ii THE CAUSA 155 



consequently, by their greatness, their life and work, 

 they show forth and preach the majesty of this first 

 principle and cause." 1 Thus the starting-point of 

 Bruno's mature philosophy is nature as the vestige or 

 imprint of divinity, and divinity is considered only " as 

 nature itself or as reflected in nature " : the presence of 

 a transcendent principle above and beyond nature is, 

 indeed, premised to the discussion of the Causa, but it 

 is no longer admitted that its study falls within the 

 philosopher's scope, nor does it ever hamper or in any 

 way influence the course of the argument. So far from 

 that, we find, at the completion of the dialogue, that 

 we have arrived at an immanent principle or divinity, 

 which renders the transcendent superfluous. 



The purpose of the Causa, 2 Bruno's first purely 

 philosophical work, was to determine what are the 

 creative and constitutive principles of the natural 

 world, its efficient cause, its end, its form, its matter, 

 and its unity ; or, in other words, to lay down the 

 " foundations of knowledge," to give an outline- 

 picture of reality the details of which it was left to 

 experience and observation to fill in. Bruno begins 

 by laying down certain distinctions, which, however, 

 do not, in the end, prove very binding. First, a 

 principle (principio} is that which enters, intrin- Principle 

 sicaily, into the constitution of a thing, while a 

 cause concurs from without in its production ; thus, 

 matter and form, which are principles rather than 

 causes, are the elements of which a thing is composed 

 and into which it is resolved. A cause, on the other 

 hand, remains outside of the resultant object for ex- 

 ample, the efficient, creating cause, and the end or final 

 cause for which the thing is ordained. Principle is the 



1 Lag. 229. 2 De la Causa, principio et uno, 1584. 



