266 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



ance in sensual and in intellectual passions that families, 

 republics, civil societies, the world, are dissolved, dis- 

 ordered, destroyed, swallowed up." l Again, Bruno's 

 unorthodox standpoint with regard to the vows of chastity 

 and of celibacy taken by nuns and priests is part of a 

 healthy reaction towards naturalism from the false senti- 

 ment which condemned as unholy whatever pertained 

 to the natural man. The place of Virgo is taken by 

 chastity, continence, modesty, shame ; the contrasting 

 vices being lust, incontinence, shamelessness. " It is 

 through these," Bruno adds, " that virginity becomes a 

 virtue. In itself it is neither virtue nor vice, implies no 

 goodness, dignity, or merit, and when it resists the com- 

 mand of nature it becomes a wrong, an impotence, a 

 folly, madness express ; while if it is in compliance with 

 some urgent reason, it is called continence^ and has 

 the essence of virtue, because it participates in that 

 courage and contempt for pleasure which is not vain 

 or worthless, but benefits human intercourse and brings 

 honourable satisfaction to others." 2 " The laws of the 

 wise do not forbid love, but irrational love ; the syco- 

 phancies of the foolish prescribe, without reason, limits 

 to reason, and condemn the law of nature ; the most 

 corrupt of them call /'/ corrupt, because by it they are 

 not raised above nature to become heroic spirits, but are 

 depraved, contrary to nature and below all worth, to 

 become brutes." 3 



In the third dialogue of the Spaccio is a digression 



The on Otium, Idleness, and the Golden Age, which had 



Age. en been brought into popularity by the pastoral poem of 



Tasso, the Aminta, and its imitators (e.g. Guarini in the 



1 P. 54*. 18. 



2 Spaccio, p. 526. 1 1 j Clemens' translation (of. cit. p. 172) gives this saying an 

 unnecessarily sinister meaning. 



3 De Vinculh in genere (Op. Lot. iii. p. 697. 26). 



