{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4228/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4228","id":"gutenberg_4228","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4228","summary":null,"tags":["Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600","Category: Biographies","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Essays"],"text":"Produced by Alfred J. Drake.  HTML version by Al Haines.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGIORDANO BRUNO, PARIS: 1586.+\n\nWALTER HORATIO PATER\n\n     \"Jetzo, da ich ausgewachsen,\n     Viel gelesen, viel gereist,\n     Schwillt mein Herz, und ganz von Herzen,\n     Glaub' ich an den Heilgen Geist.\"--Heine+\n\n\n[234] IT was on the afternoon of the Feast of Pentecost that news of\nthe death of Charles the Ninth went abroad promptly.  To his\nsuccessor the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by\nvarious pious and other observances; and it was on a Whit-Sunday\nafternoon that curious Parisians had the opportunity of listening to\none who, as if with some intentional new version of the sacred event\nthen commemorated, had a great deal to say concerning the Spirit;\nabove all, of the freedom, the independence of its operation.  The\nspeaker, though understood to be a brother of the Order of St.\nDominic, had not been present at the mass--the usual university mass,\nDe Spiritu Sancto, said to-day according to the natural course of the\nseason in the chapel of the Sorbonne, by the Italian Bishop of Paris.\nIt was the reign of the Italians just then, a doubly refined,\nsomewhat morbid, somewhat ash-coloured, Italy in France, more Italian\nstill.  Men of Italian birth, \"to the great suspicion of simple\npeople,\" swarmed in Paris, already \"flightier, less constant, than\nthe girouettes on its steeples,\" and it was love for Italian fashions\nthat had brought king and courtiers here to-day, with great eclat, as\nthey said, frizzed and starched, in the beautiful, minutely\nconsidered dress of the moment, pressing the university into a\nperhaps not unmerited background; for the promised speaker, about\nwhom tongues had been busy, not only in the Latin quarter, had come\nfrom Italy.  In an age in which all things about which Parisians much\ncared must be Italian there might be a hearing for Italian\nphilosophy.  Courtiers at least would understand Italian, and this\nspeaker was rumoured to possess in perfection all the curious arts of\nhis native language.  And of all the kingly qualities of Henry's\nyouth, the single one that had held by him was that gift of\neloquence, which he was able also to value in others--inherited\nperhaps; for in all the contemporary and subsequent historic gossip\nabout his mother, the two things certain are, that the hands credited\nwith so much mysterious ill-doing were fine ones, and that she was an\nadmirable speaker.\n\nBruno himself tells us, long after he had withdrawn himself from it,\nthat the monastic life promotes the freedom of the intellect by its\n[235] silence and self-concentration.  The prospect of such freedom\nsufficiently explains why a young man who, however well found in\nworldly and personal advantages, was conscious above all of great\nintellectual possessions, and of fastidious spirit also, with a\nremarkable distaste for the vulgar, should have espoused poverty,\nchastity, obedience, in a Dominican cloister.  What liberty of mind\nmay really come to in such places, what daring new departures it may\nsuggest to the strictly monastic temper, is exemplified by the\ndubious and dangerous mysticism of men like John of Parma and Joachim\nof Flora, reputed author of the new \"Everlasting Gospel,\" strange\ndreamers, in a world of sanctified rhetoric, of that later\ndispensation of the spirit, in which all law must have passed away;\nor again by a recognised tendency in the great rival Order of St.\nFrancis, in the so-called \"spiritual\" Franciscans, to understand the\ndogmatic words of faith with a difference.\n\nThe three convents in which Bruno lived successively, at Naples, at\nCitta di Campagna, and finally the Minerva at Rome, developed freely,\nwe may suppose, all the mystic qualities of a genius in which, from\nthe first, a heady southern imagination took the lead.  But it was\nfrom beyond conventional bounds he would look for the sustenance, the\nfuel, of an ardour born or bred within them.  Amid such artificial\nreligious stillness the air itself becomes generous in undertones.\nThe vain young monk (vain of course!) would feed his vanity by\npuzzling the good, sleepy heads of the average sons of Dominic with\nhis neology, putting new wine into old bottles, teaching them their\nown business--the new, higher, truer sense of the most familiar\nterms, the chapters they read, the hymns they sang, above all, as it\nhappened, every word that referred to the Spirit, the reign of the\nSpirit, its excellent freedom.  