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. Metaphysical atomism.From the metaphysical point of view the atom is the ultimately simple, indeterminate substance of things; 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diversity no longer apply to the absolutely simple: all are determinations of human and finite origin which are here no longer valid.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.

Physical Atomism.From the second point of view, that of physical atomism, the atom is nothing more than a hypothesis to explain the 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. Critical Atomism.From the third or critical point of view, which inquires into the 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.

Faith and works.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 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]

Asinity.The attitude of mind which formed the ideal of the Church 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.

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]

Peace and liberty.The two things which seemed to Bruno for his time the most desirable were peace and freedom—freedom alike of 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.—LawThe function of Law, the daughter 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.Judgment shall make a scale of virtues and of crimes, the greatest in 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]

The scales.Under the Scales, Bruno describes some of the reforms he 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. Sincerity.Hence the emphasis laid on 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.Temperance, as a virtue, is rather the peace of mind that 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]

The Golden Age.In the third dialogue of the Spaccio is a digression on Otium, Idleness, and the Golden Age, which had been 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.

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.

Progress.The age of gold, however, of idleness, and peaceful 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; Evolution.it can hardly be said, however, that he 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] Man and the animals.A much nearer approach to the evolution-theory is to be found in the Cabala,[476] where it 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.

Riches and poverty.Another digression occurs under Hercules,[478] where Riches, Poverty, and Fortune contend for the place of 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.Avarice is 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. Fortune.One may be poor in virtue of affect (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!

Courage.To the place for which these have striven succeeds 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] Simplicity.Beside Fortitude may be placed 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.” Self-consciousness.Simplicity is pleasing to the gods, for it has in a manner the likeness of the divine countenance, 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]

Solicitude.The transition from ordinary morality,—the virtue of the 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.” Truth.The end which this strenuous virtue seeks is 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 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]

Kinds of furor.There are, however, two kinds of furori (or inspiration). “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]

Ascent towards union with the divine.The steps towards the highest peak of human excellence are compared, after Neoplatonist example, to the degrees in intensity of light, as we proceed from darkness, in which 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]

Beauty.To the two higher kinds of love correspond the two kinds 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]