CHAPTER VIII

POSITIVE RELIGIONS AND THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY

The hostility which the Italian and some of the Latin writings of Bruno showed towards the positive religions of his day, alike the Catholic, the Reformed, the Jewish, and the Mahomedan, had two grounds: his belief that religious or sectarian strife was the chief cause of the evils of war and civil discord that were rife throughout Europe, and the fact that one and all of these Churches claimed the right of limiting thought as well as of dictating practice, and in their exercise of this right formed an unendurable barrier in the way of human progress. Of the Roman Catholic Church, to which all his life Bruno belonged in spirit if not in outward conformity, he never expressly denied any of the essential doctrines, as he maintained before the Inquisition at Venice. On the other hand, he admitted that he had occasionally made indirect criticism of these doctrines, speaking or writing "philosophically," not "theologically." To the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, he had given a rationalist, half-mystical interpretation, seeing in it a figure or metaphor of the coincidence in God of the three highest principles--Mind (the Father), Intellect (the word, the Son), and Love, the creating, vivifying force of the Universe (the Comforter or Holy Spirit). It is quite clear that he did not accept as "philosophically" true the distinction of Persons, or the special divinity of Christ. Only once, perhaps, does he write seriously of Christ as the Son of God, and that in one of the posthumous works, the _Lampas Triginta Statuarum_.[531] "Charity is the most perfect and consummate harmony, by which the soul in us becomes so harmonious in itself that it is attuned both to God and to all men equally, not only to friends but even to enemies; to this perfection we are drawn, impelled, invited by the Son of the almighty God, to raise us up to the likeness of the Father, 'who maketh His sun to rise upon good and evil, and sends His rain upon the just and the unjust,' uplifting us from the savage condition of life common to brutes and to the uncivilised, who love their friends and neighbours, but hate strangers and enemies." On the other hand, this very law is elsewhere spoken of as coming not from the "evil spirit or genius of any one race," but from God, the Father of all, as being in harmony with universal nature, and as teaching a general philanthropy; "that we should love our very enemies, not be like brutes and barbarians, but transform ourselves after the image of Him who makes His sun to rise upon good and evil, and makes the rain of His mercies to fall upon just and unjust. This is the religion which I observe, as beyond all controversy, and above all disputation, both from the conviction of my mind, and in accordance with the custom of my fatherland and race."[532]

What Bruno rejected in Christianity was the whole mass of doctrine which suggested a miraculous or supernatural interference with the order of nature, for the benefit either of a particular person, or of a particular race. That is the nerve, for example, of his satire upon the popular idea of Providence in the _Spaccio_.[533] There Mercury, on one of his visits to Sophia, relates a number of things he has to see carried out, by the order of Providence, about the little hamlet of Cicala. They are none of the cleanest--the number of melons that are to ripen in Franzino's garden and that are not to be gathered till over-ripe, of jujubes that are to be picked from Giovanni Bruno's tree, that are to fall to the earth, or that are to be eaten by worms; how Vasta, in curling the hair on her temples, is to overheat the iron and burn fifty-seven of them, but is not to scorch her head--and so on. These unpleasant details, however, are only a prelude to a philosophical conception of the divine action. God, it is said, does not provide for this and that individual as occasion arises.[534] He "does all things without deliberation, anxiety, or perplexity: provides for innumerable species and an infinite number of individuals, not in any order of succession, but at once and all together: He is not like a finite agent, doing things one by one, with many acts, an infinite number of acts for an infinite number of things, but does everything, past, present, and future, with one simple and unique act."[535] So the knowledge of God is simple, containing implicitly in itself all things that are or happen in the extended universe (the _explicate_ unity). It is only to our confused vision that this divine government does not appear just and holy. Mercury advises Sophia to put more strength and warmth into her prayers, for to the mind of the infinite the small is as important as the great! "The least things are just as much a care to the gods as the principal things, for the greatest and chiefest cannot subsist without the least and lowliest." The minutest trifle in the order of the universe is important, for great things are composed of little, little things of least things, and these of atoms and minima.[536] The act of the divine knowledge is the substance of all things: all are therefore known, ordained, foreseen. "Divine knowledge is not as human, which comes after things, but is before and in all things, and if it were not so, things could not be causes or agents, either proximate or secondary."[537]

