THE HUMANISTIC PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE (1453–1600)
=The Long List of Representatives of the Humanistic Period.= There was
a revival of _scholasticism_,――Paulus Barbus Socinas (d. 1494), Cajetan
(d. 1534), Ferrariensis (d. 1528), Melchior Cano (d. 1560), Dominicus
de Soto (d. 1560), Dominicus Banez (d. 1604), John of St. Thomas
(d. 1644), Vasquez (d. 1604), Toletus (d. 1596), Fonseca (d. 1599),
Suarez (d. 1617), John the Englishman (d. 1483), Johannes Magistri
(d. 1482), Antonius Trombetta (d. 1518), Maurice the Irishman (d. 1513).
Among the _Humanists_ were Pletho, Bessarion (d. 1472), Lorenzo Valla
(d. 1457), Marsilio Ficino (d. 1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
(d. 1494), Francesco Pico della Mirandola (d. 1533), Theodore of Gaza
(d. 1478), Agricola (d. 1485), George of Trebizond (d. 1484), Justus
Lipsius (d. 1606), Schoppe (b. 1562), Paracelsus (d. 1541), Reuchlin
(d. 1522), Fludd (d. 1637), Montaigne (d. 1592), Charron (d. 1603),
Sanchez (d. 1632), Pomponatius (d. 1530), Achillini (d. 1518), Nifo
(d. 1546), Petrus Ramus (d. 1572), Scaliger (d. 1558). The _Italian
nature philosophers_ were Cardano (d. 1576), Telesio (d. 1588),
Patrizzi (d. 1597), Bruno (d. 1600), Campanella (d. 1639). The notable
_scientists_ were Cusanus (d. 1464), Copernicus (d. 1543), Tycho Brahe
(d. 1601), Kepler (d. 1631). _The Protestant Mystics_ were Luther
(d. 1546), Zwingli (d. 1531), Franck (d. 1545), Weigel (d. 1588),
Boehme (d. 1624). The _political philosophers_ were Macchiavelli
(d. 1527), Thomas More (d. 1535), Jean Bodin (d. 1597), Gentilis
(d. 1611), Althusius (d. 1638), Hugo Grotius (d. 1645).
As examples of the first epoch of the Renaissance[2] we have selected
Cusanus (1401–1464), Paracelsus (1493–1541), and Bruno (1548–1600).
These three men will represent fairly well the wide interests of this
epoch, and more especially its neo-Platonic spirit and its methods.
The reader will see from their dates that the lives of these three
philosophers nearly cover the Humanistic Period. Cusanus lived during
the last half century of the Middle Ages and the first decade of
the Humanistic Period; Paracelsus’s life covers the middle of the
Humanistic Period; Bruno lived during the last part of the period,
and his death (1600) coincides with the last year of the period.
All three were neo-Platonists. They had been so impressed with
the nature-world that had opened before them that they were mystic
nature-worshipers――pantheists, to whom neo-Platonism became the truest
philosophical standard. All three were scientists in different degrees.
Yet Cusanus, the cardinal of the church, and Bruno, the speculative
philosopher, contributed more to science than Paracelsus, who aspired
to medical science. This seeming inconsistency in their lives is
not difficult to explain. Paracelsus merely reflects the science
of the time; while Cusanus and Bruno anticipate the Natural Science
Period――the one by his empirical discoveries, the other by his mystic
speculations which were almost prophecies.
=Nicolas of Cusa= (1401–1464). Modern German scholars place Nicolas of
Cusa (Nicolas Cusanus) with Bacon and Descartes, as the leaders of the
modern philosophical movement. Nicolas lived two hundred years before
Descartes and one hundred years before Bacon. The German estimate
of him shows at least that he was modern in his thought, although he
belongs in time to the Middle Ages for the most part. He lived when
the Middle Ages were passing over into the Renaissance. His principal
work, the _Idiota_, was published in 1450, when the Renaissance was on
the threshold. He was certainly a forerunner of modern times. He was a
German, a cardinal, and is now reverenced by liberal Catholics as one
of their deepest thinkers.
