148 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



of the understanding's activity ; irrational beings do 

 not number. But number is nothing but the unfolding 

 of the understanding. Without it the understanding 

 would have none of the results to which it attains. . . . 

 Nothing can exist before number, for all that goes 

 beyond the simplest unity is in its fashion a composite, 

 and, therefore, without number is unthinkable, for mul- 

 titude, difference, and relation of parts arise from 

 number." l In both again human knowledge proceeds 

 inversely as creation (or emanation) from number, the 

 many, back through successive grades of simplicity to 

 the one highest, most simple, God, in whom are all 

 things complicitly (without number). " What appears 

 to us as after another, successive, is by no means after 

 in Thy Thought, which is eternity itself. The single 

 thought, which is Thy word, embraces (complicat) all 

 and each in itself, Thy single word cannot be manifold, 

 opposite, changeable. ... In the eternity in which 

 Thou thinkest, coincides all the after another of time, 

 with the now of eternity. There is, therefore, no past 

 nor future where future and past coincide with the 

 present." 2 The merely logical understanding, that 

 which is based upon sense and requires sense-images 

 for its material, is inadequate to this highest knowledge, 

 gives approximation merely, and we are thrown back 

 upon mystical intuition on the one hand, reasoned faith 

 on the other, for our insight into the true nature of the 

 One and the All. 3 



of Other influences which gave direction to Bruno's 

 helm! 3 genius belong rather to physical science and pseudo- 

 science than to philosophical theory. Cornelius Agrippa 

 of Nettesheim (1487-1535), the scholarly adventurer, 



1 Cusanus, De Conjecturis, i. 4. 

 2 Id. De Vnione Dei, 10. 3 Id. De Venatione Sapient iae. 



