1 40 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



Cusa, Paracelsus, Agrippa, are named, unjustly, as 

 having drawn their chief doctrines from this source : 

 Lefevre and Bouille 1 cited among his most recent 

 followers. The art was taught " by some divine 

 genius to a rude uncultured hermit, and although it 

 seems to issue from one too dense and stupid, yet it 

 excels the teaching of any famous Attic orator in this 

 kind, as a crop of wheat excels one of barley. It seemed 

 to us unfitting that this work, struggling upwards to 

 the light, against the envy of oppressing darkness, 

 should be suffered to perish and be lost." 2 Yet Bruno 

 by no means thought Lully's exposition perfect. Of 

 his own Lullian work, the De Compendiosa Architectural 

 he says that it " suffices for the understanding, estimating, 

 and prosecuting of the art of Lully, by those who are 

 skilled in the vulgar philosophy. For in it is expressed 

 in one whole, all that is in Lully's many ' Arts/ in 

 which he always seems to be saying the same thing ; 

 you have there all that is in the Ars Brevis y the Ars 

 Magna, and other books bearing the name of Arbor 

 Scientiae, Inventionis, Artes demons tr at ivae^ mixtionis 

 principiorum, Auditus cabalistici, or any other of that 

 kind, in which the poor fellow strove always to express 

 the same thing." 



It was the dream of universal knowledge that 

 attracted Bruno and others to Lullism,just as the dream 

 of universal power over nature attracted the greater 

 minds of the Renaissance to the pseudo-science of 

 Alchemy. The same idea is at the root of both. All 

 things are in all things, i.e. the one fundamental nature 

 is in each and every individual thing, therefore out of 

 any one may be produced any other. So in the idea of 



1 Faber Stapulensis (c. 1500), and Carolus Bovillus (c. 1470-1553). Both were 

 rather followers of Cusanus. 2 Op. Lot. ii. 2. 242. 3 ii. 2. 61. 



