ii BRUNO AND SPINOZA 339 



are necessary to it, as it to them. Carriere 1 indeed 

 places Bruno above Spinoza as having found in the one 

 a self-consciousness, a subject infinite in that it knows 

 itself and all things in itself, preserving all things, as 

 necessary to its external enjoyment and love ; while 

 Spinoza is still within the bonds of substance in God 

 there is neither understanding nor will, in Him all 

 difference vanishes, the modes are an illusion. So the 

 Spinozistic parallelism between thought and matter 

 finds its counterpart in Bruno, with whom all that is 

 thought, all that is possible, is also real, or actual, i.e. 

 has extended or material existence. It is true that this 

 conception is much more precisely expressed in Spinoza, 

 with his clean-cut distinction between the world of 

 body and the world of mind or ideas, to which the 

 possible belongs, but it was a distinction which he could 

 not consistently uphold ; on the other hand, the uni- 

 versal animism, the doctrine that to every material 

 thing or event there corresponds a spiritual reality or 

 process, which is only the other side of the parallelism 

 of soul and body, is more clearly and vigorously 

 defended by the earlier philosopher. The natural and 

 the spiritual, matter and form, are not two principles, 

 or elements which combine to produce a given result, 

 or which harmonise with one another : they are one 

 and the same thing, and their truth is their life, their 

 soul, their thought. Bruno was in earnest with his 

 animism, as his confident belief in magical correlations 

 showed. 2 



From their principles both derived a conviction of 

 the necessity 3 and of the goodness of all things, but it 



1 Moritz Carriere, Weltanschauung der Reformat ionszeit, p. 470. 



2 Cf. Tocco, Conferenza, p. 15 ; Sigwart, Neuentdeckter Tractat, pp. 110-113. 



3 E.g. Bruno's Acrot. (Op. Lot. i. i, 108). 



