Academy even in the fifteenth century. These Medici, the elder Cosmo, Lorenzo, Leo X., Clement VII., were patrons of all the arts and sciences, and made their court the resort of classical Greek scholars.[60] Two counts of the name of Pico della Mirandola—Giovanni, and Giovanni Francesco, his nephew—were influential rather by virtue of their marked personality and their originality; the elder propounded nine hundred theses, fifty-five of which were taken from Proclus, and invited philosophers one and all to a solemn discussion of the same; he also in princely fashion undertook to pay the travelling expenses of those at a distance.[61] 3. GASSENDI, LIPSIUS, REUCHLIN, HELMONT.
Somewhat later, and specially by Gassendi, the opponent of Descartes, the atom theory of Epicurus was again revived. As a development therefrom the theory of molecules maintained its place thenceforth in physical science.
The revival of Stoic philosophy due to Lipsius was not so clearly evidenced.
In Reuchlin (Kapnio), who was born at Pforzheim in Swabia in 1455, and who was himself the translator of several comedies of Aristophanes, the Cabalistic philosophy found a defender. He endeavoured also to reconstruct the Pythagorean philosophy proper; but he mingled with it much that is vague and mysterious. There was in hand a project to destroy all Hebrew books in Germany by an imperial decree, as had been done in Spain; Reuchlin deserves great credit for having prevented this.[62] On account of the entire lack of dictionaries, the study of the Greek language was rendered so difficult that Reuchlin travelled to Vienna for the purpose of learning Greek from a Greek.
Later on we find many profound thoughts in Helmont, an Englishman, who was born in 1618, and died in 1699.[63] All these philosophies were carried on side by side with belief in Church dogmas, and without prejudice thereto; not in the sense in which the ancients conceived them. A mass of literature exists on this subject, containing the names of a multitude of philosophers, but it is a literature of the past, without the vitality characteristic of higher principles; it is in fact not a true philosophy at all, and I shall therefore not dwell any longer upon it.
4. CICERONIAN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY.
Cicero’s mode of philosophizing, a very general mode, was revived in an especial degree. It is a popular style of philosophizing, which has no real speculative value, but in regard to general culture it has this importance, that in it man derives more from himself as a whole, from his outer and inner experience, and speaks altogether from the standpoint of the present. He is a man of understanding who says,— “What helps a man in life, is what life itself has taught him.”
The feelings, &c., of man obtained due recognition, we must observe, as against the principle of self-abnegation. A very large number of writings of this kind were issued, some of them simply on their own account, others aimed against the Scholastics. Although all that great mass of philosophical writings—much, for instance, that Erasmus wrote on similar subjects—has been forgotten, and though it possesses little intrinsic value, it was still of very great service, as succeeding the barrenness of the Scholastics and their groundless maunderings in abstractions:—groundless I say, for they had not even self-consciousness as their basis. Petrarch was one of those who wrote from himself, from his heart, as a thinking man.
This new departure in Philosophy applies in this regard to the reform of the Church by Protestantism also. Its principle is simply this, that it led man back to himself, and removed what was alien to him, in language especially. To have translated for German Christians the book on which their faith is grounded, into their mother-tongue, is one of the greatest revolutions which could have happened. Italy in the same way obtained grand poetic works when the vernacular came to be employed by such writers as Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch; Petrarch’s political works were however written in Latin. It is not until a thing is expressed in my mother tongue that it becomes my own possession. Luther and Melancthon cast the Scholastic element quite aside, and drew their conclusions from the Bible, from faith, from the human heart. Melancthon presents to us a calm popular philosophy, in which the human element makes itself felt, and which therefore forms the most striking contrast to the lifeless and jejune Scholasticism. This attack against the Scholastic method was made in the most different directions and in the most various forms. But all this belongs rather to the history of Religion than to that of Philosophy.
