che un uomo cogitabundo, afflitto, tormentato, triste, maninconioso, per divenir or freddo, or caldo, or fervente, or tremante, or pallido, or rosso, or in mina di perplesso, or in atto di risoluto, un, che spende il miglior intervallo di tempo destillando l' elixir del cervello con mettere scritto e sigillar in pubblici monumenti, quelle continue torture, que' gravi tormenti, que' razionali discorsi, que' fatuosi pensieri, e quelli amarissimi studi, destinati sotto la tirannide d' una indegna imbecille stolta e sozza sporcaria?" Thus it continues for some fifty lines more!-Opp. Ital. ii. 299. + Vide Opp. Ital. ii. 67, where this is explicitly stated. Schelling. That Spinoza and Descartes were actually conversant with the writings of Giordano Bruno, does not distinctly appear. Yet it is not to be disputed that Bruno anticipated Spinoza in his conception of the immanence of the Deity, in his famous natura naturans and natura naturata, and in his pantheistic theory of evolution. He also anticipated Descartes' famous criterium of truth, viz. that whatever is clear and evident to the mind, and does not admit of contradiction, must be true; and in his proclamation of Doubt as opposed to Authority, he thus insists upon Doubt as the starting-point: "Chi vuol perfettamente giudicare deve saper spogliarsi de la consuetudine di credere, deve l'una e l'altre contradittoria esistimare egualmente possibile, e dismettere a fatto quell' affezione di cui è imbibeto da natività."* Leibnitz was avowedly acquainted with Bruno's works, and derived therefrom his theory of monads. Schelling makes no secret of his obligations. There is another merit in Bruno which should not be overlooked, that, namely, of giving a strong impulse to the study of Nature. Occupied with Syllogisms about entities and quiddities, the philosophy of the Middle Ages had missed the great truth that "man is the minister and interpreter of nature." Philosophy taught that the interpretation could proceed only from within; that men were to look into their own minds to analyze, subdivide, and classify their own ideas, instead of looking forth into Nature, and patiently observing her processes. Bruno was one of the first to call men out into the free air. With his poetical instinct, he naturally looked to Nature as the great book for man to read. He deified Nature; and looked upon the Universe as the garment of God, as the incarnation of the divine activity. Let not this be misunderstood, however. If Bruno embraced *De l'Infinito Universo e Mondi: Opp. Ital. ii. 84. It is of them Telesio energetically says: "Sed veluti cum Deo de sapientiâ contendentes decertantesque, mundi ipsius principia et causas ratione inquirere ausi, et quæ non invenerant, inventa ea sibi esse existimantes, volentesque, veluti suo arbitratu, mundum affluxere."-De Rerum Natura in Proœm. the Copernican theory, and combated the general physics of his day, he is not, on that account, to be mistaken for a man of scientific Method. He espoused the correct view of the earth's sphericity and rotation; but he did so on the faith of his metaphysical theories, not on rigorous induction. But Bruno's creed was Pantheism. God was the Infinite Intelligence, the Cause of Causes, the Principle of all life and mind; the great Activity, whose action we name the Universe. God did not create the universe; he informed it with life-with being. He is the universe; but only as the cause is the effect, sustaining it, causing it, but not limited by it. He is self-existing, yet so essentially active as incessantly to manifest himself as a Cause. Between the supreme Being and the inferior beings. dependent upon him, there is this distinction: He is absolutely simple, without parts. He is one whole, identical and universal; whereas the others are mere individual parts, distinct from the great Whole. Above and beyond the visible universe there is an Infinite Invisible, an immovable, unalterable Identity, which rules over all diversity. This Being of Beings, this Unity of Unities, is God: "Deus est monadum monas, nempe entium entitas." Bruno says, that although it is impossible to conceive nature separated from God, we can conceive God separated from nature. The infinite Being is the essential centre and substance of the universe, but he is above the essence and substance of all things: he is superessentialis, supersubstantialis. Thus we cannot conceive a thought