CHAPTER VII

THE HIGHER LIFE

We now turn to the higher moral life, which is at the same time the religious life, of the heroic soul in its struggle towards perfection. This perfection consists in comprehension of the world as infinitely perfect, in the union with God as the source from which the world flows, the spirit in which it lives, and in the Love of God as at once infinite beauty and infinite goodness.

We have seen that there are to Bruno, as to Plato and to Aristotle, two classes of men, the "vulgar" and the "heroic,"[488] the lower or subject, and the upper or ruling classes: as in each of us there are two principles, a higher, intellect or reason or mind, and a lower, sense and sensual passion. The danger is as great to the world when the lower class attempts to usurp the place of the higher, as it is to the individual soul when passion overwhelms reason. The spread of pedantry, in the universities and in the churches, greater in his time and more menacing to human progress than it had ever been, was an illustration to Bruno's eye of the results ensuing when lower minds tampered with divine knowledge.[489]

The heroic soul is raised by the divine spirit within it out of the turmoil of the constant change and vicissitude, to which the vulgar soul is, in common with all living things, subjected. "The beginning, middle, and end, birth, growth, and perfection of all earthly things are from contraries, through contraries, in contraries, and to contraries; and where there is contrariety, there is also action, reaction, movement, diversity, multitude, order, degrees, succession, change." "There is never any pleasure," we read elsewhere, "without some bitterness;--nay, if there were not the bitter in things, there would not be the pleasurable, for fatigue makes us to find pleasure in repose, separation causes us to find joy in union, and so everywhere we find that one contrary is the reason of another being desired and pleasing:"[490] and so it is with pain. None, therefore, are ever satisfied with their state, except the unfeeling or the foolish who have no knowledge of their own ill, but enjoy the present without fear of the future, can find rest in what is, and have no feeling or desire for what might be: "in short have no sense of contrariety, which is figured by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.[491]" Ignorance is the mother of sensual happiness and joy; hence "the heroic love (in its beginning) is a torment, for it does not rest in the present, as does sensual love, but feels ambition, emulation, suspicious fear for the future, the absent, the contrary." Yet the wise man is neither happy nor miserable,--knowing that good and evil are alike relative, alike fading and temporary things, he is neither dismayed nor elated, but becomes continent in his inclinations, and temperate in his pleasures. Pleasure is not really pleasure to him, for he has present to him its ceasing; pain is not pain, for he has by force of thought its termination before him: all mutable things therefore are to him as things that are not.[492]

Owing to the ever-moving cycle of change, the ordinary soul must of necessity fall back, in the course of the eternal process of its life, to the lowest stage, however high in the scale it may have risen; but this, although an evil for it, does not prejudice the whole, in which all things work together for good. Some few, however, may escape this danger, through becoming united with the eternal Mind or Source.[493] They then cease to be subject to mutation,--Mind being immutable,--and persist in eternal blessedness and love. For such favoured ones of heaven, the greatest evils of this life are converted into goods, correspondingly great. It is suffering that compels the labour and the striving which lead most frequently to the glory of immortal splendour. _Death in one age makes to live in all others._[494]

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: The infinite process.]

The first step, however, in the desire of the infinitely beautiful is but the beginning of an endless series; the heart goes out on an endless quest, while the intellect cannot but follow. For the intellect cannot rest in any definite or finite idea or object, but is driven ever forwards towards the source of all ideas, the ocean of all truth and goodness. Whatever form may be presented to it and comprehended by it, it judges that there must be a greater above and beyond that. Hence it is in constant discourse and movement, for whatever it possesses is seen to be a _measured_ thing, and therefore cannot be sufficient in itself, nor good in itself, nor beautiful in itself. It is not the universe, not absolute Being, but Being "contracted" to this or that nature, species, form, represented to the intellect, and presented to the mind (_animo_). Thus always from beauty comprehended, and therefore measured or limited,--the beautiful by participation,--we progress towards that which is truly beautiful, beautiful without any limit or margin.[507] On the other hand,[508] this infinite process is not in vain, for it is not from imperfect to perfect, but a "circular movement about the degrees of perfection, in order to arrive at the infinite centre which is neither formed nor form." This paradox Tansillo (taking the part of the Nolan) refuses to explain. It probably hints at the idea, as familiar in Bruno as the infinite process itself, that in each form or degree of perfection, the infinite with all its perfection, is wholly present. It is a centre which is at the same time the circumference.