B. CERTAIN ATTEMPTS IN PHILOSOPHY.
A second series of writers who now appeared have mainly to do with particular attempts made in Philosophy which remained attempts merely, and are only found while this terrible time of upheaval lasted. Many individuals of that period saw themselves forsaken by what had hitherto been accepted by them as content, by the object which up to this time had formed the stay and support of their consciousness—by faith. Side by side with the peaceful reappearance of the ancient philosophy there displayed itself, on the other hand, a multitude of individuals in whom a burning desire after the conscious knowledge of what is deepest and most concrete was violently manifested. It was spoilt, however, by endless fancies, extravagances of the imagination and a craze for secret, astrological, geomantic and other knowledge. These men felt themselves dominated, as they really were, by the impulse to create existence and to derive truth from their very selves. They were men of vehement nature, of wild and restless character, of enthusiastic temperament, who could not attain to the calm of knowledge. Though it cannot be denied that there was in them a wonderful insight into what was true and great, there is no doubt on the other hand that they revelled in all manner of corruption in thought and heart as well as in their outer life. There is thus to be found in them great originality and subjective energy of spirit; at the same time the content is heterogeneous and unequal, and their confusion of mind is great. Their fate, their lives, their writings—which often fill many volumes—manifest only this restlessness of their being, this tearing asunder, the revolt of their inner being against present existence and the longing to get out of it and reach certainty. These remarkable individuals really resemble the upheavals, tremblings and eruptions of a volcano which has become worked up in its depths and has brought forth new developments, which as yet are wild and uncontrolled.
The most outstanding men of this nature are Cardanus, Bruno, Vanini, Campanella, and lastly Ramus. They are representative of the character of the time in this interval of transition, and fall within the period of the Reformation.
1. CARDANUS.
Hieronymus Cardanus is of their number; he was remarkable as an individual of world-wide reputation, in whom the upheaval and fermentation of his time manifested itself in its utmost violence. His writings fill ten folio volumes. Cardanus was born in 1501 at Pavia, and died at Rome in 1575. He recounted his own history and described his character in his book _De vita propria_, where he makes an extraordinary confession of his sins, passing the severest possible judgment upon them.
The following may serve to give a picture of these contradictions. His life was a series of the most varied misfortunes, external and domestic.
He speaks first of his pre-natal history. He relates that his mother, when pregnant with him, drank potions in order to produce abortion. When he was still at the breast, there was an outbreak of the plague; the nurse who suckled him died of the pestilence, he survived. His father was very severe in his treatment of him. He lived sometimes in the most crushing poverty and the utmost want, sometimes in the greatest luxury.
Afterwards he applied himself to science, became a Doctor of Medicine, and travelled much. He was celebrated far and wide; summons came to him from every quarter, several times he was called to Scotland. He writes that he cannot tell the sums of money that were offered to him. He was professor at Milan, first of mathematics and then of medicine; after that he lay for two years in Bologna in the strictest imprisonment, and had to undergo the most frightful tortures. He was a profound astrologer, and predicted the future for many princes, who on that account held him in the greatest awe and reverence.[64] He is a name of note in mathematics; we have from him still the _regula Cardani_ for the solution of equations of the third degree, the only rule we have had up to this time.
He lived his whole life in perpetual inward and outward storms. He says that he suffered the greatest torments in his soul. In this inward agony he found the greatest delight in inflicting torture both on himself and others. He scourged himself, bit his lips, pinched himself violently, distorted his fingers, in order to free himself from the tortures of his spiritual disquietude and induce weeping, which brought him relief.
The same contradictions were to be seen in his outward demeanour, which was sometimes quiet and decorous, while at other times he behaved as if he were crazy and demented, and that without any external provocation whatever, and in matters the most indifferent. Sometimes he put on decent clothes and made himself neat and trim, at other times he went in rags.
He would be reserved, diligent, persevering in his work, and then would break out into excesses, wasting and squandering all that he had, his household goods and his wife’s jewels. Sometimes he would walk quietly along, like other men; at other times he would rush on as if he were mad.
