Giordano Bruno

by J. Lewis McIntyre

CONSTELLATION.	VIRTUE.	VICES.
1. Ursa	Truth.	Deformity, Falsity, Defect, Impossibility, Contingency, Hyprocrisy, Imposture, Felony.
2. Ursa Major	The place is left vacant, to be filled in the satire of the Cabala by “Asinity in the abstract.”
3. Draco	Prudence.	Cunning, Craftiness, Malice, Stupidity, Inertia, Imprudence (Envy).[449]
4. Cepheus	Wisdom.	Sophistry, Ignorance (of evil disposition), foolish Faith (Hardness).
5. Bootes (Arctophylax)	Law.	Prevarication, Crime, Excess, Exorbitance (Inconstancy).
6. Corona Borealis	Judgment.	Iniquity.
7. Hercules	Courage.	Ferocity, Fury, Cruelty, Slackness, Debility, Pusillanimity (Violence).
8. Lyra	Mnemosyne, and the Nine Muses, her daughters,—the branches of knowledge.	Ignorance, Inertia, Bestiality (Conspiracy).
9. Cygnus	Repentance.	Self-love, Uncleanness, Filthiness, Immodesty, Wantonness.
10. Cassiopeia	Simplicity.	Boastfulness on the one side, Dissimulation on the other (Vanity).
11. Perseus	Diligence or Solicitude.	Torpor, Idleness, Inertia, Foolish Occupation, Perturbation, Vain solicitude.
12. Triptolemus	Humanity or Philanthropy.	Misanthropy, Envy, Malignity.

There follow as “virtues”:—Sagacity, judicious election or choice, affability, magnanimity (Aquila); divine enthusiasm or rapture (Pegasus); hopefulness, faith and sincerity (the Triangle); virtuous emulation, tolerance, sociability (and friendship—the Pleiades); love (peace and friendship—Gemini); conversion or emendation, heroic generosity (or magnanimity, again—Leo); continence, equity (and justice—Libra); sincerity (observance of promises—Scorpio); contemplation, the love of solitude (freedom of mind), temperance (Aquarius); just reserve and taciturnity, tranquillity of mind, industry, prudent fear, vigilance for the state, kindliness, liberality, judicious sagacity (Hydra); divine magic (and soothsaying), abstinence (the Cup!), the divine parable (the sacred mystery,—Chiron); sincere piety and wise religion (the Altar); honour, glory, and, finally, health, security and repose, as the due reward of the virtues, and remuneration for zealous work and endurance.[450]

It will be seen that the list is redundant, and it is more so in the text, where several virtues are usually given under each head. Several of the names do not denote virtues in the ordinary sense (e.g. knowledge of magic, ability to interpret the divine parables): they are merely qualities which it is desirable for the good man to have. Others refer to qualities which could not be acquired by any one destitute of them (e.g. hope, love, piety), while others represent rather the outcome of the virtuous life than any one of its constituent elements, e.g. Knowledge, Divine Enthusiasm, Contemplation, Honour. There remain the familiar virtues of Greek philosophy:—Courage; prudence and sagacity; temperance (continence and abstinence); wisdom (or the love of truth); justice, including submission to law, active justice or judgment, and equity; sincerity, with truthfulness, simplicity, faith, the observance of promises; sociability and friendliness, with humanity, affability, tolerance, kindliness; liberality; magnanimity and heroic generosity; tranquillity or gentleness. More modern are the virtues of solicitude, diligence or industry, of emulation, and of love of solitude, or “Monachism.” There is accordingly nothing of value to be derived for systematic ethics from this or from any other work of Bruno. It is in the digressions from the main argument that his philosophy of practical life is revealed.[451]

Peace and liberty.The two things which seemed to Bruno for his time the most desirable were peace and freedom—freedom alike of thought and of speech. The characteristics of the Church which he consistently condemned were on the one hand its violence, the dissension and strife it stirred up, on the other its tyranny over mind and tongue. Hence the aim of the moral life, from the lower plane on which we stand in the Spaccio, is to secure the prosperity of the state, the peaceful common life of its members, and the avoidance of all interference with the individual, except where the positive end, security, appears endangered. Of the nine muses, the daughters of Mnemosyne,[452] Ethica is at once the last born and the most worthy. Her task is to institute religions, to establish ceremonies, to posit laws, to execute judgments, with prudence, sagacity, readiness, and generous philanthropy; to approve, confirm, preserve, defend whatever is well instituted, established, posited, executed; adapting, as far as may be, both passions and actions to the worship of the gods, and the common life of men.—LawThe function of Law, the daughter of wisdom, is to prevent the powerful from making undue use of their pre-eminence and strength, and in other respects vigorously to protect the common life and civil intercourse of men.[453] “The powerful are to be sustained by the weak, the feeble are not to be oppressed by the strong, tyrants are to be deposed, just governors and kings ordained and confirmed, republics fostered; violence shall not tread reason under foot, ignorance not despise knowledge, the poor shall be aided by the rich, virtues and studies necessary or useful to the community be promoted, advanced, maintained. No one is to be put into a place of power that is not superior in merits, by force of virtue and talent, either in himself, which is rare and almost impossible, or through communication with and counsel of others, which is due, ordinary and necessary. The two hands by which any law is strong to bind are justice and possibility, one moderated by the other, for although many things are possible that are not just, nothing is just that is not possible. Whether it come from heaven or from the earth, no institution or law ought to be approved or accepted which does not tend to the highest end, viz. the direction of our minds and reform of our natures so that they produce fruits necessary or useful for human intercourse.”[454] Judgment.Judgment shall make a scale of virtues and of crimes, the greatest in either class being that which affects the Republic as a whole; next that which affects other individuals than the agent; a crime committed between two who are in accord is hardly a crime, while there is no crime if the fault remains in the individual—does not proceed to bad example or to bad deed. Repentance is to be approved by it, but not set upon the same level as innocence;[455] belief and opinion, but not placed so high as deeds and work; confession and admission of fault, but not as correction and abstention. It shall not place one who to no purpose mortifies the flesh on a level with one who bridles his spirit, nor compare one who is a useless solitary with another who is in profitable intercourse[456] with his fellows, nor applaud so highly one who, perhaps unnecessarily, subdues his desires, as another, who refrains from evil-speaking and from evil-doing; not make so great a triumph over one who has healed a base, useless cripple, worth little if any more when whole than maimed, as over another who has liberated his fatherland, or reformed a mind diseased.[457] The Roman people was the type of the best-governed state, “more bridled and restrained from the vices of incivility and barbarity, more refined and willing for generous undertakings than any other; and as their law and religion were, so were their customs and deeds, so their honour and happiness.” How different from the pedants of the Church, who flourish throughout Europe: while saluting with peace they bring wherever they enter in the sword of division, and the fire of dispersion; taking son from father, neighbour from neighbour, citizen from fatherland, and causing other divorces more abhorrent and contrary to all nature and law; calling themselves ministers of one who raises the dead and heals the sick, they more than all others on the earth are maimers of the sound, and slayers of the living, not so much with fire and sword, as with the tongue of malice.[458]

