308 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



idea that various men present in their expressions 

 various animal characters, which are an index to their 

 inward nature, and at the same time point to a transi- 

 tion from a previous or towards a future state. 1 And 

 again it was shown how animals differed from men not 

 necessarily in degree or quality of mind, but only in 

 the outward organism through which alone the mind 

 could express itself. It is clear then that man should 

 have no higher place than any other animal, should 

 stand no nearer God than they ; yet in a sense he does, 

 for the human state appears to be the only one from 

 which the soul may raise itself out of the incessant 

 flow of earthly vicissitude, and enjoy the calm of eternal 

 intellectual union with God. 2 The soul of any animal 

 (or plant?) may in time, however, take the body of a 

 man, when this outlet is given to it, just as that of a 

 man, should he refuse his opportunity, may sink back, 

 and indeed must sink back, to the animal state, in the 

 never-ceasing cycle of change. But what precisely is 

 this soul that passes from one body to another, perhaps 

 from one star to another ? In one passage we read 

 that as in corporeal matter the body of the ass does not 

 differ from that of the man, so in spiritual matter the 

 soul of the ass remains the same as that of the man ; 

 the soul of either is not different from that which is in 

 all things, i.e. the soul of the universe. 3 We should 

 then have to assume that it is matter^ not the form or 

 soul, that differentiates individuals. According to the 

 differences of the organised bodies are the souls that 

 are in them ; or, it is one and the same soul which 

 constitutes the vital and cognitive principle in different 



1 Cf. Spaccio, Lag. 411. 95 Her. Fur. 662. 22 j Cantus Circaeus (Op. Lot. ii. i) j 

 De Minima (i. 3. 207) ; De Monade (i. 2. 327), and iii. 261, 653 



2 Cf. Plato's Phaedrus, 61. 3 Cabala, Lag. 584. 



