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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4228-h.zip b/4228-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..edc3e1b --- /dev/null +++ b/4228-h.zip diff --git a/4228-h/4228-h.htm b/4228-h/4228-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d0d5103 --- /dev/null +++ b/4228-h/4228-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1068 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of Giordano Bruno, by Walter Horatio Pater +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.letter {text-indent: 0%; + font-size: small ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.salutation {font-size: small ; + text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.transnote {font-size: small ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +P.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Giordano Bruno, by Walter Horatio Pater + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Giordano Bruno + +Author: Walter Horatio Pater + +Posting Date: July 9, 2009 [EBook #4228] +Release Date: July, 2003 +First Posted: December 8, 2001 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIORDANO BRUNO *** + + + + +Produced by Alfred J. Drake. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +GIORDANO BRUNO, PARIS: 1586.+ +</H1> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +WALTER HORATIO PATER +</H2> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Jetzo, da ich ausgewachsen,<BR> + Viel gelesen, viel gereist,<BR> + Schwillt mein Herz, und ganz von Herzen,<BR> + Glaub' ich an den Heilgen Geist."—Heine+<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +[234] IT was on the afternoon of the Feast of Pentecost that news of +the death of Charles the Ninth went abroad promptly. To his +successor the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by +various pious and other observances; and it was on a Whit-Sunday +afternoon that curious Parisians had the opportunity of listening to +one who, as if with some intentional new version of the sacred event +then commemorated, had a great deal to say concerning the Spirit; +above all, of the freedom, the independence of its operation. The +speaker, though understood to be a brother of the Order of St. +Dominic, had not been present at the mass—the usual university mass, +De Spiritu Sancto, said to-day according to the natural course of the +season in the chapel of the Sorbonne, by the Italian Bishop of Paris. +It was the reign of the Italians just then, a doubly refined, +somewhat morbid, somewhat ash-coloured, Italy in France, more Italian +still. Men of Italian birth, "to the great suspicion of simple +people," swarmed in Paris, already "flightier, less constant, than +the girouettes on its steeples," and it was love for Italian fashions +that had brought king and courtiers here to-day, with great eclat, as +they said, frizzed and starched, in the beautiful, minutely +considered dress of the moment, pressing the university into a +perhaps not unmerited background; for the promised speaker, about +whom tongues had been busy, not only in the Latin quarter, had come +from Italy. In an age in which all things about which Parisians much +cared must be Italian there might be a hearing for Italian +philosophy. Courtiers at least would understand Italian, and this +speaker was rumoured to possess in perfection all the curious arts of +his native language. And of all the kingly qualities of Henry's +youth, the single one that had held by him was that gift of +eloquence, which he was able also to value in others—inherited +perhaps; for in all the contemporary and subsequent historic gossip +about his mother, the two things certain are, that the hands credited +with so much mysterious ill-doing were fine ones, and that she was an +admirable speaker. +</P> + +<P> +Bruno himself tells us, long after he had withdrawn himself from it, +that the monastic life promotes the freedom of the intellect by its +[235] silence and self-concentration. The prospect of such freedom +sufficiently explains why a young man who, however well found in +worldly and personal advantages, was conscious above all of great +intellectual possessions, and of fastidious spirit also, with a +remarkable distaste for the vulgar, should have espoused poverty, +chastity, obedience, in a Dominican cloister. What liberty of mind +may really come to in such places, what daring new departures it may +suggest to the strictly monastic temper, is exemplified by the +dubious and dangerous mysticism of men like John of Parma and Joachim +of Flora, reputed author of the new "Everlasting Gospel," strange +dreamers, in a world of sanctified rhetoric, of that later +dispensation of the spirit, in which all law must have passed away; +or again by a recognised tendency in the great rival Order of St. +Francis, in the so-called "spiritual" Franciscans, to understand the +dogmatic words of faith with a difference. +</P> + +<P> +The three convents in which Bruno lived successively, at Naples, at +Citta di Campagna, and finally the Minerva at Rome, developed freely, +we may suppose, all the mystic qualities of a genius in which, from +the first, a heady southern imagination took the lead. But it was +from beyond conventional bounds he would look for the sustenance, the +fuel, of an ardour born or bred within them. Amid such artificial +religious stillness the air itself becomes generous in undertones. +The vain young monk (vain of course!) would feed his vanity by +puzzling the good, sleepy heads of the average sons of Dominic with +his neology, putting new wine into old bottles, teaching them their +own business—the new, higher, truer sense of the most familiar +terms, the chapters they read, the hymns they sang, above all, as it +happened, every word that referred to the Spirit, the reign of the +Spirit, its excellent freedom. He would soon pass beyond the utmost +limits of his brethren's sympathy, beyond the largest and freest +interpretation those words would bear, to thoughts and words on an +altogether different plane, of which the full scope was only to be +felt in certain old pagan writers, though approached, perhaps, at +first, as having a kind of natural, preparatory kinship with +Scripture itself. The Dominicans would seem to have had +well-stocked, liberally-selected, libraries; and this curious youth, in +that age of restored letters, read eagerly, easily, and very soon +came to the kernel of a difficult old author—Plotinus or Plato; to +the purpose of thinkers older still, surviving by glimpses only in +the books of others—Empedocles, Pythagoras, who had enjoyed the +original divine sense of things, above all, Parmenides, that most +ancient assertor of God's identity with the world. The affinities, +the unity, of the visible and the invisible, of earth and heaven, of +all things whatever, with each other, through the consciousness, the +person, of God the Spirit, who was at every moment of infinite time, +in every atom of matter, at every [236] point of infinite space, ay! +was everything in turn: that doctrine—l'antica filosofia Italiana—was +in all its vigour there, a hardy growth out of the very heart of +nature, interpreting itself to congenial minds with all the fulness +of primitive utterance. A big thought! yet suggesting, perhaps, from +the first, in still, small, immediately practical, voice, some +possible modification of, a freer way of taking, certain moral +precepts: say! a primitive morality, congruous with those larger +primitive ideas, the larger survey, the earlier, more liberal air. +</P> + +<P> +Returning to this ancient "pantheism," after so long a reign of a +seemingly opposite faith, Bruno unfalteringly asserts "the vision of +all things in God" to be the aim of all metaphysical speculation, as +of all inquiry into nature: the Spirit of God, in countless variety +of forms, neither above, nor, in any way, without, but intimately +within, all things—really present, with equal integrity, in the +sunbeam ninety millions of miles long, and the wandering drop of +water as it evaporates therein. The divine consciousness would have +the same relation to the production of things, as the human +intelligence to the production of true thoughts concerning them. +Nay! those thoughts are themselves God in man: a loan, there, too, of +his assisting Spirit, who, in truth, creates all things in and by his +own contemplation of them. For Him, as for man in proportion as man +thinks truly, thought and, being are identical, and things existent +only in so far as they are known. Delighting in itself, in the sense +of its own energy, this sleepless, capacious, fiery intelligence, +evokes all the orders of nature, all the revolutions of history, +cycle upon cycle, in ever new types. And God the Spirit, the soul of +the world, being really identical with his own soul, Bruno, as the +universe shapes itself to his reason, his imagination, ever more and +more articulately, shares also the divine joy in that process of the +formation of true ideas, which is really parallel to the process of +creation, to the evolution of things. In a certain mystic sense, +which some in every age of the world have understood, he, too, is +creator, himself actually a participator in the creative function. +And by such a philosophy, he assures us, it was his experience that +the soul is greatly expanded: con questa filosofia l'anima, mi +s'aggrandisce: mi se magnifica l'intelletto! +</P> + +<P> +For, with characteristic largeness of mind, Bruno accepted this +theory in the whole range of its consequences. Its more immediate +corollary was the famous axiom of "indifference," of "the coincidence +of contraries." To the eye of God, to the philosophic vision through +which God sees in man, nothing is really alien from Him. The +differences of things, and above all, those distinctions which +schoolmen and priests, old or new, Roman or Reformed, had invented +for themselves, would be lost in the length and breadth of the +philosophic survey; nothing, in itself, either great or small; and +matter, [237] certainly, in all its various forms, not evil but +divine. Could one choose or reject this or that? If God the Spirit +had made, nay! was, all things indifferently, then, matter and +spirit, the spirit and the flesh, heaven and earth, freedom and +necessity, the first and the last, good and evil, would be +superficial rather than substantial differences. Only, were joy and +sorrow also to be added to the list of phenomena really coincident or +indifferent, as some intellectual kinsmen of Bruno have claimed they +should? +</P> + +<P> +The Dominican brother was at no distant day to break far enough away +from the election, the seeming "vocation" of his youth, yet would +remain always, and under all circumstances, unmistakably a monk in +some predominant qualities of temper. At first it only by way of +thought that he asserted his liberty—delightful, late-found +privilege!