THE EVOLUTION IDEA 125 



matter bring them forth.' " But we find an im- 

 portant departure from Aristotle where Bruno 

 conceives of matter not as potential but as actual 

 and active. 



There is thus great room for difference of opin- 

 ion as to how far Bruno was an evolutionist in 

 our sense, and we find different authors taking 

 different standpoints according to their greater 

 or less appreciation of the essential elements of 

 the evolution idea. Lasson holds that Bruno was 

 a follower of Empedocles and therein a prophet 

 of Darwinism, in the capacity of perfection and 

 the unity of development of organic life. Krause, 

 in his biography of Erasmus Darwin, maintains 

 that Bruno held merely to the identity of the 

 human and the animal souls, without actually 

 conceiving their unity of origin. 



Here again Aristotelianism enters into Bru- 

 no's thought, for while he conceived all Evo- 

 lution as based on endless changes in matter, 

 he describes this movement simply as the out- 

 ward expression of an indwelling soul. This in- 

 telligence is displayed in three grades, which 

 correspond with the steps in the scale of devel- 

 opment, because we are free to suppose that "to 

 the sound of the harp of the Universal Apollo 

 (the World Spirit), the lower organisms are 

 called by stages to higher, and the lower stages 

 are connected by intermediate forms with the 



