82 THEOLOGIANS AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS. 



in a dualistic sense, for he says : " The perfecting 

 power of intelligence does not rest upon another 

 or upon more, but upon the whole." 



In Geology, Bruno appears as a uniformitarian, 

 and describes the gradual changes in Nature, not 

 as cataclysmal, but as following their natural course. 

 Thus, he argues against the short six thousand 

 years of the Biblical chronology. This was also 

 not original with Bruno ; for he was preceded in 

 the tenth century by Arabic geologists, as seen 

 in the quotation from Avicenna. It is highly prob- 

 able that Bruno drew upon the Arabs for many 

 other of his scientific ideas. 



Finally we may quote a passage from Bruno's 

 satire, the Cabala of the Pegasan Horse, pub- 

 lished in 1585, a dialogue between Sabasto and 

 Onorio, in which Bruno affirms the Oriental doc- 

 trine of Metempsychosis, and explains his views 

 of the development of organic life. He first com- 

 pares the animal and human intellect and contrasts 

 monkeys with men in their absence of tool-bearing 

 hands. Speaking of the tongue of the parrot as 

 fitted to utter any sort of sound, he says that the 

 parrot lacks perception and memory equal and akin 

 to man's ; then he touches upon the instincts of 

 the parrot and opposes the idea that they are alto- 

 gether different from the intelligence of man. Then 

 he passes on to say that the lower animals are 

 directed by an unerring intelligence, yet this is not 

 identical with the efficient universal intelligence 



