soul of man it belongs to know God and to be like him. Telesius is perhaps the most distinctly scientific and the most original of these early modern natural philosophers. He was a favorite with Francis Bacon, of whom, indeed, he was a forerunner.

§ 29.

Franciscus Patritius, or Francesco Patrizzi (15291597), received a good early training in classical literature and philosophy, and, after some time spent in travelling, completed his studies at Venice and Padua. He became a teacher of philosophy at Ferrara. He was a violent opponent of the Aristotelianism of his day, and an equally energetic advocate of Platonic, or, rather, Neo-Platonic doctrines.

Works. Works of Patritius are "Nova de Universis Philosophia Libris quinquaginta Comprehensa" (15911593), "Zoroastris Oracula," etc., "Hermetis Trismegisti Libelli et Fragmenta," etc.

Philosophy. The doctrine of Patritius is Neo-Platonism, with a modern naturalistic cast. The universe is an emanation from a primal immaterial light, the special manifestations of which in the heavens and on the earth are heavenly and earthly light. The highest principle is an indivisible One. From it emanates a discrete unity. The two are united by love. There exists a world-soul, possessing reason in a limited degree. Space is the condition of material existence, and the first element of all things. Other elements are the heat and light filling and belonging to space. A fourth element is fluidity. The earth moves. It is subject to the influences of the stars, from which come germs - having, however, their primary source in the light above the stars to the earth. Patritius praised Telesius.

§ 30.

Thomas, or Tommaso, Campanella 1 (1568–1639). Campanella (born in southern Calabria) early read the

1 Noack and Erdmann.

works of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, studied theology with the Dominicans, acquired a knowledge of the systems of Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Telesius. Going, afterwards, to Naples, he joined the Telesian Academy, and became an avowed follower of Telesius. Owing to the radical character of his opinions, frankly uttered, he came into disharmony with his fellows, and, in consequence, lived for some years a roving life. For some reason he became an object of political suspicion, and was, on the pretext of his being a conspirator against the Spanish government in Naples, thrown into prison. In various prisons more than fifty, it is reported - he spent twenty-seven years of his life.

Works. - Works of Campanella are : "Prodromus Philosophiæ," etc. (1611), "De Sensu Rerum," etc. (1620), "Realis Philosophiæ Epilogistica Partes IV.," etc. (1623), "Atheismus Triumphatus" (1631), "Philosophiæ rationalis Partes V.," etc. (1638), “Universalis Philosophiæ seu Metaphysicarum Rerum Partes III.," etc. (1638). Of these, the last named is regarded as the most important. Campanella is popularly known by a politico-philosophical romance called "City of the Sun" (Civitas Solis), which forms a part of the "Realis Philosophiæ," etc.

Philosophy. Campanella treats philosophy as a "maidservant" of theology. He divides philosophy proper into two "real sciences," philosophia naturalis and philosophia moralis. Merely formal and instrumental are the sciences of logic and mathematics. Intermediate between the real and the formal sciences is metaphysics, treating of being and essence. The starting-point of philosophy is the certainty of the existence of self, which is self-evident and beyond the reach of all scepticism. The self is limited. In common with all other limited beings, the self presupposes an infinite being. The essence of the self is seen on reflection to consist in power, knowledge, and will; and since the cause must contain at least as much as its effect, power, knowledge, and will belong to being as such, and not

merely partially as to us, but eminenter. The attributes of not-being are mere negations. Besides its positive attributes everything has negative attributes which are the negations of all the attributes which it has not in a positive manner: i. e., being and not-being are united in all beings. God created the finite world from love. In it he is only partially contained. Nearest God is a world of archetypes: then follow in order, the spiritual world or world of eternal ideas, the world of mathematical entities, the abstract temporal, or corporeal, world, and the world of definite time and space. The lower worlds are varied images of the highest of all. All existence is an act of knowledge and will, and nothing is without soul: even of space is this true, for it abhors a vacuum and strives to fill it: it is true also of passive matter, which by its fixedness (inertia) and its accelerating its speed in falling, gives evidence of its not being merely dead. Hate and love mingle in all things. The physical principles of existence are heat and light (in the circumference of the universe) and cold and dark (at the centre). Animal instinct is knowledge blended with its opposite. The instinct of self-preservation in animals is love of their own being. Every creature loves only its own being. Self-love ceases to be merely selfish when it becomes love of God. The highest end of action is self-preservation: virtue is but the method of attainment of this end. The highest political problem is the welfare of the State: the act of legislation and governing demand the highest wisdom. This "highest wisdom" includes, among other similar acts, those of currying favor with lower classes of society, and so dispersing the higher that their influence may not, by becoming centralized, be an obstacle to the realization of the idea of a high and arbitrary universal ecclesiastical monarchy.1

