CHAPTER I

THE SOURCES OF THE PHILOSOPHY

[Sidenote: Aristotle's rejection of mathematical method.]

[Sidenote: His treatment of the earlier Greeks.]

In the school and the monastery at Naples Bruno passed as a matter of course through a training in the Scholastic Philosophy. Before entering the monastery of St. Dominic at fifteen years of age he had studied "humane letters, logic, and dialectic,"[155] and had attended, among other lectures, a private course by Theophilus of Varrano, an Augustine monk and distinguished Aristotelian. From him, probably, Bruno received an impetus towards the study of Aristotle in the original works, if not also in the original tongue, which stood him in admirable stead when he came later to attack the foundations of the vulgar philosophy. He was familiar at first hand with all the main writings of Aristotle.[156] He had read, too, and cites, most of the earlier commentators--Adrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry, Themistius, Simplicius, and "Philoponus"[157]--as well as the later, the Arabians and other Schoolmen. He had accordingly a more thorough acquaintance with the mind of Aristotle than any of the latter's staunchest supporters in his time: the lack of the historic sense prevented him, however, from taking a just view of the system as a whole: it was not the Aristotle of Greek philosophy whom he rejected, and against whom he wielded the powerful weapons of his armoury, but the Aristotle of his own day,--a living force with which no one could avoid a reckoning, the influence of which was no longer for good, but which formed, as Bruno felt, a barrier against the progressive thought and spirit of the time. In the introductory letter to the _Figuratio Arist. Phys. Auditus_, Bruno gave three reasons for undertaking the work:[158]--(1) "that he might not appear, like so many others, to be taking up the office of censor without a sufficient knowledge of his subject; (2) that he might present to his opponents the philosophy of Aristotle as it really was, for the majority of the Aristotelians admired it rather from their faith in the man Aristotle than from discriminate judgment concerning the principles of the philosophy; (3) that he might seem not an audacious caviller against thoughts that were beyond his depth, but a genuine and legitimate disputant on doctrines that were clear to himself."[159] The name of Aristotle was a charm; his opinion final not in matters of pure philosophy alone, but equally in natural theory; his natural philosophy had been harmonised with scriptural authority, and was the accepted doctrine of the Church. The cry which his critic heard had weight behind it: "You against Aristotle--against so many authorities, so great names? I would rather be in error along with them, than find truth with you!"[160] The danger lay not so much in the error of Aristotle's theory of nature, or of his metaphysical theories, as in his authority; "many of the Peripatetics," Bruno says in the _Cena_, "grow angry, and flush and quarrel about Aristotle, yet do not understand even the meanings of the titles of his books."[161] It was the influence of this authority that Bruno, in the interests of true philosophy and science, set to work to undermine. The charge which he brought against Aristotle was the same as that which Bacon afterwards brought--that he attempted to explain nature by logical categories. "It is not strange that from impossible, logical, and imaginary distinctions quite discordant with the truth of things, he infers an infinite number of other untruths" (_inconvenientia_).[162] "Matter is formless only to logical abstraction, as with Aristotle, who is constantly dividing by reason what is indivisible according to nature and truth:"[163] "a logical intention (or concept) is made into a principle (or element) of nature."[164] However unfair and indeed absurd the charge must appear when Aristotle is considered in his actual place within the development of philosophy and science, and however far Bruno or Bacon or any of the nature-philosophers of the Renaissance was from avoiding the use in explanation of similar purely logical or metaphysical conceptions, it was still a great and necessary step to call attention to the need of observation and experiment upon nature, and to the value of mathematics as a method of calculating and correlating the phenomena observed. This was a second objection to Aristotle, that he despised mathematics, "being too much of a logician (and stronger in criticism than in argument)," yet, Bruno adds, "when he sought to explain any of the more profound facts of nature, he was often driven by necessity to the repudiated mathematics." Many of Bruno's own mathematical applications savour rather of Neopythagorean mysticism than of the spirit of modern science, and his geometry was far from Euclidean, but he at least made a serious attempt to account for the building-up of bodies and of the universe on mathematical principles. A third objection, which again we find in Bacon, is as to Aristotle's treatment of his predecessors. His depreciation of them is condemned in the _Causa_:--"Of all philosophers I do not know one who founds more upon imagination, or is further removed from nature than he: and if sometimes what he says is excellent, we know that it does not spring from his own principles, but is always a proposition taken from other philosophers."[165] In another passage he is described as a "dry sophist, aiming with malicious explanations and frivolous arguments to pervert the opinions of the ancients, and to oppose the truth, not so much perhaps through imbecility of intelligence as through the influence of envy and ambition."[166] So Bacon speaks of him as imposing "innumerable fictions upon the nature of things at his own will: being everywhere more anxious as to how one should extricate oneself by an answer, and how some positive reply in words should be made, than as to the internal truth of things."[167] In particular it was argued that Aristotle confused the various meanings of the same name with one another:--"He takes the word _vacuum_ in a sense in which no one has ever understood it, building castles in the air, and then pulling down his 'vacuum,' but not that of any other who has spoken of a vacuum or made use of the name. So he acts in all other cases,--those for example of 'motion,' 'infinite,' 'matter,' 'form,' 'demonstration,' 'being,' always building on the faith of his own definition, which gives the name a new sense."[168]

[Sidenote: The Pre-Aristotelians.]

