

V: 







i INDEPENDENCE OF MIND 101 



n? 



upward-looking. I Seeing, I do not pretend not to 

 see, nor fear to profess it openly ; and as there is con- 

 tinual war between light and darkness, knowledge and 

 ignorance, everywhere have I met with hatred, abuse, 

 clamour, insult (ay, not without risk to my life) from 

 the brute and stupid multitude ; but guided by the hand 

 of truth and the divine light, I have overcome_it/ T 

 that he really formed his theory by induction from 

 sense-data, or by deductive reasoning ; it was rather an 

 inspiration, or an intuition, springing from his tempera- 

 ment, to which optimism was as necessary as pessimism 

 repellent ; and there were numerous suggestions of it 

 both in Bruno's immediate predecessors, Copernicus 

 and the rest, and in earlier thinkers. Bruno himself 

 found it, as he thought, in the more ancient pre- ^/, ,/,- 

 Aristotelian philosophies, j But, however obtained, 

 this philosophy satisfied even his boundless enthusiasm, 

 and it became the chief motive of his life to convince 

 others of its truth, inspire them with the same enthusi- 

 asm, and endow them with the joyous freedom of life 

 of which it seemed to him to be the source. His 

 philosophy, in other words, became his religion, his 

 inward religion, Catholicism remaining a mere habit, 

 a set of formulae to which he was indifferent, to most 

 of which he was willing to subscribe because he had not 

 questioned them. 



His perfect self-confidence, and belief in the power Authority. 

 of human reason (especially his own reason) to penetrate 

 the mysteries of things, was accompanied by contempt 

 for the argument from authority in philosophy ^con- 

 tempt for humility, submission, obedience in the 



***^"^**'**"J^**w* >l|i-l **" 1 '* 11 *^^ 



speculative life. To believe with the many because 



~*imai uiin "T** 



they were many was the mark of a slave. Bruno, 

 before Bacon, before Descartes, insisted on the need of 





