THE PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY OF BRUNO
The distinctively ethical teaching of Bruno is contained in the two
dialogues--the _Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante_, and the _Heroici
Furori_. The latter describes the struggles and aspirations of the
"heroic" or generous human soul in its pursuit of the infinitely
beautiful and good--its efforts towards union with the divine source of
all things. To this more constructive work, in which moral philosophy
was to be treated according to "the inward light with which the divine
sun of intelligence had irradiated" the soul of the writer, the
_Spaccio_ was to form an introduction. "It seemed well to begin with a
kind of prelude, after the manner of musicians; to draw some dim and
confused lines, as painters do; to lay deep bases and dark foundations,
as do the great builders; and this end seemed best achieved by putting
down in number and in order all the primary forms of morality which are
the capital virtues and vices."[436] The _Spaccio_, with its shorter
appendage, the _Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo_, contained a bitter attack
upon the prevalent forms of Christian religion; it especially attacked
the doctrine of the all-sufficiency of faith, which, interpreted as
it then was, might stand as the formula of mediaeval corruption and
stagnation; and it was upon this dialogue, almost solely, that the
reputation Bruno long enjoyed--that of being an atheist--was based.
It is therefore well to remember the introductory nature of the work.
Had not "atheism" been frequently synonymous with "unorthodoxy," the
_Heroic Enthusiasms_ would have shown on how shallow a foundation the
charge rested, for that dialogue breathes the purest religious emotion
and aspiration. Bruno had, however, a premonition of the fate that was
to befall his memory. He protested, perhaps with a touch of sarcasm,
that nothing in his work was said "_assertively_,"--that he had no
wish either directly or indirectly to strike at the truth, to send
a shaft against anything that was honourable, useful, natural, and,
consequently, divine.[437] His own religion was that which had its
beginning, its growth, and its continuance in "the raising of the dead,
making whole the sick, and giving of one's goods"; and not that in the
spirit of which the goods of others were seized, the whole maimed, and
the living put to death.[438] The conclusions of the _Spaccio_ were not
therefore to be regarded as presenting a finished system, but as mere
suggestions, to be tested "when the music should be given in concert,
the picture finished, the roof put on the building." On the other hand,
it is clear also that in the _Spaccio_ Bruno intended to present a
popular moral philosophy, or to point out the degree of virtue which
might be attained without the influence of the divine _afflatus_
described in the _Enthusiasms_. As in the philosophy of Aristotle
before Bruno, and in that of Spinoza after him, the perfection of this
customary morality formed at the same time the ante-chamber through
which alone entrance was to be gained into the inner chamber of divine
love. This is the real meaning that underlies the bizarre and at times
extravagant humour of the dialogue: it points out the purification to
which the human soul must submit before it can become a fitting vessel
for the divine enthusiasm.
[Sidenote: Faith and works.]
Before a purer morality can be taught to any avail, there must exist a
desire for it in the minds of those to whom it shall be revealed. In
the way of Bruno's proposed reformation there stood the attitude of the
Church and of the religious orders towards "faith" and towards "works"
respectively. Faith meant merely professed belief in, or acceptance
of, their doctrines, and conformity with their practices--blind
acceptance and unreasoning conformity--in contrast with which an
earthly life that was simply moral was held to be of no value towards
the blessed life hereafter. Under the influence of this spirit the
worst vices were practised, condoned, and pardoned, even in Bishops
and Cardinals, not to speak of the ordinary priests and monks. It is
only as embodying this conception that Bruno attacked the Church. Thus
Jupiter, in the _Spaccio_, complains that his powers are decaying:--"I
have not vigour enough to pit myself against certain half-men, and I
must, to my great chagrin, leave the world to run its course as chance
and fortune direct. I am like the old lion of Æsop--the ass kicked
it with impunity, the ape played tricks upon it, the pig came and
rubbed its dusty paunch upon it, as if it were some lifeless log. My
noble oracles, fanes, and altars are thrown down, and most unworthily
desecrated; while altars and statues are raised there to some whom I
am ashamed to name, for they are worse than our satyrs, fauns, and
other half-beasts, viler than the crocodiles of Egypt; for these at
least showed some mark of divinity when magically guided, but those
are quite the scum of the earth."[439] Bruno is ironically contrasting
the Christian ideal, as he interprets it, with that of the Greeks and
Egyptians. The former is that of a being only half-human, half-free;
on one side of his nature he is reduced to the level of the beast,
