ii ARISTOTLE 123 



in the Cena, " grow angry, and flush and quarrel about 

 Aristotle, yet do not understand even the meanings of 

 the titles of his books." l It was the influence of this 

 authority that Bruno, in the interests of true philosophy 

 and science, set to work to undermine. The charge 

 which he brought against Aristotle was the same as that 

 which Bacon afterwards brought that he attempted to 

 explain nature by logical categories. "It is not strange 

 that from impossible, logical, and imaginary distinctions 

 quite discordant with the truth of things, he infers an 

 infinite number of other untruths " (inconvenientta).' 2 

 " Matter is formless only to logical abstraction, as with 

 Aristotle, who is constantly dividing by reason what is 

 indivisible according to nature and truth: " 3 "a logical 

 intention (or concept) is made into a principle (or 

 element) of nature." However unfair and indeed 

 absurd the charge must appear when Aristotle is con- 

 sidered in his actual place within the development of 

 philosophy and science, and however far Bruno or Bacon 

 or any of the nature-philosophers of the Renaissance was 

 from avoiding the use in explanation of similar purely 

 logical or metaphysical conceptions, it was still a great 

 and necessary step to call attention to the need of 

 observation and experiment upon nature, and to the 

 value of mathematics as a method of calculating and 

 correlating the phenomena observed. This was a second 

 objection to Aristotle, that he despised mathematics, Aristotle's 

 " being too much of a logician (and stronger in criticism mithematf- 

 than in argument)," yet, Bruno adds, " when he sought cal method - 

 to explain any of the more profound facts of nature, 

 he was often driven by necessity to the repudiated 



1 Lag. 131. z Of. Lat. ii. z. 133. 3 Lag. 239. 



4 Ib. 252. Cf. Bacon's Nov. Org. i. 54: "Aristotle, who altogether enslaved 

 his natural Philosophy to his Logic, and so rendered it nearly useless and conten- 

 tious," (vide infra, ch. 9). 