The upbringing of his children, as was quite to be expected under the circumstances, was very bad. He had the unhappiness of seeing his sons turn out ill; one of them poisoned his own wife and was executed with the sword; he had his second son’s ears cut off, to chastise him for being dissipated.[65] He himself was of the wildest temperament, brooding deeply within himself, and yet breaking out into violence in the most contradictory manner; within him there also raged a consuming restlessness. I have epitomized the description which he gives of his own character, and now quote it: “I have by nature a mind of philosophic and scientific cast; I am witty, elegant, well-bred, fond of luxury, cheerful, pious, faithful, a lover of wisdom, reflective, enterprising, studious, obliging, emulous, inventive, self-taught. I have a longing to perform prodigies, I am crafty, cunning, bitter, versed in secrets, sober, diligent, careless, talkative, contemptuous of religion, vindictive, envious, melancholy, malicious, treacherous, a sorcerer, a magician, unhappy; I am surly to my family, ascetic, difficult to deal with, harsh, a soothsayer, jealous, a ribald talker, a slanderer, compliant, inconstant; such contradictoriness of nature and manners is to be found in me.”[66] His writings are in parts just as utterly unequal as his character.
In them he gave vent to the wild vehemence of his nature; they are disconnected and contradictory, and were often written in the direst poverty. They contain a medley of all kinds of astrological and chiromantic superstition, yet lit up here and there with profound and brilliant flashes; there are Alexandrine and Cabalistic mysteries side by side with perfectly lucid psychological observations of his own. He treated astrologically the life and deeds of Christ. His positive merit consists, however, rather in the stimulus which he gave to original production, and in this direction he exercised an important influence on his times. He boasted of the originality and novelty of his ideas, and the craze to be original drove him to the strangest devices. This represents the first form taken by the newly awakened and energizing reason in its spontaneous activity; to be new and different from others was regarded as tantamount to possessing a private claim to science.
2. CAMPANELLA.
Tommaso Campanella, a student of Aristotle, represents just such another medley of all possible dispositions. He was born at Stilo, in Calabria, in 1568, and died at Paris in 1639. Many of his writings still remain to us. For seven-and-twenty years of his life he was kept in strict imprisonment at Naples.[67] Such men as he aroused enormous interest and gave great offence, but on their own account they were productive of very little result. We have still to make special mention of Giordano Bruno and Vanini as belonging to this period.
3. BRUNO.
Giordano Bruno was of an equally restless and effervescent temperament, and we see in him a bold rejection of all Catholic beliefs resting on mere authority. In modern times he has again been brought into remembrance by Jacobi (Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 5-46), who appended to his letters on Spinoza an abstract of one of Bruno’s works.[68] Jacobi caused great attention to be paid to Bruno, more especially by his assertion that the sum of Bruno’s teaching was the One and All of Spinoza, or really Pantheism; on account of the drawing of this parallel Bruno obtained a reputation which passes his deserts. He was less restless than Cardanus; but he had no fixed habitation on the earth. He was born at Nola in the province of Naples, and lived in the sixteenth century; the year of his birth is not known with certainty. He roamed about in most of the European states, in Italy, France, England, Germany, as a teacher of philosophy: he forsook Italy, where at one time he had been a Dominican friar, and where he had made bitter reflections both upon various Catholic dogmas—for instance, on transubstantiation and the immaculate conception of the Virgin—and upon the gross ignorance and scandalous lives of the monks. He then lived in Geneva in 1582, but there he fell out in the same way with Calvin and Beza, and could not live with them: he made some stay in several other French cities, such as Lyons; and after a time he came to Paris, where in 1585 he formally challenged the adherents of Aristotle, by following a practice greatly in favour in those days (_supra_, p. 112), and proposing for public disputation a series of philosophic theses, which were specially directed against Aristotle. They appeared under the title _Jord. Bruni Nol. Rationes articulorum physicorum adversus Peripateticos Parisiis propositorum, Vitebergæ apud Zachariam Cratonem, 1588_; he was not successful in them, however, as the position of the Aristotelians was still too well assured.