the ass, the bearer of burdens, unquestioning, faithful. Again, one
of the constellations, the _Corona Borealis_, is to be left in the
heavens, escaping the general fate,[440] until the time when it shall
be given in reward to "the invincible arm that shall bring peace, the
long-desired, to a miserable, long-suffering Europe, cutting down the
many heads of that worse than Lernean monster that is scattering its
fateful poison of manifold heresy, and sending it through every portion
of her veins."[441] To this decision of Jupiter, Momus, the critic and
wit of the assembly, adds that it would be enough "if a certain sect
of pedants could be rooted out, who, doing no good themselves, as the
divine and natural law bade, yet thought themselves, and desired to
be thought by others, pious and pleasing to the gods; they said that
to do good was good, to do evil, evil; but that men gained grace and
favour with the gods, not through the good that they did, but through
hoping and believing in accordance with _their_ catechism. As if the
gods, said Mercury, were anxious about nothing but their own vainglory,
cared nothing for the injury caused to human society. And they defame
us, Momus continued, by calling this an institution of heaven,
decrying effects or fruits; while all the time they are doing no work
themselves, but living on the works of others, who instituted temples,
chapels, hospices, hospitals, colleges, universities, for quite other
men than they. These others, even if they are not perfect, will not,
like their usurpers, be perverse and pernicious to the world; they will
be useful to the state, skilled in speculative science, studious of
morality, fanning zeal and enthusiasm for doing good to one another,
and maintaining the common weal for which all laws are ordained. The
usurpers are worse than grubs, caterpillars, or destroying locusts, and
should be exterminated accordingly."[442] How is it possible, we read
elsewhere, that men should regard that as the highest type of religion
which holds behaviour, the doing of good deeds, to be unimportant,
or even to be vice and error; or pretends that the gods do not care
for good deeds--that through such, however great they are, men are
not justified?[443] This creed was a disease that ran through a man's
nature and poisoned it for ever. "When one turned from any other
profession or faith to this, his liberality was exchanged for avarice,
mildness for insolence, humility for pride; formerly open handed with
his own goods, he now became a robber and usurper of those of others;
a good man became a hypocrite; a sincere one, cunningly evil; a simple
one, malicious; he who was once conscious of his own defects became
the most arrogant of men; he who was ready to do any good action, to
learn any new knowledge, became prone to every kind of ignorance and
ribaldry; he who had merely the makings of a rogue became the worst
possible of men."[444] Miracle-working was the universal means by which
the supremacy of faith was maintained. Momus therefore proposed to
send Orion upon the earth. "He can do miracles--can walk upon the waves
of the sea without sinking or wetting his feet; let us send him among
men to make them believe everything we would have them believe--that
black is white, that the human intellect is blind where it thinks
itself to see best; that what to reason appears excellent, good, best,
is vile, wicked, evil in the extreme; that nature is a strumpet, the
law of nature a ribaldry; that nature and divinity cannot work together
for one and the same good end; that the justice of the one is not
subordinate to that of the other, but that they are as contrary as
darkness and light."[445]
[Sidenote: Asinity.]
The attitude of mind which formed the ideal of the Church for its
members Bruno typified frequently enough, as we have seen, by the Ass,
after Cusanus' _Docta Ignorantia_ and Agrippa's praise of Asinity in
his work on _The Vanity of all Sciences_. But _they_ were in earnest:
Bruno bitterly ironical. In his _Cabala_ Asinity is given the two
places left vacant in the heavens by the council of the gods in the
_Spaccio_: the place of _Ursa Major_ is taken by Asinity in the
abstract, that of _Eridanus_ by Asinity in the concrete. The whole
work is in praise of "the pure goodness, royal sincerity, magnificent
majesty of ignorance, learned foolishness, divine Asinity."[446]
Asinity is in the sphere of practice as submission to authority in that
of speculation, or pedantry in that of teaching. Against all of these
Bruno casts the shafts of his irony, now broad and heavy, now fine,
light and piercing.[447] The list of virtues which Bruno gives as
adorning the soul of the renovated man does not present any novelty,
except perhaps in the order assigned to the different virtues.[448]
Along with each mythical figure of the constellations he names the
various vices that are expelled, and into the place of which the
virtues come. The Bear, the highest constellation in the heavens, is
replaced by Truth, the Dragon by Prudence, Cepheus by _Sophia_, or
Wisdom. The following table shows some of the virtues which occupy the
different posts vacated by the mythical beings of the heavens, and
their contrary vices.
