II 



THE PRACTICAL LIFE 261 



of Greek philosophy : Courage ; prudence and sagacity; 

 temperance (continence and abstinence) ; wisdom (or 

 the love of truth) ; justice, including submission to 

 law, active justice or judgment, and equity ; sincerity, 

 with truthfulness, simplicity, faith, the observance of 

 promises ; sociability and friendliness, with humanity, 

 affability, tolerance, kindliness ; liberality ; magnanimity 

 and heroic generosity ; tranquillity or gentleness. More 

 modern are the virtues of solicitude, diligence or 

 industry, of emulation, and of love of solitude, or 

 " Monachism." There is accordingly nothing of value 

 to be derived for systematic ethics from this or from 

 any other work of Bruno. It is in the digressions from 

 the main argument that his philosophy of practical life 

 is revealed. 1 



The two things which seemed to Bruno for his time Peace and 

 the most desirable were peace and freedom freedom 

 alike of thought and of speech. The characteristics of 

 the Church which he consistently condemned were on 

 the one hand its violence, the dissension and strife it 

 stirred up, on the other its tyranny over mind and 

 tongue. Hence the aim of the moral life, from the 

 lower plane on which we stand in the Spaccio, is to 

 secure the prosperity of the state, the peaceful common 

 life of its members, and the avoidance of all interference 

 with the individual, except where the positive end, 

 security, appears endangered. Of the nine muses, the 

 daughters of Mnemosyne, 2 Ethica is at once the last 

 born and the most worthy. Her task is to institute 

 religions, to establish ceremonies, to posit laws, to 



1 In the De Lamp. Comb, are two lists of virtues and vices, after Lully ; with 

 each virtue are given the two vicious extremes, in Aristotelian fashion. (Op. Lac. 

 ii. 2. 257). 



2 Lag. 489. 1 8 (Sub Lyra). They are Arithmetics, Geometria, Musica, Logica, Poesia, 

 Aitrologia, Physica, Metaphysica, Etkica. 