Thus the order of nature is fixed and eternal, ordained and foreknown from all time. We have seen that Bruno rejected the superstitious idea that comets and other heavenly wonders had a supernatural meaning; and that he found the truest signs of divinity in the orderly course of nature.[538] Miracles he explained either through imposture or through sympathetic magic. Along with these he rejected also what may be called the morbid side of mediæval Christianity--its constant dwelling upon the physical, sensational aspects of Christ's life, sufferings, and death,[539] its appeal to the hysterical in man. Against a religion of incoherent personal emotion and brute ignorance, he would set one of humane love and of reasoned knowledge. The chief value of the New Testament, in his eyes, was its preaching of "the Gospel law of mutual love," which the tyranny of Rome had violated.[540] The religion to which he gave his adherence was that which raised the dead, healed the sick, gave to the poor; not the contrary form to which the Inquisition had brought the Church in Catholic lands.

[Sidenote: Man and God.]

[Sidenote: The Bible,--not science but morality its aim.]

With great boldness Bruno drew from his conception of the Infinite the consequence that there can be no action of the finite upon the infinite, no change or effect in God produced through man. A practical corollary of this was the argument for freedom of thought. The virtue of _Judgment_, in the _Spaccio_, has entrusted to it the defence of the true law, and the removal of unjust or false laws, dictated by enmity to the peace and happiness of the human commonwealth. It shall kindle and fan the appetite for glory in the human breast, as the only sure stimulus for inciting men to the heroic deeds that increase, maintain, or strengthen republics. But it shall not pay heed to what men _imagine_ or _think_, provided their words and deeds do not corrupt the peace of the realm. Deeds are its only concern, and it has to judge the tree, not by the fineness, but by the goodness of its fruits. Heaven is not interested in any way in what does not interest man; it is moved and angered, not by anything done, said, or thought by men, except in so far as the welfare of republics is endangered. Gods would not be gods if they were either pleased or displeased, grieved or delighted, by what men did or thought; they would be more needy than men, would be as dependent on men as men are on themselves for utility and profit.[541] The gods are beyond all passion: they have _active_ anger and pleasure only, not passive. Therefore they do not threaten punishment or promise reward for good or evil that results in _them_, but for that committed on peoples and in the human societies which they foster by their divine laws and statutes, since human laws do not suffice. The gods do not seek the reverence, fear, love, worship, or respect of men, for any other end or utility than that of men themselves. Glory cannot be added to the gods from without; they have made their laws not to receive glory but to communicate glory to men. The sole sphere of justice is the moral actions of men with regard to other men; inward sins are sins only so far as they have outward effect, and inward justice is not justice without outward practice.[542] In the _Cena_ Bruno had already made practical use of this principle in maintaining that the Scriptures teach not science, but an ideal of conduct, and therefore that any argument from them as to the actual constitution of the world is devoid of compelling force, while, on the other side, no scientific theory or hypothesis can be ruled out simply because it is contradicted by any statement in the Scriptures. They were written, not in the service of our intellect to instruct us in philosophy, but for the grace of our mind and heart, ordaining by their laws what should be our behaviour in the moral life. The Scriptures were written in the language and adapted to the intelligence of the vulgar, the people of the time. "A historian making use of words which the ordinary man could not understand, would be absurd; and still more so would be one who desired to give to a whole people a law and model of life, if he were to employ terms which he alone or very few could understand, and should waste time over matters indifferent to the end for which the laws were ordained. For this reason Alghazel said that the function of the books of the law was not so much to probe the truth of things, or speculation, as to promote good customs," and to provide for the welfare of republics and of humanity. To use the terms of science where there is no need, is to ask that the vulgar, the foolish many, from whom only conduct is required, shall have a special comprehension,--to ask that the hand shall have the eye, whereas it is not made by nature to see, but to work, and to obey the eye.[543]

The revelation of the Scriptures is accordingly reduced to that of a moral ideal, to be enforced upon the ordinary man by the threat of future punishment and promise of future reward; but it is an ideal which the wise man would acquire by the light of reason alone, and which he would pursue for its own sake.

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

[Sidenote: Egyptian religion: Animism.]