+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------------------+
|/Constellation./ | /Virtue./ | /Vices./ |
+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------------------+
| 1. _Ursa_ | Truth |Deformity, Falsity, Defect, |
| | | Impossibility, Contingency, |
| | | Hypocrisy, |
| | | Imposture, Felony. |
| 2. _Ursa Major_ |The place is left| |
| | left vacant, to | |
| | be filled in | |
| | the satire of | |
| | the Cabala by | |
| | "_Asinity_ in | |
| | the abstract." | |
| 3. _Draco_ | Prudence. |Cunning, Craftiness, |
| | | Malice, Stupidity, Inertia, |
| | | Imprudence. |
| | | (Envy).[449] |
| 4. _Cepheus_ | Wisdom. |Sophistry, Ignorance (of |
| | | evil disposition), foolish |
| | | Faith (Hardness). |
| 5. _Bootes_ | Law. |Prevarication, Crime, |
| (Arctophylax) | | Excess, Exorbitance, |
| | | (Inconstancy). |
| 6. _Corona | Judgment. |Iniquity. |
| Borealis_ | | |
| 7. _Hercules_ | Courage. |Ferocity, Fury, Cruelty. |
| | | Slackness, Debility, |
| | | Pusillanimity (Violence). |
| 8. _Lyra_ |_Mnemosyne_, and |Ignorance, Inertia, |
| | the Nine | Bestiality (Conspiracy). |
| | Muses, her | |
| | daughters,--the | |
| | branches of | |
| | knowledge. | |
| 9. _Cygnus_ | Repentance. |Self-love, Uncleanness, |
| | | Filthiness, Immodesty, |
| | | Wantonness. |
|10. _Cassiopeia_ | Simplicity. |Boastfulness on the one |
| | | side, Dissimulation on |
| | | the other (Vanity). |
|11. _Perseus_ | Diligence or |Torpor, Idleness, Inertia, |
| | Solicitude. | Foolish Occupation, |
| | | Perturbation, Vain |
| | | solicitude. |
|12. _Triptolemus_| Humanity or |Misanthropy, Envy, |
| | Philanthropy. | Malignity. |
+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------------------+
There follow as "virtues":--Sagacity, judicious election or choice,
affability, magnanimity (_Aquila_); divine enthusiasm or rapture
(_Pegasus_); hopefulness, faith and sincerity (the _Triangle_);
virtuous emulation, tolerance, sociability (and friendship--the
_Pleiades_); love (peace and friendship--_Gemini_); conversion
or emendation, heroic generosity (or magnanimity, again--_Leo_);
continence, equity (and justice--_Libra_); sincerity (observance of
promises--_Scorpio_); contemplation, the love of solitude (freedom
of mind), temperance (_Aquarius_); just reserve and taciturnity,
tranquillity of mind, industry, prudent fear, vigilance for the state,
kindliness, liberality, judicious sagacity (_Hydra_); divine magic
(and soothsaying), abstinence (the _Cup_!), the divine parable (the
sacred mystery,--_Chiron_); sincere piety and wise religion (the
_Altar_); honour, glory, and, finally, health, security and repose, as
the due reward of the virtues, and remuneration for zealous work and
endurance.[450]
It will be seen that the list is redundant, and it is more so in the
text, where several virtues are usually given under each head. Several
of the names do not denote virtues in the ordinary sense (_e.g._
knowledge of magic, ability to interpret the divine parables): they are
merely qualities which it is desirable for the good man to have. Others
refer to qualities which could not be acquired by any one destitute
of them (_e.g._ hope, love, piety), while others represent rather the
outcome of the virtuous life than any one of its constituent elements,
_e.g._ Knowledge, Divine Enthusiasm, Contemplation, Honour. There
remain the familiar virtues of Greek philosophy:--Courage; prudence
and sagacity; temperance (continence and abstinence); wisdom (or the
love of truth); justice, including submission to law, active justice
or judgment, and equity; sincerity, with truthfulness, simplicity,
faith, the observance of promises; sociability and friendliness, with
humanity, affability, tolerance, kindliness; liberality; magnanimity
and heroic generosity; tranquillity or gentleness. More modern are
the virtues of solicitude, diligence or industry, of emulation, and
of love of solitude, or "Monachism." There is accordingly nothing of
value to be derived for systematic ethics from this or from any other
work of Bruno. It is in the digressions from the main argument that his
philosophy of practical life is revealed.[451]
[Sidenote: Peace and liberty.]
[Sidenote: Law]
[Sidenote: Judgment.]
