244 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



separately, but explaining all in each and each in all." 

 It is no part of the purpose of this book to go at 

 length into the mathematics of Bruno, which un- 

 fortunately have not yet met with a competent exposition. 

 Apart from the difficulty of the matter itself, the 

 poetical form and setting of his theorems is an additional 

 stumbling-block in the way of understanding. Bruno 

 was put to many shifts in order to give a poetical 

 colouring to the most prosaic of subjects. 



We have gone thus fully into the detail of Bruno's 

 atomic theory, more so perhaps than its intrinsic value 

 seems to demand, because this aspect of his doctrine is 

 the most important philosophically, and has exercised 

 the greatest influence upon the course of speculation. 

 It also provides most clearly an exemplification of the 

 return which was made, or thought to be made, by the 

 Renaissance to the older pre- Aristotelian philosophy and 

 science. The rejection by Aristotle and his scholastic 

 followers of the atomic theory of Leucippus and 

 Democritus had been based upon the identification of 

 space and body. The possibility of a vacuum in the 

 corporeal world was denied, on the ground that dis- 

 creteness was inconsistent with the continuity which 

 was felt to be a necessary condition of space. Accord- 

 ingly, the reintroduction of the atom was possible only 

 in one of two ways either by the distinction between 

 body and space, or by the application of the atomic 

 constitution of body to space itself. The former and 

 truer solution was not open to Bruno. His time was 

 still too much under the domination of Peripatetic 

 thought for him to be able to take the important step 

 of critically separating these two notions. The latter 



1 Cf. Art. ad-v. Math. ii. The figures there are slightly different, and named Figurae 

 Mentis, Intellectus, Amoris. 





