,io8 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



climate of different countries, by the constant, if 

 imperceptible, operation of natural causes (Cena, L. 190 

 ff.) : of the true nature of mountains, which are only 

 excrescences as compared with the real mountains, the 

 larger continents that slope upwards from the sea (e.g. 

 ,-'.' ' France) : of the true nature of comets, so far at least 

 as that they are perfectly natural bodies allied to 

 planets 1 (Infinit. L. 372 ; De Imm. iv. 9. 51); of the 

 identity of the matter of heavenly bodies with that of 

 the earth, the universality of movement (even the fixed 

 stars move, cf. Infinit., L. 350, 351, 400), the 

 possibility (he said rather the certainty} of other worlds 

 than our own being inhabited by beings similar to or 

 more highly developed than ourselves (L. 360. 27). 

 He " anticipated " also the idea of Lessing that myths 

 may contain foreshado wings of truth, and that they 

 \ should be interpreted not by their letter, as matters of 

 fact, but by their spirit, as indications of higher " truths 

 of reason." The Bible should be interpreted in the 

 same way : as Spinoza afterwards taught, so Bruno 

 held, that the Scriptures inculcated moral and practical 

 truths, to which their seemingly historical statements 



; were entirely subordinate. 



* 



Add to this fermenting thought, power of memory, 

 keenness and sureness of glance, and imaginative force, 

 the fact that Bruno had a deeply poetic nature, fiery, 

 vivid, passionate in defence of what seemed to him true, 

 equally passionate in hatred of what seemed to him 

 false, and the sources of his strength and weakness alike 

 become clear. The Italian writings remain, in spite of 

 their occasional obscurity, the most brilliant of philoso- 

 phical works in that language, while the Latin works 



1 In his De Orbitis Planetarum, iSoi, Hegel " demonstrated " that the number of 

 planets could not exceed seven. Before it appeared, Piazzi had discovered Ceres. 