Cusanus was a scientist of no small merit. He died before the great
discoveries were made; but he anticipated Copernicus in his belief that
the earth rotated on its axis; he anticipated Bruno in conceiving space
to be boundless and time unending; he proposed a reform in the calendar;
he was the first to have a map of Germany engraved. He condemned
the prevalent superstitions of the church and the use of magic in
explaining nature events. Thus he anticipated the science of the time
of Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes, and transcended his own period.
In other respects Cusanus belongs in this period with Bruno and
Paracelsus. He did not seek to discover a new method; but he turned
back to the revived traditional Greek systems for an explanation
of the “new world.” He found in the mystic numbers of Plato and the
Pythagoreans the principle of all scientific investigation. The world
of nature phenomena must be accounted for by the spiritual world.
Cusanus uses almost the identical language of Bruno, when he says
that the world is the mirror of God and that man is an epitome of the
universe. In the neo-Platonic spirit of the Humanists, he regarded the
world as a soul-possessing and articulate Oneness. Although a scientist,
he conceived science to be only a conjecture, which in its unreality
reveals the inner interconnections of the real world――the world of the
spirit.
=Paracelsus= (1493–1541). Paracelsus did not transcend his time as did
Cusanus. He merely expressed it. He was the exponent of its science as
Bruno was the representative of its poetic speculation. Paracelsus was
a much-traveled Swiss, who tried to reform the practice of medicine
by a kind of magical chemistry. The poet Browning makes his adventures
the basis of a poem. As a physician Paracelsus could employ the magic
arts without much danger of the charge of heresy, for the practice
of the magic art was theoretically justified by the neo-Platonism of
the time. The Faust of Goethe is at first a Paracelsus. The universal
spirit behind nature presents itself in an infinite number of spiritual
individuals. Nature facts are to be understood and mastered by
understanding the activities of these spiritual forces. In this way
medicine became a brewing of tinctures, magical drinks, and secret
remedies. It was an alchemy which grew to the proportions of a science.
The alchemists of the time expected to discover a panacea against
disease, which would give them the highest power. This is the meaning
of the “philosopher’s stone,” which was to heal all diseases, transmute
everything into gold, and bring all spirits into the power of its
possessor. Paracelsus thus turned back to Greek hylozoism for the truth
about physiology and the cure of disease; and he met with some degree
of personal success, for his physics had many adherents both in theory
and in practice.[3]
In the neo-Platonic manner Paracelsus conceived the world as
fundamentally a developing vital principle (Vulcanus). Man is this
cosmic force individualized (Archæus). The laws that operate in the
world are the same as in man, except that in man they are hidden.
The study of nature’s laws, as they lie open, will reveal how those
same laws operate in a human being. Now the vital principle in nature
manifests itself in three realms: the terrestrial, the astral or
celestial, and the spiritual or divine. The Archæus or vital principle
in man must have the same realms of activity. There is man’s body,
which gets its strength from the terrestrial realm of nature; man’s
mind, which is nourished by the stars; man’s soul, that feeds on faith
in Christ. Perfect health, therefore, consists in the sympathetic
interaction of these three realms in man. A complete medicine consists
of physics, astronomy, and theology.
But Paracelsus was a chemist, and the terrestrial nature of man was his
peculiar interest. The theologian may prescribe for the human soul, and
it is the duty of the astronomer to care for the human intellect; but
the practical physician must understand the human body. Here is the
Archæus imprisoned in the gross terrestrial body! It is in continual
warfare with that body. What is the nature of that body which is so
hostile to the human vital principle? Here Paracelsus introduces his
strange chemical analysis which characterizes him as a Renaissance
physician. Nature has three essences of which all bodies are composed:
(1) mercury, that makes bodies liquid; (2) sulphur, that makes them
combustible; (3) salt, that makes them rigid. These essences are
compounded in such a way that from them the four elements――earth, air,
water, and fire――are derived. Each one of these elements is controlled
by elemental spirits. The earth is controlled by gnomes, the water
by undines, the air by sylphs, and the fire by salamanders. Thus the
chemical analysis of Paracelsus discovers four sets of spirits with
which the physician is obliged to deal. Gnomes, sylphs, undines, and
salamanders are in warfare with the human vital principle for control.