The two things which seemed to Bruno for his time the most desirable
were _peace_ and _freedom_--freedom alike of thought and of speech. The
characteristics of the Church which he consistently condemned were on
the one hand its violence, the dissension and strife it stirred up, on
the other its tyranny over mind and tongue. Hence the aim of the moral
life, from the lower plane on which we stand in the _Spaccio_, is to
secure the prosperity of the state, the peaceful common life of its
members, and the avoidance of all interference with the individual,
except where the positive end, security, appears endangered. Of the
nine muses, the daughters of Mnemosyne,[452] _Ethica_ is at once the
last born and the most worthy. Her task is to institute religions,
to establish ceremonies, to posit laws, to execute judgments, with
prudence, sagacity, readiness, and generous philanthropy; to approve,
confirm, preserve, defend whatever is well instituted, established,
posited, executed; adapting, as far as may be, both passions and
actions to the worship of the gods, and the common life of men.--The
function of _Law_, the daughter of wisdom, is to prevent the powerful
from making undue use of their pre-eminence and strength, and in other
respects vigorously to protect the common life and civil intercourse
of men.[453] "The powerful are to be sustained by the weak, the feeble
are not to be oppressed by the strong, tyrants are to be deposed,
just governors and kings ordained and confirmed, republics fostered;
violence shall not tread reason under foot, ignorance not despise
knowledge, the poor shall be aided by the rich, virtues and studies
necessary or useful to the community be promoted, advanced, maintained.
No one is to be put into a place of power that is not superior in
merits, by force of virtue and talent, either in himself, which is
rare and almost impossible, or through communication with and counsel
of others, which is due, ordinary and necessary. The two hands by
which any law is strong to bind are _justice_ and _possibility_, one
moderated by the other, for although many things are possible that are
not just, nothing is just that is not possible. Whether it come from
heaven or from the earth, no institution or law ought to be approved
or accepted which does not tend to the highest end, viz. the direction
of our minds and reform of our natures so that they produce fruits
necessary or useful for human intercourse."[454] _Judgment_ shall make
a scale of virtues and of crimes, the greatest in either class being
that which affects the Republic as a whole; next that which affects
other individuals than the agent; a crime committed between two who
are in accord is hardly a crime, while there is no crime if the fault
remains in the individual--does not proceed to bad example or to bad
deed. _Repentance_ is to be approved by it, but not set upon the same
level as _innocence_;[455] _belief_ and _opinion_, but not placed so
high as _deeds_ and _work_; _confession_ and _admission_ of fault,
but not as _correction_ and _abstention_. It shall not place one who
to no purpose mortifies the flesh on a level with one who bridles his
spirit, nor compare one who is a useless solitary with another who is
in profitable intercourse[456] with his fellows, nor applaud so highly
one who, perhaps unnecessarily, subdues his desires, as another, who
refrains from evil-speaking and from evil-doing; not make so great a
triumph over one who has healed a base, useless cripple, worth little
if any more when whole than maimed, as over another who has liberated
his fatherland, or reformed a mind diseased.[457] The _Roman people_
was the type of the best-governed state, "more bridled and restrained
from the vices of incivility and barbarity, more refined and willing
for generous undertakings than any other; and as their law and religion
were, so were their customs and deeds, so their honour and happiness."
How different from the pedants of the Church, who flourish throughout
Europe: while saluting with peace they bring wherever they enter in the
sword of division, and the fire of dispersion; taking son from father,
neighbour from neighbour, citizen from fatherland, and causing other
divorces more abhorrent and contrary to all nature and law; calling
themselves ministers of one who raises the dead and heals the sick,
they more than all others on the earth are maimers of the sound, and
slayers of the living, not so much with fire and sword, as with the
tongue of malice.[458]
[Sidenote: The scales.]
Under the _Scales_, Bruno describes some of the reforms he believes
necessary: in courts, offices and honours are for the future to go
by merit; "in republics, the just are to preside, the wealthy to
contribute, the learned to teach, the prudent to guide, the brave to
fight, those that have judgment to counsel, those that have authority
to command; in states, the scales represent the keeping of contracts
of peace, confederations, leagues, the careful weighing of action
beforehand; in individuals the weighing of what each wishes with what
he knows, of what he knows with what he can, of what he wishes, knows,
and can with what he ought; of what he wishes, knows, can, and ought,
with what he is, does, has, and expects."[459]
[Sidenote: Sincerity.]