In a subsequent dialogue[509] the object alike of intellectual pursuit and of the heart's desire is described as a positive or "perfective" infinite. The will cannot rest satisfied with a finite good; but if there is other good beyond, desires it, seeks it, because, as the common saying goes, the acme of one species is the foot and the beginning of the next higher species. The highest good being infinite, it is communicated infinitely, but also according to the nature of the things to which it is communicated. Neither to the universe, _e.g._ as regards mass and figure, nor to the intellect, nor to the heart, are any definite limits fixed; yet the intellect and the heart may still become perfect through or by their object, for that object is not merely a "privative infinite[510]" or potentiality, but a perfective or positive[511] infinite as being itself actuality and perfection. When the intellect conceives truth, or light, the good, the beautiful, within the whole capacity of its nature, and the soul drinks of the divine nectar and of the source of eternal life, so much as its vessel can hold, it is seen that the light (of truth) extends beyond, and that the intellect may go on and on, penetrating more deeply into it. The nectar and the source of living water are infinitely productive; the soul may quench its thirst in it again and again.[512]

Thus the blessed or perfect life for Bruno meant a permanent, continuous absorption of the individual soul in the divine goodness--a permanence or eternity which was also one with the instant of time. There was no greater value at any later moment than at the first union of the soul with its divine object: the soul was thereby removed, once for all, out of the constant flux of things, the incessant renewal and rebirth of the soul throughout the ages, and lifted up into the calm of the eternal and immutable.

[Sidenote: Soul and body.]

Even the heroic soul, however, is, as other souls, on the border line between corporeal and incorporeal nature; in part it tends to rise towards the upper world, in part inclines towards the lower world. If sense ascends to imagination, imagination to reason, reason to intellect, intellect to mind, then the soul is wholly converted into God, and its dwelling-place is the intelligible world. In the contrary direction it descends through conversion to the sensible world, by way of intellect, reason, imagination, sense, and the vegetative faculty. Mind (the highest faculty in Bruno's psychology:--the intuitive perception of unity with the supreme ideal world) is oppressed by its conjunction with the more material faculties of the soul; knowing of a higher state to which the soul might rise, it despises the present in favour of the future. If a brute had sense of the difference between its condition and that of man, and between the baseness of its state and the nobility of that of man, to which it did not feel it impossible to rise, it would prefer death which should put it on the way to that state, to life which held it fast in its present one. So the soul, compelled by its loftier thoughts, as if dead to the body, aspires upwards. Although living in the body, it "vegetates" there as dead--is present in it so far as animation is concerned, but absent from it in its proper action.[513]

Thus the heroic soul, although present in the body, is absent from it with the better part of itself, and unites itself in an indissoluble bond with divine things. It feels neither love nor hatred of mortal things, considering itself too great to be the slave and servant of its body: the latter it regards simply as a prison-house within which its liberty is closed in; a snare that holds its wings entangled; a chain that binds its hands; fetters that hold its feet fast; a veil that bewilders its vision. Yet it is neither slave, nor captive, nor entangled, nor chained, nor held fast, bound nor blind, for the body cannot tyrannise over it further than itself allows. It has spirit allotted to it proportionally to its nearness to divinity, since the corporeal world and matter are subject to divinity and nature. So it may make itself strong against fortune, magnanimous against injustice, bold in face of poverty, disease, and persecution.[514]

[Sidenote: The soul.]

[Sidenote: Distraction of the body.]

The soul of man, in Bruno's psychology, as in Aristotle's, performs a double function:--"the one is to vivify and actuate the body, and the other to contemplate the higher world. It has a receptive faculty towards the spiritual, an active faculty towards the corporeal. Body is as dead, a thing privative towards the soul, which is its life and perfection, and the soul is as dead, a thing privative to the higher illuminating intelligence from which its intellect derives both its tendency or nature, and its actual form, its realisation."[515] The soul is not locally in the body, but is related to it as intrinsic form, and as extrinsic giver of form: moulding the members, and giving shape to the composite result from within and from without. "Body is in soul, soul in mind, and mind either _is_, or is _in_ God, as Plotinus said."[516] The dualism of nature and divinity, of corporeal and spiritual, intellect and sense, permeates the ethical as it permeates the earlier philosophical thought of Bruno: nowhere is the Neoplatonist effort to overcome the dualism inherent both in Plato and in Aristotle less effective than here. Thus the body remains--in spite of the continuity seemingly maintained between the highest and the lowest of the emanations from the supreme, or the identity asserted between sense, imagination, reason, intellect,--the chief hindrance to the aspiration of the soul. For the body is in continual movement, change, alteration, and its faculties are conditioned by its inherent nature, its operations by its faculties. "How then can immobility, subsistence, entity, truth, be understood by that which is always different from itself, always acting and becoming in different ways? What truth, what representation can be depicted or impressed when the pupils of the eyes are dispersed into water, the water into vapour, the vapour into flame, the flame into air--that into other things and again other, the object of sense and sense-knowledge passing endlessly through the infinite cycle of changes?" Thought and passion take their character from their object, or the sense-data on which they are based: but "that which has always before it now one thing now another, now in one way now in another, must necessarily be quite blind in regard to that beauty which is always one, and in one manner, which is unity itself, entity, identity."[517]

