Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/475

 462 CEITICAL NOTICES : evolution-theory for the emanation-theories of the Neo-Platonists. Here he was probably influenced by the Stoics, and by the earlier philosophers of Greece, whom he constantly cites. Indeed there was no form of speculative thought known to his age that was without influence on Bruno. This receptiveness is joined with an equally remarkable freedom. Of the submission of the spirit to external authority not a trace remains. His laudatory cita- tions from all sources philosophical and poetical, orthodox and heterodox, classical and biblical are simply the expression of an intellectual or aesthetic admiration. In a writer of the 16th century this is at first sufficiently surprising ; but it is character- istic of the spirit of the Eenaissance. The reactionary return of the past is illustrated when, in the next age, we find Campanella, some of whose speculations have so much affinity with Bruno's, laboriously establishing his points by quotations from the Fathers. We moderns, Prof. Carriere says in commenting on this, have no longer any conception of the despotism of authority that then reigned (ii. 240). It ought to be added that for a brief interval and by a small number of minds this despotism had been thrown off, though long efforts were required before the more widely extended emancipation of modern times could be attained and made practically secure. Whatever criticisms it may have been necessary to make on Prof. Carriere's general view of Bruno's doctrine, the great merits of his exposition are beyond dispute ; and much of the spirit of Bruno has passed into the translations of verse from the Frankfort books and the Eroici Furori. The life has of course been re-written so as to include the results of all the documents published since 1846. For illustration of the sources and his- torical relations of Bruno's single ideas Bartholmess ought still to be read ; while Prof. Carriere's treatment of the whole philo- sophical history of the age supplies fuller information as to his intellectual surroundings and immediate antecedents. The only fault of the chapter on Bruno as a literary and philosophical study is the tendency that has already been remarked to tone down some of his distinctive ideas. That this is not entirely without effect on the details may be briefly shown by comparison of the last pages of Prof. Carriere's systematic exposition of the philosophy (ii. 160-2) with the passage in the dedication of Dell' Infinite (Wagner, ii. 12-14) of which it is for the most part a somewhat condensed translation. Here is a portion of the passage as given by Prof. Carriere : " We fear not, therefore, that the multiplicity of things on this earth by the power of some black wandering demon, or by the anger of a thundering Jupiter, should be hurled out of this dome and shattered and dispersed beyond this vault of heaven or crumble to dust outside the starry mantle above us ; for nature cannot perish in essence, and vanishes only in appearance, like the air in a burst bubble. There is no succession of things without an eternal ground, a first and a last. There are no limits and walls that should confine the infinite and bound its fulness."