334 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



freedom for the play of his mind. Kepler could not, 

 and did not, give up his enclosing sphere of fixed stars, 

 shutting in the solar system as comfortably as the 

 orange-skin its seeds, not accepting the giddy hypothesis 

 of Bruno that each of the stars is itself a sun, with a 

 solar system of its own, and that beyond and beyond, 

 in endless series, are other suns and other worlds. 1 



Even Vanini the unfortunate, if light-headed, sceptic, 

 who in 1619, at Toulouse, met with a fate similar to 

 that of Bruno, but more horrible, mentions the latter 

 only by indication in his earlier work, the Amphi- 

 theatre of the Eternal Providence (p. 359) " Nonnulli 

 semiphilosophi novi have said that beyond the last sphere 

 of the heavens there is an infinite created universe, as if 

 from God no finite action could proceed." 



Of the philosophers who represent the main line of 

 development of modern thought on the Continent in 

 the seventeenth century, Descartes, Gassendi, Spinoza, 

 Leibniz, there is not one who has not been accused of 

 having borrowed his chief doctrines, without ac- 

 Descartes. knowledgment, from the Italian philosopher. Bishop 

 Huet 3 described Bruno as the antesignanus of the 

 Cartesian philosophy, and pointed to the De Immenso et 

 innumerabilibus as containing indications of almost all its 

 ideas. The charge is of course absurd so far as 

 Descartes' characteristic philosophy is concerned the 

 ideas by which he created a revolution in modern 



1 Vide Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, vol. i., on Kepler : he refers to Opera, i. p. 688, 

 and vi. p. 136. 



2 Florentine, in Bruno, Op. Lat., vol. i. p. xix. The full title of Vanini's work is, 

 " Amphitheatrum aeternae providentiae divino-magicum, christiano-physicum, necnon 

 astrologo-catholicum, adversus veteres philosophos, Atheos, Epicureos, Peripateticos 

 et Stoicos. Auctore Julio Caesare Vanino, Philosophic, Theologo, ae Juris utriusque 

 Doctor. Lugduni, 1615." With his remark compare Campanella, S^u'idam Nolanus 

 (Metaphys. ii. I. 5). 



3 Centura Philosophiae Carttsiar.ae, 1689. 