The close study of Aristotle himself, which was one of the greatest results of the Humanist movement, had the effect of bringing into greater prominence the earlier Greek philosophers, whose doctrines Aristotle states and criticises in many of his works--notably the _Physics_ and _Metaphysics_. The rediscovery of antiquity included that of ancient philosophy; and Bruno's dissatisfaction with Aristotle led him into greater sympathy with the nature-philosophers whom Aristotle decried. Towards these earlier Greeks, as towards other philosophers, his attitude is wholly that of an Eclectic: he does not attempt to appreciate their relative value, nor to discover any evolution of thought through the successive systems. From each he takes that which agrees or appears to agree with his own philosophy, and treats it as an anticipation of, or as an authority for, the latter. The "universal intelligence," for example, as the universal efficient cause in nature, is a doctrine ascribed in the _Causa_ indiscriminately to the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, the Magi, Orpheus, Empedocles, and Plotinus.[169] The belief in an infinite ether (Heraclitus' Fire) surrounding the earth, and containing innumerable worlds within it, in the _Cena_ is attributed, equally without discrimination, to Heraclitus, Democritus, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Melissus.[170] Xenophanes represented for Bruno the static aspect of Pantheism--the Absolute One as in itself, apart from all reference to the finite;[171] Heraclitus its dynamic aspect--the Absolute as unfolding, revealing itself, "appearing" in and through the finite.[172] Anaxagoras expressed the relation between the finite individual and the One,--"All things are in all things," for "omnipotent, all-producing divinity pervades the whole, therefore nothing is so small but that divinity lies concealed in it."[173] "Everything is in everything, because spirit or soul is in all things, and therefore out of anything may be produced anything else."[174] To Anaxagoras, as to Bruno, nature was divine.[175] No special distinction was made by Bruno between the teaching of Anaxagoras and that of Empedocles: in one passage he attributes to the former the theory of effluxes and influxes of atoms through the pores of bodies, which really belongs to the latter,[176] and in another suggests that Empedocles only put in a more "abstract" way what Anaxagoras had shown "concretely," that all things are in all.[177]

[Sidenote: Democritus]

[Sidenote: Lucretius]

With Leucippus and Democritus Bruno might have been expected to claim affinity, through their common atomism and naturalism: with two cardinal features of the traditional Epicureanism he was however in entire disagreement. The one was its admission of the void or vacuum: it explained the constitution of diverse bodies out of atoms which were all of the same spherical form, by the different positions and order in which the void and solid parts respectively were arranged, whereas Bruno could not imagine the corporeal atoms holding together without a material substance, extending continuously throughout the universe.[178] The other point of contrast was its denial that anything but corporeal matter exists, with the corollary that forms are merely accidental dispositions of matter: Bruno confesses to have been at one time of the same opinion, but he had been unable wholly to reduce forms to matter, and therefore was compelled to admit two kinds of substance, forms or ideas, and matter or body, although these again were modes of a still higher unity, the One.[179] "The deep thought of the learned Lucretius"[180] early fascinated Bruno, and Lucretius gave the trend not only to much of his philosophy but also to the style of his writing. The Latin poems were suggested by Lucretius' _De rerum natura_, to which they are far inferior, certainly, in literary charm; the philosophical system of the later writer however is not only bolder and grander in itself, but far more thoroughly worked out into the detail of exposition and of criticism. In the Italian dialogues also Lucretius is constantly quoted,--frequently from memory, as one may judge from the errors made.

[Sidenote: Neoplatonism]

[Sidenote: Egyptian theosophy.]

[Sidenote: Hebrew Cabala.]