Bruno's own leaning was towards Rationalism,--as in his interpretation of the Trinity, of Creation, of the Incarnation, of Immortality, of Providence.[547] In this he was only following Lully and Nicolaus of Cusa, who also "demonstrated" some of the deepest of Christian doctrines, interpreted in their own way. Yet Bruno was by no means a thorough Rationalist: there remained always a sphere within which Faith only was available, to which neither reason nor intellect could penetrate. We remember that he ridiculed Lully for attempting to demonstrate some of the particular doctrines which "are revealed to the worshippers of Christ (_Christicoli_) alone, are contrary to all reason, philosophy, other faiths or superstitions, and are capable of no demonstration, but admit of faith only."[548] It is improbable that any ironical meaning should be read into the words; for the distinction between faith and knowledge or science, between theological and philosophical discussion, between the supernatural light and the light of nature or reason, occurs again and again, not only in Bruno's replies to the Inquisitors of Venice, but in the published works. Here and there he deprecates the taking of his statements, should they conflict with or tend to weaken the accepted faith, as "assertively" made, and claims, like Copernicus, the right of arguing for any thesis which is "more in harmony with our sense and reason, or at least less out of harmony with them than the contradictory thesis," however high the authority of the latter may be.[549] Discreet theologians would fix no limit to natural reasonings, however far these went, provided they did not determine against the divine authority, but subordinated themselves to it.[550] Even the _Heroici Furori_ disclaims any supernatural reasoning or revelation. "If there is another order, above the natural, which either destroys or corrects the latter, I believe in it, and may not dispute about it, for I do not reason in any other than a natural spirit." He is dealing with Philosophy, not Theology.[551] In other words, Bruno refuses to dogmatise, just as he condemns dogmatism in others; philosophy or science should be allowed to pursue its own course, irrespective of religion, and untrammelled by the Church, so long as it does not attack the authority of the Church, and thereby weaken the forces that make for peace and harmony among men.[552] Short of that, entire freedom of thought should be allowed. Sometimes it might be well that the wise and heroic, as well as the others, should submit and humble the light of reason received from God, "the mark of divinity hidden in the substance of our nature," if some higher light forbid or warn. But,--"In matters of philosophy at least, by whose free altars I have taken refuge from the threatening waves, I shall listen only to those doctors who bid us not close the eyes but open them as widely as we may."[553] It has been suggested that Bruno, like many others who were unstable in the Church, made use of the subterfuge of the twofold truth;[554] in other words, that he professed to disbelieve theologically what he accepted as philosophical truth: or that he held one and the same proposition to be _true_ to sense and reason, _i.e._ to harmonise with all other "natural" knowledge, and yet to be _false_ to faith, _i.e._ inconsistent with revealed truth. But no theologian denied more strenuously than Bruno, in spite of occasional lapses, the possibility of two kinds of truth. There were indeed two kinds of _evidence_: "one from the light of our own senses and rational inference, such as we require in speculative sciences, in the arts, and in practical life, where true and false, good and evil, are apprehended by human reason and natural light;" the other, from light of a foreign, namely, a divine source. For as God neither deceives nor is deceived, and is not envious, but good in the highest degree--is indeed truth and goodness itself; so, when he speaks to us of occult things, of mysteries, it must be evident that everything he proposes for our belief is true, and that everything he proposes for our doing is good. But God is also the Author of nature, of our senses, of our eyes, and of that truth and evidence which is in them and according to them; truth does not contradict truth, goodness is not opposed to goodness. The word of God that is spread through the parts of nature, His hand and instrument,--for Nature is either God himself, or the divine force manifest in things,--is not opposed to the word of God, from whatever other part or principle it springs.