196 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



on the other infinite desire of being realised ; the 

 result must be perfect satisfaction and perfect good. 

 Abstract J n order to understand how far Bruno has moved at 



this, the final stage of his philosophy, from the 

 Neoplatonism of its beginnings, the ninth chapter of the 

 last book of the De Immenso must be taken into 

 account. 1 It is interesting in view of the relation of 

 Spinoza to Bruno, as well as of the consistency of 

 Bruno's own thought. In it the existence of abstract 

 ideal types is contended against, " Nowhere is essence 

 apart from existence ; nature is nothing but the 

 virtue that is immanent (ins i to) in things, and the law 

 by which all things fulfil their course. There is no 

 abstract that subsists in logical reason but not in 

 reality, no justice by which things are just, no goodness 

 through which they are good, wisdom through which 

 they are wise, nor are deltas and feritas the ground of 

 existence of gods and beasts : nor is it light by which 

 shining bodies shine, nor shadow by which folly, 

 darkness, fictions, nonsense come to exist." The 

 student of nature must not suppose form and matter, 

 light and colour and motion, to exist separately by 

 themselves because they may be conceived or defined 

 by themselves. There is then no archetypal world to 

 which the Creator looked in fabricating this of ours, 

 but nature produces all things from within itself, 

 without thought or hesitation. " Study to know 

 where Nature and God are, for there are the causes of 

 things, the life of principles, the source of elements, the 

 seeds of the things that are to be brought forth, the 

 typal forms, active potency producing all things, . . . 

 there is also matter, the underlying passive potency, 

 abiding, present, ever coming together into one as it 



1 Op. Lat. vol. i. pt. 2. p. 310. 