Underlying this cult of humanity one cannot but feel the robust
naturalism of the Renaissance, which in Bruno's mind is apart
altogether from the mystical exclusive intellectualism of his more
characteristic philosophy. It is with man as a natural being, living
out his earthly life, and gathering such fruits as may be of kindliness
and love from his fellow-creatures, that the practical philosophy
is concerned. The religion attacked was one that struck at the root
of this human love, and made of earth a purgatory for the sake of
the uncertain life to come. Hence the emphasis laid on _sincerity_,
_faithfulness_, or _truthfulness_, as high among the virtues. "Without
it every contract is uncertain and doubtful, all intercourse is
dissolved, all social life at an end." Bruno is as rigid as Kant in
regard to the keeping of faith; even promises made to the wicked
may not be broken. It was "a law of some Jew or Saracen, brutal and
barbarian, not of civilised and heroic Greek or Roman, that sometimes,
and with certain kinds of people, faith might be pledged for individual
gain, and for an opportunity of deception, making it the servant of
tyranny and treachery."[460]
The antipathy of Bruno towards the Jews is to be explained by the
same principle of social life and progress; it is not, as Lagarde
supposes,[461] an offspring of his hatred towards the Church, regarded
as a direct descendant of Judaism. So far as it is not an expression
of an unreasoning anti-Semitic wave of feeling, such as occasionally
overwhelms some of the European peoples, it may have had three
grounds: the reputed avarice of the Jew:[462] his exclusiveness,
unsociability;--"a race always base, servile, mercenary, solitary,
incommunicative, shunning intercourse with the Gentiles, whom they
brutally despise, and by whom in their turn, and with good reason,
they are contemned":[463]--or his religion, which appeared to Bruno
a corruption of the nobler Egyptian religion. Thus in _Spaccio_[464]
the punishment of the children for the sins of the fathers is said to
be found only among Barbarians, and first among the Jews, "a race so
pestilent, leprous, and generally pernicious that it should be effaced
from the earth."[465]
[Sidenote: Temperance.]
_Temperance_, as a virtue, is rather the peace of mind that goes with
civilisation--urbanity--than the more physical virtue: its opposites
are intemperance, excess, asperity, savagery, barbarity. "It is through
intemperance in sensual and in intellectual passions that families,
republics, civil societies, the world, are dissolved, disordered,
destroyed, swallowed up."[466] Again, Bruno's unorthodox standpoint
with regard to the vows of _chastity_ and of celibacy taken by nuns and
priests is part of a healthy reaction towards naturalism from the false
sentiment which condemned as unholy whatever pertained to the natural
man. The place of _Virgo_ is taken by chastity, continence, modesty,
shame; the contrasting vices being lust, incontinence, shamelessness.
"It is through these," Bruno adds, "that virginity becomes a virtue. In
itself it is neither virtue nor vice, implies no goodness, dignity, or
merit, and when it resists the command of nature it becomes a wrong,
an impotence, a folly, madness express; while if it is in compliance
with some urgent reason, it is called _continence_, and has the essence
of virtue, because it participates in that courage and contempt for
pleasure which is not vain or worthless, but benefits human intercourse
and brings honourable satisfaction to others."[467] "The laws of the
wise do not forbid love, but irrational love; the sycophancies of the
foolish prescribe, without reason, limits to reason, and condemn the
law of nature; the most corrupt of them call _it_ corrupt, because
by it they are not raised above nature to become heroic spirits,
but are depraved, contrary to nature and below all worth, to become
brutes."[468]
[Sidenote: The Golden Age.]
In the third dialogue of the _Spaccio_ is a digression on _Otium_,
Idleness, and the Golden Age, which had been brought into popularity
by the pastoral poem of Tasso, the _Aminta_, and its imitators (_e.g._
Guarini in the _Pastor Fido_). _Otium_ presses its claim to a place in
the heavens as being more truly a virtue than solicitude or strenuous
effort, to which the place of _Perseus_ had been given. Its chief
argument is that through it the golden age had been instituted and
maintained, by the law of idleness which is the law of nature, while
it was through solicitude, with its following of vainglory, contempt
of others, violence, oppression, torment, fear, and death, that the
age had departed. "All praise the fair age of gold, when I kept minds
quiet and peaceful, safe from this virtuous goddess of yours. For
their bodies, hunger was sufficient sauce to make a delicious and
satisfying repast out of acorns, apples, chestnuts, peaches, and roots,
which benign nature administered at a time when such food was the best
nourishment for them, gave them most pleasure, and kept them longest
in life, which the many artificial sauces that industry and zeal have
discovered cannot do."[469] Industry had introduced property, and
divided up not only the earth, which is given to all its children,
but also the sea, and perhaps the air as well; so that instead of
sufficiency for all there is too much for some and too little for
others. It had introduced an unnatural inequality, and confused
together peoples whom nature had intended to live apart, with the
consequence that the vices of one race were being implanted upon those
of others. The right of the stronger had taken the place of the law of
nature, violence that of the peace of nature, which are the law and
peace of God.