Result. There occurs in the doctrine of Campanella one very remarkable anticipation of a distinctive feature of modern philosophy in, so to say, its majority, viz., the resting of all certainty and knowledge upon the certainty

1 See Erdmann, § 246.

Naples

and knowledge of self, as is done by Descartes, with his famous Cogito, ergo sum, and by many coming after him. We may regard Campanella as a forerunner of Descartes, as Telesius is of Bacon.

§ 31.

Pompeio Ucilio Vanini (1585-1619). — Vanini studied theology and philosophy in Rome, jurisprudence at Padua, and the natural sciences in various European universities. A wanderer, like Bruno, Paracelsus, and other philosophers we have noticed, he travelled, teaching as he went, through Switzerland, France, Belgium, and England, persecuted much for his heterodox convictions. He is said to have been a pupil and worshipper of Pomponatius: he styled Aristotle the "God of philosophers and pontiff of wisdom." He was put to death in a most horrible manner by the Inquisition. A work of his (the second mentioned below) was condemned to the flames.

Works. Two of his works are entitled, respectively, "Amphitheatrum Æternæ Providentiæ " (1615) and “De Admirandis Naturæ Reginæ Deæque Mortalium Arcanis Libri IV." (1616), often cited as Dialogues on Nature."

66

The real views of Vanini are contained in the latter of these
two works.
Philosophy. 1 Nature is the energy of God and God
himself. It is an eternal begetting, and has its own inhe-
rent laws of bringing-forth and preservation. Matter is
indestructible, unchangeable in quantity: it exists not with-
out form, but always is changing form. The matter of all
things of heaven and earth - is the same.
The heavens
are not moved by intelligences, but by the omnipresent en-
ergy of God.
The sea ebbs and flows of its own essence;
the air by its motion heats itself, and so becomes flame;
plants hate and love one another. The soul rules in all
parts of the body as a material spirit, or nerve-mind it is
the form of the living element in matter, and the creative

1 Noack.

form in germs. As the centre of all life man combines in himself the earthly and the heavenly in the human compound as in a microcosm the whole of nature is contained, wherefore man has the powers of plants, animals, and minerals. Our vital spirits depend upon the food we eat; our vices on the bodily humors and germs. In Vanini (as in Bruno) nature-philosophy, and indeed philosophy in general, dissociates itself from theology, or at least "Christian theology," and exists in and for itself. As compared with the philosophy of Bruno, the principle of which is, as we are about to see, the unity of opposites, the philosophy of Vanini is rather abstract and undeveloped, a product of the negative understanding rather than of synthetic imagination. On this account we have reserved the notice of Bruno till the last.

§ 32.

Giordano Bruno1 (1548-1600).- Bruno - born at Nola, a city near Naples, — early received a training in logic, dialectic, and the ancient classics, and later was an enthusiastic student of the ancient philosophers - especially Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans and of the scientific investigators and speculators of his own age, Nicolaus Cusanus, Telesius, Cardanus, Copernicus. Decidedly, however, of an original and creative turn, he could be no mere borrower nor a mere eclectic. Independence of thought caused him to desert the cloister near Naples which he had entered, and to become a wanderer on the face of the earth. He went to Rome, Genoa, Padua, Geneva, Lyons, Toulouse, Paris, teaching and propagating on the way the ideas with which his enthusiastic brain seethed. He became instructor in philosophy and lectured with éclat at the universities of Toulouse and of Paris (1579-1583). He spent two years in England, living in intimate association with Sir Philip Sidney and other choice spirits there, debating the Coper

1 See Giordano Bruno's Weltanschauung und Verhängniss, aus den Quellen dargestellt von Dr. Hermann Brunhofer, Leipzig, 1882; Franck; Noack; etc.