296 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



mass of doctrine which suggested a miraculous or 

 supernatural interference with the order of nature, 

 for the benefit either of a particular person, or of a 

 particular race. That is the nerve, for example, of his 

 satire upon the popular idea of Providence in the 

 Spaccio. 1 There Mercury, on one of his visits to 

 Sophia, relates a number of things he has to see carried 

 out, by the order of Providence, about the little hamlet 

 of Cicala. They are none of the cleanest the number 

 of melons that are to ripen in Franzino's garden and 

 that are not to be gathered till over-ripe, of jujubes 

 that are to be picked from Giovanni Bruno's tree, that 

 are to fall to the earth, or that are to be eaten by 

 worms ; how Vasta, in curling the hair on her temples, 

 is to overheat the iron and burn fifty-seven of them, 

 but is not to scorch her head and so on. These 

 unpleasant details, however, are only a prelude to a 

 philosophical conception of the divine action. God, 

 it is said, does not provide for this and that in- 

 dividual as occasion arises. 2 He " does all things with- 

 out deliberation, anxiety, or perplexity : provides for 

 innumerable species and an infinite number of in- 

 dividuals, not in any order of succession, but at once 

 and all together : He is not like a finite agent, doing 

 things one by one, with many acts, an infinite number 

 of acts for an infinite number of things, but does 

 everything, past, present, and future, with one simple 

 and unique act." 3 So the knowledge of God is simple, 

 containing implicitly in itself all things that are or 

 happen in the extended universe (the explicate unity). 

 It is only to our confused vision that this divine 

 government does not appear just and holy. Mercury 

 advises Sophia to put more strength and warmth into 



1 Lag, 452. 3 ff. 2 Cf. Lucretius, ii. 1093 ** 3 Lag. 454. 6. 