But in the first reaction against the now barren Peripatetic philosophy, the school to which Bruno turned, with so many of his fellow-countrymen, was that which nominally derived from Aristotle's immediate predecessor. The revival of Platonism in its secondary form of Neoplatonism was one of the most marked traits of the time. In connection with the attempt to unite the Greek and Latin Churches in 1438, a Greek scholar came from Constantinople,--one _Georgius Gemistus_ (Gemistus Plethon),--to the court at Florence, and there opened the minds of the Italians to the beauty of the Platonic philosophy. Its mystical world of ideas charmed all who were embued with the new spirit--romantic, adventurous, hopeful, self-confident. The Ideas, it is true, were materialised and personified in the transition through Neoplatonism, and it was as spirits of the stars and worlds, demons of the earth and sea, the living souls of plants and stones, that they appealed to minds fed on the grosser fare of mediæval superstition. Plethon's lectures, uncritical as they were, ensured the spread of Platonism in Italy. Bessarion of Trebizond, Marsilio Ficino, who became head of the Platonist Academy at Florence, and Pico of Mirandula followed in his steps. Both Ficino and Pico are mentioned by Bruno, and his knowledge of Plato, as of Plotinus, Porphyry, and other Neoplatonists, was derived, almost certainly, from Ficino's translations. The teaching of Plato was interpreted in the light of, and confused by admixture with, the mystical ideas of Philo and Plotinus, of Porphyry and Iamblichus, of the Jewish Cabala, and the mythical sayings of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indian, and Persian sages. The new world was struggling for light, and it rushed towards every gleam of brightness, however feeble. Thus in the address to the senate at Wittenberg before leaving the university, Bruno named the foremost of those whom he regarded as Builders of the Temple of Wisdom: the list begins with the Chaldeans among the Egyptians and Assyrians; there follow Zoroaster and the Magi among the Persians, the Gymnosophists of India, Orpheus and Atlas among Thracians and Libyans, Thales and other wise men among the Greeks,--and so down to Paracelsus in Bruno's own century. The fantastic grouping is characteristic of the uncritical syncretism of this last phase of Neoplatonism: Plethon had conjoined the dogmas of Plato with those of Zoroaster, and had confirmed both by illustrations from Greek mythology. Among the most widely read works were those of Iamblichus the Platonist, who died early in the fourth century,--the _Life of Pythagoras_, and especially the _Mysteries of the Egyptians_.[181] Another work, in many books, which has not come down to us, but which penetrated into the literature of the middle ages, was on the _Perfect Theology of the Chaldaeans_. To Iamblichus, as to Plotinus, the Ideal world was a hierarchy of Gods, from the ineffable, unsearchable One, down, tier upon tier, through successive emanations, to the Gods that are immanent in the world we know and the things of the world. In the scheme not only do the Ideas of Plato, the Numbers of Pythagoras, the Forms of Aristotle, find a place, but also all the Gods of the Greek mythology, of the Egyptian religion, of the Babylonian and Hebrew esoteric cults. The same character is to be found in the writings of the so-called Hermes or Mercurius Trismegistus, to whom Bruno constantly appeals.[182] It was partly for their cosmology, more in accord with modern thought than that of the Peripatetics and the Church, that they were read; but still more for the support their belief in demonic spirits, governing the movements of the worlds and of all individual things, gave to magical and theurgical practices, which through the slackening of the rule of the Church were now universal. "All stars are called fires by the Chaldaeans," writes Bruno, "animals of fire, ministers of fire, innumerable gods, divine oracles."[183] "The Chaldaeans and the wise Rabbis endowed the stars with intelligence and feeling."[184] "There are some who are by no means thought worthy of a hearing among philosophers,--the Chaldaeans and Hebrew sages, who attribute body to the omnipotent God, calling him 'a consuming fire'": below Him were innumerable Gods, flames of fire, and spirits of air, which were subtle, active, mobile bodies: souls too were spirits--that is, subtle bodies; and Bruno adds, "We do not pursue this mode of philosophising, but are far from despising it, nor have ever thought that a wise man should think it contemptible."[185] The theology or theosophy of the Egyptians is praised in the _Spaccio_,[186]--"The magical and divine cult of the Egyptians, who saw divinity in all things, and in all actions (each manifesting divinity in its own special way); and knew by means of its forms in the bosom of nature how to secure the benefits they derived from it--as out of the sea and rivers it gives fish, out of the deserts wild beasts, and out of mines metals, out of trees fruits, and out of certain parts of nature, certain animals, certain brutes, certain plants, are gifted certain fates, virtues, fortunes, or impressions. Divinity in the sea was called Neptune, in the sun Apollo, in the earth Ceres, in the deserts Diana, and diversely in each of the other species of things: as divine ideas, they were diverse deities in Nature, and all were referred to one deity of deities, one source of Ideas above Nature." The passage shows clearly the connection between the revived enthusiasm for the old pagan cults and the new but dark beginnings of independent study of nature, in Magic, Divination, Alchemy, and Astrology: equally close was the connection of both with the revival of Pantheism, the conception of nature as a single whole throbbing with one life, springing from one single source. So of the Hebrew Cabala, Bruno writes, "its wisdom (whatever it be in its kind) derives from the Egyptians, among whom Moses was brought up." "In the first place it attributes to the first principle a name ineffable, from which proceed, in the second place, four names, afterwards resolved into twelve, these into seventy-two, these into one hundred and forty-four, etc., etc. By each name they name a god, an angel, an intelligence, a power that presides over a species of things,--so the whole of divinity is reduced back to one source, as all light is brought back to the first, self-shining light; and the images in the diverse, innumerable mirrors,--particular existences,--are referred to one formal,[187] ideal source."[188]