When the Archæus is in any way checked by these, there is disease; when
the Archæus has them under control, the man has health. The medicines
that the physician administers are determined by their effectiveness
in helping the Archæus in its battle against the hostile spirits. This
makes medicine a field for the magician in the control of spirits.
=Giordano Bruno= (1548–1600). The neo-Platonic spirit of the Humanistic
Period reached its most complete development in the æsthetic philosophy
of Giordano Bruno. He sang the world-joy of the æsthetic Renaissance.
Italy ordained him priest, exiled him as heretic, and then burned
him at the stake as recalcitrant. Italy has produced very few great
speculators since his day. The Council of Trent met when he was fifteen
years old; already the counter-Reformation had begun in Italy, and
Italy was soon to become an intellectually arid waste. The influence of
Bruno appears in Spinoza and perhaps in Leibnitz. His one contribution
to modern science was in his inspired conception that because God is
infinite, the world is infinite in space and time. The philosophers who
influenced his thought were Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, and Lucretius.
The fundamental thought of the Humanistic Period was expressed by
Bruno in his imaginative conception of the divine beauty of the living
All. Poet as well as philosopher, he was consumed by a love for nature
as a beautiful religious object. He revolted from all asceticism and
scholasticism. The “new world” in which he found himself was to him the
emblem of God. The thought of that chief of neo-Platonists, Plotinus,
of the beauty of the universe had never been so sympathetically
regarded as by the Renaissance; in the hands of Bruno this beauty
became the manifestation of the divine Idea. Philosophy, æsthetics, and
religion were identical to him. To express his thought he employed the
usual neo-Platonic symbol of the all-forming and all-animating light.
Bruno was no patient student of natural phenomena as such, but a lover
of the great illumination of nature facts by the great soul behind
them. He was not interested in any single group of phenomena, as was
Paracelsus; but he loved them all as a religion. Not only externally
but internally is the universe an eternal harmony. When one gazes upon
it with the enthusiasm of a poet, its apparent defects will vanish in
the harmony of the whole. Man needs no special theology, for the world
is perfect because it is the life of God. Bruno is a universalistic
optimist and a mystic poet. Before this cosmic harmony man should never
utter complaint, but should bow in reverence. True science is religion
and morality.
Since Bruno conceived no theodicy (proof of the goodness and justice of
God) to be necessary, he did not define in exact terms his conception
of God. Nevertheless, to escape the charge of atheism, he distinguished
between the universe and the world. For him God = the universe =
nature = matter = the principle immanent in the world. The “world,”
on the other hand, = the sum-total of nature phenomena. The “world”
is the body of God, and God is the soul of the “world.” God is _natura
naturans_; the world is _natura naturata_[4]. Just as the sum of the
parts of man’s body does not equal the man himself, so to identify God
with the totality of objects of nature is atheism in the true sense. It
is to make God a finite being, although very big. In opposition to this,
Bruno conceives God as the one substance manifesting himself through
all things. This is to magnify God and to make him really omnipresent.
Nevertheless, Bruno is involved in all the inconsistencies of the
Mystic. In a neo-Platonic fashion he frequently speaks of God as if
he were a plural number of atoms. God is not only the world unity,
but in every particle of the world is He writ small. The elements of
the world are monads, and each is the mirror of the All. The Absolute
is the primal unity; and yet in the paradoxical fashion in which
the neo-Platonist is so successful, Bruno says that all creation is
unfolded out of God and is included in him. The speculative poet is
so in love with the world that he does not stop to make consistent the
distinctions which he has drawn. The _natura naturans_ and the _natura
naturata_, the unity and plurality of the world, are the two aspects of
the reality in his own life――and that reality is God.
Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE BIRTHPLACES OF THE CHIEF
PHILOSOPHERS OF THE RENAISSANCE
(The names of the philosophers are given in brackets beneath
the towns in which they were born)