[555] There could be no clearer assertion of the right of philosophy and science to pursue their own way in the discovery of truth. Nothing revealed from above can conflict with truth acquired by the discursive, slow-moving human reason, nor on the other hand can any real truth arrived at by science ever contradict the pure, genuinely-revealed, word of God. The sphere of faith is separated from that of reason; faith follows the authority of revelation, is an infallible certainty equal to, if not greater than, that of sense-knowledge and the intuition of first principles. Revealed truths are outside the sphere of sense and reason, not, however, as opposed or contrary to the truths belonging to that sphere, but as above them. While _philosophical_ faith enables us to act according to reason and human nature, guiding us by principles innate in ourselves, to the perfection of our _natural_ condition, _theological_ faith leads us by supernatural principles to a _supernatural_ end, to become formed in the likeness and in the knowledge of God.[556] Neither must we call to the bar of reason what is above reason, summon before our tribunal "cases" of eternity,[557] nor on the other hand must faith be allowed to prejudice the discovery of truth by natural methods: if so, it becomes a danger and a snare.[558] Bruno was therefore a Rationalist only in a limited sense: while he claimed for the philosopher entire freedom of interpretation of religious dogmas or legends, the interpretation was to be governed not by the facts of ordinary knowledge, but by the mystical intuition of divine truth, given, in inspired moments, to the heroic soul. There were two types of rationalism in mediaeval philosophy--that of Averroes, which sought to supplant the positive religions by a religion of philosophy, and that of Scotus Erigena, which aimed at upholding popular faiths while allowing the philosopher freedom of thought in interpreting the doctrines these faiths involved. Bruno's rationalism is clearly of the second type, although personally he disliked all prevailing religions for the reasons already given.[559] All positive religions expressed for him one and the same truth, some more, some less adequately,--that the supreme end of human activity is the union of the soul with God, whereby it becomes one with God and is raised above the sphere of sense and reason, above nature, out of the ordinary cycle of human life and human death. That which of all others most nearly approached his ideal was the half-mythical religion of the Egyptians, from whom indeed he believed the later religions, as well as the earlier philosophies, to have been inspired. The Egyptian worship of the gods in the form of living animals was symbolic of the truth that God is in all things: "Animals and plants," says Jupiter in the _Spaccio_, "are living effects of nature, and nature is nothing but God in things. Diverse things represent diverse deities, and diverse powers."[560] God is in all things, but not fully expressed in each, "in some more, in some less excellently," in some one divine attribute or power predominates, in some another. Thus the viper or the scorpion represents _Mars_, the cock or the lion the _Sun_, because of their greater affinity, respectively, with these deities, or rather with the divine powers which the deities embody. For as divinity is communicated in a divine scale downwards to nature, so from the light that is reflected in natural things we may rise to the divine life that is above them. It was on these sympathies between animals, plants, metals, on the one hand, and the various attributes of divinity on the other, that genuine magic and divination depended. The _Magi_ ascended by the same scale of nature to the highest divinity, by which that divinity itself descended to the least of things, in its self-communication. Their ceremonies were not vain imaginations, but living voices that reached the very ears of the gods. "These wise men knew God to be in things, divinity to be latent in nature, acting in and scintillating diversely from diverse subjects, and making them to participate in itself, as in its being, life, and intelligence."[561] Of Jupiter, Venus, and the rest is said what Bruno no doubt thought of Christ, and other founders of religion, that they had been mortal human beings. What men adored was not Jupiter, as a divine being, but divinity, as expressed in Jupiter: in this or that man were worshipped the name and symbol of a divinity which in their birth communicated itself to men, and with their death was thought to have completed its work and to have returned to heaven.[562] But divinity is communicated not only through these divinely chosen human vessels, but through earth, and sun, and moon, the planets, the stars, and all that is in them: one divinity under innumerable names, according to the innumerable modes in which it is diffused. Endlessly varied also are the methods by which it must be sought, under conditions appropriate to each thing, while it must be honoured and worshipped with endlessly different rites, because the kinds of favour we seek to obtain from it are beyond number. Later religions had transformed for the worse what to the Egyptians was merely a fable or metaphor, by which a mystery above the reach of sense was expressed, or presented to the mind in a sign or symbol.[563]

