ii RESTORATION OF BRUNO'S NAME 351 



Lacroze's description of him as an atheist and fore- 

 runner of Spinoza's pantheism, describing him as a 

 martyr for the Lutheran faith and as an eclectic in 

 philosophy. Brucker l without the historical sense, 

 but a painstaking and learned, if diffuse, analyst, 

 judging all philosophies by the standard of orthodox 

 Protestantism and the Leibnizian philosophy yet 

 sympathised with Bruno, described him as an " eclectic, 

 combining ideas of the Eleatics with those of Democritus 

 and Epicurus, Copernicus and Pythagoras, not an 

 impostor, but an intellectual enthusiast cum ratione 

 insanivit." Throughout the remaining part of the 

 century a number of monographs appeared, by Jordan, 

 Christiani, Kindervater ; with, on the contra side, Less- 

 man and Lauckhard. Adelung thought Bruno worthy 

 of a place in his History of Human Folly (1785). In 

 the same year (1785) appeared F. H. Jacobi's Letters 

 on Spinoza s Philosophy, which contained a " restora- 

 tion " at one stroke of both Bruno and Spinoza to their 

 place among the great names of the history of thought. 2 

 This fine thinker if not great thinker penetrated by 

 the beauty and calm of Spinoza's pantheism, saw in 

 Bruno a true forerunner. Bruno had " taken up the 

 substance of the ancient philosophy, transformed it into 

 flesh and blood, was wholly permeated by its spirit, 

 without ceasing to be himself." Naturally it was in 

 the Causa that Jacobi found the greatest affinity with 

 Spinoza, as in it the starting-point of Bruno is from the 

 One, the Highest, which is at the same time the All 

 the universe, the unity of the One and Many, of Spirit 

 and Nature. Jakobi's friend, Hamann, the " Wizard 

 of the North," the mystical critic of Kantianism, went 



1 Kurze Fragen aus der Phil. Hist. (1736), and Hist. Crit. (1742-1744). 

 2 Cf. his Werke, t. iv. pt. 2. 



