338 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



it may have been his free-thinking teacher Dr. Van den 

 Ende who introduced Spinoza to Bruno's writings : 

 there is no external evidence of the acquaintanceship, 

 but that, it is needless to say, is of slight importance. 

 Spinoza certainly read Italian, and he practised in 

 other cases the same neglect of authorities, of whose 

 substance he was making use : it was indeed the 

 custom of the time there were few who followed 

 Burton's example. 



There are certain general resemblances between the 

 finished philosophies of the two authors, so far as Bruno 

 can be said to have a finished philosophy. The first 

 principle of both is the unity out of which all things 

 spring, to which all return, and in which all have their 

 true nature, or highest reality, a unity with which both 

 identify nature and spirit alike, and which is for both 

 God. God is accordingly beyond the reach of all 

 human knowledge ; determination is negation, limit, by 

 which the infinite is untouched. All attributes in God 

 are one only, or none ; thought is one with extension, 

 love with intelligence ; yet in strictness God is neither 

 thought nor extension, intelligence nor love, or he is 

 these in another than our human meaning. So far as 

 this central thought is concerned, it is Bruno that is the 

 deeper thinker. In him the One is not a dead negation, 

 in which real things are absorbed to the loss of all their 

 reality and life, as it is with Spinoza : rather it is a 

 living fountain, gushing forth in the infinite streams of 

 living beings : the whole of nature is the expression 

 of its own inward being. The One is in process ; the 

 whole, in which this process results, is a harmony every 

 member of which has its own independent reality and 

 worth, over against all others, as a manifestation of 

 divinity. The life of the one is that of its members ; all 





