Albertus Magnus.Of the Scholastics proper, from whom much at least of Bruno’s terminology is derived, two seem to have 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]
Lully, 1235–1305.One of the mediæval writers Bruno associated so closely with himself, that his indebtedness might easily be 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]
Nicolaus Cusanus.Foremost of all, however, of the influences which directed Bruno’s thought was that of the Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa (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.
The Trinity.With the Cusan the threefold nature of the Highest Being is 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]
Agrippa of Nettesheim.Other influences which gave direction to Bruno’s genius belong rather to physical science and pseudo-science than 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.Paracelsus[240] proposed a reform of medicine on 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. Cardanus.The same general tendency, the 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. Telesio.The more profound Telesio also (who before Bruno “made honourable war upon Aristotle”)[244] attempted, independently of all authority, from sense-knowledge and induction alone, to penetrate the mysteries of nature.
Copernicus.Only one name remains with which that of Bruno is 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]
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. Principle: Cause.First, a principle (principio) is that which enters, 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.
Efficient cause of nature.The efficient cause of the natural world is the universal intelligence, “the first and principal faculty of the soul of 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.
Formal cause of nature.The formal cause of nature is the ideal reason; before the intelligence can produce species or particular things, can 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. Final cause.The final cause which the intellect sets before itself 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]
Form.Among constitutive principles or elements of things, the 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.
Substance.It follows that there are, strictly speaking, only two 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 deduction of matter.The “proof” of “Matter” is from the analogy between Nature and Art. All who have attempted, 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.
Natural forms.The argument has proved that there is a something, the “I 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 as potentiality.Matter, however, meant not only “subject” or substrate, but also “potentiality,” or possibility: and we have to consider 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. First principle or absolute.Thus the first principle is all that which it has the possibility of being—in it reality and possibility are one; 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, Matter and form are one.or matter and form coincide in the One.[275] We approach this conclusion first from the consideration of matter as “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] Matter or substrate of the spiritual world.But the spiritual and the corporeal worlds, also, as distinguished from one another, imply a common “subject” or substrate in which they are 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.
The unity of spirit and body.This unity, which embraces all the knowable, is the subject of the fifth dialogue of the Causa. The steps by which we 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] Coincidence of all things in the One.Thus the One is the only ultimate reality; it is neither matter nor form, yet both together,—implicitly. And it has no parts, or all parts, for all parts coincide in it, the smallest with the 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] Indifference of all things in the Infinite.Thus, Bruno frankly draws the conclusion, which is inherent in all pantheistic thought, that in the infinite all things are indifferent; there are no proportional 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.