He would soon pass beyond the utmost\nlimits of his brethren's sympathy, beyond the largest and freest\ninterpretation those words would bear, to thoughts and words on an\naltogether different plane, of which the full scope was only to be\nfelt in certain old pagan writers, though approached, perhaps, at\nfirst, as having a kind of natural, preparatory kinship with\nScripture itself.  The Dominicans would seem to have had\nwell-stocked, liberally-selected, libraries; and this curious youth, in\nthat age of restored letters, read eagerly, easily, and very soon\ncame to the kernel of a difficult old author--Plotinus or Plato; to\nthe purpose of thinkers older still, surviving by glimpses only in\nthe books of others--Empedocles, Pythagoras, who had enjoyed the\noriginal divine sense of things, above all, Parmenides, that most\nancient assertor of God's identity with the world.  The affinities,\nthe unity, of the visible and the invisible, of earth and heaven, of\nall things whatever, with each other, through the consciousness, the\nperson, of God the Spirit, who was at every moment of infinite time,\nin every atom of matter, at every [236] point of infinite space, ay!\nwas everything in turn: that doctrine--l'antica filosofia Italiana--was\nin all its vigour there, a hardy growth out of the very heart of\nnature, interpreting itself to congenial minds with all the fulness\nof primitive utterance.  A big thought! yet suggesting, perhaps, from\nthe first, in still, small, immediately practical, voice, some\npossible modification of, a freer way of taking, certain moral\nprecepts: say! a primitive morality, congruous with those larger\nprimitive ideas, the larger survey, the earlier, more liberal air.\n\nReturning to this ancient \"pantheism,\" after so long a reign of a\nseemingly opposite faith, Bruno unfalteringly asserts \"the vision of\nall things in God\" to be the aim of all metaphysical speculation, as\nof all inquiry into nature: the Spirit of God, in countless variety\nof forms, neither above, nor, in any way, without, but intimately\nwithin, all things--really present, with equal integrity, in the\nsunbeam ninety millions of miles long, and the wandering drop of\nwater as it evaporates therein.  The divine consciousness would have\nthe same relation to the production of things, as the human\nintelligence to the production of true thoughts concerning them.\nNay! those thoughts are themselves God in man: a loan, there, too, of\nhis assisting Spirit, who, in truth, creates all things in and by his\nown contemplation of them.  For Him, as for man in proportion as man\nthinks truly, thought and, being are identical, and things existent\nonly in so far as they are known.  Delighting in itself, in the sense\nof its own energy, this sleepless, capacious, fiery intelligence,\nevokes all the orders of nature, all the revolutions of history,\ncycle upon cycle, in ever new types.  And God the Spirit, the soul of\nthe world, being really identical with his own soul, Bruno, as the\nuniverse shapes itself to his reason, his imagination, ever more and\nmore articulately, shares also the divine joy in that process of the\nformation of true ideas, which is really parallel to the process of\ncreation, to the evolution of things.  In a certain mystic sense,\nwhich some in every age of the world have understood, he, too, is\ncreator, himself actually a participator in the creative function.\nAnd by such a philosophy, he assures us, it was his experience that\nthe soul is greatly expanded: con questa filosofia l'anima, mi\ns'aggrandisce: mi se magnifica l'intelletto!\n\nFor, with characteristic largeness of mind, Bruno accepted this\ntheory in the whole range of its consequences.  Its more immediate\ncorollary was the famous axiom of \"indifference,\" of \"the coincidence\nof contraries.\"  To the eye of God, to the philosophic vision through\nwhich God sees in man, nothing is really alien from Him.  The\ndifferences of things, and above all, those distinctions which\nschoolmen and priests, old or new, Roman or Reformed, had invented\nfor themselves, would be lost in the length and breadth of the\nphilosophic survey; nothing, in itself, either great or small; and\nmatter, [237] certainly, in all its various forms, not evil but\ndivine.  Could one choose or reject this or that? If God the Spirit\nhad made, nay! was, all things indifferently, then, matter and\nspirit, the spirit and the flesh, heaven and earth, freedom and\nnecessity, the first and the last, good and evil, would be\nsuperficial rather than substantial differences.  Only, were joy and\nsorrow also to be added to the list of phenomena really coincident or\nindifferent, as some intellectual kinsmen of Bruno have claimed they\nshould?