Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/258

246 THOMAS WHITTAKER : supposed to be characteristic of the earlier works is found in the later works also. Here, for example, is an expression of it from the Summa Terminorum metaphysicorum " Natura aut est Deus ipse, aut divina virtus in rebus ipsis manifestata". It is alluded to in the poem De Immenso as a doctrine that has constantly been held by the author. And the dialogues Degli eroici Furori, which belong to the London and not to the Frankfort period, are devoted chiefly to the expression of the other side of Bruno's doctrine. In these dialogues the aspiration of the mind towards absolute unity is des- cribed. It is said that the contemplation of this unity is what the Peripatetics have in view when they say that the highest happiness of man consists in perfection by the specu- lative sciences. The opinion of Plotinus is quoted with approval to the effect that " the mind " (as distinguished from " the soul ") " either is God or is in God ". Thus the contrast between the earlier and the later works again disap- pears. The explanation of its having been supposed to exist is probably that the poems of the Frankfort period, because of the resemblance of their subject-matter to that of the two best-known Italian works, have been compared with these to the exclusion of the others. When they are compared with the Italian works generally, it is seen that the less systematic mode of exposition adopted in them has made it possible to include elements that do not receive full expression in Delia Causa and Dell' Infinite, but which are more completely expressed in the Eroici Furori than anywhere else in Bruno's writings. The two sides of Bruno's doctrine are brought into rela- tion by means of the idea of perpetual transformation, of a descent of beings from unity on the one hand and an ascent towards it on the other. This idea is already present in the first of his philosophical works, De Umbris Idcarum (1582). In this book, indeed, most of his characteristic ideas are put forward quite distinctly though without the development which they afterwards received. The influence of Platonism is evident in the title " Of the Shadows of Ideas ". But Bruno distinguishes his own doctrine of transformation from the doctrine of emanation taught by the Neo-Platonists. He holds that as there is a continual passage from light to darkness by which the higher beings become lower, so also there is a continual passage in the opposite direction by which the lowest beings may gradually return to the highest state. Light is here the symbol of the region of ideas, of the absolute unity which alone truly exists. Darkness is merely the negation of light ;