THE HIGHER LIFE
We now turn to the higher moral life, which is at the same time the
religious life, of the heroic soul in its struggle towards perfection.
This perfection consists in comprehension of the world as infinitely
perfect, in the union with God as the source from which the world
flows, the spirit in which it lives, and in the Love of God as at once
infinite beauty and infinite goodness.
We have seen that there are to Bruno, as to Plato and to Aristotle,
two classes of men, the "vulgar" and the "heroic,"[488] the lower or
subject, and the upper or ruling classes: as in each of us there are
two principles, a higher, intellect or reason or mind, and a lower,
sense and sensual passion. The danger is as great to the world when the
lower class attempts to usurp the place of the higher, as it is to the
individual soul when passion overwhelms reason. The spread of pedantry,
in the universities and in the churches, greater in his time and more
menacing to human progress than it had ever been, was an illustration
to Bruno's eye of the results ensuing when lower minds tampered with
divine knowledge.[489]
The heroic soul is raised by the divine spirit within it out of the
turmoil of the constant change and vicissitude, to which the vulgar
soul is, in common with all living things, subjected. "The beginning,
middle, and end, birth, growth, and perfection of all earthly things
are from contraries, through contraries, in contraries, and to
contraries; and where there is contrariety, there is also action,
reaction, movement, diversity, multitude, order, degrees, succession,
change." "There is never any pleasure," we read elsewhere, "without
some bitterness;--nay, if there were not the bitter in things, there
would not be the pleasurable, for fatigue makes us to find pleasure in
repose, separation causes us to find joy in union, and so everywhere
we find that one contrary is the reason of another being desired and
pleasing:"[490] and so it is with pain. None, therefore, are ever
satisfied with their state, except the unfeeling or the foolish who
have no knowledge of their own ill, but enjoy the present without fear
of the future, can find rest in what is, and have no feeling or desire
for what might be: "in short have no sense of contrariety, which is
figured by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.[491]" Ignorance
is the mother of sensual happiness and joy; hence "the heroic love (in
its beginning) is a torment, for it does not rest in the present, as
does sensual love, but feels ambition, emulation, suspicious fear for
the future, the absent, the contrary." Yet the wise man is neither
happy nor miserable,--knowing that good and evil are alike relative,
alike fading and temporary things, he is neither dismayed nor elated,
but becomes continent in his inclinations, and temperate in his
pleasures. Pleasure is not really pleasure to him, for he has present
to him its ceasing; pain is not pain, for he has by force of thought
its termination before him: all mutable things therefore are to him as
things that are not.[492]
Owing to the ever-moving cycle of change, the ordinary soul must of
necessity fall back, in the course of the eternal process of its life,
to the lowest stage, however high in the scale it may have risen; but
this, although an evil for it, does not prejudice the whole, in which
all things work together for good. Some few, however, may escape this
danger, through becoming united with the eternal Mind or Source.[493]
They then cease to be subject to mutation,--Mind being immutable,--and
persist in eternal blessedness and love. For such favoured ones of
heaven, the greatest evils of this life are converted into goods,
correspondingly great. It is suffering that compels the labour and the
striving which lead most frequently to the glory of immortal splendour.
_Death in one age makes to live in all others._[494]
[Sidenote: Kinds of furor.]
There are, however, two kinds of _furori_ (or inspiration). "In some
there is only blindness, stupidity, unreasoning impulse; others consist
in a certain divine abstraction by which some men become better in fact
than ordinary men. These again are of two kinds, for some becoming
the habitation of gods or of divine spirits, say or do miraculous
things without themselves or others understanding the reason; these
for the most part are promoted to this state from one of rudeness and
ignorance: the divine sense and spirit enters into them as into a house
swept and garnished, they being void of any spirit or sense of their
own. Others being more habituated to or skilled in contemplation, and
having innate in them a lucid and intellectual spirit, are moved by an
internal impulse and natural fervour, with love of divinity, justice,
truth, glory; by the fire of desire, fanned by the breath of purpose,
they give edge to their senses, and in the sulphur of the thinking
faculty enkindle the light of reason, by which they see further than
ordinary men. These come in the end to speak and operate not as vases
or instruments, but as principal artificers and agents--the first
_have_ worth or dignity, the second _are_ worthy: or the first are
worthy as an ass that carries the sacraments, the second as a sacred
thing. In the first we see divinity in effect--we admire, adore, obey
it; in the second we see the excellence of our own humanity."[495]
[Sidenote: Ascent towards union with the divine.]
