332 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



sensation, to comprehend the latter ; but while Bruno 

 saw in the negative limits of the understanding a posi- 

 tive hint of a reality beyond, the more careful Bacon 

 saw only a further ground for falling back from reason 

 upon faith. Thus the incapacity of the mind to rest 

 in any finite space, without thinking of a space beyond 

 that and beyond, or of imagining a body than which 

 none could be greater, was proof to Bruno that space 

 itself was infinite, and that body or matter was immea- 

 surable, i.e. infinite in extent and in quantity. Bacon 

 also makes use of this impossibility in the human in- 

 tellect of resting, acquiescing, at any point as a finality. 

 " It must ever pass beyond but it is in vain. Thus it 

 is unthinkable that there should be any extreme or 

 outermost rim to the world, our mind always of neces- 

 sity thinks there may be something beyond : nor can 

 we think how eternity could have flowed down to this 

 day : the distinction between an infinity a parte ante 

 and an infinity a parte post cannot be maintained, for it 

 would follow that one infinite is greater than another, 

 and that an infinite is used up, and declines into a finite. 

 Similar is the subtlety about lines always divisible (how- 

 ever small parts we take), from the impotency of 

 thought." l But the conclusion drawn is simply the 

 positivist one, that such endless questioning after the 

 unknowable is profitless and absurd. The one sees in 

 it a metaphysical or cosmological argument infinite 

 capacity for knowing implies an infinite to be known, 

 as infinite or endless desire implies an infinite or limit- 

 less good : the other a methodological argument against 

 attempting to fly when we are born to creep. In two 

 other cases Bacon rejected the work of Bruno, and 

 rightly, viz. in regard to the Art of Lully, and the 



1 Nov. Org. i. 48. 