\n\nThe Dominican brother was at no distant day to break far enough away\nfrom the election, the seeming \"vocation\" of his youth, yet would\nremain always, and under all circumstances, unmistakably a monk in\nsome predominant qualities of temper.  At first it only by way of\nthought that he asserted his liberty--delightful, late-found\nprivilege!--traversing, in mental journeys, that spacious circuit, as\nit broke away before him at every moment into ever-new horizons.\nKindling thought and imagination at once, the prospect draws from him\ncries of joy, a kind of religious joy, as in some new \"canticle of\nthe creatures,\" a new monkish hymnal or antiphonary.  \"Nature\"\nbecomes for him a sacred term.  \"Conform thyself to Nature\"--with\nwhat sincerity, what enthusiasm, what religious fervour, he enounces\nthe precept to others, to himself!  Recovering, as he fancies, a\ncertain primeval sense of Deity broadcast on things, in which\nPythagoras and other inspired theorists of early Greece had abounded,\nin his hands philosophy becomes a poem, a sacred poem, as it had been\nwith them.  That Bruno himself, in \"the enthusiasm of the idea,\" drew\nfrom his axiom of the \"indifference of contraries\" the practical\nconsequence which is in very deed latent there, that he was ready to\nsacrifice to the antinomianism, which is certainly a part of its\nrigid logic, the purities of his youth for instance, there is no\nproof.  The service, the sacrifice, he is ready to bring to the great\nlight that has dawned for him, which occupies his entire conscience\nwith the sense of his responsibilities to it, is that of days and\nnights spent in eager study, of a plenary, disinterested utterance of\nthe thoughts that arise in him, at any hazard, at the price, say! of\nmartyrdom.  The work of the divine Spirit, as he conceives it,\nexalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to\ntake the place of prayer, sacrifice, communion.  It would be a\nmistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely\npassive or receptive.  She, too, possesses, not less than the soul of\nthe world, initiatory power, responding with the free gift of a light\nand heat that seem her own.\n\nYet a nature so opulently endowed can hardly have been lacking in\npurely physical ardours.  His pantheistic belief that the Spirit of\nGod was in all things, was not inconsistent with, might encourage, a\nkeen and restless eye for the dramatic details of life and character\nfor humanity in all its visible attractiveness, since there, too, in\n[238] truth, divinity lurks.  From those first fair days of early\nGreek speculation, love had occupied a large place in the conception\nof philosophy; and in after days Bruno was fond of developing, like\nPlato, like the Christian platonist, combining something of the\npeculiar temper of each, the analogy between intellectual enthusiasm\nand the flights of physical love, with an animation which shows\nclearly enough the reality of his experience in the latter.  The\nEroici Furori, his book of books, dedicated to Philip Sidney, who\nwould be no stranger to such thoughts, presents a singular blending\nof verse and prose, after the manner of Dante's Vita Nuova.  The\nsupervening philosophic comment re-considers those earlier physical\nimpulses which had prompted the sonnet in voluble Italian, entirely\nto the advantage of their abstract, incorporeal equivalents.  Yet if\nit is after all but a prose comment, it betrays no lack of the\nnatural stuff out of which such mystic transferences must be made.\nThat there is no single name of preference, no Beatrice or Laura, by\nno means proves the young man's earlier desires merely \"Platonic;\"\nand if the colours of love inevitably lose a little of their force\nand propriety by such deflection, the intellectual purpose as\ncertainly finds its opportunity thereby, in the matter of borrowed\nfire and wings.  A kind of old, scholastic pedantry creeping back\nover the ardent youth who had thrown it off so defiantly (as if Love\nhimself went in for a degree at the University) Bruno developes,\nunder the mask of amorous verse, all the various stages of\nabstraction, by which, as the last step of a long ladder, the mind\nattains actual \"union.\"  For, as with the purely religious mystics,\nunion, the mystic union of souls with each other and their Lord,\nnothing less than union between the contemplator and the\ncontemplated--the reality, or the sense, or at least the name of\nit--was always at hand.  Whence that instinctive tendency, if not from\nthe Creator of things himself, who has doubtless prompted it in the\nphysical universe, as in man?  How familiar the thought that the\nwhole creation longs for God, the soul as the hart for the\nwater-brooks!  To unite oneself to the infinite by breadth and lucidity of\nintellect, to enter, by that admirable faculty, into eternal\nlife--this was the true vocation of the spouse, of the rightly amorous\nsoul--\"a filosofia e necessario amore.