The steps towards the highest peak of human excellence are compared,
after Neoplatonist example, to the degrees in intensity of light, as
we proceed from darkness, in which it is entirely absent, to shadow,
then to the colours in their order from black to white, next to the
brightness diffused from polished or transparent bodies, the rays
outflowing from the sun, finally to the sun itself, in which light _is_
most truly and most vividly itself.[496] First of all it is needful for
the soul to turn to the light, "by act of _conversion_ to present the
light of intelligence to its eyes, so to regain its lost virtue, to
strengthen its sinews, to terrify and put to rout its enemies,"--the
lower, sense-feelings and passions. The conversion seems to arise as
by an act of grace from above; or, to express this in other words,
the soul or spirit tends towards that with which it has greatest
affinity, as the sun-flower tends towards the sun, and this affinity
in the human soul is Love.[497] The symbol of love is fire, for love
converts the object of love into the lover, as fire is of all elements
the most active, the most potent to transform others into itself.[498]
It is the divine in man that makes him or impels him to love God as He
is in reality, and the goal or aim of that love is to take God into
himself, to become one with God. No really divine or heroic love can
ever rest satisfied in anything but spiritual beauty. For there are
three kinds of love, as there are three kinds of Platonic rapture--the
contemplative, the practical, the idle or voluptuous. One from the
perception of corporeal form and beauty rises to the thought of the
spiritual and divine; another enjoys the vision of beauty for itself,
and for the grace of the spirit that is reflected in the grace of the
body; while still another enjoys only the material pleasure that beauty
provides; the last is the love of barbarous natures, incapable of
raising themselves to love that which is really worthy of love.[499]
[Sidenote: Beauty.]
To the two higher kinds of love correspond the two kinds of
beauty--_sensible_ and _intelligible_. That in the body which calls
forth love--its beauty--is a certain spirituality, which consists not
in definite dimensions, "nor in determinate colours or forms, but in
a certain harmony and consonance of members and colours." Corporeal
beauty is not, however, true or permanent beauty, and therefore cannot
call forth true or permanent love. The beauty of bodies is accidental,
"shadowy," and like other qualities is absorbed, altered, and decays
through the change of the subject-body, for the latter frequently from
beautiful becomes ugly, without any change taking place in the soul.
_Reason_, however, apprehends the more truly beautiful by conversion
to that which _makes_ beauty in body, the source of the beauty, and
that is the soul, which has so moulded and formed it. _Intellect_
rises still higher, sees that while the soul is incomparably beautiful
above the beauty of bodily things, it is not beautiful in itself, or
primitively, otherwise there could not exist the diversity that is
found in souls--some being wise, lovable, beautiful, others foolish,
hateful, ugly. Hence it must rise to that higher intelligence which of
itself is beautiful and of itself is good. That is the One, the Supreme
Captain, who when presented to the eyes of the thoughts militant,
illuminates them, encourages, strengthens, and leads them to victory
in the contempt of every other beauty, and repudiation of every other
good. Its presence, therefore, is that which enables us to overcome
every difficulty and conquer every force.[500] The Intelligence which
is the truest beauty attainable by us, is not yet Divinity itself, but
only the highest "intelligible species," or form, the highest Idea.
Divinity itself is the final, the most perfect object of thought and
love, not attainable in our present state, in which God cannot become
object to us, except through some image.[501] No image of the Divine,
however, even the most inadequate, can be abstracted or otherwise
derived by the senses, from corporeal beauty or excellence. Such can be
formed only by the intellect, and on such the human intellect feeds,
in this lower world, until it be allowed to behold with purer eyes the
beauty of divinity itself. In a fine simile Bruno describes how one
may come to some mansion, most exquisitely adorned, and as he goes
about observing now this, now that, is pleased and happy, filled with
delight and noble wonder. But if then he sees the living Lord of these
beautiful forms, of beauty incomparably greater, he lets go all care
or thought of them, intent wholly on this _one_, their source. Such
is the difference between the earthly state, when we see the divine
beauty in intelligible or abstract forms, derived from its effects,
its works, masterpieces, its shadows and similitudes, and the perfect
state, when we are allowed to behold it in its real presence.[502]
The "intelligible species" of this conception, which Bruno derives
from Neoplatonism, are simply the ideas of the "speculative sciences,"
which include, however, what would now be called the natural sciences.
