BRUNO. 8 1 



There is thus great room for difference of opinion 

 as to how far Bruno was an evolutionist in our 

 sense, and we find different authors taking different 

 standpoints according to their greater or less appre- 

 ciation of the essential elements of the Evolution 

 idea. Lasson holds that Bruno was a follower of 

 Empedocles, and therein a prophet of Darwinism, 

 in the capacity of perfection and the unity of devel- 

 opment of organic life. Krause, in his biography 

 of Erasmus Darwin, maintains that Bruno held 

 merely to the identity of the human and animal 

 soul, without actually conceiving their unity of 

 origin. Here enters Aristotelianism again in 

 Bruno's thought, for while he conceived all Evo- 

 lution as based on endless changes in matter, he 

 describes this movement simply as the outward 

 expression of an indwelling soul. This intelli- 

 gence is displayed in three grades, which corre- 

 spond with the steps in the 'scale of development, 

 because we are free to suppose that " to the sound 

 of the harp of the Universal Apollo (the World 

 Spirit), the lower organisms are called by stages 

 to higher, and the lower stages are connected by 

 intermediate forms with the higher. . . . Every 

 species is first shown in Nature before it passes 

 into life, thus each becomes the starting-point for 

 the next ; as in the expansion of the form of the 

 embryo there is an unbroken continuity into the 

 species of man or beast." At other points he 

 speaks as if this soul or intelligence was conceived 