—traversing, in mental journeys, that spacious circuit, as +it broke away before him at every moment into ever-new horizons. +Kindling thought and imagination at once, the prospect draws from him +cries of joy, a kind of religious joy, as in some new "canticle of +the creatures," a new monkish hymnal or antiphonary. "Nature" +becomes for him a sacred term. "Conform thyself to Nature"—with +what sincerity, what enthusiasm, what religious fervour, he enounces +the precept to others, to himself! Recovering, as he fancies, a +certain primeval sense of Deity broadcast on things, in which +Pythagoras and other inspired theorists of early Greece had abounded, +in his hands philosophy becomes a poem, a sacred poem, as it had been +with them. That Bruno himself, in "the enthusiasm of the idea," drew +from his axiom of the "indifference of contraries" the practical +consequence which is in very deed latent there, that he was ready to +sacrifice to the antinomianism, which is certainly a part of its +rigid logic, the purities of his youth for instance, there is no +proof. The service, the sacrifice, he is ready to bring to the great +light that has dawned for him, which occupies his entire conscience +with the sense of his responsibilities to it, is that of days and +nights spent in eager study, of a plenary, disinterested utterance of +the thoughts that arise in him, at any hazard, at the price, say! of +martyrdom. The work of the divine Spirit, as he conceives it, +exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to +take the place of prayer, sacrifice, communion. It would be a +mistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely +passive or receptive. She, too, possesses, not less than the soul of +the world, initiatory power, responding with the free gift of a light +and heat that seem her own. +</P> + +<P> +Yet a nature so opulently endowed can hardly have been lacking in +purely physical ardours. His pantheistic belief that the Spirit of +God was in all things, was not inconsistent with, might encourage, a +keen and restless eye for the dramatic details of life and character +for humanity in all its visible attractiveness, since there, too, in +[238] truth, divinity lurks. From those first fair days of early +Greek speculation, love had occupied a large place in the conception +of philosophy; and in after days Bruno was fond of developing, like +Plato, like the Christian platonist, combining something of the +peculiar temper of each, the analogy between intellectual enthusiasm +and the flights of physical love, with an animation which shows +clearly enough the reality of his experience in the latter. The +Eroici Furori, his book of books, dedicated to Philip Sidney, who +would be no stranger to such thoughts, presents a singular blending +of verse and prose, after the manner of Dante's Vita Nuova. The +supervening philosophic comment re-considers those earlier physical +impulses which had prompted the sonnet in voluble Italian, entirely +to the advantage of their abstract, incorporeal equivalents. Yet if +it is after all but a prose comment, it betrays no lack of the +natural stuff out of which such mystic transferences must be made. +That there is no single name of preference, no Beatrice or Laura, by +no means proves the young man's earlier desires merely "Platonic;" +and if the colours of love inevitably lose a little of their force +and propriety by such deflection, the intellectual purpose as +certainly finds its opportunity thereby, in the matter of borrowed +fire and wings. A kind of old, scholastic pedantry creeping back +over the ardent youth who had thrown it off so defiantly (as if Love +himself went in for a degree at the University) Bruno developes, +under the mask of amorous verse, all the various stages of +abstraction, by which, as the last step of a long ladder, the mind +attains actual "union." For, as with the purely religious mystics, +union, the mystic union of souls with each other and their Lord, +nothing less than union between the contemplator and the +contemplated—the reality, or the sense, or at least the name of +it—was always at hand. Whence that instinctive tendency, if not from +the Creator of things himself, who has doubtless prompted it in the +physical universe, as in man? How familiar the thought that the +whole creation longs for God, the soul as the hart for the +water-brooks! To unite oneself to the infinite by breadth and lucidity of +intellect, to enter, by that admirable faculty, into eternal +life—this was the true vocation of the spouse, of the rightly amorous +soul—"a filosofia e necessario amore." There would be degrees of +progress therein, as of course also of relapse: joys and sorrows, +therefore. And, in interpreting these, the philosopher, whose +intellectual ardours have superseded religion and love, is still a +lover and a monk. All the influences of the convent, the heady, +sweet incense, the pleading sounds, the sophisticated light and air, +the exaggerated humour of gothic carvers, the thick stratum of pagan +sentiment beneath ("Santa Maria sopra Minerva!") are indelible in +him. Tears, sympathies, tender inspirations, attraction, repulsion, +dryness, zeal, desire, recollection: he finds a place for them all: +knows them all [239] well in their unaffected simplicity, while he +seeks the secret and secondary, or, as he fancies, the primary, form +and purport of each. +</P> + +<P> +A light on actual life, or mere barren scholastic subtlety, never +before had the pantheistic doctrine been developed with such +completeness, never before connected with so large a sense of nature, +so large a promise of the knowledge of it as it really is. The eyes +that had not been wanting to visible humanity turned with equal +liveliness on the natural world in that region of his birth, where +all its force and colour is twofold. Nature is not only a thought in +the divine mind; it is also the perpetual energy of that mind, which, +ever identical with itself, puts forth and absorbs in turn all the +successive forms of life, of thought, of language even. But what +seemed like striking transformations of matter were in truth only a +chapter, a clause, in the great volume of the transformations of the +Spirit. To that mystic recognition that all is divine had succeeded +a realisation of the largeness of the field of concrete knowledge, +the infinite extent of all there was actually to know. Winged, +fortified, by this central philosophic faith, the student proceeds to +the reading of nature, led on from point to point by manifold lights, +which will surely strike on him, by the way, from the intelligence in +it, speaking directly, sympathetically, to the intelligence in him. +The earth's wonderful animation, as divined by one who anticipates by +a whole generation the "philosophy of experience:" in that, the bold, +flighty, pantheistic speculation became tangible matter of fact. +Here was the needful book for man to read, the full revelation, +the detailed story of that one universal mind, struggling, emerging, +through shadow, substance, manifest spirit, in various orders of +being—the veritable history of God. And nature, together with the +true pedigree and evolution of man also, his gradual issue from it, +was still all to learn. The delightful tangle of things! it would be +the delightful task of man's thoughts to disentangle that. Already +Bruno had measured the space which Bacon would fill, with room +perhaps for Darwin also. That Deity is everywhere, like all such +abstract propositions, is a two-edged force, depending for its +practical effect on the mind which admits it, on the peculiar +perspective of that mind. To Dutch Spinosa, in the next century, +faint, consumptive, with a hold on external things naturally faint, +the theorem that God was in all things whatever, annihilating, their +differences suggested a somewhat chilly withdrawal from the contact +of all alike. In Bruno, eager and impassioned, an Italian of the +Italians, it awoke a constant, inextinguishable appetite for every +form of experience—a fear, as of the one sin possible, of limiting, +for oneself or another, that great stream flowing for thirsty souls, +that wide pasture set ready for the hungry heart. Considered from +the point of view of a minute observation of nature, the Infinite +might figure as "the infinitely little;" no blade [240] of grass +being like another, as there was no limit to the complexities of an +atom of earth, cell, sphere, within sphere. But the earth itself, +hitherto seemingly the privileged centre of a very limited universe, +was, after all, itself but an atom in an infinite world of starry +space, then lately displayed to the ingenuous intelligence, which +the telescope was one day to verify to bodily eyes. For if Bruno +must needs look forward to the future, to Bacon, for adequate +knowledge of the earth—the infinitely little; he looked back, +gratefully, to another daring mind, which had already put the earth +into its modest place, and opened the full view of the heavens. +If God is eternal, then, the universe is infinite and worlds +innumerable. Yes! one might well have supposed what reason now +demonstrated, indicating those endless spaces which sidereal science +would gradually occupy, an echo of the creative word of God himself, +</P> + +<P> +"Qui innumero numero innumerorum nomina dicit." +</P> + +<P> +That the stars are suns: that the earth is in motion: that the earth +is of like stuff with the stars: now the familiar knowledge of +children, dawning on Bruno as calm assurance of reason on appeal from +the prejudice of the eye, brought to him an inexpressibly +exhilarating sense of enlargement of the intellectual, nay! the +physical atmosphere. And his consciousness of unfailing unity and +order did not desert him in that larger survey, making the utmost one +could ever know of the earth seem but a very little chapter in that +endless history of God the Spirit, rejoicing so greatly in the +admirable spectacle that it never ceases to evolve from matter new +conditions. The immovable earth beneath one's feet! one almost felt +the movement, the respiration of God in it. And yet how greatly even +the physical eye, the sensible imagination (so to term it) was +flattered by the theorem. What joy in that motion, the prospect, the +music, the music of the spheres!—he could listen to it in a +perfection such as had never been conceded to Plato, to Pythagoras +even. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Veni, Creator Spiritus,<BR> + Mentes tuorum visita,<BR> + Imple superna gratia,<BR> + Quae tu creasti pectora!"<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Yes! the grand old Christian hymns, perhaps the grandest of them, +seemed to blend themselves in the chorus, to deepen immeasurably +under this new intention. It is not always, or often, that men's +abstract ideas penetrate the temperament, touch the animal spirits, +affect conduct. It was what they did with Bruno. The ghastly +spectacle of the endless material universe, infinite dust, in truth, +starry as it may look to our terrestrial eyes—that prospect from +which Pascal's faithful soul recoiled so painfully—induced in Bruno +only the delightful consciousness of an ever-widening kinship [241] +and sympathy, since every one of those infinite worlds must have its +sympathetic inhabitants. Scruples of conscience, if he felt such, +might well be pushed aside for the "excellency" of such knowledge as +this. To shut the eyes, whether of the body or the mind, would be a +kind of dark ingratitude; the one sin, to believe directly or +indirectly in any absolutely dead matter anywhere, because involving +denial of the indwelling spirit. A free spirit, certainly, as of +old! Through all his pantheistic flights, from horizon to horizon, +it was still the thought of liberty that presented itself to the +infinite relish of this "prodigal son" of Dominic. God the Spirit +had made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence, +impiously belied by any theory of restrictions, distinctions, +absolute limitations. Touch, see, listen, eat freely of all the +trees of the garden of Paradise with the voice of the Lord God +literally everywhere: here was the final counsel of perfection. The +world was even larger than youthful appetite, youthful capacity. Let +theologian and every other theorist beware how he narrowed either. +The plurality of worlds! how petty in comparison seemed the sins, to +purge which was the chief motive for coming to places like this +convent, whence Bruno, with vows broken, or obsolete for him, +presently departed. A sonnet, expressive of the joy with which he +returned to so much more than the liberty of ordinary men, does not +suggest that he was driven from it. Though he must have seemed to +those who surely had loved so lovable a creature there to be +departing, like the prodigal of the Gospel, into the furthest of +possible far countries, there is no proof of harsh treatment, or even +of an effort to detain him. +</P> + +<P> +It happens, of course most naturally, that those who undergo the +shock of spiritual or intellectual change sometimes fail to recognise +their debt to the deserted cause: how much of the heroism, or other +high quality, of their rejection has really been the growth of what +they reject? Bruno, the escaped monk, is still a monk: his +philosophy, impious as it might seem to some, a new religion. He +came forth well fitted by conventual influences to play upon men as +he was played upon. A challenge, a war-cry, an alarum; everywhere he +seemed to be the creature of some subtly materialized spiritual +force, like that of the old Greek prophets, like the primitive +"enthusiasm" he was inclined to set so high, or impulsive Pentecostal +fire. His hunger to know, fed at first dreamily enough within the +convent walls as he wandered over space and time an indefatigable +reader of books, would be fed physically now by ear and eye, by large +matter-of-fact experience, as he journeys from university to +university; yet still, less as a teacher than a courtier, a citizen +of the world, a knight-errant of intellectual light. The philosophic +need to try all things had given reasonable justification to the +stirring desire for travel common to youth, in which, if in nothing +else, that whole age of the [242] later Renaissance was invincibly +young. The theoretic recognition of that mobile spirit of the world, +ever renewing its youth, became, sympathetically, the motive of a +life as mobile, as ardent, as itself; of a continual journey, the +venture and stimulus of which would be the occasion of ever new +discoveries, of renewed conviction. +</P> + +<P> +The