276 GIORDANO BRUNO PART n 



to attain which is the real end of the philosophic life. 

 " He who pretends to know what he does not know, 

 says Wisdom, is a wanton Sophist : he who denies 

 knowing what he knows, is ungrateful to the Active 

 Intelligence, insults truth, and outrages me, as do all 

 those who seek me not for myself, or for the supreme 

 virtue and love of that divinity which is above every 

 Jupiter and every heaven, but either to sell me for 

 money, honour, or other gain, or to be known rather 

 than to know, or to detract from and be able to destroy 

 the happiness of others. . . . They that seek me for 

 love of the supreme and first truth are wise, and there- 

 fore blessed." l Bruno's Summum Bonum is therefore 

 knowledge, an intellectual comprehension of the All of 

 things, as it is in the supreme Unity or source of the 

 world. It is for the sake of this end of the few, the 

 wise, that the many, the vulgar, and foolish, are to be 

 kept at peace, in harmony with one another, following 

 obediently their higher guides in religion or in the state. 

 There is not in Bruno any more than in Spinoza any 

 sense of the infinite worth, or the infinite pitifulness of 

 man as an earth-born creature of hopes and fears, 

 creeping towards the light, with the clogging darkness 

 behind, groping in childish terror and childish trust, for 

 the hand of a loving, human God. Therefore, although 

 he lived in the midst of the Reformation, its true mean- 

 ing passed him by. 



1 Lag. 459. 460. 



