2 9 o GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



intelligence As the height of our intelligence, so is the depth 

 of our love or passion ; the higher, i.e. the more 

 comprehensive, the object of knowledge, the more 

 absorbed become feelings and emotions in its con- 

 templation. 1 The most complete absorption is that of 

 the heroic mind in its infinite and all -comprehensive 

 object. That is not perfect divine heroic love which 

 feels the spur or the bridle, or regret or grief for any 

 other love ; but that which is entirely without sense or 

 feeling of other passions. It is so deep in its delight 

 that nothing can displease or divert it or cause it to 

 stumble in the least, and this is to reach the highest 

 blessedness in our present state to have pleasure 

 without any sense of pain. 2 The loss of sense is caused 

 by the absorption of the whole being in virtue, in the 

 truly good, and in felicity. Regulus, Lucretia, Socrates, 

 Anaxarchus, Scaevola, Codes, are instanced as noble 

 human beings who had no feeling or sense of the 

 greatest tortures, or what would be such to baser human 

 natures. 3 " A keener joy, or fear, or hope, faith, or 

 indignation, or contempt, turns the mind away from any 

 present, less vivid, passion." "One who is more 

 deeply moved by the sight of some other thing, does 

 not suffer the pangs of death. The truly wise and 

 virtuous man, not feeling pain, is perfectly happy, so 

 far as the present life admits, at least in the eye of 

 reason." 



1 Lag. 663. 36 ; cf. 666. 5. 2 P. 680. 2 ff. 



* Cf. also Slglllus Sigillorum (ii. 2. 192), where Polemon and Laurentius are 

 added to the above list. The highest kind of " contraction " or concentration is the 

 subject, viz. that which is proper to philosophers. Cf. also De Vinculis in genere 

 (vol. iii. p. 657). Diogenes the Cynic and Epicurus are placed side by side 

 as having held that they had attained the highest good in this life possible to 

 man, when they could keep the mind free from pain, fear, anger, or other 

 melancholy passions and preserve it in a certain heroic delight. By this con- 

 tempt of the ignoble things in this life, viz. those subject to change, they protested 

 that they had attained, even in this mortal body, to a life similar to that of the gods. 



