234 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



that man is an animal, we must know both man and 

 animal, know that animal nature is in man, and other 

 things which, as means or circumstances, concur directly 

 or indirectly in this knowledge. External sense can 

 apprehend only one species or image of the object; 

 from the colour and figure to pass to its name, its 

 truth, its difference from other objects, belongs to a 

 judgment more inward faculty. Yet the latter is always based 



based upon i r i i 



sensation, upon sense ; a dear man can neither imagine nor dream 

 of sounds which he has never heard, nor a blind man 

 of colours and figures which he has never seen. 1 This 

 digression on the relativity of knowledge, and on the 

 different functions of sense and reason, in which Bruno 

 follows partly the teaching of Lucretius, partly the 

 Peripatetic doctrine of knowledge, shows that even if 

 a true or perfectly exact geometrical figure existed in 

 nature, none of the faculties with which we are endowed 

 could apprehend it, since it is not given by external 

 sense. 2 



NO exact- But in the second place 3 reason tells us that no 



ness or , i /* r 



similarity true circle, or other figure, is possible in nature : for 

 " there is in nature no similarity except in the atoms ; 

 a true circle would imply the equality of all lines from 

 the centre, but no two lines in nature are entirely and 

 in all respects equal to one another. The circle or 

 part of a circle which appears most perfect to us the 

 rainbow is an illusion of the senses, due to the 

 reflection of the light of the sun from the clouds ; so 

 the circles made by a stone falling into water cannot be 

 perfect, for this would mean that the stone itself is 

 perfectly spherical, that the water is everywhere of the 

 same density, that no wind is playing upon its sur- 

 face. Sound is not equally diffused owing to differ- 



1 De Min. bk. ii. ch. 3, pp. 191 ff. 2 P. 195. 20. 3 Ch. 4. 



