Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/737

 seemed to forsake philosophy for science, but the science she cultivated was only disguised philosophy. A distinguished contemporary, a critic and a Platonist, was Francesco Patrizzi (1529-97), who agreed with the Telesian physics, but differed in his metaphysics: arguing that, as both the corporeal and spiritual light emanated from one source, each was the kin and correlate of the other, the effects being reduced to unity by the unity of the cause. Another and younger contemporary, who loved to think and speak of himself as Telesio's disciple, though he only saw the master after death, was Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639). His career has something of the tragedy which belongs to another and even more distinguished contemporary, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), for whom he wrote while suffering imprisonment a noble though unsuccessful Apology. Like Galilei, Campanella lived after Copernicus, and was attracted by his sublimer and vaster view of the universe; and, like Copernicus, he was accused of heresy in consequence, spending, partly on account of his religious and partly on account of his political views, twenty-seven years of his life in prison. He was at first, and he probably remained, in spite of all the persecutions he endured, a faithful Catholic. While he followed Telesio, he was yet a most independent disciple. His science evolved into a philosophy of existence, whose highest truth is the Deity, and whose fixed first principle is the thought, the "Notio abdita ïnnata" which is man. He was praised by Leibniz as one who soared to heaven, in contrast to Hobbes who grovelled upon the earth. Then as Telesio anticipated Bacon, Campanella anticipated Descartes. Though he does not use the formula he holds the principle of the " cogito ergo sum." Both are rooted in Augustine who said: "As for me, the most certain of all things is that I exist. Even if thou deniest this and sayest that I deceive myself, yet thou dost confess that I am, for if I do not live how could I deceive myself." One of the strangest things in connexion with the Catholic Campanella is the State, as described by him in his Cimtas Soils. It is an echo of the Platonic Republic, without private property or family, with sexual intercourse publicly regulated and children owned and educated by the State, without a priesthood or public and positive religion, with philosophers as rulers and workmen as the true nobility. It was a noble dream, and shows how little physical speculation had killed ethical passion; the best interpreted earth was empty till it was made the home of happy and contented men. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) is of all the thinkers of the Latin Renaissance the most modern; in him science becomes philosophical, and philosophy speaks the language of science, confronts, defines, and enlarges its problems. As a man he is passionate, explosive, impetuous, vain, intolerant, and indomitable; and where these qualities are allowed freely to mix and express themselves it is very difficult indeed to be just. He himself says that " if the first button of one's coat is wrongly buttoned all the rest will be crooked"; and the event which set his