Giordano Bruno

perfection. This perfection consists in comprehension of the world as infinitely perfect, in the union with God as the source f

t or reason or mind, and a lower, sense and sensual passion. The danger is as great to the world when the lower class attempts to usurp the place of the higher, as it is to the individual soul when passion overwhelms reason. The spread of p

ue makes us to find pleasure in repose, separation causes us to find joy in union, and so everywhere we find that one contrary is the reason of another being desired and pleasing:"[490] and so it is with pain. None, therefore, are ever satisfied with their state, except the unfeeling or the foolish who have no knowledge of their own ill, but enjoy the present without fear of the future, can find rest in what is, and have no feeling or desire for what might be: "in short have no sense of contrariety, which is figured by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.[491]" Ignorance is the mother of sensual happiness and joy; hence "the heroic lo

n which all things work together for good. Some few, however, may escape this danger, through becoming united with the eternal Mind or Source.[493] They then cease to be subject to mutation,-Mind being immutable,-and persist in eternal blessedness and love. For such favo

udeness and ignorance: the divine sense and spirit enters into them as into a house swept and garnished, they being void of any spirit or sense of their own. Others being more habituated to or skilled in contemplation, and having innate in them a lucid and intellectual spirit, are moved by an internal impulse and natural fervour, with love of divinity, justice, truth, glory; by the fire of desire, fanned by the breath of purpose, they give edge to their senses, and in the sulphur

, to terrify and put to rout its enemies,"-the lower, sense-feelings and passions. The conversion seems to arise as by an act of grace from above; or, to express this in other words, the soul or spirit tends towards that with which it has greatest affinity, as the sun-flower tends towards the sun, and this affinity in the human soul is Love.[497] The symbol of love is fire, for love converts the object of love into the lover, as fire is of all elements the most active, the most potent to transform others into itself.[498] It is the divine in man that makes him or impels him to love God as He is in reality, and the goal or aim of that love is to take God into himself, t

difficulty and conquer every force.[500] The Intelligence which is the truest beauty attainable by us, is not yet Divinity itself, but only the highest "intelligible species," or form, the highest Idea. Divinity itself is the final, the most perfect object of thought and love, not attainable in our present state, in which God cannot become object to us, except through some image.[501] No image of the Divine, however, even the most inadequate, can be abstracted or otherwise derived by the senses, from corporeal beauty or excellence. Such can be formed only by the intellect, and on such the human intellect feeds, in this lower world, until it be allowed to behold with purer eyes the beauty of divinity itself. In a fine simile Bruno describes how one may come to some mansion, most exquisitely adorned, and as he goes about observing now this, now that, is pleased and happy, filled with delight and noble wonder. But if then he sees the living Lord of these beautiful forms, of beauty incomparably greater, he lets go all care or thought of them, intent wholly on this one, their source. Such is the difference between the earthly state, when we see the divine beauty in intelligible or abstract forms, derived from its effects, its works, masterpieces, its shadows and similitudes, and the perfect state, when we are allowed to behold it in its real presence.[502] The "intelligible species" of this conception, which Bruno derives from Neoplatonism, are simply the ideas of the "speculative sciences," which include, however, what would now be called the natural scien

movement, for whatever it possesses is seen to be a measured thing, and therefore cannot be sufficient in itself, nor good in itself, nor beautiful in itself. It is not the universe, not absolute Being, but Being "contracted" to this or that nature, species, form, represented to the intellect, and presented to the mind (animo). Thus always from beauty comprehended, and therefore measured or limited,-the beautiful by participation,-we progress towards that which is truly beautiful, beautiful without any limit or margin.[507] On the othe

ding to the nature of the things to which it is communicated. Neither to the universe, e.g. as regards mass and figure, nor to the intellect, nor to the heart, are any definite limits fixed; yet the intellect and the heart may still become perfect through or by their object, for that object is not merely a "privative infinite[510]" or potentiality, but a perfective or positive[511] infinite as being itself actuality and perfection. When the intellect

one with the instant of time. There was no greater value at any later moment than at the first union of the soul with its divine object: the soul was thereby removed, onc

sensible world, by way of intellect, reason, imagination, sense, and the vegetative faculty. Mind (the highest faculty in Bruno's psychology:-the intuitive perception of unity with the supreme ideal world) is oppressed by its conjunction with the more material faculties of the soul; knowing of a higher state to which the soul might rise, it despises the present in favour of the future. If a brute had sense of the difference between its condition and that of man, and b

a prison-house within which its liberty is closed in; a snare that holds its wings entangled; a chain that binds its hands; fetters that hold its feet fast; a veil that bewilders its vision. Yet it is neither slave, nor captive, nor entangled, nor chained, nor held fast, bound nor blind, for the body cannot tyrann

ither is, or is in God, as Plotinus said."[516] The dualism of nature and divinity, of corporeal and spiritual, intellect and sense, permeates the ethical as it permeates the earlier philosophical thought of Bruno: nowhere is the Neoplatonist effort to overcome the dualism inherent both in Plato and in Aristotle less effective than here. Distraction of the body.Thus the body remains-in spite of the continuity seemingly maintained between the highest and the lowest of the emanations from the supreme, or the identity asserted between sense, imagination, reason, intellect,-the chief hindrance to the aspiration of the soul. For the body is in continual movement, change, alteration, and its faculties are conditioned by its inherent nature, its operations by its faculties. "How then can immobi

the other; and the things that are becoming and those that are decaying are conjoined in one and the same composite being. The sense of joy and the sense of sorrow go ever together; it is called joy rather than sorrow if the former predominates and has greater force to solicit the sense."[518] The life in death of the more divine soul is only an extreme instance:-"it is the death of lovers from an extreme of joy, the Cabalist mors osculi, and is at the same time eternal life, such as man may have potentially, in disposition, in this wo

irely without sense or feeling of other passions. It is so deep in its delight that nothing can displease or divert it or cause it to stumble in the least, and this is to reach the highest blessedness in our present state-to have pleasure without any sense of pain.[522] The loss of sense is caused by the absorption of the whole being in virtue, in the truly good, and in felicity. Regulus, Lucretia, Socrates, Anaxarchus, Scaevola, Cocles, are instanced as noble human bei

e of essences." Divinity is not more nor less present in the other worlds than in our own or in ourselves.[524] Therefore the heroic soul withdraws from the many, neither hating them nor seeking to be like them, associating only with those whom it may make better, or who may make it better; Aspiration.but aiming ever to be self-sufficient in its own wisdom. "The soul must come to the point when it no longer regards but despises fatigue, and the more the contest of passions and

t.[527] To love God is to be loved by God. It is only through love, again, that we can approach the inmost nature of God; we cannot reason or even think of the divine without detracting from it rather than adding to its glory.[528] To think of God is to limit Him, and, therefore, as we have seen, every conception of Him is inadequate: the deepest, the highest knowledge of divine things is by way of negation, never by affirmation. For the divine beauty and divine goodness can never fall within our understanding (our conceptual knowledge), but are ever beyond and beyond in absolute incomprehensibility. No finite intelligence ever perceives the substance of divinity, but always its similitude, its image; even the highest intelligences are, in the language of the schools, not formally, but only denominatively, gods, or divine,-divinity and the divine beauty remaining one and exalted