134 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



order of thought or knowledge was one in kind, from 

 its lowest phase in sense, to its highest in the divine 

 ecstasy. In the Heroici Furori (as again in the post- 

 humous De Vinculis in generi) the Platonic doctrine of 

 the ascent to the ecstatic vision and love of divine 

 beauty, from sense-perception and the material feeling 

 for sensible beauty, is the essential topic throughout : 

 and in both Bruno is largely indebted for his symbolism 

 to the Neoplatonist mystics. 



The renewed passion for physical science brought 

 another school of philosophy into prominence the 

 Arabian. 1 The chief commentaries of this school on 

 Aristotle, as well as many of their original writings, 

 were translated and published before the middle of the 

 sixteenth century. Their interest being directed rather 

 towards the physical and metaphysical writings of the 

 master, than towards the logical, they helped to satisfy 

 and to foster the growing spirit of inquiry, and at the 

 same time to spread abroad a more exact knowledge of 

 the real Aristotle than was to be derived from the 

 Christian commentators, whose philosophy was much 

 less in sympathy with Aristotle's than was imagined. 

 The general trend of the Arabian school in meta- 

 physics was towards a modified Aristotelianism, leavened 

 by the Neoplatonist conception of the essential unity of 

 all being and all thought, particular things and particular 

 ideas being a free outflow from the One, into which they of 

 necessity return again without affecting its fundamental 

 nature. Bruno was familiar with Avicenna? Avempace* 

 Avicebronf Algazel? and above all Averroes. Avice- 



1 Vide Munk, Melanges de Philosophic juive e t Arabe, Paris, 1589 j and Dictionnaire 

 des sciences Philosophiques, Paris, 1844-52. 



2 Ibn Sina, 980-1037 A.D. ; cf. Op. Lot. iii. 458, 475. 



3 Op. Lat. i. I. 223, called by Bruno Hispanus, but really an Arabian, Ibn Badja, 

 d. 1138. 4 A Jew, Ibn Gebirol, fl. 1050. 5 Al Ghazzali, 1059-1111 A.D. 



