ii THE EVILS OF COMMERCE 269 



these evils. 1 It should be remembered that the colonists 

 of the day were the Spaniards, with the corruption and 

 cruelty of whose rule Italians were only too familiar ; 

 and their misdeeds were far greater in the new world. 



The age of gold, however, of idleness, and peaceful Progress. 



happiness, was far from Bruno's ideal ; the reply of 



Momus to Otium showed that it had not made men 



virtuous in the golden age any more than the brutes 



were virtuous now that men were perhaps originally 



more stupid than many of the latter; but in their 



emulation of divine actions and their attempts to 



satisfy spiritual desires, difficulties had arisen and needs 



sprung up ; through these their minds were sharpened, 



industries had been discovered, arts invented ; and so 



from day to day out of the depth of the human 



intellect necessity brought forth new and marvellous 



inventions. 2 Thus more and more they advance, 



through pressing and earnest occupation, from the 



bestial nature, and approximate more and more nearly 



to the divine. That injustice and vice increase along 



with industries is only a corollary of the increase of 



justice and of virtue. If oxen or apes had as much 



virtue and spirit as man, they would have the same 



apprehensions, the same passions, and the same vices. 



So in men those that have in them somewhat of the 



pig nature, or of the ass or ox nature, are certainly 



less wicked, not infected by so criminal vices as more 



highly developed men might be ; but they are not for 



that more virtuous, unless the brutes also are more 



virtuous than men, being infected with fewer vices. 3 



In this generous conception of human progress, and of 



its spur solicitude, necessity, pain Bruno is quite at 



one with modern theories of human evolution ; it can 



1 Cf. De Imm. vii. 16 (Op. Lat. i. 2. p. 278). 2 Lag. p. 507. 6. 3 P. 507. 14. 



