i2 4 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



mathematics." Many of Bruno's own mathematical 

 applications savour rather of Neopythagorean mysticism 

 than of the spirit of modern science, and his geometry 

 was far from Euclidean, but he at least made a serious 

 attempt to account for the building-up of bodies and 

 of the universe on mathematical principles. A third 

 objection, which again we find in Bacon, is as to 

 His treat- Aristotle's treatment of his predecessors. His deprecia- 



ment of the . r . . , i-i.^> t-v/> it 



earlier tion of them is condemned in the Causa: <{ Of all 

 :ks> philosophers I do not know one who founds more upon 

 imagination, or is further removed from nature than he : 

 and if sometimes what he says is excellent, we know 

 that it does not spring from his own principles, but is 

 always a proposition taken from other philosophers." 1 

 In another passage he is described as a " dry sophist, 

 aiming with malicious explanations and frivolous argu- 

 ments to pervert the opinions of the ancients, and to 

 oppose the truth, not so much perhaps through 

 imbecility of intelligence as through the influence of 

 envy and ambition." 2 So Bacon speaks of him as 

 imposing " innumerable fictions upon the nature of 

 things at his own will : being everywhere more anxious 

 as to how one should extricate oneself by an answer, and 

 how some positive reply in words should be made, than 

 as to the internal truth of things." 3 In particular it 

 was argued that Aristotle confused the various meanings 

 of the same name with one another : " He takes the 

 word vacuum in a sense in which no one has ever under- 

 stood it, building castles in the air, and then pulling 

 down his * vacuum/ but not that of any other who has 

 spoken of a vacuum or made use of the name. So he 

 acts in all other cases, those for example of * motion/ 



1 Lag. 256. Ib. 280. 



3 Nov. Org. i. 62. 



