ii PLATO AND PLOTINUS 131 



Egyptians, among whom Moses was brought up." 

 " In the first place it attributes to the first principle 

 a name ineffable, from which proceed, in the second 

 place, four names, afterwards resolved into twelve, 

 these into seventy-two, these into one hundred and forty- 

 four, etc., etc. By each name they name a god, an 

 angel, an intelligence, a power that presides over a 

 species of things, so the whole of divinity is reduced 

 back to one source, as all light is brought back to the 

 first, self-shining light ; and the images in the diverse, 

 innumerable mirrors, particular existences, are re- 

 ferred to one formal, 1 ideal source." 2 



As might be expected, Plato himself was best 

 known to the school through one of the least charac- 

 teristic of his works, the Timaeus, with its fanastic 

 cosmology and demonology, alongside of which was 

 placed the work of (the Pseudo-) Timaeus of Locris, a 

 later writing, based upon that of Plato, although pro- 

 fessing to belong to an earlier date : next to these in 

 importance came the Republic, with the theory of Ideas. 

 It was from the Chaldaeans, Egyptians, and Pythago- 



1 i.e. creative or original. 



2 Spaccio, Lag. 533. Bruno was probably acquainted with the De arte 

 cabbalistica (1517) of Reuchlin the Platonist, and with Pico of Mirandula's Caba- 

 listarum selectiora obscurioraque dogmata. Of the Cabala itself the first part (Creation) 

 was published in Hebrew at Mantua 1562, a translation into Latin at Basle 1587 : 

 the second part, The Book of Splendour, Hebrew, 1560, a translation, not, as it seems, 

 until the following century. It is unlikely that Bruno read Hebrew, although he 

 makes use of Hebrew letters among his symbols. But there were many writings on 

 the Cabala from which he could have derived his idea of their teaching e.g. 

 Agrippa's Occulta Philosophia, to which he was indebted for much of the De Monade. 

 The Cabala (i.e. '' traditional teaching ") is a collection of dogmas made about the 

 ninth and thirteenth centuries j it was certainly influenced by Neoplatonism, and 

 contained the interpretation of creation as emanation in graduated series of beings 

 from the one supreme Being, of the Logos or Divine Word as intermediary between 

 the Supreme and the lower beings (viz. the material world and all sensible objects) : 

 the elements of the Logos are the Sephiroth, the ten numbers of Pythagoras, corre- 

 sponding to the chief virtues or qualities ; next to these are the ideas or forms, then 

 the world-souls, and last of all material things. 