\"  There would be degrees of\nprogress therein, as of course also of relapse: joys and sorrows,\ntherefore.  And, in interpreting these, the philosopher, whose\nintellectual ardours have superseded religion and love, is still a\nlover and a monk.  All the influences of the convent, the heady,\nsweet incense, the pleading sounds, the sophisticated light and air,\nthe exaggerated humour of gothic carvers, the thick stratum of pagan\nsentiment beneath (\"Santa Maria sopra Minerva!\") are indelible in\nhim.  Tears, sympathies, tender inspirations, attraction, repulsion,\ndryness, zeal, desire, recollection: he finds a place for them all:\nknows them all [239] well in their unaffected simplicity, while he\nseeks the secret and secondary, or, as he fancies, the primary, form\nand purport of each.\n\nA light on actual life, or mere barren scholastic subtlety, never\nbefore had the pantheistic doctrine been developed with such\ncompleteness, never before connected with so large a sense of nature,\nso large a promise of the knowledge of it as it really is.  The eyes\nthat had not been wanting to visible humanity turned with equal\nliveliness on the natural world in that region of his birth, where\nall its force and colour is twofold.  Nature is not only a thought in\nthe divine mind; it is also the perpetual energy of that mind, which,\never identical with itself, puts forth and absorbs in turn all the\nsuccessive forms of life, of thought, of language even.  But what\nseemed like striking transformations of matter were in truth only a\nchapter, a clause, in the great volume of the transformations of the\nSpirit.  To that mystic recognition that all is divine had succeeded\na realisation of the largeness of the field of concrete knowledge,\nthe infinite extent of all there was actually to know.  Winged,\nfortified, by this central philosophic faith, the student proceeds to\nthe reading of nature, led on from point to point by manifold lights,\nwhich will surely strike on him, by the way, from the intelligence in\nit, speaking directly, sympathetically, to the intelligence in him.\nThe earth's wonderful animation, as divined by one who anticipates by\na whole generation the \"philosophy of experience:\" in that, the bold,\nflighty, pantheistic speculation became tangible matter of fact.\nHere was the needful book for man to read, the full revelation,\nthe detailed story of that one universal mind, struggling, emerging,\nthrough shadow, substance, manifest spirit, in various orders of\nbeing--the veritable history of God.  And nature, together with the\ntrue pedigree and evolution of man also, his gradual issue from it,\nwas still all to learn.  The delightful tangle of things! it would be\nthe delightful task of man's thoughts to disentangle that.  Already\nBruno had measured the space which Bacon would fill, with room\nperhaps for Darwin also.  That Deity is everywhere, like all such\nabstract propositions, is a two-edged force, depending for its\npractical effect on the mind which admits it, on the peculiar\nperspective of that mind.  To Dutch Spinosa, in the next century,\nfaint, consumptive, with a hold on external things naturally faint,\nthe theorem that God was in all things whatever, annihilating, their\ndifferences suggested a somewhat chilly withdrawal from the contact\nof all alike.  In Bruno, eager and impassioned, an Italian of the\nItalians, it awoke a constant, inextinguishable appetite for every\nform of experience--a fear, as of the one sin possible, of limiting,\nfor oneself or another, that great stream flowing for thirsty souls,\nthat wide pasture set ready for the hungry heart.  Considered from\nthe point of view of a minute observation of nature, the Infinite\nmight figure as \"the infinitely little;\" no blade [240] of grass\nbeing like another, as there was no limit to the complexities of an\natom of earth, cell, sphere, within sphere.  But the earth itself,\nhitherto seemingly the privileged centre of a very limited universe,\nwas, after all, itself but an atom in an infinite world of starry\nspace, then lately displayed to the ingenuous intelligence, which\nthe telescope was one day to verify to bodily eyes.  For if Bruno\nmust needs look forward to the future, to Bacon, for adequate\nknowledge of the earth--the infinitely little; he looked back,\ngratefully, to another daring mind, which had already put the earth\ninto its modest place, and opened the full view of the heavens.\nIf God is eternal, then, the universe is infinite and worlds\ninnumerable.  Yes! one might well have supposed what reason now\ndemonstrated, indicating those endless spaces which sidereal science\nwould gradually occupy, an echo of the creative word of God himself,\n\n\"Qui innumero numero innumerorum nomina dicit.