354 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



Bruno with any of the more modern philosophers. It 

 is foolhardy to say, for example, as Brunnhofer does, 

 that Schopenhauer alone reaches the same height of 

 literary style in modern philosophy, " although the 

 Nolan leaves the Frankfort philosopher far behind him 

 through the strength of his philosophical conception of 

 the universe, which holds its own against pessimism and 

 optimism alike." l It is foolhardy, and it is misleading, 

 to place him in comparison with philosophers who have 

 nearly three centuries of thought, of social, industrial, 

 and literary growth, between him and them. Like all 

 the philosophers whom a touch of poetical imagination 

 has redeemed, Bruno stands more or less alone, and he 

 overtops all the others of his century. None of the 

 ordinary rubrics of historical terminology in philosophy 

 apply to him, not even that of "Eclectic." He is 

 far more than that. His philosophy, as perhaps these 

 pages have shown, bears the stamp of individuality, the 

 individuality of a strong mind, fed with nearly all the 

 knowledge, and all the out-reaching guesses at truth of 

 its own time, and of the times that had gone before, 

 striving to turn this difficult mass into nourishment for 

 itself, and to transmit the achievement to others. He 

 was an eclectic, just as every great thinker is an eclectic, 

 but it is the bricks merely, not the style of architecture, 

 that he has borrowed from others. He never founded 

 a school, not merely because the circumstances of his 

 life, and the fate of his writings, precluded him from 

 being widely known or studied in any country, but also 

 because his philosophy was too much a thing of himself 

 to be readily attractive to many of his hearers or readers. 

 Yet it has been a force making for the progress of 



1 Of. >., Vorredt, xi. A bibliography of the more recent works on Bruno 

 is given at the beginning of this volume. 



