122 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



conservative checked the whole tide of evolution- 

 ary thought of Aristotle and previous theologians 

 and formulated the special-creation idea that 

 dominated both theology and science until the 

 time of Darwin; Bruno the rationalist main- 

 tained the natural philosophy of Aristotle, of 

 Lucretius, and of the Arabs, and in a measure 

 developed a natural philosophy of his own, ad- 

 herence to which finally cost him his life at the 

 stake (1600). Bruno was the last exponent of 

 the idea of Evolution along Greek ideas of 

 thought; the long period of the direct influence 

 of Greek philosophy on theology ended with him. 

 Giordano Bruno was born near Nola in the 

 village of Cicala. Little is known of his life; 

 christened Fihppo, he took the name Giordano 

 on entering the religious order of the Dominicans 

 at Naples, in his fifteenth year. A treatise on the 

 ark of Noah is attributed to him.^ In his biology 

 Bruno imbibed the diverse influences of the 

 Greeks, of Lucretius, of Arabic philosophy, and 

 of Oriental mysticism, and evolved a highly 

 speculative and vague system of natural philoso- 

 phy. From the physics of the Stoics he derived 

 the idea that all living beings had a greater or 

 less share of the Universal Force, a force which 

 leads to steps corresponding in the world of or- 

 ganized beings to a gradated scale of develop- 



1 See Enc. Brit., vol. 4, p. 686. 