unity, the spiritual unity, of the world:—that must involve the +alliance, the congruity, of all things with each other, great +reinforcement of sympathy, of the teacher's personality with the +doctrine he had to deliver, the spirit of that doctrine with the +fashion of his utterance. In his own case, certainly, as Bruno +confronted his audience at Paris, himself, his theme, his language, +were the fuel of one clear spiritual flame, which soon had hold of +his audience also; alien, strangely alien, as it might seem from the +speaker. It was intimate discourse, in magnetic touch with every one +present, with his special point of impressibility; the sort of speech +which, consolidated into literary form as a book, would be a dialogue +according to the true Attic genius, full of those diversions, passing +irritations, unlooked-for appeals, in which a solicitous missionary +finds his largest range of opportunity, and takes even dull wits +unaware. In Bruno, that abstract theory of the perpetual motion of +the world was a visible person talking with you. +</P> + +<P> +And as the runaway Dominican was still in temper a monk, so he +presented himself in the comely Dominican habit. The eyes which in +their last sad protest against stupidity would mistake, or miss +altogether, the image of the Crucified, were to-day, for the most +part, kindly observant eyes, registering every detail of that +singular company, all the physiognomic lights which come by the way +on people, and, through them, on things, the "shadows of ideas" in +men's faces (De Umbris Idearum was the title of his discourse), +himself pleasantly animated by them, in turn. There was "heroic +gaiety" there; only, as usual with gaiety, the passage of a peevish +cloud seemed all the chillier. Lit up, in the agitation of speaking, +by many a harsh or scornful beam, yet always sinking, in moments of +repose, to an expression of high-bred melancholy, it was a face that +looked, after all, made for suffering—already half pleading, half +defiant—as of a creature you could hurt, but to the last never shake +a hair's breadth from its estimate of yourself. +</P> + +<P> +Like nature, like nature in that country of his birth, the Nolan, as +he delighted to proclaim himself, loved so well that, born wanderer +as he was, he must perforce return thither sooner or later, at the +risk of life, he gave plenis manibus, but without selection, and, +with all his contempt for the "asinine" vulgar, was not fastidious. +His rank, unweeded eloquence, abounding in a play of words, rabbinic +allegories, verses defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he +professed to despise, with a shameless image here or there, product +not of formal method, but of Neapolitan improvisation, was akin to +[243] the heady wine, the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery, +volcanic soil, fertile in the irregularities which manifest power. +Helping himself indifferently to all religions for rhetoric +illustration, his preference was still for that of the soil, the old +pagan one, the primitive Italian gods, whose names and legends haunt +his speech, as they do the carved and pictorial work of the age, +according to the fashion of that ornamental paganism which the +Renaissance indulged. To excite, to surprise, to move men's minds, +as the volcanic earth is moved, as if in travail, and, according to +the Socratic fancy, bring them to the birth, was the true function of +the teacher, however unusual it might seem in an ancient university. +Fantastic, from first to last that was the descriptive epithet; and +the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how +characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was +pre-eminently due to Italy. A bookman, yet with so vivid a hold on +people and things, the traits and tricks of the audience seemed to +revive in him, to strike from his memory all the graphic resources of +his old readings. He seemed to promise some greater matter than was +then actually exposed; himself to enjoy the fulness of a great +outlook, the vague suggestion of which did but sustain the curiosity +of the listeners. And still, in hearing him speak you seemed to see +that subtle spiritual fire to which he testified kindling from word +to word. What Parisians then heard was, in truth, the first fervid +expression of all those contending apprehensions, out of which his +written works would afterwards be compacted, with much loss of heat +in the process. Satiric or hybrid growths, things due to hybris,+ +insolence, insult, all that those fabled satyrs embodied—the +volcanic South is kindly prolific of this, and Bruno abounded in +mockeries: it was by way of protest. So much of a Platonist, for +Plato's genial humour he had nevertheless substituted the harsh +laughter of Aristophanes. Paris, teeming, beneath a very courtly +exterior, with mordent words, in unabashed criticism of all real or +suspected evil, provoked his utmost powers of scorn for the +"triumphant beast," the "constellation of the Ass," shining even +there, amid the university folk, those intellectual bankrupts of the +Latin Quarter, who had so long passed between them gravely a +worthless "parchment and paper" currency. In truth, Aristotle, as +the supplanter of Plato, was still in possession, pretending to +determine heaven and earth by precedent, hiding the proper nature of +things from the eyes of men. Habit—the last word of his practical +philosophy—indolent habit! what would this mean in the intellectual +life, but just that sort of dead judgments which are most opposed to +the essential freedom and quickness of the Spirit, because the mind, +the eye, were no longer really at work in them? +</P> + +<P> +To Bruno, a true son of the Renaissance, in the light of those large, +antique, pagan ideas, the difference between Rome and the Reform +would figure, of course, as but an insignificant variation upon [244] +some deeper, more radical antagonism between two tendencies of men's +minds. But what about an antagonism deeper still? between Christ and +the world, say! Christ and the flesh?—that so very ancient +antagonism between good and evil? Was there any place for +imperfection in a world wherein the minutest atom, the lightest +thought, could not escape from God's presence? Who should note the +crime, the sin, the mistake, in the operation of that eternal spirit, +which could have made no misshapen births? In proportion as man +raised himself to the ampler survey of the divine work around him, +just in that proportion did the very notion of evil disappear. There +were no weeds, no "tares," in the endless field. The truly +illuminated mind, discerning spiritually, might do what it would. +Even under the shadow of monastic walls, that had ever been the +precept, which the larger theory of "inspiration" had bequeathed to +practice. "Of all the trees of the garden thou mayst freely eat! If +you take up any deadly thing, it shall not hurt you! And I think +that I, too, have the spirit of God." +</P> + +<P> +Bruno, the citizen of the world, Bruno at Paris, was careful to warn +off the vulgar from applying the decisions of philosophy beyond its +proper speculative limits. But a kind of secresy, an ambiguous +atmosphere, encompassed, from the first, alike the speaker and the +doctrine; and in that world of fluctuating and ambiguous characters, +the alerter mind certainly, pondering on this novel reign of the +spirit—what it might actually be—would hardly fail to find in +Bruno's theories a method of turning poison into food, to live and +thrive thereon; an art, surely, no less opportune in the Paris of +that hour, intellectually or morally, than had it related to physical +poisons. If Bruno himself was cautious not to suggest the ethic or +practical equivalent to his theoretic positions, there was that in +his very manner of speech, in his rank, unweeded eloquence, which +seemed naturally to discourage any effort at selection, any sense of +fine difference, of nuances or proportion, in things. The loose +sympathies of his genius were allied to nature, nursing, with equable +maternity of soul, good, bad, and indifferent, rather than to art, +distinguishing, rejecting, refining. Commission and omission; sins +of the former surely had the preference. And how would Paolo and +Francesca have read the lesson? How would this Henry the Third, and +Margaret of the "Memoirs," and other susceptible persona then +present, read it, especially if the opposition between practical good +and evil traversed another distinction, to the "opposed points," the +"fenced opposites" of which many, certainly, then present, in that +Paris of the last of the Valois, could never by any possibility +become "indifferent," between the precious and the base, +aesthetically—between what was right and wrong, as matter of art? +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +NOTES +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +234. +Pater's article appeared in The Fortnightly Review, 1889. +Later it was much revised and included as Chapter VII of the +unfinished novel, Gaston de Latour. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +234. +From Heine's Aus der Harzreise, "Bergidylle 2": "Tannenbaum, +mit grunen Fingern," Stanza 10. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +243. +E-text editor's transliteration: hybris. Liddell and Scott +definition: "wanton violence, arising from the pride of strength, +passion, etc." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Giordano Bruno, by Walter Horatio Pater + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIORDANO BRUNO *** + +***** This file should be named 4228-h.htm or 4228-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/2/4228/ + +Produced by Alfred J. Drake. HTML version by Al Haines. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Giordano Bruno + +Author: Walter Horatio Pater + +Posting Date: July 9, 2009 [EBook #4228] +Release Date: July, 2003 +First Posted: December 8, 2001 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIORDANO BRUNO *** + + + + +Produced by Alfred J. Drake. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + +GIORDANO BRUNO, PARIS: 1586.+ + +WALTER HORATIO PATER + + "Jetzo, da ich ausgewachsen, + Viel gelesen, viel gereist, + Schwillt mein Herz, und ganz von Herzen, + Glaub' ich an den Heilgen Geist."--Heine+ + + +[234] IT was on the afternoon of the Feast of Pentecost that news of +the death of Charles the Ninth went abroad promptly. To his +successor the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by +various pious and other observances; and it was on a Whit-Sunday +afternoon that curious Parisians had the opportunity of listening to +one who, as if with some intentional new version of the sacred event +then commemorated, had a great deal to say concerning the Spirit; +above all, of the freedom, the independence of its operation. The +speaker, though understood to be a brother of the Order of St. +Dominic, had not been present at the mass--the usual university mass, +De Spiritu Sancto, said to-day according to the natural course of the +season in the chapel of the Sorbonne, by the Italian Bishop of Paris. +It was the reign of the Italians just then, a doubly refined, +somewhat morbid, somewhat ash-coloured, Italy in France, more Italian +still. Men of Italian birth, "to the great suspicion of simple +people," swarmed in Paris, already "flightier, less constant, than +the girouettes on its steeples," and it was love for Italian fashions +that had brought king and courtiers here to-day, with great eclat, as +they said, frizzed and starched, in the beautiful, minutely +considered dress of the moment, pressing the university into a +perhaps not unmerited background; for the promised speaker, about +whom tongues had been busy, not only in the Latin quarter, had come +from Italy. In an age in which all things about which Parisians much +cared must be Italian there might be a hearing for Italian +philosophy. Courtiers at least would understand Italian, and this +speaker was rumoured to possess in perfection all the curious arts of +his native language. And of all the kingly qualities of Henry's +youth, the single one that had held by him was that gift of +eloquence, which he was able also to value in others--inherited +perhaps; for in all the contemporary and subsequent historic gossip +about his mother, the two things certain are, that the hands credited +with so much mysterious ill-doing were fine ones, and that she was an +admirable speaker. + +Bruno himself tells us, long after he had withdrawn himself from it, +that the monastic life promotes the freedom of the intellect by its +[235] silence and self-concentration. The prospect of such freedom +sufficiently explains why a young man who, however well found in +worldly and