As might be expected, Plato himself was best known to the school through one of the least characteristic of his works, the _Timaeus_, with its fantastic cosmology and demonology, alongside of which was placed the work of (the Pseudo-) Timaeus of Locris, a later writing, based upon that of Plato, although professing to belong to an earlier date: next to these in importance came the _Republic_, with the theory of Ideas. It was from the Chaldaeans, Egyptians, and Pythagoreans that Plato was supposed to have derived his cosmology. It is, however, with the system of Plotinus that Bruno's earlier theory has the closest affinity: he passed far beyond that system, as the following chapters may show, but many of the ideas that had come down from the master remained throughout part of the basis of Bruno's thought: such are, for example, the idea of the Universal Intelligence,--distinct from the One, the Highest and Unknowable Being, or God,--as the soul of the world and the source of the forms of material things;[189] the _rationes_ or ideas which are contained in it mould and form all things from the seed onwards: the seed is a miniature world containing _implicitly_, _i.e._ in its _ratio_, form or soul, the perfect thing.[190] The conception again of the lower, sensible world, as an imitation of the higher, the intelligible, is derived from Plotinus, as is that of the seven grades or steps of emanation from the First Principle to the material world, which correspond to the seven grades by which the human mind rises from the knowledge of sensible things to that of the Highest, the Good.[191] The order of knowledge corresponds step for step with the order of emanation--of creation. Most significant of all for the development of Bruno's philosophy was Plotinus' conception of an "intelligible matter," which is common to all the different beings and species, in the intelligible world, just as brute matter is that which is common to all kinds of corporeal objects.[192] Again from Plotinus derives the distinction that the matter underlying the intelligible world _is_ all things and all together: having in it (implicitly) all forms, there is nothing into which it may change: whereas the matter of the sensible world _becomes_ all by change in its parts, becomes at successive moments this and that, is therefore at all times in diversity, change, movement. Matter of either kind is never without form, but all forms are in them in different ways--in the one in the instant of eternity, in the other in the instants of time; in the one all at once, in the other successively, in the one _complicitly_, in the other _explicitly_.[193] The same idea is attributed in the _De Immenso_ (Book V.) to the Platonists,--"that God has imbued celestial matter with all forms at once, but gives them to elemental matter in single moments, just as he has poured into the nature of the Gods all ideas once for all, but instils them into animal nature day by day. And as in the order of minds there is an ultimate principle which is incorruptible, so in the order of bodies. For the order of bodies follows that of intelligences as a footmark follows the foot, as a shadow follows the body; hence whatever order is proved to hold of minds, the same will be found to hold of "bodies."[194] It only remained to identify the two kinds of matter, the divine and the "elemental," the spiritual and the corporeal, to obtain the pure Pantheistic naturalism of the middle period of Bruno's philosophy: at that stage he was no longer in sympathy with the Neoplatonist psychology, and denied the doctrine of a _separate_ intelligence or understanding in man, an intelligence, that is, of different origin from sense, and therefore of different kind; he rejected also their view that the imagination which is the source of instinct in animals, differs from human imagination, and their assertion of a difference in kind between reason and intellect in man. For Bruno, as the order of nature was throughout the same in kind, constituted of similar elements, so the order of thought or knowledge was one in kind, from its lowest phase in sense, to its highest in the divine ecstasy. In the _Heroici Furori_ (as again in the posthumous _De Vinculis in genere_) the Platonic doctrine of the ascent to the ecstatic vision and love of divine beauty, from sense-perception and the material feeling for sensible beauty, is the essential topic throughout: and in both Bruno is largely indebted for his symbolism to the Neoplatonist mystics.

[Sidenote: Averroes:--Ibn Roschd (1126-1198).]

The renewed passion for physical science brought another school of philosophy into prominence--the Arabian.[195] The chief commentaries of this school on Aristotle, as well as many of their original writings, were translated and published before the middle of the sixteenth century. Their interest being directed rather towards the physical and metaphysical writings of the master, than towards the logical, they helped to satisfy and to foster the growing spirit of inquiry, and at the same time to spread abroad a more exact knowledge of the real Aristotle than was to be derived from the Christian commentators, whose philosophy was much less in sympathy with Aristotle's than was imagined. The general trend of the Arabian school in metaphysics was towards a modified Aristotelianism, leavened by the Neoplatonist conception of the essential unity of all being and all thought, particular things and particular ideas being a free outflow from the One, into which they of necessity return again without affecting its fundamental nature. Bruno was familiar with _Avicenna_,[196] _Avempace_,[197] _Avicebron_,[198] _Algazel_,[199] and above all _Averroes_. Avicebron or Avencebrol was the author of the famous _Fons Vitae_, "the Source of Life," which gained a quite undeserved notoriety for its supposed materialism. Bruno did not know it at first hand, but through quotations in the translated Arabian writings,[200] and criticisms in the Scholastics. Accordingly his idea of it is by no means accurate.[201] He knew that Avicebron had spoken of matter as divine, that he had reduced even the "substantial forms" of Aristotle to transitory phases of matter--"the stable, the eternal, progenetrix, mother of all things,"[202] and had shown the logical necessity of assuming a matter, or ground, out of which corporeal nature on the one hand, incorporeal or spiritual on the other, are differentiated.[203] It is clear that this underlying matter was not material in the ordinary sense, but a unity which in itself was neither corporeal nor spiritual, yet in its different aspects was both at once. That is a conception which formed one of the main theses in Bruno's philosophy. Directly or indirectly, he drew from the _Fons Vitae_ the thought of a common something which runs through all differences, which is their basis, and gives them reality, which stands to them in the relation of Aristotle's matter to forms: under the differences of bodily objects there lies one common matter, under the differences of spiritual beings another, and under the differences of these two secondary "matters" lies a primary matter in which both are one. So too the progress of thought is from the most complex, or composite, material bodies,--through the less complex, the spiritual,--to the highest and simplest, the One.[204] Of Algazel's _Makacid_--a resumé of the chief philosophical systems, which were criticised in a second part of the work--a translation was published in 1506. Although an orthodox theologian, he taught Bruno that the Sacred Books had as their end not so much truth or knowledge about reality "as goodness of custom, the advantage of the civil body, harmonious living together of peoples, and practice for the benefit of human intercourse, maintenance of peace, increase of republics";[205] in other words, that the Bible claimed no authority in regard to matters of historical fact or of natural science, but contained a revelation of moral or practical rather than of speculative or theoretical truth.[206] For Averroes, Bruno has the highest respect:[207] he constantly speaks of him as "the most subtle and weighty of the Peripatetics"; "Averroes, though an Arab and ignorant of Greek (!), is more at home in the Peripatetic doctrine than any Greek I have read: and he would have understood it better, had he not been so devoted to his deity Aristotle."[208] This blind faith in Aristotle was the weak spot in Averroes' armour, and the cause of many of his subtleties. "He could not believe that Aristotle, whose knowledge was co-extensive with creation, could have erred; rather than deny Aristotle, he refused to believe his own senses."[209] In philosophical theory there were at least two points of contact between Bruno and the great Arabian--one was the doctrine that forms, _i.e._ individual particular objects, are sent out from and therefore originally contained in matter, or, in modern phrase, that the evolution of natural objects is from within outwards, not imposed upon nature by an alien and separate creator:[210] the other was the theory of a universal intelligence pervading and illuminating all human minds, yet remaining one and the same in all, itself an emanation from the Divine, and the lowest in the order of intelligences.[211] Bruno did not, however, speak of it as separate from the finite minds, but as immanent in them: nor did he regard it as the only immortal element in man.

