ii LUCRETIUS: NEOPLATONISM 127 



that anything but corporeal matter exists, with the 

 corollary that forms are merely accidental dispositions 

 of matter : Bruno confesses to have been at one time of 

 the same opinion, but he had been unable wholly to 

 reduce forms to matter, and therefore was compelled 

 to admit two kinds of substance, forms or ideas, and 

 matter or body, although these again were modes of 

 a still higher unity, the One. 1 " The deep thought 

 of the learned Lucretius " 2 early fascinated Bruno, Lucretius, 

 and Lucretius gave the trend not only to much of 

 his philosophy but also to the style of his writing. 

 The Latin poems were suggested by Lucretius' De 

 rerum natura^ to which they are far inferior, certainly, 

 in literary charm ; the philosophical system of the later 

 writer however is not only bolder and grander in itself, 

 but far more thoroughly worked out into the detail of 

 exposition and of criticism. In the Italian dialogues 

 also Lucretius is constantly quoted, frequently from 

 memory, as one may judge from the errors made. 



But in the first reaction against the now barren Neopiaton- 

 Peripatetic philosophy, the school to which Bruno 

 turned, with so many of his fellow-countrymen, was 

 that which nominally derived from Aristotle's immediate 

 predecessor. The revival of Platonism in its secondary 

 form of Neoplatonism was one of the most marked 

 traits of the time. In connection with the attempt to 

 unite the Greek and Latin Churches in 1438, a Greek 

 scholar came from Constantinople, one Georgius 

 Gemistus (Gemistus Plethon), to the court at 

 Florence, and there opened the minds of the Italians 

 to the beauty of the Platonic philosophy. Its mystical 

 world of ideas charmed all who were embued with the 

 new spirit romantic, adventurous, hopeful, self-con- 



1 Causa, Lag. 247. 2 Op. Lat. i. 3. 169. 



ism. 



