is in all; each moment is his perfect and unlimited activity. Single things are born and die. Intuition of this fact banishes pain. There is no death in reality. The soul (the Platonic eros) makes a long struggle to elevate itself to the infinite nature. The infinity of God assures the freedom of all. There is no inner compulsion and all movement is from the inner nature of things. While this is the highest necessity, it is, after all, the most perfect and only freedom.1 However, Bruno's conception of the divine infinity, as the divine beauty and artistic harmony of the living All, expressed more clearly than anything else the fundamental thought of the Renaissance. Poet as well as philosopher, he was consumed by a love for nature as a beautiful religious object. He revolted from all asceti- 、 cism and scholasticism. The "new world" in which he found himself was to him the emblem of God. The thought of that chief of Neo-Platonists, Plotinus, of the beauty of the universe had never been so sympathetically regarded as by the Renaissance; in the hands of Bruno this beauty became the manifestation of the divine Idea. Philosophy, æsthetics, and religion were identical to him. 1 Bruno had all the inconsistencies of the mystic. In his later writings, where he developed an individualism and a monadology, he frequently speaks of God as if He were a plural number of atoms or monads. Many of the conceptions which were later worked out by Leibnitz appear here: the monad as a mirror of the universe; the distinction of the three kinds of infinitesimals or points. Bruno had no theodicy (proof for the justice and goodness of God), for he did not think it necessary. Therefore he did not define in exact terms his conception of God. However, he had to distinguish between God and the world, or be open to the charge of atheism. This was the ground for his distinction between the universe and the world. The universe God nature= matter the principle immanent in the world. The world on the other hand the sum-total of natural objects. Bruno used two phrases which we shall find again in Spinoza: natura naturans is the animating principle in nature; natura naturata is the world as materialized forms or effects. = = MAP SHOWING THE BIRTHPLACES OF THE CHIEF (The names of the philosophers are given in brackets beneath the towns in which they were born) To express his thought he employed the usual NeoPlatonic symbol of the all-forming and all-animating light. Bruno was no patient student of natural phenomena as such, but a lover of the great illumination of nature facts by the great soul behind them. He was not interested in any single group of phenomena, as was Paracelsus; but he loved them all as a religion. Not only externally but internally is the universe an eternal harmony. When one gazes upon it with the enthusiasm of a poet, its apparent defects will vanish in the harmony of the whole. Man needs no special theology, for the world is perfect because it is the life of God. Bruno is a universalistic optimist and a mystic poet. Before_ this cosmic harmony man should never utter complaint, but should bow in reverence. True science is religion and morality. CHAPTER IV THE NATURAL SCIENCE PERIOD OF THE The Philosophers of the Natural Science Period. 1. Galileo, 1564-1641, and the group of scientists. 2. Bacon, 1561-1626. 3. Hobbes, 1588-1679. 4. The Rationalists. Descartes, 1596-1650. Leibnitz, 1646-1716. Countries other than Italy and Germany come upon the philosophic stage during the eighty-nine years of the period of teeming natural science. England is represented by Bacon and Hobbes, France by Descartes, Holland by the Jew, Spinoza, and, at the end of the period, Germany by Leibnitz. Still Italy yields the most influential thinker of them all- Galileo, who is the most prominent of a long series of astronomers coming from many countries. The most completely representative is Descartes, who was the founder of the Rationalistic school; for he was not only interested in mathematics itself, but in the application of mathematics to metaphysical questions. Neither as influential as Galileo, nor as comprehensive as Descartes, the Englishmen, Bacon and Hobbes, were nevertheless important as the forerunners of the English empirical school. Spinoza is more of a "world's philosopher" than any * Read Windelband, History of Philosophy, pp. 378-79. of the others, and he joins in his doctrine the scholasticism of the Middle Ages and the mathematics of the Renaissance; while Leibnitz occupies the position between the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. The Mathematical Astronomers. After enthusiastically canvassing the traditional theories of antiquity, the Humanists had been unable to find one which would explain and organize the newly accumulated materials of their "new world." But working in more or less narrow circles, natural science had already made a beginning in the midst of the Humanists. Beginning with Copernicus, an interest in physics and astronomy had been aroused, but in these early days it was more speculative than empirical. The speculations of the astronomers had but little influence upon their own time. However, when the ancient theories proved inadequate to explain the facts of the "new world," and especially when the empirical researches of Galileo confirmed the speculations of his predecessors, the Renaissance turned away from antiquity to Nature herself for an explanation. This was about the year 1600, the year of the beginning of the Natural Science Period. The most prominent of these astronomers were- Huyghens, Newton, 1629-1695, a Hollander. 1642-1722, an Englishman. While the greatest of these scientists is Newton, who belongs to the next period, the most influential is Galileo. Modern methods in science began with Galileo. |