Into the very life of the generous soul there enter, accordingly, the contrarieties by which on a lower plane the soul is governed:--"the skilfulness and art of nature cause it to faint with desire for that which destroys it, to be content in the midst of torment, to be tormented in the midst of all content. For nothing derives from principles of peace, but everything from contrary principles, through the victory and dominance of one side of the contrariety. There is no pleasure of generation on one side without the pain of corruption on the other; and the things that are becoming and those that are decaying are conjoined in one and the same composite being. The sense of joy and the sense of sorrow go ever together; it is called joy rather than sorrow if the former predominates and has greater force to solicit the sense."[518] The life in death of the more divine soul is only an extreme instance:--"it is the death of lovers from an extreme of joy, the Cabalist _mors osculi_, and is at the same time eternal life, such as man may have potentially, _in disposition_, in this world, but actually, _in effect_, in eternity alone."[519] Again it is the contrast of infinite desire and finite power:--"the weakness of the human mind which is intent on its divine enterprise, and suddenly is engulfed in the abyss of incomprehensible excellence. Sense and imagination are confused and absorbed, the soul can neither go forward nor backward, nor know where to turn, but loses its being just as a drop of water vanishes in the sea, or a little vapour thins out and loses its proper substance in the spacious immeasurable air."[520]

[Sidenote: Intelligence and love.]

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

[Sidenote: Aspiration.]

In its aspiration the soul need not go beyond itself, need only enter into the depths of its own mind (_mens_); "for this it is unnecessary to open the eyes wide upon the heavens, to raise aloft the hands, to wend one's way to the temple, to intone to the ears of idols, that one may best be heard; rather we should enter into the innermost heart of ourselves, for God is near to us, with us, within us, more truly than we are in ourselves; being soul of souls, life of lives, essence of essences." Divinity is not more nor less present in the other worlds than in our own or in ourselves.[524] Therefore the heroic soul withdraws from the many, neither hating them nor seeking to be like them, associating only with those whom it may make better, or who may make it better; but aiming ever to be self-sufficient in its own wisdom. "The soul must come to the point when it no longer regards but despises fatigue, and the more the contest of passions and vices rages within, the struggle of vicious enemies without, the more it must aspire and rise, and pass, with one breath (if it may be) over this mountain of difficulty. Here there is no need for other arms or shield than the grandeur of an invincible mind, the endurance of a spirit which maintains the even tenor of its life, proceeds from knowledge, and is regulated by the art of speculating upon things high and low, divine and human, in which its highest good consists."[525]

[Sidenote: Love of God.]

To the love in the human soul there corresponds love in the divine nature, because love is of the essence of divinity. It precedes, in the mythology of the ancients, all the other gods. Hence there is a natural instinct or tendency of all things towards the beautiful and good. Love is that by virtue of which all things are produced, which is in all things, and is the vigour of all things; by its guidance souls rise to contemplation, by the power of flight it inspires, the difficulties of nature are overcome, and men become united with God.[526] To see God is to be seen by God; to be heard by divinity is to hear the voice of divinity; to be favoured by its grace is the same thing as offering oneself to it. The divine potency that is wholly in everything does not offer nor withdraw itself except through the conversion of the other, its object, to it, or aversion from it.[527] To love God is to be loved by God. It is only through love, again, that we can approach the inmost nature of God; we cannot reason or even think of the divine without detracting from it rather than adding to its glory.[528] To think of God is to limit Him, and, therefore, as we have seen, every conception of Him is inadequate: the deepest, the highest knowledge of divine things is by way of negation, never by affirmation. For the divine beauty and divine goodness can never fall within our understanding (our conceptual knowledge), but are ever beyond and beyond in absolute incomprehensibility. No finite intelligence ever perceives the substance of divinity, but always its similitude, its image; even the highest intelligences are, in the language of the schools, not _formally_, but only _denominatively_, gods, or divine,--divinity and the divine beauty remaining one and exalted above all things.[529] Being itself eternal, unchangeable, the divine truth reveals itself to the few to whom it is revealed--not as in the physical sciences, which are acquired by the natural light of sense and reason, proceeding from the known to the unknown, in successive stages, but--suddenly and at one stroke. There is no need of expense of time, laborious study, active inquiry, to secure it; but it enters into us as readily as the solar light is present, without lapse of time to him who turns to it, and lays himself open to receive it.[530] When the soul is thus wholly turned to God--to the Idea of Ideas--the mind is lifted up to the unity above essence, and becomes all love, all simplicity and unity. The soul is permeated at once with the desire or love of the divine beauty in itself, "without similitude, figure, image, or form"--a desire or love which is its own realisation.