i WORKS PUBLISHED AFTER 1592 115 



example, we have first the two triads Chaos, Orcus, Nox ; and 

 Pater, Intellectus Primus, Lux typifying the lowest and the highest 

 principles of things : the first three are Vacuum, Potency in 

 Appetite, and Matter ; the second three Mind or Reason, Under- 

 standing or Soul, and Love or Spirit. At the close of the Statuae 

 there follows the practical application of them to the scale of 

 Nature the outflow of the highest towards the lowest, the gradual 

 transition from lowest to highest ; an account of the thirty pre- 

 dicates of Substance and of " Nature " in the universal sense ; and a 

 logical or methodological illustration of the uses of the Art under 

 the headings of Definition, Verification, Demonstration. The 

 general purpose of the whole is to give an instrument for discovery 

 ("Invention"} of truth, after the model of the Lullian Art, just as 

 some of the earlier works (e.g. De Umbris] contain a similar instru- 

 ment for remembering knowledge acquired. 1 Unfortunately the 

 work is entirely marred by the artificial distinctions drawn, and the 

 tying down (or expansion) of the ideas treated therein to the thirty 

 fundamental notions and thirty applications of each. Thus subjects 

 and predicates are thirty in number each, and the modes of pre- 

 dication are in classes of fifteen. It is impossible not to agree with 

 Tocco's verdict, that " However fine the analysis employed in dis- 

 tinguishing the subtlest shades of concepts, however great the 

 number of elevated philosophical thoughts scattered throughout, 

 expounded with vigour and felicity of imagery, the tractate as a 

 whole has little value, just as the ars inventiva itself has little 

 more fit to blunt than to sharpen the inventive powers." 2 One 

 gladly re-echoes Bruno's words at the close : " Itaque gratias deo 

 agentes, Artem Inventivam per triginta statuas perfecimus" 



4. Animadversiones circa Lampaaem Lullianam (State Edition, vol. 

 ii. pt. 2). From the Augustan MSS., dated I3th March 1587. 

 Notes dictated in Wittenberg, on the Lullian art as a universal 

 instrument for the discovery of truth. 



5. Libri Physicorum Aristotelis, a clariss. Dn. D. jFordano Bruno 

 Nolano explanati. From two codices in the Erlangen Library, the 

 second of which is in the hand of Besler, and was written, pre- 

 sumably, at Helmstadt. The earlier MS. in a German handwriting 

 points to the commentaries having been dictated by Bruno during 



1 Vide Tocco, Of ere Inedite di G. B. Napoli, 1891. 2 Of. at. p. 77. 