\"\n\nThat the stars are suns: that the earth is in motion: that the earth\nis of like stuff with the stars: now the familiar knowledge of\nchildren, dawning on Bruno as calm assurance of reason on appeal from\nthe prejudice of the eye, brought to him an inexpressibly\nexhilarating sense of enlargement of the intellectual, nay! the\nphysical atmosphere.  And his consciousness of unfailing unity and\norder did not desert him in that larger survey, making the utmost one\ncould ever know of the earth seem but a very little chapter in that\nendless history of God the Spirit, rejoicing so greatly in the\nadmirable spectacle that it never ceases to evolve from matter new\nconditions.  The immovable earth beneath one's feet! one almost felt\nthe movement, the respiration of God in it.  And yet how greatly even\nthe physical eye, the sensible imagination (so to term it) was\nflattered by the theorem.  What joy in that motion, the prospect, the\nmusic, the music of the spheres!--he could listen to it in a\nperfection such as had never been conceded to Plato, to Pythagoras\neven.\n\n     \"Veni, Creator Spiritus,\n     Mentes tuorum visita,\n     Imple superna gratia,\n     Quae tu creasti pectora!\"\n\nYes! the grand old Christian hymns, perhaps the grandest of them,\nseemed to blend themselves in the chorus, to deepen immeasurably\nunder this new intention.  It is not always, or often, that men's\nabstract ideas penetrate the temperament, touch the animal spirits,\naffect conduct.  It was what they did with Bruno.  The ghastly\nspectacle of the endless material universe, infinite dust, in truth,\nstarry as it may look to our terrestrial eyes--that prospect from\nwhich Pascal's faithful soul recoiled so painfully--induced in Bruno\nonly the delightful consciousness of an ever-widening kinship [241]\nand sympathy, since every one of those infinite worlds must have its\nsympathetic inhabitants.  Scruples of conscience, if he felt such,\nmight well be pushed aside for the \"excellency\" of such knowledge as\nthis.  To shut the eyes, whether of the body or the mind, would be a\nkind of dark ingratitude; the one sin, to believe directly or\nindirectly in any absolutely dead matter anywhere, because involving\ndenial of the indwelling spirit.  A free spirit, certainly, as of\nold!  Through all his pantheistic flights, from horizon to horizon,\nit was still the thought of liberty that presented itself to the\ninfinite relish of this \"prodigal son\" of Dominic.  God the Spirit\nhad made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence,\nimpiously belied by any theory of restrictions, distinctions,\nabsolute limitations.  Touch, see, listen, eat freely of all the\ntrees of the garden of Paradise with the voice of the Lord God\nliterally everywhere: here was the final counsel of perfection.  The\nworld was even larger than youthful appetite, youthful capacity.  Let\ntheologian and every other theorist beware how he narrowed either.\nThe plurality of worlds! how petty in comparison seemed the sins, to\npurge which was the chief motive for coming to places like this\nconvent, whence Bruno, with vows broken, or obsolete for him,\npresently departed.  A sonnet, expressive of the joy with which he\nreturned to so much more than the liberty of ordinary men, does not\nsuggest that he was driven from it.  Though he must have seemed to\nthose who surely had loved so lovable a creature there to be\ndeparting, like the prodigal of the Gospel, into the furthest of\npossible far countries, there is no proof of harsh treatment, or even\nof an effort to detain him.\n\nIt happens, of course most naturally, that those who undergo the\nshock of spiritual or intellectual change sometimes fail to recognise\ntheir debt to the deserted cause: how much of the heroism, or other\nhigh quality, of their rejection has really been the growth of what\nthey reject?  Bruno, the escaped monk, is still a monk: his\nphilosophy, impious as it might seem to some, a new religion.  He\ncame forth well fitted by conventual influences to play upon men as\nhe was played upon.  A challenge, a war-cry, an alarum; everywhere he\nseemed to be the creature of some subtly materialized spiritual\nforce, like that of the old Greek prophets, like the primitive\n\"enthusiasm\" he was inclined to set so high, or impulsive Pentecostal\nfire.  His hunger to know, fed at first dreamily enough within the\nconvent walls as he wandered over space and time an indefatigable\nreader of books, would be fed physically now by ear and eye, by large\nmatter-of-fact experience, as he journeys from university to\nuniversity; yet still, less as a teacher than a courtier, a citizen\nof the world, a knight-errant of intellectual light.  The philosophic\nneed to try all things had given reasonable justification to the\nstirring desire for travel common to youth, in which, if in nothing\nelse, that whole age of the [242] later Renaissance was invincibly\nyoung.  