Bruno was also in London; he visited Wittenberg in the year 1586; he likewise stayed in Prague and other universities and towns. In Helmstedt he was high in the favour of the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg in 1589; after that he went to Frankfort-on-Main, where he had several of his works printed. He was a wandering professor and author. Finally he came back to Italy in 1592, and lived in Padua for some time undisturbed, but at last he was seized in Venice by the Inquisition, cast into prison, sent on to Rome, and there in the year 1600, refusing to recant, he was burned at the stake as a heretic. Eye-witnesses, and amongst them Scioppius, recount that he met death with the most unflinching courage.
He had become a Protestant when in Germany, and had broken the vows of his order.[69] Among both Catholics and Protestants his writings were held to be heretical and atheistic, and therefore they were burned and destroyed, or kept in concealment. His complete works are hence very seldom met with; the greatest number of them are to be found in the University Library at Gottingen; the fullest account of them is given in Buhle’s History of Philosophy (_supra_, Vol. I. p. 113). His works are for the most part rare, and in many cases interdicted; in Dresden they are still included among prohibited writings, and are therefore not to be seen there.
Lately[70] an edition of them in the Italian language was prepared,[71] which possibly has never yet been issued. Bruno also wrote a great deal in Latin. Wherever he took up his abode for a time, he gave public lectures, wrote and published works; and this increases the difficulty of making complete acquaintance with his books. Many of his writings are for the above reason very similar in their matter, the form only being different, and in the evolution of his thoughts he never consequently advanced very much nor attained to any results. But the leading characteristic of his various writings is really to some extent the grand enthusiasm of a noble soul, which has a sense of indwelling spirit, and knows the unity of its own Being and all Being to be the whole life of thought. There is something bacchantic in his way of apprehending this deep consciousness; it overflows in becoming thus an object of thought, and in the expression of its riches. But it is only in knowledge that spirit can bring itself forth as a whole; when it has not yet attained to this point of scientific culture, it reaches out after all forms, without bringing them first into due order. Bruno displays just such an unregulated and multiform profusion; and on that account his expositions have frequently a dreamy, confused, allegorical appearance of mystical enthusiasm. Many of his writings are in verse, and much that is fantastic finds a place in them, as for instance when he says in one of his works, entitled _La Bestia Trionfante_, that something else must be put in place of the stars.[72] He sacrificed his personal welfare to the great enthusiasm which filled him, and which left him no peace. It is easy to say that he was “a restless being, who could get on with nobody.” But whence did this restlessness come to him? What he could not get on with was the finite, the evil, the ignoble. Thence arose his restlessness.
He rose to the one universal substantiality by putting an end to this separation of self-consciousness and nature, whereby both alike are degraded. God was in self-consciousness, it was admitted, but externally, and as remaining something different from self-consciousness, another reality; while Nature was made by God, being His creature, not an image of Him. The goodness of God displayed itself only in final causes, finite ends, as when it is said: “Bees make honey for man’s food; the cork tree grows to provide stoppers for bottles.”[73] As to his reflections, Jacobi has by his recent[74] exposition of them made it seem as if it were a theory specially characteristic of Bruno that one living Being, one World-Soul, should penetrate all existence, and should be the life of all. Bruno asserted, in the first place, the unity of life and the universality of the World-Soul, and, in the second place, the indwelling presence of reason; but Bruno in so saying is far from being original, and in fact this doctrine is a mere echo of the Alexandrian. But in his writings there are two specially marked features.