[Sidenote: _Albertus Magnus._]

Of the Scholastics proper, from whom much at least of Bruno's terminology is derived, two seem to have influenced him most strongly:--Albert the Great, whose interest in natural science entitled him to a place in the temple of wisdom: "He had no equal in his time, and was far superior to Aristotle, whose school, in which he ranked according to the conditions of his age, was unworthy of him";[212] and Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, "honour and glory of all and every race of theologians and of Peripatetic philosophers."[213] Generally speaking, however, the Scholastic is to Bruno the pedant, the dabbler in words, as contrasted with the student of nature or of reality.[214] Under this condemnation fell two of the greatest innovators upon the Aristotelian philosophy of his own time,--Ramus, and Patrizzi. The great logician was merely "a French arch-pedant, who has written _The School upon the Liberal Arts_, and the _Animadversions against Aristotle_. We may admit that he understood Aristotle, but he understood him badly; and had he understood him well, he would perhaps have been minded to make honourable war upon him, as the judicious Telesio has done."[215] The fashionable philosopher and Platonist is "_un altro sterco di pedanti_, an Italian who has soiled so many quires with his _Discussiones Peripateticae_; we cannot say he understood Aristotle, either well or ill, but he has read and re-read, stitched and unstitched, and compared with a thousand other Greek authors, friendly and unfriendly to Aristotle, and in the end has undergone great labour, not only without any profit, but also with very great disprofit, so that he who would see into what presumptuous folly and vanity the pedantic habit may plunge a man, let him look at that book, before the memory of it is lost." Tocco has laid his finger upon the reason for Bruno's dislike of these moderns, and it explains his objection to the Scholastics generally:--it was that they attempted to remodel and reform the Logic and Rhetoric of Aristotle, the very parts of his work which Bruno regarded as the most perfect,--and neglected the physical works, the theory of which had so powerful an authority to back it, and therefore all the more required the energies of the stronger minds of the time to be directed upon it.[216]

[Sidenote: Lully, 1235-1305.]

One of the mediæval writers Bruno associated so closely with himself, that his indebtedness might easily be exaggerated: this was Raymond Lully, whose grim figure stands out from the shadowy thirteenth century,--the author of the celebrated _Art of Reasoning_.[217] The object of the Art was to tabulate the primary forms or elements of thought, and their modes of combination, from which data, it was believed, any process of reasoning, however complex, might be carried out, without greater expenditure of energy than in performing an arithmetical operation with any of the first nine numbers. There was no question of a possible divorce between thought and reality. The result of any such process of rational calculus properly carried out was truth. Bruno thought with Lully that the ultimate ideas within reach of human thought were at the same time substantial elements in reality and that the completest knowledge of reality--short of the Absolute--was within the power of human reason to achieve. Lully included in this rational sphere the dogmas of Christian theology: faith was for the many, who must be _driven_ to believe; reason for the few, the wise. Lully's method attracted, and his teaching influenced nearly all the greater minds of the later middle ages, and of the Renaissance. They became a source of as bitter contention as the doctrines of Aristotle himself. Bruno speaks of Lully as "almost divine"; Agrippa, after being an ardent follower, came to see the vanity of the system, and Bacon called it a method of imposture. At different times Bruno expounded, criticised, and expanded the Art. He claims[218] to have "embellished the method of him whom the best leaders among philosophers admire, follow, imitate." Duns Scotus ("Scotigena"), Nicholas of Cusa, Paracelsus, Agrippa, are named, unjustly, as having drawn their chief doctrines from this source: Lefevre and Bouillé[219] cited among his most recent followers. The art was taught "by some divine genius to a rude uncultured hermit, and although it seems to issue from one too dense and stupid, yet it excels the teaching of any famous Attic orator in this kind, as a crop of wheat excels one of barley. It seemed to us unfitting that this work, struggling upwards to the light, against the envy of oppressing darkness, should be suffered to perish and be lost."[220] Yet Bruno by no means thought Lully's exposition perfect. Of his own Lullian work, the _De Compendiosa Architectura_,[221] he says that it "suffices for the understanding, estimating, and prosecuting of the art of Lully, by those who are skilled in the vulgar philosophy. For in it is expressed in one whole, all that is in Lully's many 'Arts,' in which he always seems to be saying the same thing; you have there all that is in the _Ars Brevis_, the _Ars Magna_, and other books bearing the name of _Arbor Scientiae_, _Inventionis_, _Artes demonstrativae_, _mixtionis principiorum_, _Auditus cabalistici_, or any other of that kind, in which the poor fellow strove always to express the same thing."

