ii ATOMISM AND MATHEMATICS 331 



Bruno, also, this universal animism is combined with an 

 atomistic theory of mechanical nature, and with the 

 belief that no physical phenomenon is understood until 

 it can be expressed in mathematical terms : " the more 

 our inquiry inclines to simple natures, the plainer and 

 clearer shall things become ; for we shall have to deal 

 with the simple instead of the manifold, the computable 

 instead of the surd, the definite and certain instead of 

 the vague, as in the elements of letters, and the notes 

 of harmonies, and an inquiry is best conducted when 

 the physical is defined by the mathematical." l The 

 last result of analysis is not, with either Bacon or Bruno, 

 the atom of the Epicurean physics, viz. an immutable 

 substance floating in empty space ; but Bacon' s particulae 

 verae are much more confusedly thought out than the 

 Italian's theory of a subtle ethereal matter diffused 

 throughout the universe, and of the denser atoms which 

 are in constant motion within it. There is, however, 

 the same perpetual flux and reflux in matter with Bacon 

 as with Bruno. 2 In the last resort, Bacon took refuge 

 in a hope of future explanation always, however, 

 by simple, positive, computable factors regarding 

 atoms and void, as on a par with materia prima, human 

 abstractions, entirely unfruitful, not light -bringing 

 " anticipations of nature." In regard to the relation 

 between the human understanding and nature, both had 

 absolute convictions of the power of the former, directed 

 by the rules of experience and limited by the data of 



natural dimension or extension (viz. Elasticity), the appetite to conjugate with 

 masses of its own kind, as the dense to the sphere of the earth, the rare to the sphere 

 of the sky." These are described as really "physical" kinds of motion, not, as 

 Aristotle's are, " logical " and " scholastical." Cf. the Natural History, E. and S. 

 ii. 600, 6oz j and Bruno, supra. 



1 Nov. Org. ii. 8. 



2 Vide Bacon's Essay on the Vicissitude of Things j and for his Atomism, the 

 Hi star ia Densi et Rari (E. and S. vol. ii.), and Cogit. de Natura Rerun (ib. vol. iii.). 