The first is the nature of his system, based as it is on his leading thoughts, or his philosophic principles generally, namely the Idea as substantial unity. The second, which is closely connected with the first, is his use of the _Art_ of Lullius; this is specially emphasized and highly esteemed by him, the art of finding differences in the Idea: it he wished to bring into special recognition.
a. His philosophic thoughts, to express which he sometimes made use of Aristotle’s concepts, give evidence of a peculiar, highly strung and very original mind. The substance of his general reflections is found in the greatest enthusiasm for the above-mentioned vitality of Nature, divinity, the presence of reason in nature. His philosophy is thus on the whole certainly Spinozism, Pantheism. The separation of man from God or the world, all such relations of externality, have been superadded to his living idea of the absolute, universal unity of all things, for the expression of which idea Bruno has been so greatly admired. In his conception of things the main points are that, on the one hand, he gives the universal determination of matter, and, on the other hand, that of form.
α. The unity of life he thus determines as the universal, active understanding (νοῦς), which manifests itself as the universal form of all the world, and comprehends all forms in itself; it bears the same relation to the production of natural objects as does the understanding of man, and moulds and systematizes them, as the human understanding moulds the multitude of its concepts. It is the artist within, who shapes and forms the material without. From within the root or the seed-grain it makes the shoot come forth; from this again it brings the branches, and from them the twigs, and from out of the twigs it calls forth the buds, and leaves, and flowers. All is planned, prepared and perfected within. In the same way this universal reason within calls back their saps from the fruits and blossoms to the twigs, and so on. The universe is thus an infinite animal, in which all things live and move and have their being in modes the most diverse. The formal understanding is thus in no wise different from the Final Cause (the Notion of end, the entelechy, the unmoved principle, which we meet with in Aristotle); but these are just as truly also active understanding, the efficient cause (_causa efficiens_), this same producing force. Nature and Spirit are not separated; their unity is the formal understanding, in which is contained the pure Notion, not as in consciousness, but as free and independent, remaining within itself, and at the same time exercising activity and passing beyond itself. The understanding working towards one particular end is the inward form of the thing itself, an inward principle of the understanding. What is continually produced is in accordance with this form, and contained within it; what appears is determined as the form is in itself determined.[75] With Proclus in the same way the understanding, as substantial, is that which includes all things in its unity: life is the outgoing, the producing force: and the understanding as such similarly includes the returning force, which brings all things back into unity. In dealing with Kant’s philosophy we shall have again to mention this determination of final purpose. That which has organic life, whose principle is formative, which has its efficacy in itself, and in the same only remains at home with itself and maintains itself, is nothing but the end, the activity determined in itself, which in its relation to what is different does not comport itself as mere cause, but returns upon itself.
β. Bruno, who asserts the final cause to be immediately operative, and the life immanent in the universe, asserts it also to be existent, as substance; he is therefore opposed to the conception of a merely extra-mundane understanding. To a certain extent Bruno distinguishes form and matter in substance, which itself, as the aforesaid activity of the Idea, is the unity of form and matter; thus matter has life in itself. The permanent element in the endless changes of existence is, he says, the first and absolute matter; although without form, it is nevertheless the mother of all forms, and receptive of all forms. Because matter is not without the first universal form, it is itself principle or in itself final cause. Form is immanent in matter; the one simply cannot exist without the other; thus matter itself brings about these changes of form, and the same matter runs through them all. What was at first seed becomes blade, then ear, then bread, chyle, blood, seed of animal, an embryo, a human being, a corpse, then once more earth, stone, or other substance; from sand and water frogs are produced. Here then we can perceive something which, although it transforms itself into all these things in turn, yet still in itself remains one and the same. This matter cannot be a body, for bodies have form; nor can it belong to the class which we term properties, attributes, or qualities, for these are liable to change. Thus nothing seems to be eternal and worthy of the name of a principle, except matter. Many have for this reason held matter to be the only reality, and all forms to be accidental. This error arises from the fact of their recognizing only a form of the second kind, and not that necessary first and eternal form, which is the form and source of all forms. In the same way the aforesaid matter, on account of its identity with the understanding which causes form beforehand, is itself intelligible, as the universal presupposition of all corporeality.