[Sidenote: The finite and the infinite.]

How Bruno understood the relation of the finite human soul to the divine mind, or to the soul of the universe, it is not easy to determine, and it is doubtful whether he ever made it clear to himself. Men, as natural beings, enter into the determinate order of _Nature_, which, as we have seen, is the divine power that moves matter to life. This divine power is the soul in all things, everywhere "one mundane spirit, wholly in the whole and in every part of it, producing all things in each according to the conditions of matter, time, and place." Men, for example, are not descended from one parent only, but have come to life in the ordinary course of nature, in different places and at different times; hence the difference between the races.[564] We have seen that Bruno also reverts repeatedly to the idea that various men present in their expressions various animal characters, which are an index to their inward nature, and at the same time point to a transition from a previous or towards a future state.[565] And again it was shown how animals differed from men not necessarily in degree or quality of mind, but only in the outward organism through which alone the mind could express itself. It is clear then that man should have no higher place than any other animal, should stand no nearer God than they; yet in a sense he does, for the human state appears to be the only one from which the soul may raise itself out of the incessant flow of earthly vicissitude, and enjoy the calm of eternal intellectual union with God.[566] The soul of any animal (or plant?) may in time, however, take the body of a man, when this outlet is given to it, just as that of a man, should he refuse his opportunity, may sink back, and indeed must sink back, to the animal state, in the never-ceasing cycle of change. But what precisely is this soul that passes from one body to another, perhaps from one star to another? In one passage we read that as in corporeal matter the body of the ass does not differ from that of the man, so in spiritual matter the soul of the ass remains the same as that of the man; the soul of either is not different from that which is in all things, _i.e._ the soul of the universe.[567] We should then have to assume that it is _matter_, not the form or soul, that differentiates individuals. According to the differences of the organised bodies are the souls that are in them; or, it is one and the same soul which constitutes the vital and cognitive principle in different animal bodies, and in different "worlds" or stars. The individual human and animal souls would be merely modes of the one earth-soul, just as the different star-souls would be merely modes of the one soul of the universe, the first and highest emanation of divinity. The immortality of the individual soul would mean accordingly its reabsorption, at the close of its bodily life, into the eternal; but it would be impossible then to ascribe any continuity or identity to the souls of two beings which succeed each other in nature. This impersonal immortality is that which is most prominent in the Italian dialogues; it gives place, so far as prominence is concerned, to quite another standpoint in the later Latin works. Thus we find in the _Causa_ the comparison of the presence of the spiritual in matter to that of a voice in a room: it is wholly in the room and in every part of the room, yet it is only one utterance that is so heard in the different parts.[568] It might be added that the different degrees of perfection or of divinity in different things would correspond exactly with the differences in the intensity, vividness, of the sound in nearer and more distant parts of the room. As matter itself is ultimately one with spirit,[569] the outcome of this theory is an extreme Pantheism; especially as in the _Causa_ the transcendent Unity, elsewhere distinguished from the soul of the universe, is disregarded. Divinity constitutes both existence and essence of all things, and all things are ultimately one--God, in whom individual beings have their reality, and in whom each is one with all other beings. "We have not to look for divinity at a distance from us, for we have it with us, more truly intimate to us than we are to ourselves"; and so with all other finite things.[570] It has been shown also that death from this standpoint is merely the dissolution of a composite thing into its immortal elements, spirit and matter;[571] death is a change of "accidents" to the substance (_i.e._ of qualities, conditions), never a change of substance itself.[572] Not only we, but all other substances, spiritual and corporeal alike, are beyond reach of death; but as all substances are ultimately one, this does not mean a peculiar, personal immortality for each of us as separate beings.

[Sidenote: Optimism.]

It follows also from this aspect of Bruno's philosophy, that as all things are divine, so all are good. The forms of all living things--men, animals, metals, even those of deformed creatures--are beautiful and perfect in heaven (_i.e. sub specie aeternitatis_).[573] All things being subordinated to the will of the best, everything is good, and tends towards good; the contrary is only apparent when we refuse to look beyond the present, as the beauty of a building is not manifest to one who sees only a part of it, a stone, a piece of cement, a partition wall, but is clearest to one who can see the whole, and is able to compare part with part.[574]

[Sidenote: The worth of the finite individual.]

But there is another aspect of Bruno's theory of the relation of the finite individual soul to the universal spirit, according to which every finite thing has an infinite worth from the very fact of its existence as a member, or part of the universe. It is in this phase, later in time than the other, but never completely dissociated from it, that the real contribution of Bruno to the history of philosophy appears.

