Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/476

 M. CARRIERS, DIE REFORMATIONSZEIT. 463 The sentences to which these correspond in Bruno are as follows : " We fear not that that which is accumulated in this world, by the vehemence of some wandering spirit, or by the anger of some thundering Jupiter, should be dispersed out of this vault or dome of heaven, or shaken and scattered as in dust out of this starry mantle, and the nature of things not otherwise become void in substance than to the appearance of our eyes that air which was comprised within the concavity of a bubble is dissipated ; for there is known to us a world in which for ever thing succeeds thing, neither is there any ultimate profound, from whence, as from the hand of the smith, they should irreparably vanish into nothingness. There are no limits, terms, margins, walls, that should defraud us or withdraw from us the infinite fulness of things." The remainder of the passage concludes from the infinite power of God that the universe, or eternal image of God, must be infinite also, on the pantheistic ground that in God will and power, act and possibility, coincide. The last sentences are thus expounded by Prof. Carriere : " Not vain is the power of the understanding to add space to space, unity to unity, mass to mass, number to number ; thereby it breaks the chain of the finite and raises itself to the freedom of the infinite ; thereby it is loosed from the poverty and exults in the riches of life, and no Pluto can hold it imprisoned, no sphere bound it. Nature is an all-fertile mother, and God is not envious but is love itself" In Bruno they are as follows : " So that not vain is this power of intellect which ever will and can add space to space, mass to mass, unity to unity, number to number, by that science that unbinds us from the chains of a most narrow and promotes us to the liberty of a most august empire ; that takes us from the believed poverty and narrowness to the innumerable riches of so great a space, of so worthy a field, of so many cultivated worlds ; and lets not circle of horizon counterfeited by the eye on earth and feigned by fantasy in the spacious ether imprison our spirit under the ward of a Pluto and the compassion of a Jove. We are exempt from the care of so rich a possessor and then so parsi- monious, sordid and avaricious a giver, and from the nurture of a so fertile and all-pregnant and then so meanly and miserably parturient Nature." Now, of course, as Prof. Carriere is not ostensibly translating from DelV Infinito, but is using it as material for his own inter- pretation, he has a right to make alterations. The words omitted from the passages just quoted, and a sentence praising " Democritus and Epicurus," which is omitted from the inter- mediate passage, may seem to Prof. Carriere incongruous or not characteristic ; as, perhaps, according to his theistic interpreta- tion of Bruno, they are. And he could find support for the words substituted. The reason why his variations in this particular case have been cited is to indicate exactly where he may seem to readers who do not approach the subject with his pre-supposi- tions to fall short of perfect appreciation of Bruno's way of thinking. Within the limits imposed by the desire to approxi- mate the philosopher of Nola to the Christian mystics, neither his general interpretation nor his detailed exposition could be better. THOMAS WHITTAKEK.