It was the dream of universal knowledge that attracted Bruno and others to Lullism, just as the dream of universal power over nature attracted the greater minds of the Renaissance to the pseudo-science of Alchemy. The same idea is at the root of both. All things are in all things, _i.e._ the one fundamental nature is in each and every individual thing, therefore out of any one may be produced any other. So in the idea of any one thing, the knowledge of all and any others is necessarily contained, requiring only a proper method for its extraction, as out of the seed may be brought the great tree. Therefore, to Bruno, the hermit Lully seemed "omniscient and almost divine," his method an inspiration from above.[222] There is little, however, to connect Bruno with the substantive teaching of Lully, apart from the method. He explicitly rejects, for example, the main contention of Lully, that the Christian dogmas are capable of demonstration by reason.--"Those relations (_i.e._ between God and man), which have been revealed to the worshippers of Christ alone, are contrary to all reasoning, philosophy, other faiths and superstitions, and allow of no demonstration but of faith only, in spite of what Lully in his madness (_delirando_) attempted to do, in face of the opinion of the great theologians."[223]

[Sidenote: _Nicolaus Cusanus._]

Foremost of all, however, of the influences which directed Bruno's thought was that of the Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa (Nicholas Chrypffs). A "pre-reformation reformer," he stands both in theology and philosophy between the old and the new eras, summing up in his own theory the purest theology and the most refined philosophy of the Middle Ages, yet inevitably pointing forwards to a scientific and religious reform which should transcend both. "Where," cried Bruno in his oration at Wittenberg, "will you find his equal? and the greater he is the fewer are they to whom he is accessible. Had not the robe of the priest infected his genius it would have been not merely equal to but far superior to that of Pythagoras."[224] "He knew and discerned much, and is truly one of the most gifted natures that have ever breathed the air of heaven; but as to the apprehension of truth, he was like a swimmer in tempestuous waters, cast now high now low, he did not see the light continuously, openly, clearly; did not swim as in calm and quiet waters, but interruptedly, at intervals, for he had not cast off all the false principles which he had received from the common doctrine--his starting-point."[225]

A sketch of the philosophy of the Cusan will show in how close a relation Bruno stands to him, yet how great is the difference in outcome between the two philosophies. Clemens, whose sympathies are with the orthodox theologian, does not hesitate to say that this is "the real and direct source from which Bruno drew with both hands, the philosophy to which he owes many of the main principles of his nature-philosophy, and which he has to thank for all the essentials of teaching said to be peculiar to himself"; and Falckenberg is equally inclined to underrate the originality of the Italian in preference to the German philosopher. The outset of Cusanus' philosophy is from a theory of knowledge which he held from Platonist traditions:--Knowledge is posterior both in time and in value to Being, or Reality, of which it is at best a copy or a sign, hence Reality can never be wholly comprehended by it. Every human assertion is at best a "conjecture," a hypothesis or approach to truth, but never the absolute truth itself. Only in the Divine spirit are thought and reality one; the Divine thought is at the same time creative, human only reflective, imitative, thus the Ultimate Being is and must remain incomprehensible for human minds. So Bruno also taught. The Cusan did not, however, reject on this account all human knowledge. On the contrary, reason approximates ever more and more closely to the Divine mind, as a polygon approaches more and more to the form of a circle when the number of its sides is increased; as it never becomes an actual circle, so the Divine reason may be known ever more and more truly through human reason, but never quite truly. It is the knowledge of this our essential _ignorance_ of the Divine that brings us nearest to it.[226] Thus although from one point of view all that is best in human experience may be attributed to the Divine nature in a higher form (_positive theology_), from another every predicate, even the highest, may be denied of it (_negative theology_), or from still a third standpoint (_mystical theology_), contrary predicates equally hold or do not hold of the Divine. This "coincidence of contraries," suggested perhaps by the tradition of Heraclitus and Empedocles, was in the Cusan a principle of knowledge merely. The Divine was at once the greatest and the least; _greatest_ because we could not imagine it added to, for it was the all; _least_ because, being truly existent, we could not imagine anything taken away from it. It is owing to the limits of human thought, therefore, that God is at once greatest and least, equal and unequal, many and one; God Himself is free from all contradiction, the apparent contraries of our understanding are in Him one and the same. So, to our imagination, the infinite circle coincides with the infinite straight line, and a top spinning with its fastest movement appears to stand still.

Bruno extols the greatness of this discovery--"Considering it physically, mathematically, morally, one sees that the philosopher who saw into the coincidence of contraries made a discovery of the highest importance, and that the magician who knows to seek it where it is is no feeble practician."[227] Yet, although he made use of the same geometrical illustrations, and believed himself to be substantially following Cusanus, his theory was widely different. The coincidence springs in Bruno, not from the limitations of the human mind, but from the fulness of the Divine nature. It is not in God as the transcendent unknowable Being that the coincidence inheres, but in the infinite universe as one with God, which is in itself at once the greatest and the least, the maximum and the minimum. Since nature is permeated by God, in everything, in the least of things, is God the greatest; the least _is_ the greatest, has in it the nature of the whole, and so, too, the greatest is the least. In Bruno it is a _pantheistic_, in the Cusan a _theistic_, doctrine. The same conception occurs again in its different meanings, when both compare God to an infinite circle in which centre and circumference are one; in Cusanus it is to our knowledge that He so appears, in Bruno He really _is_ infinite, and is with His whole nature at any point or centre, as well as in the whole, the circumference.

[Sidenote: The Trinity.]

