Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/739

 an akosmism or a naturalisation of God: in other words, Bruno started with nature and ended with Deity, but Spinoza began with Deity, his causa sui, substantia, or ens absolute infinitum, and reasoned down to nature. The antecedents of the one system were classical and philosophical but those of the other Semitic and religious. The historical factors of Bruno's thought were two, ancient or Neo-Platonic, and modern or scientific. His system, if system it can be called, may be described as an attempt to state and to articulate the ideas inherited by him in the terms of the universe which Copernicus had revealed.

He conceived this universe as infinite, and so rejected the ancient scholastic idea of a limited nature with its distinctions and divisions of place, its here and there, its above and below, its cycles and epicycles. But the universe, which has no centre and therefore no circumference, has yet a unity for consciousness, and wherever consciousness is its unity appears. And this unity signifies that order reigns in the universe; that its phenomena are connected; that individual things are yet not insulated; and this coherence implies that all are animated by a common life and moved by a common cause. And this cause must be as infinite as the universe; for an infinite effect can proceed only from an infinite cause, and such a cause can be worthily expressed only in such an effect. But there is no room for two infinities to exist at the same moment in the same place; and so the effect must be simply the body of the cause, the cause the soul of the effect. Hence the cause is immanent, not transcendent; matter is animated, the pregnant mother who bears and brings forth all forms and varieties of being. And the soul which animates matter and energises the whole is God; He is the natura naturans, Who is not above and not outside, but within and through, all things. He is the monad of monads, the spirit of spirits, carried so within that we cannot think ourselves without thinking Him.

There are, indeed, other expressions in Bruno; God is described as "the supersubstantial substance," as "the supernatural first principle," exalted far above nature, which is only a shadow of divine truth, speaking to us in parables. And this is possible, because in every single thing the whole is manifested, just as one picture reveals the artist's power and promise. But these things signify that he refused to conceive God as a mere physical force or material energy, and held, on the contrary, that He must be interpreted in the terms of mind or spirit. He hates, indeed, the notion that nature is an accident, or the result of voluntary action; and he labours to represent it as a necessity, seeking by a theory of emanation or instinctive action to reconcile the notions of necessity and God. Yet he does not conceive the best as already attained. Everything in nature strives to become better; everywhere instinct feels after the good, though higher than instinct is that which it seeks to become, the rational action that wills the best. Thought rises, like sense and instinct, from lower to higher forms. Heroic love, which desires the