Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/470

 M. CAKBIEKE, DIE REFORMATIONSZEIT. 457 the "shadow," the "simulacrum" or the "attribute" of the primal intellect, which may manifest itself by other attributes, all of which must be infinite and eternal. The possible existence of unknown attributes (on which, for the rest, Bruno does not dwell) again necessitates the distinction of God as absolute from the manifestation or " reflexion " of God in things. This may perhaps in one sense be called a doctrine of " tran- scendence," but it is not to be confounded with the theistic " transcendence," which implies a possible supernatural or miraculous. When Bruno speaks of a God who is known by supernatural light (as, for example, in Delia Causa, ed. Wagner, i. 275) it is as an object of faith, with which philosophy is not concerned ; and he sufficiently explains his attitude towards faith elsewhere. Although, however, there is no distinctively theistic element in Bruno, Prof. Carriere is right in insisting that his doctrine is not simply a naturalistic pantheism. Just as much as Spinoza, though in a different way, he seeks to overcome the dualism of nature and mind. And the conjecture that there is a development in his writings from a more naturalistic to a more spiritualistic doctrine is in itself plausible ; for, in a passage of Delia Causa, " Teofilo," the representative of Bruno, declares that he once inclined to the opinion of " Democritus and the Epicu- reans," who say that that which is not body is nothing, and who consequently will have it that matter alone is the substance of things and is also the divine nature, as was said by Avicebron in the Fons Vitce ; but that, having more maturely considered, he had found that it is necessary to recognise two kinds of sub- stance "matter" and "form" (Wagner, i. 251). Nevertheless there seems to be no evidence in Bruno's existing writings of such a development. Both sides of his doctrine are already clearly present in the De Umbris Idearum. The Eroici Furori, published in London, is chiefly expressive of its spiritualistic or TPlatonist side. And in the Frankfort books there are expressions of its naturalistic side identical with those of Delia Causa. The truth seems to be that before writing anything philoso- phical Bruno had arrived at the pantheistic doctrine of which an expression, as of something already familiar to him, is found in the dedication of his Italian comedy // Candelaio and in some elegiacs at the end of the De Umbris Idearum. In these con- densed expressions the stress is laid on the unity and permanence of substance and the eternity of vicissitude. Vicissitude, accord- ing to Bruno's philosophy, is possible only by the coincidence of contraries in the one Principle of things. The one Principle, the identity of unity and infinite number, becomes explicit in the productive energies and varied forms of nature. Nature produces the human mind, and the mind seeks to return, by intellectual concentration, to the unity of its principle. Thus the source of things and the end to which they aspire are one and the same. A more correct interpretation of the doctrine of which this is