Because it is everything in general, it is nothing in particular, neither air nor water, nor anything else, abstract or otherwise; it has no dimensions, in order to have all dimensions. The forms of matter are the inward power of matter itself; it is, as intelligible, the very totality of form.[76] This system of Bruno’s is thus objective Spinozism, and nothing else; one can see how deeply he penetrated.
Bruno here asks the question: “But this first universal form and that first universal matter, how are they united, inseparable? Different—and yet one Being?” He answers by making use of the Aristotelian forms of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια: Matter is to be regarded as potentiality; in this way all possible forms of existence in a certain sense are included in the Notion of it. The passivity of matter must be regarded as pure and absolute. Now it is impossible to attribute existence to a thing which lacks the power to exist. Existence has, however, such an express reference to the active mode, that it is at once clear that the one cannot exist without the other, but that each of them presupposes the other. If therefore at all times a capacity of working, producing, creating, was there, so must there also have been at all times a capacity of being worked upon, produced, created. The perfect potentiality of the existence of things (matter) cannot precede their actual existence, and just as little can it remain after that is past. The first and most perfect principle includes all existence in itself, can be all things, and is all things. Active power and potentiality, possibility and actuality are therefore in it one undivided and indivisible principle.[77] This simultaneousness of acting and being acted upon is a very important determination; matter is nothing without activity, form is therefore the power and inward life of matter. If matter were nothing but indeterminate potentiality, how would the determinate be arrived at?
This simplicity of matter is itself only one moment of form: in wishing therefore to tear asunder matter and form, matter is at once established in one determination of form, but in so doing there is immediately established also the existence of the Other.
Thus the Absolute is determined for Bruno: it is not so with other things, which may exist and also may not exist, and which may be determined in one way or in another way. In regard to finite things and in finite determinations of the understanding the distinction between form and matter is thus present. The individual man is at every moment what he may be at that moment, but not everything which he may be in general and with reference to substance. The things which appear to be different are only modifications of one single thing which includes in its existence all other existence. The universe, unbegotten Nature, is, however, everything which it can be in reality and at one time, because it includes in itself the whole of matter, as well as the eternal, unchangeable form of its changing forms. But in its developments from moment to moment, its particular parts, qualities, individual existences, in its externality as a whole, it is no more what it is and may be; but a part such as this is only a shadow of the image of the first principle.[78] Thus Bruno wrote also a book, _De umbris idearum_.
γ. This is Bruno’s fundamental idea. He says: “To recognize this unity of form and matter in all things, is what reason is striving to attain to. But in order to penetrate to this unity, in order to investigate all the secrets of Nature, we must search into the opposed and contradictory extremes of things, the maximum and the minimum.” It is in these very extremes that they are intelligible, and become united in the Notion; and this union of them is infinite Nature. “To find the point of union is not the greatest matter; but to develop from the same its very opposite, this is the real and the deepest secret of the art.”[79] It is saying much if we speak of knowing the development of the Idea as a necessity of determinations; we shall see later how Bruno proceeded to do this.
He represents the original principle, which is elsewhere known as the form, under the Notion of the minimum, which is at the same time the maximum—One, which at the same time is All; the universe is this One in All. In the universe, he says, the body is not distinguished from the point, nor the centre from the circumference, nor the finite from the infinite, nor the maximum from the minimum. There is nothing but centre point; or the centre point is everywhere and in everything. The ancients expressed the same by saying of the Father of the gods, that he really had his dwelling-place in every point of the universe. It is the universe that first gives to things true reality; it is the substance of all things, the monad, the atom, the spirit poured out on all things, the innermost essence, the pure form.[80] b. The second object to which Bruno devoted himself was the so-called Lullian Art, which received its name from its first inventor, the Scholastic Raymundus Lullus (_supra_, pp. 92-94). Bruno adopted this and carried it to completion; he termed it also his _ars combinatoria_.
