ii TRUTH, PRUDENCE, WISDOM 275 



Truth is the unity which stands above the all of 

 things, and the goodness which is pre-eminent over 

 all things, for being, goodness, and truth are one : in 

 other words, it is the Eleatic One, the " implicit 

 universe," of the metaphysical works. 1 It is before 

 things as cause and principle, and things have dependence 

 upon it : it is in things, as their substance, and through 

 it things subsist : it is after things, for through it 

 things are known without error. These three aspects 

 represent metaphysical, physical, and logical truth re- 

 spectively. What is presented to our senses and may 

 be grasped by our intelligence, is not the highest truth, 

 but only the figure, image, resplendence, or appearance 

 of it. Prudence also is both above and in us. It is 

 above as Providence, when it is also truth itself, and 

 there Liberty, Necessity, Essence, Entity, all are one, 

 the Absolute. In us Prudence is the virtue of the 

 consultative and deliberative faculty, " it is a principal 

 form of reason dealing with the universal and the 

 particular. 2 has for its maid-servant dialectics^ and for 

 guide acquired wisdom, vulgarly called metaphysics^ 

 which deals with the universals of all things that fall 

 within human knowledge." 3 So too Wisdom, Sophia, 

 is at once supra-mundane, when it is one with Provi- 

 dence itself, light and eye in one, and mundane, 

 inferior, not truth itself, wisdom itself, but participant 

 in truth and in wisdom, an eye that is illuminated by 

 a foreign light. The first is invisible, infigurable, 

 incomprehensible ; the second is figured in the heavens, 

 reflected in finite minds, communicated by words. The 

 earthly or inferior forms, however, as Bruno makes 

 clear, are of value only for the sake of the higher unity, 



1 Vide supra, ch. 2. and cf. Cabala, Lag. 578. 35. 

 2 A reminiscence of Aristotle's <f>p6vr)(Tis. 3 Lag. 458. 459. 