O bella etá de l'oro
Non gia perche di latte
Sen corse il fiume, et stilló mele il bosco.
* * * * *
Ma 'n primavera eterna
Ch' hora s' accende et verna
Rise di luce, et di sereno il cielo,
Ne porto peregrino
O' guerra, o merce a' l' altrui lidi il pino.
* * * * *
Ma legge aurea et felice
Che natura scolpi. S' ei piace, ei lice[470]
Bruno was no imperialist. Nature seemed to him to have fixed definite
boundaries to the extension of the different races, by which the
special genius of each was kept pure. In the _Cena_ (126. 9) Tiphys
and his successors (Columbus, Vespucci, and others are meant, although
not named) are said to have "discovered means of disturbing the peace
of peoples, violating the natural trend of the genius of countries,
confounding what foreseeing nature had distinguished, doubling,
through commerce, evil feelings, adding the vices of one race to those
of another, propagating new incitements, instruments, methods of
tyranny and assassination, which in time, by the natural vicissitude
of things, would recoil upon our own heads."[471] It was really, he
thought, for the advantage of men themselves that the world-regions
should be kept as distinct in their usages and customs as they are
physically distinct by the natural divisions of mountains and tracts of
sea. From region to region, vice and the poison of perverse laws and
religions, the materials of discord and extermination, were propagated
and disseminated to the suffocation of every good fruit; there were no
advantages which could compare with these evils.[472] It should be
remembered that the colonists of the day were the Spaniards, with the
corruption and cruelty of whose rule Italians were only too familiar;
and their misdeeds were far greater in the new world.
[Sidenote: Progress.]
[Sidenote: Evolution.]
[Sidenote: Man and the animals.]
The age of gold, however, of idleness, and peaceful happiness, was
far from Bruno's ideal; the reply of Momus to _Otium_ showed that it
had not made men virtuous in the golden age any more than the brutes
were virtuous now--that men were perhaps originally more stupid than
many of the latter; but in their emulation of divine actions and their
attempts to satisfy spiritual desires, difficulties had arisen and
needs sprung up; through these their minds were sharpened, industries
had been discovered, arts invented; and so from day to day out of the
depth of the human intellect necessity brought forth new and marvellous
inventions.[473] Thus more and more they advance, through pressing
and earnest occupation, from the bestial nature, and approximate more
and more nearly to the divine. That injustice and vice increase along
with industries is only a corollary of the increase of justice and of
virtue. If oxen or apes had as much virtue and spirit as man, they
would have the same apprehensions, the same passions, and the same
vices. So in men those that have in them somewhat of the pig nature, or
of the ass or ox nature, are certainly less wicked, not infected by so
criminal vices as more highly developed men might be; but they are not
for that more virtuous, unless the brutes also are more virtuous than
men, being infected with fewer vices.[474] In this generous conception
of human progress, and of its spur--solicitude, necessity, pain--Bruno
is quite at one with modern theories of human evolution; it can hardly
be said, however, that he anticipated the evolution theory so far as
it involves an identity of origin for human beings and lower animals.
The idea that different human beings express different animal types was
not a new one. It means in Bruno that such men have animal souls, but
this is not because their bodies have reverted to the animal type. It
is the soul that moulds the body and gives, in these cases, the animal
expression to the face--the look of wolf, or bear, or fox, or serpent.
There is no question of a _physical continuity_ between animal and man,
but there is a _psychical continuity_, since a soul which is that of
an animal in one generation may become that of a man in another.[475]
A much nearer approach to the evolution-theory is to be found in the
_Cabala_,[476] where it is said that if a serpent could have its
head moulded into that of a man, its tongue widened, its shoulders
broadened, arms and hands branching out from it, and, where the tail
now is, a pair of legs, it would think, look, breathe, speak, work,
and walk just as a man does, for it would be nothing but a man. Or if
the reverse process occurred, in a man (_involution_), in place of
talking he would hiss, in place of walking he would creep, in place of
building a palace he would hollow out a hiding-place for himself. This
is not, however, because the body of the one had been transformed into
that of the other animal, function following structure; the soul with
all its qualities is unchanged--it is one and the same in both; the
differences are only in the power of expression. A serpent or any other
animal might have a higher intelligence than man, yet remain inferior
to him through poverty of instruments. If man had not hands, but two
feet in their stead, however high his intelligence, family and social
life would have been no more enduring with him than with the horse,
the deer, or the pig; it would only have exposed him to greater danger
and more certain ruin; and, in consequence, there would have been
none of the institutions of doctrine, the inventions of discipline,
the congregations of citizens, the raising of edifices and other
things that represent human greatness and excellence, and make man
the invincible superior over all other species. All this is referred
not so much to his mind as to his hand, the organ of organs.[477] It
is in the development of the hand, also, that modern anthropology has
sought one of the chief conditions of human development. It is clear,
however, that in these theories there are two positions not distinctly
separated: one that the soul gives form to the body, the other that all
difference comes from the body, the soul remaining apart, and in its
essence untouched by the changes its body undergoes. We shall have to
return to this question in the following chapter.