The theoretic recognition of that mobile spirit of the world,\never renewing its youth, became, sympathetically, the motive of a\nlife as mobile, as ardent, as itself; of a continual journey, the\nventure and stimulus of which would be the occasion of ever new\ndiscoveries, of renewed conviction.\n\nThe unity, the spiritual unity, of the world:--that must involve the\nalliance, the congruity, of all things with each other, great\nreinforcement of sympathy, of the teacher's personality with the\ndoctrine he had to deliver, the spirit of that doctrine with the\nfashion of his utterance.  In his own case, certainly, as Bruno\nconfronted his audience at Paris, himself, his theme, his language,\nwere the fuel of one clear spiritual flame, which soon had hold of\nhis audience also; alien, strangely alien, as it might seem from the\nspeaker.  It was intimate discourse, in magnetic touch with every one\npresent, with his special point of impressibility; the sort of speech\nwhich, consolidated into literary form as a book, would be a dialogue\naccording to the true Attic genius, full of those diversions, passing\nirritations, unlooked-for appeals, in which a solicitous missionary\nfinds his largest range of opportunity, and takes even dull wits\nunaware.  In Bruno, that abstract theory of the perpetual motion of\nthe world was a visible person talking with you.\n\nAnd as the runaway Dominican was still in temper a monk, so he\npresented himself in the comely Dominican habit.  The eyes which in\ntheir last sad protest against stupidity would mistake, or miss\naltogether, the image of the Crucified, were to-day, for the most\npart, kindly observant eyes, registering every detail of that\nsingular company, all the physiognomic lights which come by the way\non people, and, through them, on things, the \"shadows of ideas\" in\nmen's faces (De Umbris Idearum was the title of his discourse),\nhimself pleasantly animated by them, in turn.  There was \"heroic\ngaiety\" there; only, as usual with gaiety, the passage of a peevish\ncloud seemed all the chillier.  Lit up, in the agitation of speaking,\nby many a harsh or scornful beam, yet always sinking, in moments of\nrepose, to an expression of high-bred melancholy, it was a face that\nlooked, after all, made for suffering--already half pleading, half\ndefiant--as of a creature you could hurt, but to the last never shake\na hair's breadth from its estimate of yourself.\n\nLike nature, like nature in that country of his birth, the Nolan, as\nhe delighted to proclaim himself, loved so well that, born wanderer\nas he was, he must perforce return thither sooner or later, at the\nrisk of life, he gave plenis manibus, but without selection, and,\nwith all his contempt for the \"asinine\" vulgar, was not fastidious.\nHis rank, unweeded eloquence, abounding in a play of words, rabbinic\nallegories, verses defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he\nprofessed to despise, with a shameless image here or there, product\nnot of formal method, but of Neapolitan improvisation, was akin to\n[243] the heady wine, the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery,\nvolcanic soil, fertile in the irregularities which manifest power.\nHelping himself indifferently to all religions for rhetoric\nillustration, his preference was still for that of the soil, the old\npagan one, the primitive Italian gods, whose names and legends haunt\nhis speech, as they do the carved and pictorial work of the age,\naccording to the fashion of that ornamental paganism which the\nRenaissance indulged.  To excite, to surprise, to move men's minds,\nas the volcanic earth is moved, as if in travail, and, according to\nthe Socratic fancy, bring them to the birth, was the true function of\nthe teacher, however unusual it might seem in an ancient university.\nFantastic, from first to last that was the descriptive epithet; and\nthe very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how\ncharacteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was\npre-eminently due to Italy.  A bookman, yet with so vivid a hold on\npeople and things, the traits and tricks of the audience seemed to\nrevive in him, to strike from his memory all the graphic resources of\nhis old readings.  He seemed to promise some greater matter than was\nthen actually exposed; himself to enjoy the fulness of a great\noutlook, the vague suggestion of which did but sustain the curiosity\nof the listeners.  And still, in hearing him speak you seemed to see\nthat subtle spiritual fire to which he testified kindling from word\nto word.  What Parisians then heard was, in truth, the first fervid\nexpression of all those contending apprehensions, out of which his\nwritten works would afterwards be compacted, with much loss of heat\nin the process.  