i WORKS PUBLISHED AFTER 1592 117 



principles of things light and fire, wind or air, water or vapour or 

 darkness, and earth or the dry, with their "forms," time and place 

 leaving the metaphysical and the immaterial principles (spirit 

 and soul) for consideration elsewhere. It is not of great scientific 

 value. Bruno makes use of abstract terms even more readily than 

 Aristotle (e.g. "lux seminaliter est ubiquc, et in tenebris" p. 514). 

 The chief aim of the work is to illustrate the magical applications 

 of the different elements 1 (cf. pp. 516, 525, etc.). Its value mainly 

 lies in the light it throws on Bruno's atomic theory, and on one or 

 two other minor points of his philosophy the harmony, co-ordina- 

 tion, and sympathy between all natural things, the doctrines of 

 liberty and necessity, etc. 



9. De Me die in a Lulliana, partim ex matkematicis, partim ex physicis 

 principiis educta. Written immediately after the above (de rerum 

 principiis], to which it occasionally refers : merely a collection of 

 abstracts from works of Lully on medicine, as a practical application 

 of the system of magic contained in the three previous writings. 

 It is accordingly of the astrological type of mediaeval medicine. 



10. De Vinculisin genere. NorofF MSS. A first sketch in Bruno's 

 own hand, dating probably from Frankfort ; and a later, much 

 more detailed, in Besler's, copied at Padua. It in a sense completes 

 the tractates on Magic, by dealing with "attraction" in general, of 

 which the attractions and sympathies of natural and mathematical 

 magic are special cases. As it stands, however (for neither sketch 

 is finished : Bruno's covers wider ground than Besler's, the latter 

 breaks off abruptly before the natural end is reached), it is a 

 psychological essay on the human passions, and more especially on 

 human love, from a purely objective, matter-of-fact standpoint. 

 In it the most grossly material and the highest spiritual sources of 

 love are placed side by side ; and to love, including self-love, are 

 reduced all passions, all effects, even hate, which is an outcome, a 

 reversion of love. 



1 Under the heading " Time " (de temper e] there is a short treatise on Astrology. 