This art is in some respects like what we met with in Aristotle under the name of the Topics (Vol. II. pp. 217, 218), seeing that both give an immense number of “places” and determinations which were fixed in the conception like a table with its divisions, in order that these headings might be applied to all that came to hand. But the Topics of Aristotle did this in order to apprehend and determine an object in its various aspects, while Bruno rather worked for the sake of lightening the task of memory. He thus really connected the Lullian Art with the art of mnemonics as practised by the ancients, which has come into notice again in recent times, and which will be found described in greater detail in the _Auctor ad Herennium_ (Libr. III. c. 17, _sqq._). To give an example: one establishes for oneself a certain number of different departments in the imagination, which are to be chosen at pleasure; there may be perhaps twelve of these, arranged in sets of three, and indicated by certain words, such as Aaron, Abimelech, Achilles, Berg, Baum, Baruch, etc., into which divisions one inserts, as it were, what has to be learnt by heart, and forms it into a succession of pictures. In this way when we repeat it, we have not to say it from memory or out of our head, as we are accustomed to do, but we have only to read it off as if from a table.
The only difficulty lies in making some ingenious connection between the content in question and the picture; that gives rise to the most unholy combinations, and the art is therefore not one to be commended. Bruno also soon abandoned it, since what had been a matter of memory became a matter of imagination; which was, of course, a descent. But since with Bruno the diagram is not only a picture of external images, but a system of universal determinations of thought, he certainly gave to this art a deeper inward meaning.[81] α. Bruno passes over to this art from universal ideas which are given.
Since namely one life, one understanding is in all things, Bruno had the dim hope of apprehending this universal understanding in the totality of its determinations, and of subsuming all things under it—of setting up a logical philosophy by its means, and making it applicable in all directions.[82] He says: The object of consideration therein is the universe, in so far as it enters into the relation of the true, the knowable and the rational. Like Spinoza he distinguishes between the intelligible thing of reason and the actual thing: As metaphysics has for object the universal thing, which is divided into substance and accident, so the chief matter is that there is a single and more universal art which knits together and compasses round the thing of reason and the actual thing, and recognizes them both as harmonizing with one another, so that the many, be they of what kind they may, are led back to simple unity.[83] β. For Bruno the principle in all this is the understanding generally: None other than the understanding whose activity extends beyond itself, which brings into existence the sensuous world. It is related to the illumination of the spirit as the sun is related to the eye: it relates therefore to a phenomenal manifold, illuminating this, not itself. The Other is the active understanding in itself, which is related to the objects of thought in their various classes, as the eye is to things visible.[84] The infinite form, the active understanding which dwells in reason, is the first, the principle, which develops; the process in some respects resembles what was met with in the Neo-Platonists. Bruno’s great endeavour is really now to apprehend and demonstrate the modes of organizing this active understanding.
γ. This is presented more in detail as follows: To the pure truth itself, the absolute light, man approaches only; his Being is not absolute Being itself, which alone is the One and First. He rests only under the shadow of the Idea, whose purity is the light, but which at the same time partakes of the darkness. The light of substance emanates from this pure First Light, the light of accident emanates from the light of substance.
This we met with also in Proclus (_supra_, Vol. II. p. 446) as the third moment in the first triad. This absolute principle in its unity is for Bruno the first matter, and the first act of this principle he names the original light (_actus primus lucis_). But substances and accidents, which are many, cannot receive the full light, they are therefore only included in the shadow of the light; in like manner the ideas also are only shadows thereof.[85] The development of Nature goes on from moment to moment; created things are only a shadow of the first principle, not the first principle itself.
δ. Bruno continues: From this super-essential (_super-essentiale_)—an expression which is also met with in Proclus (_supra_, Vol. II. p.
441)—advance is made to the essences, from the essences to that which is, from that which is to their traces, images and shadows, and that in