Satiric or hybrid growths, things due to hybris,+\ninsolence, insult, all that those fabled satyrs embodied--the\nvolcanic South is kindly prolific of this, and Bruno abounded in\nmockeries: it was by way of protest.  So much of a Platonist, for\nPlato's genial humour he had nevertheless substituted the harsh\nlaughter of Aristophanes.  Paris, teeming, beneath a very courtly\nexterior, with mordent words, in unabashed criticism of all real or\nsuspected evil, provoked his utmost powers of scorn for the\n\"triumphant beast,\" the \"constellation of the Ass,\" shining even\nthere, amid the university folk, those intellectual bankrupts of the\nLatin Quarter, who had so long passed between them gravely a\nworthless \"parchment and paper\" currency.  In truth, Aristotle, as\nthe supplanter of Plato, was still in possession, pretending to\ndetermine heaven and earth by precedent, hiding the proper nature of\nthings from the eyes of men.  Habit--the last word of his practical\nphilosophy--indolent habit! what would this mean in the intellectual\nlife, but just that sort of dead judgments which are most opposed to\nthe essential freedom and quickness of the Spirit, because the mind,\nthe eye, were no longer really at work in them?\n\nTo Bruno, a true son of the Renaissance, in the light of those large,\nantique, pagan ideas, the difference between Rome and the Reform\nwould figure, of course, as but an insignificant variation upon [244]\nsome deeper, more radical antagonism between two tendencies of men's\nminds.  But what about an antagonism deeper still? between Christ and\nthe world, say!  Christ and the flesh?--that so very ancient\nantagonism between good and evil?  Was there any place for\nimperfection in a world wherein the minutest atom, the lightest\nthought, could not escape from God's presence?  Who should note the\ncrime, the sin, the mistake, in the operation of that eternal spirit,\nwhich could have made no misshapen births?  In proportion as man\nraised himself to the ampler survey of the divine work around him,\njust in that proportion did the very notion of evil disappear.  There\nwere no weeds, no \"tares,\" in the endless field.  The truly\nilluminated mind, discerning spiritually, might do what it would.\nEven under the shadow of monastic walls, that had ever been the\nprecept, which the larger theory of \"inspiration\" had bequeathed to\npractice.  \"Of all the trees of the garden thou mayst freely eat!  If\nyou take up any deadly thing, it shall not hurt you!  And I think\nthat I, too, have the spirit of God.\"\n\nBruno, the citizen of the world, Bruno at Paris, was careful to warn\noff the vulgar from applying the decisions of philosophy beyond its\nproper speculative limits.  But a kind of secresy, an ambiguous\natmosphere, encompassed, from the first, alike the speaker and the\ndoctrine; and in that world of fluctuating and ambiguous characters,\nthe alerter mind certainly, pondering on this novel reign of the\nspirit--what it might actually be--would hardly fail to find in\nBruno's theories a method of turning poison into food, to live and\nthrive thereon; an art, surely, no less opportune in the Paris of\nthat hour, intellectually or morally, than had it related to physical\npoisons.  If Bruno himself was cautious not to suggest the ethic or\npractical equivalent to his theoretic positions, there was that in\nhis very manner of speech, in his rank, unweeded eloquence, which\nseemed naturally to discourage any effort at selection, any sense of\nfine difference, of nuances or proportion, in things.  The loose\nsympathies of his genius were allied to nature, nursing, with equable\nmaternity of soul, good, bad, and indifferent, rather than to art,\ndistinguishing, rejecting, refining.  Commission and omission; sins\nof the former surely had the preference.  And how would Paolo and\nFrancesca have read the lesson?  How would this Henry the Third, and\nMargaret of the \"Memoirs,\" and other susceptible persona then\npresent, read it, especially if the opposition between practical good\nand evil traversed another distinction, to the \"opposed points,\" the\n\"fenced opposites\" of which many, certainly, then present, in that\nParis of the last of the Valois, could never by any possibility\nbecome \"indifferent,\" between the precious and the base,\naesthetically--between what was right and wrong, as matter of art?\n\n\n\nNOTES\n\n234. +Pater's article appeared in The Fortnightly Review, 1889.\nLater it was much revised and included as Chapter VII of the\nunfinished novel, Gaston de Latour.\n\n234. +From Heine's Aus der Harzreise, \"Bergidylle 2\": \"Tannenbaum,\nmit grunen Fingern,\" Stanza 10.\n\n243. +E-text editor's transliteration: hybris.  Liddell and Scott\ndefinition: \"wanton violence, arising from the pride of strength,\npassion, etc.\"","title":"Giordano Bruno","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":5443}