It is foreshadowed in the _Heroici Furori_,[575] where the pursuit of an infinite object by a finite intelligence is justified from the infinite potentiality of the latter, as eternal and unlimited in its capacity for delight and blessedness. The infinite desire is itself a pledge of its fulfilment in an eternal life.[576] The individual, finite as it is, must realise in itself the whole nature of the universe to which it belongs; each thing, each substance or monad, realises in the course of its life all other possible existences. Each takes on successively all possible forms, just as at every moment all possible forms are actually realised in the universe as a whole. Each thing, and every part of each, present to us the "similitude," the image of the universe. It is precisely the thought which afterwards loomed so largely in the philosophy of Leibniz, that each monad is a mirror of the universe. The _transmigration_ of the earlier philosophy appears in a far nobler light in this phase. The soul of man does not change in itself as it passes through its innumerable forms; now it is endowed with the "instruments" or members of the human body; anon it will take up the members of another body; "for the soul which has now the bodily organs of a horse there await the bodily members of a man and of all other kinds of being, in regular series, or in confused order; the death of the present members has no bearing upon the future life and its innumerable forms. The soul would not suffer if this were known to it; the wise soul does not fear death, sometimes desires it, and goes to meet it. Before every substance lies eternity for duration, immensity for place, omniformity for realisation."[577] The soul is not limited to the earth alone, but has the infinite worlds before it, for its dwelling-place. It is owing to this individual (indivisible, therefore unchanging) substance--the soul--that we are what we are; about it as a centre there occur in each life continuous "massing and unmassing" of corporeal atoms, through which the changes of form are brought about. "By birth and growth the spirit-architect expands into this mass of which we consist, spreading outwards from the heart. Thither again it withdraws, winding up the threads of its web, retiring by the same path along which it advanced, passing out by the same gate through which it entered. Birth is expansion of the centre, life consistency of the sphere, death contraction to the centre." It is the soul that gathers about it, groups and vivifies the atom-mass; and the strongest argument for its immortality is that it cannot be of less value, of inferior condition, than the atoms themselves of which it avails itself to its own ends, and which are in their nature imperishable.[578] Each soul exists apart in its own unity and individuality; the soul of the universe does not impart anything of itself to the souls of its members.[579] The hierarchy of souls is not a scale of beings within beings, but a multitude of realities, co-existent to all eternity, the _Monas Monadum_ at their head, representing perfectly, completely, at every moment (_i.e._ timelessly), the reality of all the others, yet separable from them. Of the others _that_ is higher which knows more perfectly, and in closer unity--that is, more adequately--the universe to which it belongs. Thus there is the daemon or soul "which is wholly in the whole extent of the life of _the earth_, by the life of which we live, and in the being of which we are;" above it is the individual soul or substantial nature which is in the wider extent of the _solar system_ to which the earth belongs; above it again the soul of the whole system of the _universe_; and highest of all the mind of minds--_God_, the one spirit filling all things wholly.[580]

So in the _Lampas_ the _Intellectus primus_ is said to be separable from particular finite intelligences. It does not belong to their substance: it works in them, but not as a part of them. It does not gradually leave the being to which it has presented itself when that begins to decay, but simply ceases to operate, just as it comes also _suddenly_ to each, if at all.[581]

It follows that each of the lower monads is so far imperfect that it is never at any one time all that it has the possibility of being; the eternal essence of humanity, for example, the truth of humanity, its ideal, is realised not in any one individual, but only in the species as a whole,[582] and this is true of the perfection of every other species. But Bruno's optimism surmounts this difficulty. The evil, the imperfection, is so only to the individual, and in that particular phase of its life. Each thing has a double tendency and a double striving--to remain in the state in which it is, and to press beyond that to realise new forms. But each thing has in itself the nature of the whole--is therefore in its inmost nature perfect. It is imperfect only in its explicit nature--on its outward side. The striving after new life is due to the felt conflict, or want of harmony, between what it has in it to become--its inner self--and what it has actually become, the limited form in which it appears. On the one hand evil is necessary for good, for were the imperfections not felt, there would be no striving after perfection; all defect and sin consist merely in privation, in the non-realisation of possible qualities. "It would not be well were evil non-existent, for it makes for the necessity of good, since if evil were removed the desire of good would also cease."[583] In its whole life, however, the soul will realise all good, and therefore is only _per accidens_ imperfect. On the other hand, however mean in itself at any moment, it is a necessary part of the whole, and therefore, relatively to the whole it is good. "If we look to the order of the universe it will appear that every action and effect is good by way of necessity, for even the things which appear the most trifling and sordid are parts of greater and more noble things, as the formless are parts of the formed, the least are necessary elements of the great, the great of the greatest; and as the less cannot subsist without the least, so neither can the greatest without the great. All beings, therefore, of whatsoever nature, are good, if they are rightly considered, not less good than greater things, if we take into account the fact that the goodness of the whole depends on the goodness of its parts."[584]

Every part, every individual in the universe, differs from every other; each has its own inalienable individuality by which it stands out from all others and is _itself_. So far was this principle carried by Bruno that, as we have seen, he denied that any body could ever occupy the same place twice; the planets moved not in circles or regular paths, but ever in spiral course, so that at each moment their places were other than at any prior or later moment. No two circles, no two lines in nature, were ever exactly equal; hence there was never a perfect circle nor a perfectly straight line. The principle is not at all an epistemological one. It does not mean that _we_ could not distinguish between two precisely equal things, but that two such things could not exist, not even in the minutest forms of nature, since the infinite variety of the infinite all must reflect at every moment the infinite, eternally realised, thought of the One Mind.

[Sidenote: God in nature.]

