Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/272

 260 THOMAS WHITTAKEE : mitted to live; but after these things have happened the world shall by some new revolution be restored to its ancient countenance. In all this it is clear that Bruno regarded those religions from which the pantheistic view of nature had not disap- peared as more favourable to the true philosophy than the monotheistic religions ; but these passages must not be understood as a direct attack on Judaism or Christianity. To aim directly at the subversion of the popular religion because it was unfavourable to the true philosophy would have been inconsistent with his view that the end of all religions is properly ethical. The difference between the positions he takes up when he is considering religions from the point of view of ethics and when he is considering them from the point of view of his philosophy of nature is seen in this : that the goddess of Wisdom is represented as ex- pecting the return of light in Europe after a long period of darkness, but as not having control over the vicissitudes by which the alternation of light and darkness is caused, while Judgment on the other hand is directly charged by the gods to destroy those forms of opinion that represent them as indif- ferent to the actions of men and caring only for their beliefs. Some have found in the Eroici Furori an expression of Bruno's esoteric religion. This term, however, does not seem to be strictly applicable here ; for Bruno always as- sociates religion with ethics, and he distinguishes the " in- finite aspiration " which is the subject of the Eroici Furori from "virtue" as defined by him in the same book. 1 His definition of virtue is founded on his theory of pleasure and pain. According to this theory all pleasure consists in a certain transition, and is pleasure only by contrast with a state of pain that has preceded it. Since in this transition, as in all motion, contraries coincide, since the end of one of two contrary states is the beginning of the other, there can be no pleasure without mixture of pain. At the highest point of pain or of pleasure the wise man always expects a reversal of his state. By considering the mutability of things he may at length arrive at indifference to all pleasures and pains. It is in this indifference that perfect virtue con- sists. 2 As the wise man is set free from subjection to 1 Part i., Dialogue 2. 2 Bruno does not deduce the particular virtues from his definition of the ideal virtue which is the result of the contemplation of philosophic truth. It has been shown by Hartung that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean has had more influence on the definitions of particular virtues in the Spaccio than any other general principle.