r DIFFICULTY : BRUNO'S MISSION 103 



strife are politeness itself. 1 Boundless was his confidence 

 in himself, in his power of discerning truth, and in his 

 ability to overcome all difficulties in the way of its 

 discovery. " Difficulty," he writes in the Cena, " is 

 ordained to check poltroons. Things ordinary and 

 easy are for the vulgar, for ordinary people. But rare, 

 heroic, divine men pass along this way of difficulty, that 

 necessity may be constrained to yield them the palm of 

 immortality. Although it may not be possible to come 

 so far as to gain the prize, run your race nevertheless, 

 do your hardest in what is of so great importance, strive 

 to your last breath. It is not only he who arrives 

 at the goal that is praised, but also whoever dies no 

 coward's or poltroon's death ; he casts the fault of his 

 loss and of his death upon the back of fate, and shows 

 the world that he has come to such an end by no defect 

 of himself, but by error of fortune." 2 



His outward fortunes left Bruno indifferent ; it was 

 the opposition to his philosophy that embittered him, 

 and excited the magnificent invectives scattered every- 

 where through his works. Of his own mission Bruno 

 had the highest conception : " The Nolan has set free 

 the human mind, and its knowledge, that was shut up 

 within the narrow prison-house of the atmosphere (the 

 troubled air), whence it could only with difficulty, as 

 through chinks, see the far distant stars ; its wings were 

 clipped, that it might not fly and pass through the veil 

 of clouds, and see that which is really to be found there. 

 . . . But he in the eye of sense and reason, with the 

 key of unwearied inquiry, has opened those prison- 

 doors of the truth which man might open, laid bare 

 nature that was covered over and veiled from sight, 



1 E.g. cf. De Umbris, p. 10 ff., and Magia Math., Op. Lot. iii. 5. 506. 

 2 Lag. 141. 5. 



