i HIS CREED 109 



are a monument of learning (too often misapplied or 

 useless), of acute reasoning, and of poetic enthusiasm. 



XXI 



Bruno was far from being what we should now Religion, 

 call a Rationalist ; he felt that cold reason, mere ^ $ J 

 human logic alone, could not fathom the deepest nature 

 of things, which was God, but that this deepest 

 nature of things was apart from conditions of time 

 and space. Whatever occurred under these conditions, 

 whatever fell within the actual world, he claimed 

 for sense and reason, i.e. as a subject of natural explana- 

 tion, as accessible in all its aspects to human knowledge. 

 There are thus two very distinct sides to Bruno's 

 philosophical character : on the one side he is a fore- 

 runner of modern science, in his love of nature as 

 a whole, in his desire to understand it, in his applica- 

 tion of purely " empirical " methods to its analysis. To 

 this side belong his rejection of the orthodox dogmas 

 concerning the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception, 

 and the rest, his theory of an evolution of man, 

 his idea of a natural history of religions, his entire 

 rejection of authority however high as an argument 

 for or against a theory or view of nature. His own 

 religious creed was simple, and he believed it to be 

 the essence of what was true in all the jarring sects 

 that had separated man from man, nation from nation, 

 and race from race " the law of love which springs 

 not from the evil genius of any one race, but from 

 God the father of all, and is in harmony with universal 

 nature, which teaches a general love of man, that 

 we should love our enemies even, should not remain 