Human Perfection consists in a form of knowledge, a system of
thought, by which the knower becomes one with the mind in which this
thought-system originated, the mind of God. Our knowledge--that is,
our perfection--can never, however, be complete, since the object,
the knowable, can never be perfectly comprehended. But it may be made
complete so far as our vision extends; and herein lies a saving clause
for the "ordinary" man. Few can reach the goal, but all may run; it
is enough that each do his best possible. The generous spirit prefers
to fail nobly in the pursuit of the highest rather than to succeed
in inferior and baser enterprises.[503] _Acteon_ typifies the human
intellect in its pursuit of the divine wisdom and capture of divine
beauty.[504] The wild beasts whom he tracks down are the "intelligible
species" or ideal forms, rarely sought, and rarely seen by those that
seek them. His dogs are the thoughts that issue outwards in search of
goodness, wisdom, beauty beyond himself. The fate of Acteon--his death
under the fangs of his own hounds--represents how the generous spirit,
coming into the presence of that highest beauty, is ravished out of
itself, is converted into the very prey which it pursued: itself is
now the prey of its own thoughts, for it has contracted divinity into
itself, has no longer to seek it outside of itself: as love converts
into the thing loved.[505] His death means that he ends his life
according to the world of folly, of sense, of blindness and of fancy,
only to commence the new intellectual life, the life of the gods.[506]
[Sidenote: The infinite process.]
The first step, however, in the desire of the infinitely beautiful
is but the beginning of an endless series; the heart goes out on an
endless quest, while the intellect cannot but follow. For the intellect
cannot rest in any definite or finite idea or object, but is driven
ever forwards towards the source of all ideas, the ocean of all truth
and goodness. Whatever form may be presented to it and comprehended by
it, it judges that there must be a greater above and beyond that. Hence
it is in constant discourse and movement, for whatever it possesses
is seen to be a _measured_ thing, and therefore cannot be sufficient
in itself, nor good in itself, nor beautiful in itself. It is not the
universe, not absolute Being, but Being "contracted" to this or that
nature, species, form, represented to the intellect, and presented to
the mind (_animo_). Thus always from beauty comprehended, and therefore
measured or limited,--the beautiful by participation,--we progress
towards that which is truly beautiful, beautiful without any limit or
margin.[507] On the other hand,[508] this infinite process is not in
vain, for it is not from imperfect to perfect, but a "circular movement
about the degrees of perfection, in order to arrive at the infinite
centre which is neither formed nor form." This paradox Tansillo (taking
the part of the Nolan) refuses to explain. It probably hints at the
idea, as familiar in Bruno as the infinite process itself, that in each
form or degree of perfection, the infinite with all its perfection,
is wholly present. It is a centre which is at the same time the
circumference.
In a subsequent dialogue[509] the object alike of intellectual pursuit
and of the heart's desire is described as a positive or "perfective"
infinite. The will cannot rest satisfied with a finite good; but
if there is other good beyond, desires it, seeks it, because, as
the common saying goes, the acme of one species is the foot and the
beginning of the next higher species. The highest good being infinite,
it is communicated infinitely, but also according to the nature of the
things to which it is communicated. Neither to the universe, _e.g._ as
regards mass and figure, nor to the intellect, nor to the heart, are
any definite limits fixed; yet the intellect and the heart may still
become perfect through or by their object, for that object is not
merely a "privative infinite[510]" or potentiality, but a perfective
or positive[511] infinite as being itself actuality and perfection.
When the intellect conceives truth, or light, the good, the beautiful,
within the whole capacity of its nature, and the soul drinks of the
divine nectar and of the source of eternal life, so much as its vessel
can hold, it is seen that the light (of truth) extends beyond, and
that the intellect may go on and on, penetrating more deeply into it.
The nectar and the source of living water are infinitely productive;
the soul may quench its thirst in it again and again.[512]
Thus the blessed or perfect life for Bruno meant a permanent,
continuous absorption of the individual soul in the divine goodness--a
permanence or eternity which was also one with the instant of time.
There was no greater value at any later moment than at the first union
of the soul with its divine object: the soul was thereby removed, once
for all, out of the constant flux of things, the incessant renewal and
rebirth of the soul throughout the ages, and lifted up into the calm of
the eternal and immutable.
[Sidenote: Soul and body.]
Even the heroic soul, however, is, as other souls, on the border line
between corporeal and incorporeal nature; in part it tends to rise
towards the upper world, in part inclines towards the lower world.
If sense ascends to imagination, imagination to reason, reason to
intellect, intellect to mind, then the soul is wholly converted into
God, and its dwelling-place is the intelligible world. In the contrary
direction it descends through conversion to the sensible world, by way
of intellect, reason, imagination, sense, and the vegetative faculty.