personal advantages, was conscious above all of great +intellectual possessions, and of fastidious spirit also, with a +remarkable distaste for the vulgar, should have espoused poverty, +chastity, obedience, in a Dominican cloister. What liberty of mind +may really come to in such places, what daring new departures it may +suggest to the strictly monastic temper, is exemplified by the +dubious and dangerous mysticism of men like John of Parma and Joachim +of Flora, reputed author of the new "Everlasting Gospel," strange +dreamers, in a world of sanctified rhetoric, of that later +dispensation of the spirit, in which all law must have passed away; +or again by a recognised tendency in the great rival Order of St. +Francis, in the so-called "spiritual" Franciscans, to understand the +dogmatic words of faith with a difference. + +The three convents in which Bruno lived successively, at Naples, at +Citta di Campagna, and finally the Minerva at Rome, developed freely, +we may suppose, all the mystic qualities of a genius in which, from +the first, a heady southern imagination took the lead. But it was +from beyond conventional bounds he would look for the sustenance, the +fuel, of an ardour born or bred within them. Amid such artificial +religious stillness the air itself becomes generous in undertones. +The vain young monk (vain of course!) would feed his vanity by +puzzling the good, sleepy heads of the average sons of Dominic with +his neology, putting new wine into old bottles, teaching them their +own business--the new, higher, truer sense of the most familiar +terms, the chapters they read, the hymns they sang, above all, as it +happened, every word that referred to the Spirit, the reign of the +Spirit, its excellent freedom. He would soon pass beyond the utmost +limits of his brethren's sympathy, beyond the largest and freest +interpretation those words would bear, to thoughts and words on an +altogether different plane, of which the full scope was only to be +felt in certain old pagan writers, though approached, perhaps, at +first, as having a kind of natural, preparatory kinship with +Scripture itself. The Dominicans would seem to have had +well-stocked, liberally-selected, libraries; and this curious youth, in +that age of restored letters, read eagerly, easily, and very soon +came to the kernel of a difficult old author--Plotinus or Plato; to +the purpose of thinkers older still, surviving by glimpses only in +the books of others--Empedocles, Pythagoras, who had enjoyed the +original divine sense of things, above all, Parmenides, that most +ancient assertor of God's identity with the world. The affinities, +the unity, of the visible and the invisible, of earth and heaven, of +all things whatever, with each other, through the consciousness, the +person, of God the Spirit, who was at every moment of infinite time, +in every atom of matter, at every [236] point of infinite space, ay! +was everything in turn: that doctrine--l'antica filosofia Italiana--was +in all its vigour there, a hardy growth out of the very heart of +nature, interpreting itself to congenial minds with all the fulness +of primitive utterance. A big thought! yet suggesting, perhaps, from +the first, in still, small, immediately practical, voice, some +possible modification of, a freer way of taking, certain moral +precepts: say! a primitive morality, congruous with those larger +primitive ideas, the larger survey, the earlier, more liberal air. + +Returning to this ancient "pantheism," after so long a reign of a +seemingly opposite faith, Bruno unfalteringly asserts "the vision of +all things in God" to be the aim of all metaphysical speculation, as +of all inquiry into nature: the Spirit of God, in countless variety +of forms, neither above, nor, in any way, without, but intimately +within, all things--really present, with equal integrity, in the +sunbeam ninety millions of miles long, and the wandering drop of +water as it evaporates therein. The divine consciousness would have +the same relation to the production of things, as the human +intelligence to the production of true thoughts concerning them. +Nay! those thoughts are themselves God in man: a loan, there, too, of +his assisting Spirit, who, in truth, creates all things in and by his +own contemplation of them. For Him, as for man in proportion as man +thinks truly, thought and, being are identical, and things existent +only in so far as they are known. Delighting in itself, in the sense +of its own energy, this sleepless, capacious, fiery intelligence, +evokes all the orders of nature, all the revolutions of history, +cycle upon cycle, in ever new types. And God the Spirit, the soul of +the world, being really identical with his own soul, Bruno, as the +universe shapes itself to his reason, his imagination, ever more and +more articulately, shares also the divine joy in that process of the +formation of true ideas, which is really parallel to the process of +creation, to the evolution of things. In a certain mystic sense, +which some in every age of the world have understood, he, too, is +creator, himself actually a participator in the creative function. +And by such a philosophy, he assures us, it was his experience that +the soul is greatly expanded: con questa filosofia l'anima, mi +s'aggrandisce: mi se magnifica l'intelletto! + +For, with characteristic largeness of mind, Bruno accepted this +theory in the whole range of its consequences. Its more immediate +corollary was the famous axiom of "indifference," of "the coincidence +of contraries." To the eye of God, to the philosophic vision through +which God sees in man, nothing is really alien from Him. The +differences of things, and above all, those distinctions which +schoolmen and priests, old or new, Roman or Reformed, had invented +for themselves, would be lost in the length and breadth of the +philosophic survey; nothing, in itself, either great or small; and +matter, [237] certainly, in all its various forms, not evil but +divine. Could one choose or reject this or that? If God the Spirit +had made, nay! was, all things indifferently, then, matter and +spirit, the spirit and the flesh, heaven and earth, freedom and +necessity, the first and the last, good and evil, would be +superficial rather than substantial differences. Only, were joy and +sorrow also to be added to the list of phenomena really coincident or +indifferent, as some intellectual kinsmen of Bruno have claimed they +should? + +The Dominican brother was at no distant day to break far enough away +from the election, the seeming "vocation" of his youth, yet would +remain always, and under all circumstances, unmistakably a monk in +some predominant qualities of temper. At first it only by way of +thought that he asserted his liberty--delightful, late-found +privilege!--traversing, in mental journeys, that spacious circuit, as +it broke away before him at every moment into ever-new horizons. +Kindling thought and imagination at once, the prospect draws from him +cries of joy, a kind of religious joy, as in some new "canticle of +the creatures," a new monkish hymnal or antiphonary. "Nature" +becomes for him a sacred term. "Conform thyself to Nature"--with +what sincerity, what enthusiasm, what religious fervour, he enounces +the precept to others, to himself! Recovering, as he fancies, a +certain primeval sense of Deity broadcast on things, in which +Pythagoras and other inspired theorists of early Greece had abounded, +in his hands philosophy becomes a poem, a sacred poem, as it had been +with them. That Bruno himself, in "the enthusiasm of the idea," drew +from his axiom of the "indifference of contraries" the practical +consequence which is in very deed latent there, that he was ready to +sacrifice to the antinomianism, which is certainly a part of its +rigid logic, the purities of his youth for instance, there is no +proof. The service, the sacrifice, he is ready to bring to the great +light that has dawned for him, which occupies his entire conscience +with the sense of his responsibilities to it, is that of days and +nights spent in eager study, of a plenary, disinterested utterance of +the thoughts that arise in him, at any hazard, at the price, say! of +martyrdom. The work of the divine Spirit, as he conceives it, +exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to +take the place of prayer, sacrifice, communion. It would be a +mistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely +passive or receptive. She, too, possesses, not less than the soul of +the world, initiatory power, responding with the free gift of a light +and heat that seem her own. + +Yet a nature so opulently endowed can hardly have been lacking in +purely physical ardours. His pantheistic belief that the Spirit of +God was in all things, was not inconsistent with, might encourage, a +keen and restless eye for the dramatic details of life and character +for humanity in all its visible attractiveness, since there, too, in +[238] truth, divinity lurks. From those first fair days of early +Greek speculation, love had occupied a large place in the conception +of philosophy; and in after days Bruno was fond of developing, like +Plato, like the Christian platonist, combining something of the +peculiar temper of each, the analogy between intellectual enthusiasm +and the flights of physical love, with an animation which shows +clearly enough the reality of his experience in the latter. The +Eroici Furori, his book of books, dedicated to Philip Sidney, who +would be no stranger to such thoughts, presents a singular blending +of verse and prose, after the manner of Dante's Vita Nuova. The +supervening philosophic comment re-considers those earlier physical +impulses which had prompted the sonnet in voluble Italian, entirely +to the advantage of their abstract, incorporeal equivalents. Yet if +it is after all but a prose comment, it betrays no lack of the +natural stuff out of which such mystic transferences must be made. +That there is no single name of preference, no Beatrice or Laura, by +no means proves the young man's earlier desires merely "Platonic;" +and if the colours of love inevitably lose a little of their force +and propriety by such deflection, the intellectual purpose as +certainly finds its opportunity thereby, in the matter of borrowed +fire and wings. A kind of old, scholastic pedantry creeping back +over the ardent youth who had thrown it off so defiantly (as if Love +himself went in for a degree at the University) Bruno developes, +under the mask of amorous verse, all the various stages of +abstraction, by which, as the last step of a long ladder, the mind +attains actual "union." For, as with the purely religious mystics, +union, the mystic union of souls with each other and their Lord, +nothing less than union between the contemplator and the +contemplated--the reality, or the sense, or at least the name of +it--was always at hand. Whence that instinctive tendency, if not from +the Creator of things himself, who has doubtless prompted it in the +physical universe, as in man? How familiar the thought that the +whole creation longs for God, the soul as the hart for the +water-brooks! To unite oneself to the infinite by breadth and lucidity of +intellect, to enter, by that admirable faculty, into eternal +life--this was the true vocation of the spouse, of the rightly amorous +soul--"a filosofia e necessario amore." There would be degrees of +progress therein, as of course also of relapse: joys and sorrows, +therefore. And, in interpreting these, the philosopher, whose +intellectual ardours have superseded religion and love, is still a +lover and a monk. All the influences of the convent, the heady, +sweet incense, the pleading sounds, the sophisticated light and air, +the exaggerated humour of gothic carvers, the thick stratum of pagan +sentiment beneath ("Santa Maria sopra Minerva!") are indelible in +him. Tears, sympathies, tender inspirations, attraction, repulsion, +dryness, zeal, desire, recollection: he finds a place for them all: +knows them all [239] well in their unaffected simplicity, while he +seeks the secret and secondary, or, as he fancies, the primary, form +and purport of each. + +A light on actual life, or mere barren scholastic subtlety, never +before had the pantheistic doctrine been developed with such +completeness, never before connected with so large a sense of nature, +so large a promise of the knowledge of it as it really is. The eyes +that had not been wanting to visible humanity turned with equal +liveliness on the natural world in that region of his birth, where +all its force and colour is twofold. Nature is not only a thought in +the divine mind; it is also the perpetual energy of that mind, which, +ever identical with itself, puts forth and absorbs in turn all the +successive forms of