160 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



again and again throughout the works, and he believed 

 the removal from man of the fear of death to be one 

 of the greatest results of his teaching. "This spirit, 

 being persistent along with matter and these being 

 the one and the other indissoluble, it is impossible 

 that anything should in any respect see corruption or 

 come to death, in its substance, although in certain 

 accidents everything changes face, and passes now into 

 one composition, now into another, through now one 

 disposition, now another, leaving off or taking up 

 now this now that existence. Aristotelians, Platonists, 

 and other sophists have not understood what the sub- 

 stance of things is. In natural things that which they 

 call substance, apart from matter, is pure accident. 

 When we know what form really is, we know what is 

 life and what is death ; and, the vain and puerile fear 

 of the latter passing from us, we experience some of 

 that blessedness which our philosophy brings with it, 

 inasmuch as it lifts the dark veil of foolish sentiment 

 concerning Orcus and the insatiable Charon, that wrests 

 from us or empoisons all that is sweetest in our lives." l 

 There is a certain ambiguity in the description of 

 substance. Whether is the spiritual unity which is 

 placed over against matter itself substance, or is it 

 rather the particular souls which are part of it, and 

 which are thus immortal, changing only the form of 

 composition into which they enter ? In this dialogue 

 it seems Bruno is speaking only of the world-soul, 2 

 but in later works, especially in the Spaccio and De 

 Minimo, the substantiality and immortality of the 

 individual soul are categorically asserted. In the 



1 Lag. 202. 40. 



2 Cf. e.g. 238. 12, when the form or soul is said to be one in all things, and differ- 

 ences are said to arise from the dispositions of matter. 