With the Cusan the threefold nature of the Highest Being is deduced as a necessity of Reason: it is (1) _unity_ eternal; (2) _sameness_ or _equality_ eternal; and (3) the _union_ of unity and equality. As there cannot be three eternal and highest beings, these three are necessarily one--the Unity (the Father) produces or begets from itself the _same_ (the Son), and out of both springs their union (the Holy Ghost), yet each of these in the One is one and the same.[228] In the universe, the created world, there is also a Trinity, since it is a copy or reflection of the Divine. (1) _Possibility_ or _Matter_, the unlimited, indeterminate, but capable of being limited and determined, corresponds to the unity of the eternal; (2) _Actuality_, or _Form_, the limiting or determining something, that which limits, corresponds to the sameness or equality of the Eternal; and (3) the unifying _movement_ by which the possible receives actuality, matter receives form, implying a spirit of union, of Love, corresponds to the Absolute Union, the Holy Ghost.[229] At a later stage of his philosophy, however, the Cusan gave a second deduction of the Trinity.[230] God is both Absolute Possibility, Absolute Power or Potency (the Creative Word, the Son), and the union of both in Absolute Reality; yet these are merely different aspects or points of view of the Eternal Being. Again, God is the identity of knowing, or intellect, the knowable or intelligible (the Word), and love, as the inter-relation of each with each, the striving of the knowing after the knowable, its highest good.[231] Bruno also adopts the Trinity of Possibility or Matter, Potency or Form, and Reality, but it is applied at once to God and to Nature as two sides of the same thing. As the Divine potency is infinite, so is nature, its expression, infinite; matter and form do not in their origin stand opposed to one another, as if separated from one another, any more than _power_ and _possibility_ are separate in God; all that can be is realised; matter has in itself all possible forms, and produces these out of itself in the successive moments of time; the universe is eternal, therefore, in order that the infinite power may in it be realised. In all these respects Bruno transforms the orthodox Cusanus' conception of a created and finite world; although nowhere perhaps has the idea of a creation been more skilfully woven into a profound philosophical system than in the Cardinal's quaint dialogues. The Cusan does not attempt the impossible, to account for the fact of creation--"God comprehends (or contains) all things, for all things are in Him, and He unfolds all things out of Himself, for in all things He lives"; but the essence and the process of the comprehension and the unfolding are unknowable by us, just as we can never understand how _chance_ comes to be united with _necessity_ (creation) in the world. It is to this incomprehensible partnership that the imperfections of created things are attributed. In its reality the universe is finite, limited; in its possibility (_i.e._ its _idea_) it is infinite, but only _privatively_ infinite--that is, God could still call a more perfect universe into existence than it has actually pleased Him to do. Only He, as the Absolute Greatest, is infinite in the full _negative_ sense, _i.e._ that which can neither be nor be thought greater than it is. Here Bruno's theory is in complete contrast with that of the Cusan. There are, however, many consequences that both alike have drawn, as that no two things in the universe are wholly and in all respects alike (the _identity of indiscernibles_); each thing expresses the nature of the whole in a special way, but all things may be arranged in graduated scales from the lowest to the highest, or from any one to any other, _i.e._ there are no absolute differences, only differences of degree. Nor are there absolute centres in the universe, or in any of the worlds, nor perfect figures--thus there are no perfect circles described, _e.g._ by the planets, in nature. A further corollary was that the whole is mirrored in each of the parts, as each particular thing partakes of the soul or creative force of all; each does not, however, mirror or reflect the Divine nature with the same adequacy as every other; some do so more perfectly than others, man most perfectly of all.[232] Cusanus did not definitely accept the suggestion of a soul of the universe, analogous in its relation to the world to the soul of man in the body; still less did he identify it with God, as Bruno tended more and more to do. Hence he escaped the fantastical consequences of the belief in Universal Animism, which were drawn without reserve by the Renaissance writers--the consequence, _e.g._ that if one soul, one nature, pervades all things, and is the life of all things, then out of each may be produced any other--out of lead, gold, etc. On the other hand, the four elements at least were different forms of the same fundamental being, and might be produced each out of the other; and, in common with Bruno, Cusanus held the pre-Aristotelian belief in Atomism:--there cannot be division of anything, cube or surface, or line--_ad infinitum_; ultimately there must in each kind be a minimum,[233] an atom, beyond which we cannot _in fact_ go, although to _thought_ it may be still further divisible; so there is in every figure, in every kind of thing, a definite _number_ of atoms. It was partly this thought, partly also the mystical value from time immemorial given to the different numbers and geometrical figures, that led both Cusanus and Bruno to look to mathematics and geometry for the true method or organon of natural science. "Number is the natural and fruitful principle of the understanding's activity; irrational beings do not number. But number is nothing but the unfolding of the understanding. Without it the understanding would have none of the results to which it attains.... Nothing can exist before number, for all that goes beyond the simplest unity is in its fashion a composite, and, therefore, without number is unthinkable, for multitude, difference, and relation of parts arise from number."[234] In both again human knowledge proceeds inversely as creation (or emanation) from number, the many, back through successive grades of simplicity to the one highest, most simple, God, in whom are all things complicitly (without number). "What appears to us as after another, successive, is by no means after in Thy Thought, which is eternity itself. The single thought, which is Thy word, embraces (_complicat_) all and each in itself, Thy single word cannot be manifold, opposite, changeable.... In the eternity in which Thou thinkest, coincides all the _after another_ of time, with the _now_ of eternity. There is, therefore, no past nor future where future and past coincide with the present."[235] The merely logical understanding, that which is based upon sense and requires sense-images for its material, is inadequate to this highest knowledge, gives approximation merely, and we are thrown back upon mystical intuition on the one hand, reasoned faith on the other, for our insight into the true nature of the One and the All.[236]

[Sidenote: Agrippa of Nettesheim.]