[Sidenote: Riches and poverty.]
[Sidenote: Avarice.]
[Sidenote: Fortune.]
Another digression occurs under _Hercules_,[478] where Riches, Poverty,
and Fortune contend for the place of honour that is finally given to
Courage or Fortitude. Such personifications of the virtues had been
familiarised in Italian philosophy by Petrarca (_Remedium utriusque
fortunae_), but Bruno refers back to Crantor's discussion of the
relative value for the soul of Riches and other goods.[479] In our
dialogue Riches is decided to be neither good nor bad in itself; it may
be indifferently either, according to its possessor: therefore it is
to incur neither disgrace nor honour, neither be condemned to Hades,
nor raised up to Heaven, but to wander from place to place. It shall be
found by no one who has not first repented of his good mind and healthy
brain; he must give up, according to Momus, all thought of prudence,
"not trusting in Heaven, regarding not justice or injustice, honour or
shame, calm or storm, but committing all to chance. As a general rule
Riches are to go to the most insensate, the most foolish, careless,
silly--to beware of the wise as of fire. Poverty, on the other hand (in
inferior or corporeal goods), may be conjoined with riches in goods of
the mind, as riches in inferior goods may never be, for no one that is
wise or wishes to gain knowledge can ever achieve great things by their
means. To philosophy Riches are an impediment, while Poverty offers it
a safe and easy road. He will be great who in poverty is rich because
he is content; and he is a slave who in riches is poor because he has
not enough. Not he that has little but he that desires much is really
poor. The friends of _Poverty_ are open, the enemies of _Riches_ are
secret; the poor man by repressing desire may rival Jove in happiness;
the rich, ever spreading more and more widely the nets of cupidity,
is plunged more and more into depths of misery. _Avarice_ is the dark
side, the shadow, of both Riches and Poverty, ever fleeing Poverty and
pursuing Riches, but ever eluded by the latter, and ever caught by
the former; far from Poverty in reality, she is ever close by it in
imagination; it is this darkness or shadow that make Poverty and Riches
alike to be evil. One may be poor in virtue of _affect_ (feeling,
emotion) as well as in virtue of _effect_ (actual, material want).
_Fortune_ also is rejected, in spite of her claim to be absolutely
just; as all things are ultimately or really one, no part of the world,
she claims, should be treated as more worthy or unworthy than another,
and fortune regards all equally, or does not respect any particular
person more than another, which is really justice!
[Sidenote: Courage.]
[Sidenote: Simplicity.]
[Sidenote: Self-consciousness.]
To the place for which these have striven succeeds _Fortitude_, the
servant of the higher virtues: "Constant and brave must be he that
administers judgment, with prudence, by the law, and according to
truth. He shall be guided by the book in which is the catalogue of
the things the brave man ought not to fear, viz.: those which do not
make him worse, as hunger, nakedness, thirst, pain, poverty, solitude,
persecution, death; and that of other things which, as they make him
worse, must be avoided at all cost,--gross ignorance, injustice,
infidelity, lying, avarice, and the rest."[480] Beside _Fortitude_
may be placed _Simplicity_,[481] between the vicious extremes of
Boastfulness on the one hand and Dissimulation on the other, the latter
being the less hateful of the two: "sometimes even the gods must make
use of it, and to escape envy, reproach, outrage, Prudence is wont to
cover Truth with her vestments." Simplicity is pleasing to the gods,
for it has in a manner the likeness of the divine countenance, being
always the same and unconscious of itself. That which reflects upon
or is conscious of itself, makes itself in a sense to be many, to be
other and other, becoming both object and faculty, the knowing and the
knowable, whereas in the act of intelligence many things concur in
one. The most simple intelligence does not know itself, by reflection,
because it is absolute, pure light: and again it alone knows itself,
negatively, for it cannot be hidden.[482]
[Sidenote: Solicitude.]