independent of a mind, but we can conceive a mind apart from any one thought. The universe is a thought of God's mind-nay more, it is the infinite activity of his mind. To suppose the world finite is to limit his power. "Wherefore should we imagine that the Divine activity (la divina efficacia) is idle? Wherefore should we say that the Divine goodness, which can communicate itself ad infinitum, and infinitely diffuse itself, is willing to restrict itself? Why should his infinite capacity be frustrated-defrauded of its possibility to create infinite worlds? And why should we deface the excellence of the Di vine image, which should rather reflect itself in an infinite mirror, as his nature is infinite and immense ?"* Bruno admits the existence of only one intelligence, and that is God. Est Deus in nobis. This intelligence, which is perfect in God, is less perfect in inferior spirits; still less so in man; more and more imperfect in the lower gradations of created beings. But all these differences are differences of degree, not of kind. The inferior order of beings do not understand themselves, but they have a sort of language. In the superior orders of beings, intelligence arrives at the point of self-consciousnessthey understand themselves, and those below them. Man, who occupies the middle position in the hierarchy of creation, is capable of contemplating every phasis of life. He sees God above him he sees around him traces of the divine activity. These traces, which attest the immutable order of the universe, constitute the soul of the world. To collect them, and connect them with the Being whence they issue, is the noblest function of the human mind. Bruno further teaches that, in proportion as man labors in this direction, he discovers that these traces, spread abroad in nature, do not differ from the ideas which exist in his own mind. He thus arrives at the perception of the identity between the soul of the world, and his own soul, both as reflections of the Divine intelligence. He is thus led to perceive the identity of Subject and Object, of Thought and Being. Such is the faint outline of a doctrine, to preach which, Bruno became a homeless wanderer and a martyr; as he loftily says, "Con questa filosofia l'anima mi s' aggrandisce, e mi si magnifica l'intelletto." If not original, this doctrine has at any rate the merit of poetical grandeur. In it deep thoughts, wrestling *De l' Infinito: Opp. Ital. ii. 24. +"ELP.: What is the purpose of the senses ?-FIL.: Solely to excite the reason; to indicate the truth, but not to judge of it. Truth is in the sensible object as in a mirror; in the reason, as a matter of argument; in the intellect, as a principle and conclusion; but in the mind it has its true and proper form."-De l' Infinito, p. 18. with imperfect language, do get some sort of utterance. As a system, it is more imaginative than logical; but to many minds it would be all the more acceptable on that account. Coleridge used to say, and with truth, that imagination was the greatest faculty of the philosopher; and Bruno said, "Philosophi sunt quodammodo pictores atque poetæ. . . . Non est philosophus nisi fingit et pingit." Little as the dull man of science may be aware of it, the great faculty of imagination is indispensable even to his science it is the great telescope with which we look into the infinite. But in metaphysics imagination plays a still greater part: it there reigns as a queen. ah The works of Bruno are mostly in Italian, Latin having been happily reserved by him for the logical treatises. The volumes which we owe to the honorable diligence and love of philosophy of Adolph Wagner, open with the comedy, Il Candelajo, which was adapted to the French stage under the title of Boniface le Pédant, from which Cyrano de Bergerac took his Pédant Joué, -a piece which in its turn was plundered by Molière, who, with charming wit and candor, avows it: "Ces deux scènes (in Cyrano) étaient bonnes; elles m'appartenaient de plein droit; on reprend son bien partout où on le trouve."* According to This is, perhaps, the wittiest of all the variations of the "pereant male qui ante nos nostra dixissent." The Chevalier D'Aceilly's version is worth citing: "Dis-je quelque chose assez belle? J'aurais dit la chose avant elle !" While on this subject, we cannot resist Piron's lines; "Ils ont dit, il est vrai, presque tout ce qu'on pense. La Metromanic. |