ioo GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



thought, for the new light of science, became a spectacle 

 for the gay and thoughtless sight-seers of the Roman 

 Jubilee year, to all of whom, one sad disciple excepted, 

 it was but another " damnable and obstinate heretic " 

 who was on this earth, for that brief spell, foretasting 

 his eternal doom. 



XIX 



It is not easy to characterise so complex a personality 

 as Bruno undoubtedly was. The fiery passionate blood 

 of the south ran in his veins, the joy of a strong-flow- 

 ing life was in his heart and brain. A child of Nature, 

 he was almost from the first, " cribbed, cabined, and 

 confined " by the stone walls of the cloister, as his 

 mind was hampered by the laws and dogmas of the 

 Church. 1 From Nature herself he drew his first lessons. 

 While his fellows taught that Nature was a thing of evil, 

 he learnt to love her, and to turn to her rather than to 

 the authority of man for instruction. He believed also, 

 as very few of his age did, in the power of human 

 thought to penetrate the secret nature of things, to 

 reach even to the deepest and highest reality, so far 

 as that can be known by another than itself. Trust- 

 ing to his own mind, to sense and reason, for his 

 theory of the world, he found himself opposed in all 

 essentials to the general thought of the time. 



His purpose from the first was to use his own eyes, 

 i to discover truth for himself, and to hold fast what- 



ever seemed to be right, irrespective of the opinions 

 ' \ ^ '\ of others. " From the beginning I was convinced 

 of the vanity of the cry which summons us to close 

 or lower the eyes that were given to us open and 



1 Cf. Her. Fur. 623. 2O ff. 





