ii PHILOSOPHY OF CUSANUS 143 



hensible for human minds. So Bruno also taught. 

 The Cusan did not, however, reject on this account all 

 human knowledge. On the contrary, reason approxi- 

 mates ever more and more closely to the Divine mind, 

 as a polygon approaches more and more to the form of 

 a circle when the number of its sides is increased ; as it 

 never becomes an actual circle, so the Divine reason 

 may be known ever more and more truly through 

 human reason, but never quite truly. It is the know- 

 ledge of this our essential ignorance of the Divine that 

 brings us nearest to it. 1 Thus although from one 

 point of view all that is best in human experience may 

 be attributed to the Divine nature in a higher form 

 (positive theology}, from another every predicate, even 

 the highest, may be denied of it (negative theology), or 

 from still a third standpoint (mystical theology), con- 

 trary predicates equally hold or do not hold of the 

 Divine. This u coincidence of contraries," suggested 

 perhaps by the tradition of Heraclitus and Empedocles, 

 was in the Cusan a principle of knowledge merely. 

 The Divine was at once the greatest and the least ; 

 greatest because we could not imagine it added to, for 

 it was the all ; least because, being truly existent, we 

 could not imagine anything taken away from it. It is 

 owing to the limits of human thought, therefore, that God 

 is at once greatest and least, equal and unequal, many 

 and one ; God Himself is free from all contradiction, 

 the apparent contraries of our understanding are in Him 

 one and the same. So, to our imagination, the infinite 

 circle coincides with the infinite straight line, and a top 

 spinning with its fastest movement appears to stand 

 still. 



Bruno extols the greatness of this discovery " Con- 



1 Cf. Cusanus' De docta Igncrantia. 