life, of thought, of language even. But what +seemed like striking transformations of matter were in truth only a +chapter, a clause, in the great volume of the transformations of the +Spirit. To that mystic recognition that all is divine had succeeded +a realisation of the largeness of the field of concrete knowledge, +the infinite extent of all there was actually to know. Winged, +fortified, by this central philosophic faith, the student proceeds to +the reading of nature, led on from point to point by manifold lights, +which will surely strike on him, by the way, from the intelligence in +it, speaking directly, sympathetically, to the intelligence in him. +The earth's wonderful animation, as divined by one who anticipates by +a whole generation the "philosophy of experience:" in that, the bold, +flighty, pantheistic speculation became tangible matter of fact. +Here was the needful book for man to read, the full revelation, +the detailed story of that one universal mind, struggling, emerging, +through shadow, substance, manifest spirit, in various orders of +being--the veritable history of God. And nature, together with the +true pedigree and evolution of man also, his gradual issue from it, +was still all to learn. The delightful tangle of things! it would be +the delightful task of man's thoughts to disentangle that. Already +Bruno had measured the space which Bacon would fill, with room +perhaps for Darwin also. That Deity is everywhere, like all such +abstract propositions, is a two-edged force, depending for its +practical effect on the mind which admits it, on the peculiar +perspective of that mind. To Dutch Spinosa, in the next century, +faint, consumptive, with a hold on external things naturally faint, +the theorem that God was in all things whatever, annihilating, their +differences suggested a somewhat chilly withdrawal from the contact +of all alike. In Bruno, eager and impassioned, an Italian of the +Italians, it awoke a constant, inextinguishable appetite for every +form of experience--a fear, as of the one sin possible, of limiting, +for oneself or another, that great stream flowing for thirsty souls, +that wide pasture set ready for the hungry heart. Considered from +the point of view of a minute observation of nature, the Infinite +might figure as "the infinitely little;" no blade [240] of grass +being like another, as there was no limit to the complexities of an +atom of earth, cell, sphere, within sphere. But the earth itself, +hitherto seemingly the privileged centre of a very limited universe, +was, after all, itself but an atom in an infinite world of starry +space, then lately displayed to the ingenuous intelligence, which +the telescope was one day to verify to bodily eyes. For if Bruno +must needs look forward to the future, to Bacon, for adequate +knowledge of the earth--the infinitely little; he looked back, +gratefully, to another daring mind, which had already put the earth +into its modest place, and opened the full view of the heavens. +If God is eternal, then, the universe is infinite and worlds +innumerable. Yes! one might well have supposed what reason now +demonstrated, indicating those endless spaces which sidereal science +would gradually occupy, an echo of the creative word of God himself, + +"Qui innumero numero innumerorum nomina dicit." + +That the stars are suns: that the earth is in motion: that the earth +is of like stuff with the stars: now the familiar knowledge of +children, dawning on Bruno as calm assurance of reason on appeal from +the prejudice of the eye, brought to him an inexpressibly +exhilarating sense of enlargement of the intellectual, nay! the +physical atmosphere. And his consciousness of unfailing unity and +order did not desert him in that larger survey, making the utmost one +could ever know of the earth seem but a very little chapter in that +endless history of God the Spirit, rejoicing so greatly in the +admirable spectacle that it never ceases to evolve from matter new +conditions. The immovable earth beneath one's feet! one almost felt +the movement, the respiration of God in it. And yet how greatly even +the physical eye, the sensible imagination (so to term it) was +flattered by the theorem. What joy in that motion, the prospect, the +music, the music of the spheres!--he could listen to it in a +perfection such as had never been conceded to Plato, to Pythagoras +even. + + "Veni, Creator Spiritus, + Mentes tuorum visita, + Imple superna gratia, + Quae tu creasti pectora!" + +Yes! the grand old Christian hymns, perhaps the grandest of them, +seemed to blend themselves in the chorus, to deepen immeasurably +under this new intention. It is not always, or often, that men's +abstract ideas penetrate the temperament, touch the animal spirits, +affect conduct. It was what they did with Bruno. The ghastly +spectacle of the endless material universe, infinite dust, in truth, +starry as it may look to our terrestrial eyes--that prospect from +which Pascal's faithful soul recoiled so painfully--induced in Bruno +only the delightful consciousness of an ever-widening kinship [241] +and sympathy, since every one of those infinite worlds must have its +sympathetic inhabitants. Scruples of conscience, if he felt such, +might well be pushed aside for the "excellency" of such knowledge as +this. To shut the eyes, whether of the body or the mind, would be a +kind of dark ingratitude; the one sin, to believe directly or +indirectly in any absolutely dead matter anywhere, because involving +denial of the indwelling spirit. A free spirit, certainly, as of +old! Through all his pantheistic flights, from horizon to horizon, +it was still the thought of liberty that presented itself to the +infinite relish of this "prodigal son" of Dominic. God the Spirit +had made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence, +impiously belied by any theory of restrictions, distinctions, +absolute limitations. Touch, see, listen, eat freely of all the +trees of the garden of Paradise with the voice of the Lord God +literally everywhere: here was the final counsel of perfection. The +world was even larger than youthful appetite, youthful capacity. Let +theologian and every other theorist beware how he narrowed either. +The plurality of worlds! how petty in comparison seemed the sins, to +purge which was the chief motive for coming to places like this +convent, whence Bruno, with vows broken, or obsolete for him, +presently departed. A sonnet, expressive of the joy with which he +returned to so much more than the liberty of ordinary men, does not +suggest that he was driven from it. Though he must have seemed to +those who surely had loved so lovable a creature there to be +departing, like the prodigal of the Gospel, into the furthest of +possible far countries, there is no proof of harsh treatment, or even +of an effort to detain him. + +It happens, of course most naturally, that those who undergo the +shock of spiritual or intellectual change sometimes fail to recognise +their debt to the deserted cause: how much of the heroism, or other +high quality, of their rejection has really been the growth of what +they reject? Bruno, the escaped monk, is still a monk: his +philosophy, impious as it might seem to some, a new religion. He +came forth well fitted by conventual influences to play upon men as +he was played upon. A challenge, a war-cry, an alarum; everywhere he +seemed to be the creature of some subtly materialized spiritual +force, like that of the old Greek prophets, like the primitive +"enthusiasm" he was inclined to set so high, or impulsive Pentecostal +fire. His hunger to know, fed at first dreamily enough within the +convent walls as he wandered over space and time an indefatigable +reader of books, would be fed physically now by ear and eye, by large +matter-of-fact experience, as he journeys from university to +university; yet still, less as a teacher than a courtier, a citizen +of the world, a knight-errant of intellectual light. The philosophic +need to try all things had given reasonable justification to the +stirring desire for travel common to youth, in which, if in nothing +else, that whole age of the [242] later Renaissance was invincibly +young. The theoretic recognition of that mobile spirit of the world, +ever renewing its youth, became, sympathetically, the motive of a +life as mobile, as ardent, as itself; of a continual journey, the +venture and stimulus of which would be the occasion of ever new +discoveries, of renewed conviction. + +The unity, the spiritual unity, of the world:--that must involve the +alliance, the congruity, of all things with each other, great +reinforcement of sympathy, of the teacher's personality with the +doctrine he had to deliver, the spirit of that doctrine with the +fashion of his utterance. In his own case, certainly, as Bruno +confronted his audience at Paris, himself, his theme, his language, +were the fuel of one clear spiritual flame, which soon had hold of +his audience also; alien, strangely alien, as it might seem from the +speaker. It was intimate discourse, in magnetic touch with every one +present, with his special point of impressibility; the sort of speech +which, consolidated into literary form as a book, would be a dialogue +according to the true Attic genius, full of those diversions, passing +irritations, unlooked-for appeals, in which a solicitous missionary +finds his largest range of opportunity, and takes even dull wits +unaware. In Bruno, that abstract theory of the perpetual motion of +the world was a visible person talking with you. + +And as the runaway Dominican was still in temper a monk, so he +presented himself in the comely Dominican habit. The eyes which in +their last sad protest against stupidity would mistake, or miss +altogether, the image of the Crucified, were to-day, for the most +part, kindly observant eyes, registering every detail of that +singular company, all the physiognomic lights which come by the way +on people, and, through them, on things, the "shadows of ideas" in +men's faces (De Umbris Idearum was the title of his discourse), +himself pleasantly animated by them, in turn. There was "heroic +gaiety" there; only, as usual with gaiety, the passage of a peevish +cloud seemed all the chillier. Lit up, in the agitation of speaking, +by many a harsh or scornful beam, yet always sinking, in moments of +repose, to an expression of high-bred melancholy, it was a face that +looked, after all, made for suffering--already half pleading, half +defiant--as of a creature you could hurt, but to the last never shake +a hair's breadth from its estimate of yourself. + +Like nature, like nature in that country of his birth, the Nolan, as +he delighted to proclaim himself, loved so well that, born wanderer +as he was, he must perforce return thither sooner or later, at the +risk of life, he gave plenis manibus, but without selection, and, +with all his contempt for the "asinine" vulgar, was not fastidious. +His rank, unweeded eloquence, abounding in a play of words, rabbinic +allegories, verses defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he +professed to despise, with a shameless image here or there, product +not of formal method, but of Neapolitan improvisation, was akin to +[243] the heady wine, the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery, +volcanic soil, fertile in the irregularities which manifest power. +Helping himself indifferently to all religions for rhetoric +illustration, his preference was still for that of the soil, the old +pagan one, the primitive Italian gods, whose names and legends haunt +his speech, as they do the carved and pictorial work of the age, +according to the fashion of that ornamental paganism which the +Renaissance indulged. To excite, to surprise, to move men's minds, +as the volcanic earth is moved, as if in travail, and, according to +the Socratic fancy, bring them to the birth, was the true function of +the teacher, however unusual it might seem in an ancient university. +Fantastic, from first to last that was the descriptive epithet; and +the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how +characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was +pre-eminently due to Italy. A bookman, yet with so vivid a hold on +people and things, the traits and tricks of the audience seemed to +revive in him, to strike from his memory all the graphic resources of +his old readings. He seemed to promise some greater matter than was +then actually exposed; himself to enjoy the fulness of a great +outlook, the vague suggestion of which did but sustain the curiosity +of the listeners. And still, in hearing him speak you seemed to see +that subtle spiritual fire to which he testified kindling from word +to word. What Parisians then heard was, in truth, the first fervid +expression of all those contending apprehensions, out of which his +written works would afterwards be compacted, with much loss of heat +in the process. Satiric or hybrid growths, things due to hybris,+ +insolence, insult, all that those fabled satyrs embodied--the +volcanic South is kindly prolific of this, and Bruno abounded in +mockeries: it was by way of protest. So much of a Platonist, for +Plato's genial humour he had nevertheless substituted the harsh +laughter of Aristophanes. Paris, teeming, beneath a very courtly +exterior, with mordent words, in unabashed criticism of all real or +suspected evil, provoked his utmost powers of scorn for the +"triumphant beast," the "constellation of the Ass," shining even +there, amid the university folk, those intellectual bankrupts of the +Latin Quarter, who had so long passed between them gravely a +worthless "parchment and paper" currency. In truth, Aristotle, as +the supplanter of Plato, was still in possession, pretending to +determine heaven and earth by precedent, hiding the proper nature of +things from the eyes of men. Habit--the last word of his practical +philosophy--indolent habit! what would this mean in the intellectual +life, but just that sort of dead judgments which are most opposed to +the essential freedom and quickness of the Spirit, because the mind, +the eye, were no longer really at work in them? + +To Bruno, a true son of the Renaissance, in the light of those large, +antique, pagan ideas, the difference between Rome and the Reform +would figure, of course, as but an insignificant variation upon [244] +some deeper, more radical antagonism between two tendencies of men's +minds. But what about an antagonism deeper still? between Christ and +the world, say! Christ and the flesh?