There are accordingly three aspects of God in Bruno's philosophy--three different standpoints from which He may be approached. The first is that of natural religion--God in Nature. Nature is "the omniform image of the omniform God--His great living semblance (_simulacrum_)."[585] Its order reveals the mind from which it springs--the stars "declare the glory of the majesty of God and the works of His hands. Thence we are uplifted to the infinite cause of the infinite effect."[586] Nature is God in things,[587] His infinite mirror, the _explicate_, unfolded, extended, immeasurable world, and He is _implicitly_ everywhere in the whole.[588] There is, however, no argument from the world to God's existence. From the first the infinite power and goodness are assumed, and the universe, in Bruno's thought, is simply a broad general revelation of what each one of us may find in himself.[589]

[Sidenote: God in us.]

The form which the cosmological argument takes in Bruno is that as individual things, taken singly, must be referred each to a finite principle and cause, a finite effect implying a finite power; so from the point of view of the universe of things, the innumerable individuals in immeasurable space must be referred to an infinite first cause. But to our thought the universe is only an inciting cause; we cannot know God or anything of God's nature from it further than an architect or sculptor can be known from one or all of his works. The beauty and majesty of external nature leads us to aspire to God, its source; but a nearer spring of knowledge is in ourselves. "We are led to regard divinity not as without us, separate or distant from us, but as within ourselves (since it is everywhere wholly), for it is more intimate to us than we can be to ourselves, since it is the substantiating and most essential centre of all essences and of all being."[590] It is from these two aspects of his philosophy, the identifying of _nature_ with God, and the identifying of the true being of each of us with God, that Bruno has been described as a Pantheist. So far, however, as this term implies the identity of the individual things with each other, the conception that all things are one, not in the sense of forming a unity of differents, but in the sense of an indifference or uniformity of all, the term "Pantheism" would give a very false impression of Bruno's religious belief. It is neither the Pantheism which reduces all to a lifeless one, in which all differences are merged, nor that which breaks up the one into a many in which all differences are lost; but the Pantheism of a living, self-manifesting One, which is throughout eternity unfolding itself in the diverse units of the world--a pantheism not different from that of any of the higher religions.

[Sidenote: God in Himself.]

Neither in nature, however, nor in ourselves, in the soul of man, is the whole being of God to be found. Could we indeed see the substance, the truth of ourselves, could our eye in seeing itself see all things, as the eye of God in seeing other things sees itself,--then it would be possible to understand all things and to create all things, for we should then in reality _be_ God. We never penetrate to the deep-lying individual in ourselves, but see only the accidents, the externals; as we never see our own eye, but only its reflection from a mirror, so our intellect cannot see itself in itself, nor anything else in itself, but always some external form, semblance, image, figure, sign.[591] The truth of things--God--everywhere eludes our sense and our reason, our discursive intelligence. It is revealed, as we have seen, only to our intuitive, comprehensive glance--a sudden insight for which reason only prepares the way. Yet even this insight, "comprehension," is not "comprehending." We are brought, perhaps, through it into contact and into harmony with Him, but He is never, even to intuition, knowable. To be known would mean to be comprehended, limited, and therefore finite.

First, then, God, the Monad, or Mind, is the true, _innermost_ nature of things; "in themselves things are in motion, in matter, dependent, defective, are rather _non-entia_ than _entia_, for as from not-being they become, so from being they may cease to be; hence they truly exist only where they cannot cease to be, _i.e._ in the first cause and unfailing principle, which has power to bring them forth when it will. Therefore they are more truly in the _Monad_ itself, and consequently are more truly known in it, in simplicity and togetherness, where all things are _one_ in an ineffable sense, without distinction, distribution, or number."[592] God is the source of the determinations, the forms of all things. "The first _measure_ is Mind itself: for all measure receives its denomination from mind"[593] (_mensura_, _mens_). "One is _mind_, everywhere wholly, giving measure to all things; one _intellect_, giving order to all things; one _love_, producing harmony between all things."[594] The first section of the _Praxis Descensus_ sums up the relation, the meaning of "creation," thus:[595]--"God is the universal substance, being, by which all things are; essence, the soul of all essence, by which whatever is, is; more intimate in every being than its form or its nature; for as nature is the ground of the being of each thing, so the deeper ground of the nature of each thing is God."

[Sidenote: Theism.]