[Sidenote: Truth.]
The transition from ordinary morality,--the virtue of the everyday
life of human society,--to the divine aspiration of the "heroic"
soul, is to be found in the virtue of _Solicitude_, and the primary
triad of _Truth_, _Prudence_, and _Wisdom_. On the feet of Solicitude
(Diligence, Endurance) "are the winged sandals of the divine impetus,
through which she leaves beneath her the vulgar good, and contemns the
soft caresses of pleasures, that, like insidious sirens, try to delay
her in the pursuit of the works she seeks." On labour and fatigue she
nurses the generous mind,--enables it not only to subdue itself, but to
attain the highest state--that of not feeling fatigue, or pain, when
fatigue or pain must be undergone. In noble work fatigue is pleasure
and not fatigue to itself, but in other than in such work or virtuous
activity, it is not pleasure to itself, but intolerable fatigue. "Be
with me" Solicitude concludes, "generous, heroic, anxious _Fear_,
stimulate me that I do not perish from the number of the illustrious
before I perish from that of the living. Before torpor or death take
from me my hands, grant that the glory of my works may not be in their
power to take. _Anxiety_, grant that the roof be finished before the
rain come: that the windows be whole before the winds of treacherous
and unquiet winter blow. _Memory_ of a well-spent life, thou shalt
make old age and death destroy my soul before they disturb it. Fear of
losing the glory acquired in my life shall make old age and death not
bitter to me, but dear and desirable." The end which this strenuous
virtue seeks is that of the intellectual triad placed in the highest
part of the heavens by the gods,--Truth, Prudence and Wisdom, which in
reality are one and the same.[483] Truth is the unity which stands
above the all of things, and the goodness which is pre-eminent over
all things, for being, goodness, and truth are one:--in other words,
it is the Eleatic One,--the "implicit universe,"--of the metaphysical
works.[484] It is _before_ things as cause and principle, and things
have dependence upon it: it is _in_ things, as their substance, and
through it things subsist: it is _after_ things, for through it things
are known without error. These three aspects represent metaphysical,
physical, and logical truth respectively. What is presented to our
senses and may be grasped by our intelligence, is not the highest
truth, but only the figure, image, resplendence, or appearance of it.
_Prudence_ also is both above and in us. It is above as Providence,
when it is also truth itself, and there Liberty, Necessity, Essence,
Entity, all are one, the Absolute. In us Prudence is the virtue of
the consultative and deliberative faculty,--"it is a principal form
of reason dealing with the universal and the particular,[485] has for
its maid-servant _dialectics_, and for guide acquired wisdom, vulgarly
called _metaphysics_, which deals with the universals of all things
that fall within human knowledge."[486] So too Wisdom, _Sophia_, is at
once supra-mundane,--when it is one with Providence itself, light and
eye in one,--and mundane, inferior, not truth itself, wisdom itself,
but participant in truth and in wisdom,--an eye that is illuminated by
a foreign light. The first is invisible, infigurable, incomprehensible;
the second is figured in the heavens, reflected in finite minds,
communicated by words. The earthly or inferior forms, however, as Bruno
makes clear, are of value only for the sake of the higher unity, to
attain which is the real end of the philosophic life. "He who pretends
to know what he does not know, says Wisdom, is a wanton Sophist: he who
denies knowing what he knows, is ungrateful to the Active Intelligence,
insults truth, and outrages me, as do all those who seek me--not for
myself, or for the supreme virtue and love of that divinity which
is above every Jupiter and every heaven,--but either to sell me for
money, honour, or other gain, or to be known rather than to know, or
to detract from and be able to destroy the happiness of others....
They that seek me for love of the supreme and first truth are wise,
and therefore blessed."[487] Bruno's _Summum Bonum_ is therefore
_knowledge_, an intellectual comprehension of the All of things, as it
is in the supreme Unity or source of the world. It is for the sake of
this end of the few, the wise, that the many, the vulgar, and foolish,
are to be kept at peace, in harmony with one another, following
obediently their higher guides in religion or in the state. There is
not in Bruno any more than in Spinoza any sense of the infinite worth,
or the infinite pitifulness of man as an earth-born creature of hopes
and fears, creeping towards the light, with the clogging darkness
behind, groping in childish terror and childish trust, for the hand of
a loving, human God. Therefore, although he lived in the midst of the
Reformation, its true meaning passed him by.