--that so very ancient +antagonism between good and evil? Was there any place for +imperfection in a world wherein the minutest atom, the lightest +thought, could not escape from God's presence? Who should note the +crime, the sin, the mistake, in the operation of that eternal spirit, +which could have made no misshapen births? In proportion as man +raised himself to the ampler survey of the divine work around him, +just in that proportion did the very notion of evil disappear. There +were no weeds, no "tares," in the endless field. The truly +illuminated mind, discerning spiritually, might do what it would. +Even under the shadow of monastic walls, that had ever been the +precept, which the larger theory of "inspiration" had bequeathed to +practice. "Of all the trees of the garden thou mayst freely eat! If +you take up any deadly thing, it shall not hurt you! And I think +that I, too, have the spirit of God." + +Bruno, the citizen of the world, Bruno at Paris, was careful to warn +off the vulgar from applying the decisions of philosophy beyond its +proper speculative limits. But a kind of secresy, an ambiguous +atmosphere, encompassed, from the first, alike the speaker and the +doctrine; and in that world of fluctuating and ambiguous characters, +the alerter mind certainly, pondering on this novel reign of the +spirit--what it might actually be--would hardly fail to find in +Bruno's theories a method of turning poison into food, to live and +thrive thereon; an art, surely, no less opportune in the Paris of +that hour, intellectually or morally, than had it related to physical +poisons. If Bruno himself was cautious not to suggest the ethic or +practical equivalent to his theoretic positions, there was that in +his very manner of speech, in his rank, unweeded eloquence, which +seemed naturally to discourage any effort at selection, any sense of +fine difference, of nuances or proportion, in things. The loose +sympathies of his genius were allied to nature, nursing, with equable +maternity of soul, good, bad, and indifferent, rather than to art, +distinguishing, rejecting, refining. Commission and omission; sins +of the former surely had the preference. And how would Paolo and +Francesca have read the lesson? How would this Henry the Third, and +Margaret of the "Memoirs," and other susceptible persona then +present, read it, especially if the opposition between practical good +and evil traversed another distinction, to the "opposed points," the +"fenced opposites" of which many, certainly, then present, in that +Paris of the last of the Valois, could never by any possibility +become "indifferent," between the precious and the base, +aesthetically--between what was right and wrong, as matter of art? + + + +NOTES + +234. +Pater's article appeared in The Fortnightly Review, 1889. +Later it was much revised and included as Chapter VII of the +unfinished novel, Gaston de Latour. + +234. +From Heine's Aus der Harzreise, "Bergidylle 2": "Tannenbaum, +mit grunen Fingern," Stanza 10. + +243. +E-text editor's transliteration: hybris. Liddell and Scott +definition: "wanton violence, arising from the pride of strength, +passion, etc." + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Giordano Bruno, by Walter Horatio Pater + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIORDANO BRUNO *** + +***** This file should be named 4228.txt or 4228.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/2/4228/ + +Produced by Alfred J. Drake. HTML version by Al Haines. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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To his +successor the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by +various pious and other observances; and it was on a Whit-Sunday +afternoon that curious Parisians had the opportunity of listening to +one who, as if with some intentional new version of the sacred event +then commemorated, had a great deal to say concerning the Spirit; +above all, of the freedom, the independence of its operation. The +speaker, though understood to be a brother of the Order of St. +Dominic, had not been present at the mass--the usual university mass, +De Spiritu Sancto, said to-day according to the natural course of the +season in the chapel of the Sorbonne, by the Italian Bishop of Paris. +It was the reign of the Italians just then, a doubly refined, +somewhat morbid, somewhat ash-coloured, Italy in France, more Italian +still. Men of Italian birth, "to the great suspicion of simple +people," swarmed in Paris, already "flightier, less constant, than +the girouettes on its steeples," and it was love for Italian fashions +that had brought king and courtiers here to-day, with great eclat, as +they said, frizzed and starched, in the beautiful, minutely +considered dress of the moment, pressing the university into a +perhaps not unmerited background; for the promised speaker, about +whom tongues had been busy, not only in the Latin quarter, had come +from Italy. In an age in which all things about which Parisians much +cared must be Italian there might be a hearing for Italian +philosophy. Courtiers at least would understand Italian, and this +speaker was rumoured to possess in perfection all the curious arts of +his native language. And of all the kingly qualities of Henry's +youth, the single one that had held by him was that gift of +eloquence, which he was able also to value in others--inherited +perhaps; for in all the contemporary and subsequent historic gossip +about his mother, the two things certain are, that the hands credited +with so much mysterious ill-doing were fine ones, and that she was an +admirable speaker. + +Bruno himself tells us, long after he had withdrawn himself from it, +that the monastic life promotes the freedom of the intellect by its +[235] silence and self-concentration. The prospect of such freedom +sufficiently explains why a young man who, however well found in +worldly and personal advantages, was conscious above all of great +intellectual possessions, and of fastidious spirit also, with a +remarkable distaste for the vulgar, should have espoused poverty, +chastity, obedience, in a Dominican cloister. What liberty of mind +may really come to in such places, what daring new departures it may +suggest to the strictly monastic temper, is exemplified by the +dubious and dangerous mysticism of men like John of Parma and Joachim +of Flora, reputed author of the new "Everlasting Gospel," strange +dreamers, in a world of sanctified rhetoric, of that later +dispensation of the spirit, in which all law must have passed away; +or again by a recognised tendency in the great rival Order of St. +Francis, in the so-called "spiritual" Franciscans, to understand the +dogmatic words of faith with a difference. + +The three convents in which Bruno lived successively, at Naples, at +Citta di Campagna, and finally the Minerva at Rome, developed freely, +we may suppose, all the mystic qualities of a genius in which, from +the first, a heady southern imagination took the lead. But it was +from beyond conventional bounds he would look for the sustenance, the +fuel, of an ardour born or bred within them. Amid such artificial +religious stillness the air itself becomes generous in undertones. +The vain young monk (vain of course!) would feed his vanity by +puzzling the good, sleepy heads of the average sons of Dominic with +his neology, putting new wine into old bottles, teaching them their +own business--the new, higher, truer sense of the most familiar +terms, the chapters they read, the hymns they sang, above all, as it +happened, every word that referred to the Spirit, the reign of the +Spirit, its excellent freedom. He would soon pass beyond the utmost +limits of his brethren's sympathy, beyond the largest and freest +interpretation those words would bear, to thoughts and words on an +altogether different plane, of which the full scope was only to be +felt in certain old pagan writers, though approached, perhaps, at +first, as having a kind of natural, preparatory kinship with +Scripture itself. The Dominicans would seem to have had well- +stocked, liberally-selected, libraries; and this curious youth, in +that age of restored letters, read eagerly, easily, and very soon +came to the kernel of a difficult old author--Plotinus or Plato; to +the purpose of thinkers older still, surviving by glimpses only in +the books of others--Empedocles, Pythagoras, who had enjoyed the +original divine sense of things, above all, Parmenides, that most +ancient assertor of God's identity with the world. The affinities, +the unity, of the visible and the invisible, of earth and heaven, of +all things whatever, with each other, through the consciousness, the +person, of God the Spirit, who was at every moment of infinite time, +in every atom of matter, at every [236] point of infinite space, ay! +was everything in turn: that doctrine--l'antica filosofia Italiana-- +was in all its vigour there, a hardy growth out of the very heart of +nature, interpreting itself to congenial minds with all the fulness +of primitive utterance. A big thought! yet suggesting, perhaps, from +the first, in still, small, immediately practical, voice, some +possible modification of, a freer way of taking, certain moral +precepts: say! a primitive morality, congruous with those larger +primitive ideas, the larger survey, the earlier, more liberal air. + +Returning to this ancient "pantheism," after so long a reign of a +seemingly opposite faith, Bruno unfalteringly asserts "the vision of +all things in God" to be the aim of all metaphysical speculation, as +of all inquiry into nature: the Spirit of God, in countless variety +of forms, neither above, nor, in any way, without, but intimately +within, all things--really present, with equal integrity, in the +sunbeam ninety millions of miles long, and the wandering drop of +water as it evaporates therein. The divine consciousness would have +the same relation to the production of things, as the human +intelligence to the production of true thoughts concerning them. +Nay! those thoughts are themselves God in man: a loan, there, too, of +his assisting Spirit, who, in truth, creates all things in and by his +own contemplation of them. For Him, as for man in proportion as man +thinks truly, thought and, being are identical, and things existent +only in so far as they are known. Delighting in itself, in the sense +of its own energy, this sleepless, capacious, fiery intelligence, +evokes all the orders of nature, all the revolutions of history, +cycle upon cycle, in ever new types. And God the Spirit, the soul of +the world, being really identical with his own soul, Bruno, as the +universe shapes itself to his reason, his imagination, ever more and +more articulately, shares also the divine joy in that process of the +formation of true ideas, which is really parallel to the process of +creation, to the evolution of things. In a certain mystic sense, +which some in every age of the world have understood, he, too, is +creator, himself actually a participator in the creative function. +And by such a philosophy, he assures us, it was his experience that +the soul is greatly expanded: con questa filosofia l'anima, mi +s'aggrandisce: mi se magnifica l'intelletto! + +For, with characteristic largeness of mind, Bruno accepted this +theory in the whole range of its consequences. Its more immediate +corollary was the famous axiom of "indifference," of "the coincidence +of contraries." To the eye of God, to the philosophic vision through +which God sees in man, nothing is really alien from Him. The +differences of things, and above all, those distinctions which +schoolmen and priests, old or new, Roman or Reformed, had invented +for themselves, would be lost in the length and breadth of the +philosophic survey; nothing, in itself, either great or small; and +matter, [237] certainly, in all its various forms, not evil but +divine. Could one choose or reject this or that? If God the Spirit +had made, nay! was, all things indifferently, then, matter and +spirit, the spirit and the flesh, heaven and earth, freedom and +necessity, the first and the last, good and evil, would be +superficial rather than substantial differences. Only, were joy and +sorrow also to be added to the list of phenomena really coincident or +indifferent, as some intellectual kinsmen of Bruno have claimed they +should? + +The Dominican brother was at no distant day to break far enough away +from the election, the seeming "vocation" of his youth, yet would +remain always, and under all circumstances, unmistakably a monk in +some predominant qualities of temper. At first it only by way of +thought that he asserted his liberty--delightful, late-found +privilege!