ii SPINOZA AND BRUNO 337 



but in an endless time, of a plurality of worlds with the 

 earth as centre of our system : here also it is Bruno that 

 is the more advanced, and the more daring thinker ; 

 yet, from the respect with which Gassendi writes of 

 Copernicus, it is clear that his sympathies were with the 

 new hypothesis. It may be added that although 

 Gassendi rejected the notion of a world-soul, in the 

 ordinary sense, as distinct from God, and that of souls 

 of the individual worlds, or of stones, etc., yet he too 

 was fain to explain the attraction of the magnet for the 

 iron, of the earth for the stone, of atom for atom, by an 

 influence passing from the one to the other, by which 

 the one became aware of the other's existence, and was 

 impelled towards it, i.e. by a kind of sense, or feeling, 

 a soul, which was at the same time the principle of 

 movement. 



It is, however, on the development of Spinoza's 1 Spinoza, 

 thought that the most direct influence of Bruno can be 

 shown. Sigwart 2 and Avenarius 3 have proved that in 

 preparing the short treatise on " God, Man, and his 

 Blessedness," Spinoza must have had the Causa and 

 Infinite of Bruno almost before his eyes. The treatise 

 consists of several parts which are more or less in- 

 dependent of one another, and which represent tentative 

 approaches towards the finished Ethics ; but it differs 

 from the Ethics in the far greater prominence of the 

 mystical, Neoplatonist element. Pollock suggests that 



1 Cf. Brunnhofer, p. xix : " The longer I consider the question, the more probable 

 it appears to me that Spinoza would have been impossible, historically, if Bruno had 

 had time to develop the rich fulness of his ideas in a systematic form." Cf. p. 81, 

 where, however, he lays too much stress on verbal analogies between Bruno's Summa 

 and the Ethlca of Spinoza. 



2 Spinoza's Neuentdeckter Tractat von Gott, dem Menschen, and dessen Gluckseiigkeit, 

 Gotha, 1866, and his translation of this, Kurzer Tractat^ with introduction and 

 notes. Tubingen, 1870. 



3 Die Beiden Ersten Phasen des Spinozischen Panthehmus. Leipzig, 1868. 



Z 



