ii THE TWOFOLD TRUTH 303 



condemns dogmatism in others ; philosophy or science 

 should be allowed to pursue its own course, irrespective 

 of religion, and untrammelled by the Church, so long 

 as it does not attack the authority of the Church, and 

 thereby weaken the forces that make for peace and 

 harmony among men. 1 Short of that, entire freedom 

 of thought should be allowed. Sometimes it might be 

 well that the wise and heroic, as well as the others, 

 should submit and humble the light of reason received 

 from God, " the mark of divinity hidden in the sub- 

 stance of our nature," if some higher light forbid or 

 warn. But, " In matters of philosophy at least, by 

 whose free altars I have taken refuge from the threaten- 

 ing waves, I shall listen only to those doctors who bid us 

 not close the eyes but open them as widely as we may." 2 

 It has been suggested that Bruno, like many others 

 who were unstable in the Church, made use of the 

 subterfuge of the twofold truth ; 3 in other words, that 

 he professed to disbelieve theologically what he accepted 

 as philosophical truth : or that he held one and the 

 same proposition to be true to sense and reason, i.e. to 

 harmonise with all other " natural " knowledge, and yet 

 to be false to faith, i.e. inconsistent with revealed truth. 

 But no theologian denied more strenuously than Bruno, 

 in spite of occasional lapses, the possibility of two 

 kinds of truth. There were indeed two kinds of 

 evidence : " one from the light of our own senses 

 and rational inference, such as we require in speculative 

 sciences, in the arts, and in practical life, where true 

 and false, good and evil, are apprehended by human 

 reason and natural light ; " the other, from light of a 

 foreign, namely, a divine source. For as God neither 



1 Cf. the passage in the Infinite referred to above, Lag. 317. n. 

 2 Op. Lot. i. 3. 6. 3 E.g. by Sigwart. Cf. supra, p. 75. 