Mind (the highest faculty in Bruno's psychology:--the intuitive
perception of unity with the supreme ideal world) is oppressed by its
conjunction with the more material faculties of the soul; knowing of
a higher state to which the soul might rise, it despises the present
in favour of the future. If a brute had sense of the difference
between its condition and that of man, and between the baseness of its
state and the nobility of that of man, to which it did not feel it
impossible to rise, it would prefer death which should put it on the
way to that state, to life which held it fast in its present one. So
the soul, compelled by its loftier thoughts, as if dead to the body,
aspires upwards. Although living in the body, it "vegetates" there as
dead--is present in it so far as animation is concerned, but absent
from it in its proper action.[513]
Thus the heroic soul, although present in the body, is absent from it
with the better part of itself, and unites itself in an indissoluble
bond with divine things. It feels neither love nor hatred of mortal
things, considering itself too great to be the slave and servant of
its body: the latter it regards simply as a prison-house within which
its liberty is closed in; a snare that holds its wings entangled; a
chain that binds its hands; fetters that hold its feet fast; a veil
that bewilders its vision. Yet it is neither slave, nor captive, nor
entangled, nor chained, nor held fast, bound nor blind, for the body
cannot tyrannise over it further than itself allows. It has spirit
allotted to it proportionally to its nearness to divinity, since the
corporeal world and matter are subject to divinity and nature. So it
may make itself strong against fortune, magnanimous against injustice,
bold in face of poverty, disease, and persecution.[514]
[Sidenote: The soul.]
[Sidenote: Distraction of the body.]
The soul of man, in Bruno's psychology, as in Aristotle's, performs
a double function:--"the one is to vivify and actuate the body, and
the other to contemplate the higher world. It has a receptive faculty
towards the spiritual, an active faculty towards the corporeal. Body
is as dead, a thing privative towards the soul, which is its life and
perfection, and the soul is as dead, a thing privative to the higher
illuminating intelligence from which its intellect derives both its
tendency or nature, and its actual form, its realisation."[515] The
soul is not locally in the body, but is related to it as intrinsic
form, and as extrinsic giver of form: moulding the members, and giving
shape to the composite result from within and from without. "Body is in
soul, soul in mind, and mind either _is_, or is _in_ God, as Plotinus
said."[516] The dualism of nature and divinity, of corporeal and
spiritual, intellect and sense, permeates the ethical as it permeates
the earlier philosophical thought of Bruno: nowhere is the Neoplatonist
effort to overcome the dualism inherent both in Plato and in Aristotle
less effective than here. Thus the body remains--in spite of the
continuity seemingly maintained between the highest and the lowest
of the emanations from the supreme, or the identity asserted between
sense, imagination, reason, intellect,--the chief hindrance to the
aspiration of the soul. For the body is in continual movement, change,
alteration, and its faculties are conditioned by its inherent nature,
its operations by its faculties. "How then can immobility, subsistence,
entity, truth, be understood by that which is always different from
itself, always acting and becoming in different ways? What truth, what
representation can be depicted or impressed when the pupils of the eyes
are dispersed into water, the water into vapour, the vapour into flame,
the flame into air--that into other things and again other, the object
of sense and sense-knowledge passing endlessly through the infinite
cycle of changes?" Thought and passion take their character from their
object, or the sense-data on which they are based: but "that which
has always before it now one thing now another, now in one way now
in another, must necessarily be quite blind in regard to that beauty
which is always one, and in one manner, which is unity itself, entity,
identity."[517]
Into the very life of the generous soul there enter, accordingly, the
contrarieties by which on a lower plane the soul is governed:--"the
skilfulness and art of nature cause it to faint with desire for
that which destroys it, to be content in the midst of torment, to
be tormented in the midst of all content. For nothing derives from
principles of peace, but everything from contrary principles, through
the victory and dominance of one side of the contrariety. There is no
pleasure of generation on one side without the pain of corruption on
the other; and the things that are becoming and those that are decaying
are conjoined in one and the same composite being. The sense of joy
and the sense of sorrow go ever together; it is called joy rather than
sorrow if the former predominates and has greater force to solicit
the sense."[518] The life in death of the more divine soul is only an
extreme instance:--"it is the death of lovers from an extreme of joy,
the Cabalist _mors osculi_, and is at the same time eternal life,
such as man may have potentially, _in disposition_, in this world,
but actually, _in effect_, in eternity alone."[519] Again it is the
contrast of infinite desire and finite power:--"the weakness of the
human mind which is intent on its divine enterprise, and suddenly
is engulfed in the abyss of incomprehensible excellence. Sense and
imagination are confused and absorbed, the soul can neither go forward
nor backward, nor know where to turn, but loses its being just as a
drop of water vanishes in the sea, or a little vapour thins out and
loses its proper substance in the spacious immeasurable air."[520]
[Sidenote: Intelligence and love.]
