250 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



bound all the thought of his time even that thought 

 which most believed itself to be free. 



Aristotle's distinction of form and matter in nature, 

 of pure activity and pure passivity, had still sufficient 

 influence to render even in Bruno's time a purely 

 mechanical treatment of nature an impossibility. The 

 opposing school, the Neo-Platonism which attracted so 

 many minds of that period, because of its supposed incon- 

 sistency with Aristotle's system, was itself an offshoot, to 

 some extent, of that system, and was still less scientific in 

 its tendency. Mysticism, of which it was partly a cause 

 and partly an effect, lent its weight also against any 

 mechanical interpretation of nature. Thus even while 

 apparently governed by scientific aspiration, Bruno 

 gives a teleological scheme of the universe which 

 renders any scientific explanation of it impossible. Not 

 only, as we have seen, is the ether identified with the 

 first substance, spirit, or soul of the universe, but also 

 the greater and lesser organic bodies are governed each 

 by its individual soul, which is somehow distinguished 

 from the universal spirit, and within each of these is an 

 infinite number of smaller living bodies. In other 

 words, the atoms themselves are animated virtually, if 

 not actually. This animistic interpretation is in direct 

 conflict with the mechanical interpretation which science 

 has followed, and which it must continue to follow if 

 it is to produce any result. Thus, motion and the 

 changes of composition that derive from motion are 

 explained not by the mechanical impact of atoms and 

 bodies upon one another, but by the action of the 

 intrinsic soul in each being, which causes the motion of 

 the body, in accordance with its need and desire of self- 

 preservation. All motion, even the slightest, is thus 

 explained by a final cause. In the whole universe also, 