--traversing, in mental journeys, that spacious circuit, as +it broke away before him at every moment into ever-new horizons. +Kindling thought and imagination at once, the prospect draws from him +cries of joy, a kind of religious joy, as in some new "canticle of +the creatures," a new monkish hymnal or antiphonary. "Nature" +becomes for him a sacred term. "Conform thyself to Nature"--with +what sincerity, what enthusiasm, what religious fervour, he enounces +the precept to others, to himself! Recovering. as he fancies, a +certain primeval sense of Deity broadcast on things, in which +Pythagoras and other inspired theorists of early Greece had abounded, +in his hands philosophy becomes a poem, a sacred poem, as it had been +with them. That Bruno himself, in "the enthusiasm of the idea," drew +from his axiom of the "indifference of contraries" the practical +consequence which is in very deed latent there, that he was ready to +sacrifice to the antinomianism, which is certainly a part of its +rigid logic, the purities of his youth for instance, there is no +proof. The service, the sacrifice, he is ready to bring to the great +light that has dawned for him, which occupies his entire conscience +with the sense of his responsibilities to it, is that of days and +nights spent in eager study, of a plenary, disinterested utterance of +the thoughts that arise in him, at any hazard, at the price, say! of +martyrdom. The work of the divine Spirit, as he conceives it, +exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to +take the place of prayer, sacrifice, communion. It would be a +mistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely +passive or receptive. She, too, possesses, not less than the soul of +the world, initiatory power, responding with the free gift of a light +and heat that seem her own. + +Yet a nature so opulently endowed can hardly have been lacking in +purely physical ardours. His pantheistic belief that the Spirit of +God was in all things, was not inconsistent with, might encourage, a +keen and restless eye for the dramatic details of life and character +for humanity in all its visible attractiveness, since there, too, in +[238] truth, divinity lurks. From those first fair days of early +Greek speculation, love had occupied a large place in the conception +of philosophy; and in after days Bruno was fond of developing, like +Plato, like the Christian platonist, combining something of the +peculiar temper of each, the analogy between intellectual enthusiasm +and the flights of physical love, with an animation which shows +clearly enough the reality of his experience in the latter. The +Eroici Furori, his book of books, dedicated to Philip Sidney, who +would be no stranger to such thoughts, presents a singular blending +of verse and prose, after the manner of Dante's Vita Nuova. The +supervening philosophic comment re-considers those earlier physical +impulses which had prompted the sonnet in voluble Italian, entirely +to the advantage of their abstract, incorporeal equivalents. Yet if +it is after all but a prose comment, it betrays no lack of the +natural stuff out of which such mystic transferences must be made. +That there is no single name of preference, no Beatrice or Laura, by +no means proves the young man's earlier desires merely "Platonic;" +and if the colours of love inevitably lose a little of their force +and propriety by such deflection, the intellectual purpose as +certainly finds its opportunity thereby, in the matter of borrowed +fire and wings. A kind of old, scholastic pedantry creeping back +over the ardent youth who had thrown it off so defiantly (as if Love +himself went in for a degree at the University) Bruno developes, +under the mask of amorous verse, all the various stages of +abstraction, by which, as the last step of a long ladder, the mind +attains actual "union." For, as with the purely religious mystics, +union, the mystic union of souls with each other and their Lord, +nothing less than union between the contemplator and the +contemplated--the reality, or the sense, or at least the name of it-- +was always at hand. Whence that instinctive tendency, if not from +the Creator of things himself, who has doubtless prompted it in the +physical universe, as in man? How familiar the thought that the +whole creation longs for God, the soul as the hart for the water- +brooks! To unite oneself to the infinite by breadth and lucidity of +intellect, to enter, by that admirable faculty, into eternal life-- +this was the true vocation of the spouse, of the rightly amorous +soul--"a filosofia e necessario amore." There would be degrees of +progress therein, as of course also of relapse: joys and sorrows, +therefore. And, in interpreting these, the philosopher, whose +intellectual ardours have superseded religion and love, is still a +lover and a monk. All the influences of the convent, the heady, +sweet incense, the pleading sounds, the sophisticated light and air, +the exaggerated humour of gothic carvers, the thick stratum of pagan +sentiment beneath ("Santa Maria sopra Minerva!") are indelible in +him. Tears, sympathies, tender inspirations, attraction, repulsion, +dryness, zeal, desire, recollection: he finds a place for them all: +knows them all [239] well in their unaffected simplicity, while he +seeks the secret and secondary, or, as he fancies, the primary, form +and purport of each. + +A light on actual life, or mere barren scholastic subtlety, never +before had the pantheistic doctrine been developed with such +completeness, never before connected with so large a sense of nature, +so large a promise of the knowledge of it as it really is. The eyes +that had not been wanting to visible humanity turned with equal +liveliness on the natural world in that region of his birth, where +all its force and colour is twofold. Nature is not only a thought in +the divine mind; it is also the perpetual energy of that mind, which, +ever identical with itself, puts forth and absorbs in turn all the +successive forms of life, of thought, of language even. But what +seemed like striking transformations of matter were in truth only a +chapter, a clause, in the great volume of the transformations of the +Spirit. To that mystic recognition that all is divine had succeeded +a realisation of the largeness of the field of concrete knowledge, +the infinite extent of all there was actually to know. Winged, +fortified, by this central philosophic faith, the student proceeds to +the reading of nature, led on from point to point by manifold lights, +which will surely strike on him, by the way, from the intelligence in +it, speaking directly, sympathetically, to the intelligence in him. +The earth's wonderful animation, as divined by one who anticipates by +a whole generation the "philosophy of experience:" in that, the bold, +flighty, pantheistic speculation became tangible matter of fact. +Here was the needful book for man to read, the full revelation, +the detailed story of that one universal mind, struggling, emerging, +through shadow, substance, manifest spirit, in various orders of +being--the veritable history of God. And nature, together with the +true pedigree and evolution of man also, his gradual issue from it, +was still all to learn. The delightful tangle of things! it would be +the delightful task of man's thoughts to disentangle that. Already +Bruno had measured the space which Bacon would fill, with room +perhaps for Darwin also. That Deity is everywhere, like all such +abstract propositions, is a two-edged force, depending for its +practical effect on the mind which admits it, on the peculiar +perspective of that mind. To Dutch Spinosa, in the next century, +faint, consumptive, with a hold on external things naturally faint, +the theorem that God was in all things whatever, annihilating, their +differences suggested a somewhat chilly withdrawal from the contact +of all alike. In Bruno, eager and impassioned, an Italian of the +Italians, it awoke a constant, inextinguishable appetite for every +form of experience--a fear, as of the one sin possible, of limiting, +for oneself or another, that great stream flowing for thirsty souls, +that wide pasture set ready for the hungry heart. Considered from +the point of view of a minute observation of nature, the Infinite +might figure as "the infinitely little;" no blade [240] of grass +being like another, as there was no limit to the complexities of an +atom of earth, cell, sphere, within sphere. But the earth itself, +hitherto seemingly the privileged centre of a very limited universe, +was, after all, itself but an atom in an infinite world of starry +space, then lately displayed to the ingenuous intelligence, which +the telescope was one day to verify to bodily eyes. For if Bruno +must needs look forward to the future, to Bacon, for adequate +knowledge of the earth--the infinitely little; he looked back, +gratefully, to another daring mind, which had already put the earth +into its modest place, and opened the full view of the heavens. +If God is eternal, then, the universe is infinite and worlds +innumerable. Yes! one might well have supposed what reason now +demonstrated, indicating those endless spaces which sidereal science +would gradually occupy, an echo of the creative word of God himself, + +"Qui innumero numero innumerorum nomina dicit." + +That the stars are suns: that the earth is in motion: that the earth +is of like stuff with the stars: now the familiar knowledge of +children, dawning on Bruno as calm assurance of reason on appeal from +the prejudice of the eye, brought to him an inexpressibly +exhilarating sense of enlargement of the intellectual, nay! the +physical atmosphere. And his consciousness of unfailing unity and +order did not desert him in that larger survey, making the utmost one +could ever know of the earth seem but a very little chapter in that +endless history of God the Spirit, rejoicing so greatly in the +admirable spectacle that it never ceases to evolve from matter new +conditions. The immovable earth beneath one's feet! one almost felt +the movement, the respiration of God in it. And yet how greatly even +the physical eye, the sensible imagination (so to term it) was +flattered by the theorem. What joy in that motion, the prospect, the +music, the music of the spheres !