Other influences which gave direction to Bruno's genius belong rather to physical science and pseudo-science than to philosophical theory. Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1487-1535), the scholarly adventurer, the Faust who acquired all the knowledge and most of the arts of his time, wrote a compendium and justification (from Neoplatonist philosophy) of magical practices,[237] and at the close of his life the great declamation "on the uncertainty and vanity of all sciences and arts,"[238]--a plea for the simple life and the simple gospel. The _De occulta philosophia_ is the chief source from which Bruno drew the fantastical lore of the _De Monade_.[239] The satires upon Asinity, as the chief human virtue, in the _Spaccio_ and the _Cabala_, directed as they are against blind faith without works or wisdom, found their occasion at least in Agrippa's praise of the Ass (in the _De Vanitate_) as the mouthpiece of God in the story of Balaam, and the bearer of Christ in the New Testament history.

[Sidenote: Paracelsus.]

[Sidenote: Cardanus.]

[Sidenote: Telesio.]

_Paracelsus_[240] proposed a reform of medicine on Neoplatonist principles, attacking the Galenian doctrine of the Four Humours, which was based on the four elements of the Aristotelians (the warm and the cold, the moist and the dry). His own more "natural" theory made salt, sulphur, and mercury the (chemical) elements of all things--those which in living organisms were vivified and directed by an inner spirit (_e.g._ the _Archaeus_ in man), a direct emanation from the soul of the universe. Through their common constitution, and the spirit that infused all things alike, there was a subtle, mysterious sympathy between the microcosm and the macrocosm, the individual body and the universe, and it was by the study of the relations (magical, astrological, and the rest) between the stars and the things of earth, between the different metals and the body of man, that Paracelsus proposed to reform the art of medicine. Bruno, in the _Causa_,[241] praises Paracelsus for his "philosophical" treatment of medicine, that he did not rest content with the three chemical principles alone for explanation of the different vital phenomena, but sought the true principle of life everywhere in a spirit or soul. He is one of the builders of the temple of wisdom,--_ad miraculum medicus_.[242] In his magical writings and in the _De Monade_, Bruno is largely indebted for materials to Paracelsus. The same general tendency, the desire for a return to nature and to sense-observation as opposed to the authority of Aristotle, and to the cult of logical or grammatical subtleties, is found also in Cardan.[243] In his work there is the same mixture of mathematics and physical science with theology, magic, and Neoplatonism, and to him Bruno owes many of his superstitions. The more profound Telesio also (who before Bruno "made honourable war upon Aristotle")[244] attempted, independently of all authority, from sense-knowledge and induction alone, to penetrate the mysteries of nature.

[Sidenote: Copernicus.]

Only one name remains with which that of Bruno is indelibly associated--that of Copernicus, whose _De orbium coelestium Revolutionibus_ was published in 1543. It was his theory of the solar system, coinciding as it seemed with that of the most ancient philosophers, that gave the decisive trend to Bruno's thought, holding him fast to the one all-important fact that the earth is not the centre of the universe but one of its humblest members. Without the solid arguments of Copernicus, Bruno's superb conception of the cosmic system would have remained a dream, an intuition of genius, rather than a well-grounded forecast of modern scientific discovery. "There is more understanding," said Bruno, "in two of his chapters than in the whole philosophy of nature of Aristotle and all the Peripatetics.[245] Grave, thoughtful, careful, and mature in mind, not inferior to any of the astronomers that went before him--in natural judgment far superior to Ptolemy, Hipparch, Eudoxus, and all the others that have walked in their footsteps--a height he attained by freeing himself from the prejudices, not to say blindness, of the vulgar philosophy. Yet he did not get beyond it; being more a student of mathematics than of nature, he was unable wholly to uproot all unfitting, vain principles, to solve all contrary difficulties, liberate both himself and others from so many vain inquiries, and fix their contemplation on things abiding and sure. With all that, who can sufficiently appraise the greatness of this German, who paid little heed to the foolish multitude, and stood solid against the torrent of opposing belief. Although almost destitute of living reasons for weapons, he took up those cast-off and rusty fragments that he could get to his hand from antiquity; repolished them, brought the pieces together, mended them, so that through his arguments--mathematical rather than physical though they were--he made a cause that had been ridiculed, despised, neglected, to be honoured and prized, to seem more probable than its contrary, and certainly more suitable and expeditious for calculation."[246] Copernicus had put forward the theory as a hypothesis merely, and had shown how much more simply the different positions of the sun and planets as seen from the earth could be explained by it, and how much more accurately they could be calculated. In the Epistle prefixed to his work (said by Bruno not to be by Copernicus himself), the reader was warned of the folly of taking this hypothesis as true. To Bruno the contrary of the hypothesis was absurd. Bruno did not appreciate the mathematical proofs of Copernicus, and constantly spoke of him as too much of a mathematician, too little of a physicist: his own mathematical demonstrations were, however, much less successful than those of his predecessor.[247]