In the second place, the order and life of things has its source in God, as the _Monas ordinatrix_; the whole order of nature, both as it is simultaneously, as it has been, and as it shall be, lies "complicitly," grasped in one thought, and realised in one act, in his Mind. "What immutable substance wills, it wills immutably, _i.e._ it wills necessarily, not as determined by an alien will, which enforces the necessity, but of its own will; this necessity is far from being contrary to liberty; liberty itself, will, and necessity are one and the same" (in God).[596] Divine necessity differs from natural causation, the sequence of causes and effects, in that in nature the causes, will, and knowledge may be frustrated, the effect averted; but divine necessity is necessity in all respects--to will, to know, to act, are one. In the third place, God is above and beyond both natural things and their order in the universe as a whole. In the later works, it is no longer as a mystical being--inaccessible, because wholly abstract, empty of content, the sublimated unity of things--that God is posited. The Neoplatonism of the earlier works, although remaining in the language and even in much of the thoughts of the later, has been overcome in fact.[597] God is indeed transcendent, beyond the world, but He is so only as comprehending the world in Himself, its source, its truth--yet more than the source of things or of their order. In all other things we may distinguish between existence and essence (_i.e._ the fact of their being, their historical presence in the world, and their nature, through which they are what they are); in God alone these are one or indistinguishable.[598] God and things differ by a greater difference than substance and accident--_i.e._ things are not accidents, or "modes" of God. They differ from one another by their special _differentiae_, but resemble in other respects. God differs, not as marked off, limited by them, but as containing them all in essence, presence, power and eternity.[599] He is not apart from things, but in them; in _them_ not as comprehended or contained by them, but as comprehending and containing them, and as the essential basis of all things, the centre of the universal life and substance.[600] He is all things in all, because He gives existence to all; He is none of them, because above all, transcending each and all in essence, nobility and power.[601] He comprises all things, not as excluded and, as it were, looking upon them from apart and from above, for He is also comprised by all things. He is comprised also not as included, contained, repressed within alien limits, for He also comprises all things. He is therefore within all things, as He who gives essence to all things; and is the basis of all being, the heart and source of all life. He comprises all things, as excelling them, governing, moving, disposing, limiting--Himself unlimited.[602] Hence, also, as we saw, He is nameless; names are for distinguishing, defining, separating from other things, but He is above all difference, otherness, diversity, multitude[603]; or again, all names, all predicates, attributes, are equally true of Him, because He comprises all in Himself. It is in this sense that He is _Monad_ of _Monads_, _entity_ of _entities_, "in whom are all things, who is in none, not even in Himself, because He is indivisible, and is simplicity itself."[604]

Bruno's philosophical religion is in the end a theism, but theism of a purely intellectual or rationalist type. The natural world is after all nothing over against God who subsists in absolute simplicity--as Mind; in absolute immobility, changelessness--as Intellect (the World of Ideas); in absolute perfection, self-sufficiency, and self-satisfaction--as Love, or Holy Spirit. Over against this self-contained Trinity, the changing and passing world is a _non-ens_: as _it_ changes not, neither can it know change: to know change would be a change in itself--its knowledge is as immutable, as simple as itself. "Although we see things come into being that before were not, and the world itself, as is believed, was produced out of nothing--a new thing, yet from this change and novelty of effects, no change in His action or power can be inferred, for He exists above all motion and all vicissitude, an unchanging agent in eternity; not as artificers, or material principles, moved by changing dispositions to new willing, new faculty, new effects, but from the instant of eternity, above time and above change, He creates all that which becomes in time, in change, in motion, in vicissitude. Before and above time and motion there is not always time and motion, but there we find divinity, immutable and invariable. He has from eternity willed that to be which now is." "There liberty makes necessity, necessity attests liberty."[605] "Past is not past to it (the First Intelligence), nor future future, but the whole of eternity is present to it as one whole, all together, in its completeness."[606] Seldom, even in recent idealist philosophy, has the World of Ideas maintained its hold so powerfully over a mind whose whole trend was towards a naturalistic interpretation of things. The religious instinct dominates to the last Bruno's thought; these passages are from the very latest of his works. Each and all of his speculations on nature, on its elements, its individuals, its general laws, bring him back to the all-embracing Mind, in which nature has its source, but which nature by no means exhausts. So his speculations on the nature of man, on the moral life, on the inspiration of the artist and of the generous human soul, the hunter after truth, point again to a thought, a world above nature, revealed neither capriciously nor yet to the natural faculties of the seeker, but to a divinely implanted power of intuitive insight. It was an attempt, more consistent perhaps and more thorough than any other has been, to combine the independence and freedom and worth of individual souls, of the finite many, in one thought with the absolute unity, necessity, eternity of God. And this, after all, is the one aim philosophy has to achieve.