--he could listen to it in a +perfection such as had never been conceded to Plato, to Pythagoras +even. + + "Veni, Creator Spiritus, + Mentes tuorum visita, + Imple superna gratia, + Quae tu creasti pectora!" + +Yes! the grand old Christian hymns, perhaps the grandest of them, +seemed to blend themselves in the chorus, to deepen immeasurably +under this new intention. It is not always, or often, that men's +abstract ideas penetrate the temperament, touch the animal spirits, +affect conduct. It was what they did with Bruno. The ghastly +spectacle of the endless material universe, infinite dust, in truth, +starry as it may look to our terrestrial eyes--that prospect from +which Pascal's faithful soul recoiled so painfully--induced in Bruno +only the delightful consciousness of an ever-widening kinship [241] +and sympathy, since every one of those infinite worlds must have its +sympathetic inhabitants. Scruples of conscience, if he felt such, +might well be pushed aside for the "excellency" of such knowledge as +this. To shut the eyes, whether of the body or the mind, would be a +kind of dark ingratitude; the one sin, to believe directly or +indirectly in any absolutely dead matter anywhere, because involving +denial of the indwelling spirit. A free spirit, certainly, as of +old! Through all his pantheistic flights, from horizon to horizon, +it was still the thought of liberty that presented itself to the +infinite relish of this "prodigal son" of Dominic. God the Spirit +had made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence, +impiously belied by any theory of restrictions, distinctions, +absolute limitations. Touch, see, listen, eat freely of all the +trees of the garden of Paradise with the voice of the Lord God +literally everywhere: here was the final counsel of perfection. The +world was even larger than youthful appetite, youthful capacity. Let +theologian and every other theorist beware how he narrowed either. +The plurality of worlds! how petty in comparison seemed the sins, to +purge which was the chief motive for coming to places like this +convent, whence Bruno, with vows broken, or obsolete for him, +presently departed. A sonnet, expressive of the joy with which he +returned to so much more than the liberty of ordinary men, does not +suggest that he was driven from it. Though he must have seemed to +those who surely had loved so lovable a creature there to be +departing, like the prodigal of the Gospel, into the furthest of +possible far countries, there is no proof of harsh treatment, or even +of an effort to detain him. + +It happens, of course most naturally, that those who undergo the +shock of spiritual or intellectual change sometimes fail to recognise +their debt to the deserted cause: how much of the heroism, or other +high quality, of their rejection has really been the growth of what +they reject? Bruno, the escaped monk, is still a monk: his +philosophy, impious as it might seem to some, a new religion. He +came forth well fitted by conventual influences to play upon men as +he was played upon. A challenge, a war-cry, an alarum; everywhere he +seemed to be the creature of some subtly materialized spiritual +force, like that of the old Greek prophets, like the primitive +"enthusiasm" he was inclined to set so high, or impulsive Pentecostal +fire. His hunger to know, fed at first dreamily enough within the +convent walls as he wandered over space and time an indefatigable +reader of books, would be fed physically now by ear and eye, by large +matter-of-fact experience, as he journeys from university to +university; yet still, less as a teacher than a courtier, a citizen +of the world, a knight-errant of intellectual light. The philosophic +need to try all things had given reasonable justification to the +stirring desire for travel common to youth, in which, if in nothing +else, that whole age of the [242] later Renaissance was invincibly +young. The theoretic recognition of that mobile spirit of the world, +ever renewing its youth, became, sympathetically, the motive of a +life as mobile, as ardent, as itself; of a continual journey, the +venture and stimulus of which would be the occasion of ever new +discoveries, of renewed conviction. + +The unity, the spiritual unity, of the world :--that must involve the +alliance, the congruity, of all things with each other, great +reinforcement of sympathy, of the teacher's personality with the +doctrine he had to deliver, the spirit of that doctrine with the +fashion of his utterance. In his own case, certainly, as Bruno +confronted his audience at Paris, himself, his theme, his language, +were the fuel of one clear spiritual flame, which soon had hold of +his audience also; alien, strangely alien, as it might seem from the +speaker. It was intimate discourse, in magnetic touch with every one +present, with his special point of impressibility; the sort of speech +which, consolidated into literary form as a book, would be a dialogue +according to the true Attic genius, full of those diversions, passing +irritations, unlooked-for appeals, in which a solicitous missionary +finds his largest range of opportunity, and takes even dull wits +unaware. In Bruno, that abstract theory of the perpetual motion of +the world was a visible person talking with you. + +And as the runaway Dominican was still in temper a monk, so he +presented himself in the comely Dominican habit. The eyes which in +their last sad protest against stupidity would mistake, or miss +altogether, the image of the Crucified, were to-day, for the most +part, kindly observant eyes, registering every detail of that +singular company, all the physiognomic lights which come by the way +on people, and, through them, on things, the "shadows of ideas" in +men's faces (De Umbris Idearum was the title of his discourse), +himself pleasantly animated by them, in turn. There was "heroic +gaiety" there; only, as usual with gaiety, the passage of a peevish +cloud seemed all the chillier. Lit up, in the agitation of speaking, +by many a harsh or scornful beam, yet always sinking, in moments of +repose, to an expression of high-bred melancholy, it was a face that +looked, after all, made for suffering--already half pleading, half +defiant--as of a creature you could hurt, but to the last never shake +a hair's breadth from its estimate of yourself. + +Like nature, like nature in that country of his birth, the Nolan, as +he delighted to proclaim himself, loved so well that, born wanderer +as he was, he must perforce return thither sooner or later, at the +risk of life, he gave plenis manibus, but without selection, and, +with all his contempt for the "asinine" vulgar, was not fastidious. +His rank, unweeded eloquence, abounding in a play of words, rabbinic +allegories, verses defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he +professed to despise, with a shameless image here or there, product +not of formal method, but of Neapolitan improvisation, was akin to +[243] the heady wine, the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery, +volcanic soil, fertile in the irregularities which manifest power. +Helping himself indifferently to all religions for rhetoric +illustration, his preference was still for that of the soil, the old +pagan one, the primitive Italian gods, whose names and legends haunt +his speech, as they do the carved and pictorial work of the age, +according to the fashion of that ornamental paganism which the +Renaissance indulged. To excite, to surprise, to move men's minds, +as the volcanic earth is moved, as if in travail, and, according to +the Socratic fancy, bring them to the birth, was the true function of +the teacher, however unusual it might seem in an ancient university. +Fantastic, from first to last that was the descriptive epithet; and +the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how +characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was pre- +eminently due to Italy. A bookman, yet with so vivid a hold on +people and things, the traits and tricks of the audience seemed to +revive in him, to strike from his memory all the graphic resources of +his old readings. He seemed to promise some greater matter than was +then actually exposed; himself to enjoy the fulness of a great +outlook, the vague suggestion of which did but sustain the curiosity +of the listeners. And still, in hearing him speak you seemed to see +that subtle spiritual fire to which he testified kindling from word +to word. What Parisians then heard was, in truth, the first fervid +expression of all those contending apprehensions, out of which his +written works would afterwards be compacted, with much loss of heat +in the process. Satiric or hybrid growths, things due to hybris,+ +insolence, insult, all that those fabled satyrs embodied--the +volcanic South is kindly prolific of this, and Bruno abounded in +mockeries: it was by way of protest. So much of a Platonist, for +Plato's genial humour he had nevertheless substituted the harsh +laughter of Aristophanes. Paris, teeming, beneath a very courtly +exterior, with mordent words, in unabashed criticism of all real or +suspected evil, provoked his utmost powers of scorn for the +"triumphant beast," the "constellation of the Ass," shining even +there, amid the university folk, those intellectual bankrupts of the +Latin Quarter, who had so long passed between them gravely a +worthless "parchment and paper" currency. In truth, Aristotle, as +the supplanter of Plato, was still in possession, pretending to +determine heaven and earth by precedent, hiding the proper nature of +things from the eyes of men. Habit--the last word of his practical +philosophy--indolent habit! what would this mean in the intellectual +life, but just that sort of dead judgments which are most opposed to +the essential freedom and quickness of the Spirit, because the mind, +the eye, were no longer really at work in them? + +To Bruno, a true son of the Renaissance, in the light of those large, +antique, pagan ideas, the difference between Rome and the Reform +would figure, of course, as but an insignificant variation upon [244] +some deeper, more radical antagonism between two tendencies of men's +minds. But what about an antagonism deeper still? between Christ and +the world, say! Christ and the flesh?--that so very ancient +antagonism between good and evil? Was there any place for +imperfection in a world wherein the minutest atom, the lightest +thought, could not escape from God's presence? Who should note the +crime, the sin, the mistake, in the operation of that eternal spirit, +which could have made no misshapen births? In proportion as man +raised himself to the ampler survey of the divine work around him, +just in that proportion did the very notion of evil disappear. There +were no weeds, no "tares," in the endless field. The truly +illuminated mind, discerning spiritually, might do what it would. +Even under the shadow of monastic walls, that had ever been the +precept, which the larger theory of "inspiration" had bequeathed to +practice. "Of all the trees of the garden thou mayst freely eat! If +you take up any deadly thing, it shall not hurt you! And I think +that I, too, have the spirit of God." + +Bruno, the citizen of the world, Bruno at Paris, was careful to warn +off the vulgar from applying the decisions of philosophy beyond its +proper speculative limits. But a kind of secresy, an ambiguous +atmosphere, encompassed, from the first, alike the speaker and the +doctrine; and in that world of fluctuating and ambiguous characters, +the alerter mind certainly, pondering on this novel reign of the +spirit--what it might actually be--would hardly fail to find in +Bruno's theories a method of turning poison into food, to live and +thrive thereon; an art, surely, no less opportune in the Paris of +that hour, intellectually or morally, than had it related to physical +poisons. If Bruno himself was cautious not to suggest the ethic or +practical equivalent to his theoretic positions, there was that in +his very manner of speech, in his rank, unweeded eloquence, which +seemed naturally to discourage any effort at selection, any sense of +fine difference, of nuances or proportion, in things. The loose +sympathies of his genius were allied to nature, nursing, with equable +maternity of soul, good, bad, and indifferent, rather than to art, +distinguishing, rejecting, refining. Commission and omission; sins +of the former surely had the preference. And how would Paolo and +Francesca have read the lesson? How would this Henry the Third, and +Margaret of the "Memoirs," and other susceptible persona then +present, read it, especially if the opposition between practical good +and evil traversed another distinction, to the "opposed points," the +"fenced opposites" of which many, certainly, then present, in that +Paris of the last of the Valois, could never by any possibility +become "indifferent," between the precious and the base, +aesthetically--between what was right and wrong, as matter of art? + +NOTES + +234. +Pater's article appeared in The Fortnightly Review, 1889. +Later it was much revised and included as Chapter VII of the +unfinished novel, Gaston de Latour. + +234. +From Heine's Aus der Harzreise, "Bergidylle 2": "Tannenbaum, +mit grunen Fingern," Stanza 10. + +243. +E-text editor's transliteration: hybris. Liddell and Scott +definition: "wanton violence, arising from the pride of strength, +passion, etc." + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Giordano Bruno, by Walter Pater + diff --git a/old/gdbrn10.zip b/old/gdbrn10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ca5584f --- /dev/null +++ b/old/gdbrn10.zip |