As the height of our intelligence, so is the depth of our love or
passion; the higher, _i.e._ the more comprehensive, the object of
knowledge, the more absorbed become feelings and emotions in its
contemplation.[521] The most complete absorption is that of the heroic
mind in its infinite and all-comprehensive object. That is not perfect
divine heroic love which feels the spur or the bridle, or regret or
grief for any other love; but that which is entirely without sense or
feeling of other passions. It is so deep in its delight that nothing
can displease or divert it or cause it to stumble in the least, and
this is to reach the highest blessedness in our present state--to have
pleasure without any sense of pain.[522] The loss of sense is caused by
the absorption of the whole being in virtue, in the truly good, and in
felicity. Regulus, Lucretia, Socrates, Anaxarchus, Scaevola, Cocles,
are instanced as noble human beings who had no feeling or sense of the
greatest tortures, or what would be such to baser human natures.[523]
"A keener joy, or fear, or hope, faith, or indignation, or contempt,
turns the mind away from any present, less vivid, passion." "One who is
more deeply moved by the sight of some other thing, does not suffer the
pangs of death. The truly wise and virtuous man, not feeling pain, is
perfectly happy, so far as the present life admits, at least in the eye
of reason."
[Sidenote: Aspiration.]
In its aspiration the soul need not go beyond itself, need only enter
into the depths of its own mind (_mens_); "for this it is unnecessary
to open the eyes wide upon the heavens, to raise aloft the hands, to
wend one's way to the temple, to intone to the ears of idols, that one
may best be heard; rather we should enter into the innermost heart
of ourselves, for God is near to us, with us, within us, more truly
than we are in ourselves; being soul of souls, life of lives, essence
of essences." Divinity is not more nor less present in the other
worlds than in our own or in ourselves.[524] Therefore the heroic soul
withdraws from the many, neither hating them nor seeking to be like
them, associating only with those whom it may make better, or who
may make it better; but aiming ever to be self-sufficient in its own
wisdom. "The soul must come to the point when it no longer regards
but despises fatigue, and the more the contest of passions and vices
rages within, the struggle of vicious enemies without, the more it must
aspire and rise, and pass, with one breath (if it may be) over this
mountain of difficulty. Here there is no need for other arms or shield
than the grandeur of an invincible mind, the endurance of a spirit
which maintains the even tenor of its life, proceeds from knowledge,
and is regulated by the art of speculating upon things high and low,
divine and human, in which its highest good consists."[525]
[Sidenote: Love of God.]
To the love in the human soul there corresponds love in the divine
nature, because love is of the essence of divinity. It precedes, in
the mythology of the ancients, all the other gods. Hence there is a
natural instinct or tendency of all things towards the beautiful and
good. Love is that by virtue of which all things are produced, which
is in all things, and is the vigour of all things; by its guidance
souls rise to contemplation, by the power of flight it inspires,
the difficulties of nature are overcome, and men become united with
God.[526] To see God is to be seen by God; to be heard by divinity is
to hear the voice of divinity; to be favoured by its grace is the same
thing as offering oneself to it. The divine potency that is wholly
in everything does not offer nor withdraw itself except through the
conversion of the other, its object, to it, or aversion from it.[527]
To love God is to be loved by God. It is only through love, again,
that we can approach the inmost nature of God; we cannot reason or
even think of the divine without detracting from it rather than adding
to its glory.[528] To think of God is to limit Him, and, therefore,
as we have seen, every conception of Him is inadequate: the deepest,
the highest knowledge of divine things is by way of negation, never
by affirmation. For the divine beauty and divine goodness can never
fall within our understanding (our conceptual knowledge), but are
ever beyond and beyond in absolute incomprehensibility. No finite
intelligence ever perceives the substance of divinity, but always its
similitude, its image; even the highest intelligences are, in the
language of the schools, not _formally_, but only _denominatively_,
gods, or divine,--divinity and the divine beauty remaining one and
exalted above all things.[529] Being itself eternal, unchangeable, the
divine truth reveals itself to the few to whom it is revealed--not as
in the physical sciences, which are acquired by the natural light
of sense and reason, proceeding from the known to the unknown, in
successive stages, but--suddenly and at one stroke. There is no need
of expense of time, laborious study, active inquiry, to secure it; but
it enters into us as readily as the solar light is present, without
lapse of time to him who turns to it, and lays himself open to receive
it.[530] When the soul is thus wholly turned to God--to the Idea of
Ideas--the mind is lifted up to the unity above essence, and becomes
all love, all simplicity and unity. The soul is permeated at once with
the desire or love of the divine beauty in itself, "without similitude,
figure, image, or form"--a desire or love which is its own realisation.