CHAPTER II 



THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 1 



IT is the object of this chapter to give some account of 

 the speculations on nature and spirit which occupied 

 Bruno during his first year in England, and which 

 show how hard he was striving to pierce through the 

 shell of mediaeval thought in which his mind was 

 encased. However fiercely he struggled to gain his 

 freedom, it was impossible that he should do so quite at 

 once. With all his contemporaries, he was imbued in 

 Aristotle's ways of thought, and the problems he set 

 himself to answer were largely determined for him by 

 Aristotle. The categories with which he wrought, 

 "principle," "cause," "form," "matter," "potency," 

 " act," " subject," were those of the Stagirite, and 

 were open, therefore, to the same charge of unfruitful- 

 ness. On the other hand, while the outward form of 

 Bruno's philosophy, and to a certain extent its matter 

 also, were essentially Aristotelian, the spirit which 

 infused it all was not so ; the emotion and enthusiasm 

 with which he wrote savoured rather of the fire of 

 Plato than of the logical mind of his successor ; and 

 throughout, the new conception of nature and of mind 

 which belongs to modern philosophy was struggling to 

 the light. 



1 De la Causa, etc. 

 153 