The scales.Under the Scales, Bruno describes some of the reforms he believes necessary: in courts, offices and honours are for the future to go by merit; “in republics, the just are to preside, the wealthy to contribute, the learned to teach, the prudent to guide, the brave to fight, those that have judgment to counsel, those that have authority to command; in states, the scales represent the keeping of contracts of peace, confederations, leagues, the careful weighing of action beforehand; in individuals the weighing of what each wishes with what he knows, of what he knows with what he can, of what he wishes, knows, and can with what he ought; of what he wishes, knows, can, and ought, with what he is, does, has, and expects.”[459]

Underlying this cult of humanity one cannot but feel the robust naturalism of the Renaissance, which in Bruno’s mind is apart altogether from the mystical exclusive intellectualism of his more characteristic philosophy. It is with man as a natural being, living out his earthly life, and gathering such fruits as may be of kindliness and love from his fellow-creatures, that the practical philosophy is concerned. The religion attacked was one that struck at the root of this human love, and made of earth a purgatory for the sake of the uncertain life to come. Sincerity.Hence the emphasis laid on sincerity, faithfulness, or truthfulness, as high among the virtues. “Without it every contract is uncertain and doubtful, all intercourse is dissolved, all social life at an end.” Bruno is as rigid as Kant in regard to the keeping of faith; even promises made to the wicked may not be broken. It was “a law of some Jew or Saracen, brutal and barbarian, not of civilised and heroic Greek or Roman, that sometimes, and with certain kinds of people, faith might be pledged for individual gain, and for an opportunity of deception, making it the servant of tyranny and treachery.”[460]

The antipathy of Bruno towards the Jews is to be explained by the same principle of social life and progress; it is not, as Lagarde supposes,[461] an offspring of his hatred towards the Church, regarded as a direct descendant of Judaism. So far as it is not an expression of an unreasoning anti-Semitic wave of feeling, such as occasionally overwhelms some of the European peoples, it may have had three grounds: the reputed avarice of the Jew:[462] his exclusiveness, unsociability;—“a race always base, servile, mercenary, solitary, incommunicative, shunning intercourse with the Gentiles, whom they brutally despise, and by whom in their turn, and with good reason, they are contemned”:[463]—or his religion, which appeared to Bruno a corruption of the nobler Egyptian religion. Thus in Spaccio[464] the punishment of the children for the sins of the fathers is said to be found only among Barbarians, and first among the Jews, “a race so pestilent, leprous, and generally pernicious that it should be effaced from the earth.”[465]

Temperance.Temperance, as a virtue, is rather the peace of mind that goes with civilisation—urbanity—than the more physical virtue: its opposites are intemperance, excess, asperity, savagery, barbarity. “It is through intemperance in sensual and in intellectual passions that families, republics, civil societies, the world, are dissolved, disordered, destroyed, swallowed up.”[466] Again, Bruno’s unorthodox standpoint with regard to the vows of chastity and of celibacy taken by nuns and priests is part of a healthy reaction towards naturalism from the false sentiment which condemned as unholy whatever pertained to the natural man. The place of Virgo is taken by chastity, continence, modesty, shame; the contrasting vices being lust, incontinence, shamelessness. “It is through these,” Bruno adds, “that virginity becomes a virtue. In itself it is neither virtue nor vice, implies no goodness, dignity, or merit, and when it resists the command of nature it becomes a wrong, an impotence, a folly, madness express; while if it is in compliance with some urgent reason, it is called continence, and has the essence of virtue, because it participates in that courage and contempt for pleasure which is not vain or worthless, but benefits human intercourse and brings honourable satisfaction to others.”[467] “The laws of the wise do not forbid love, but irrational love; the sycophancies of the foolish prescribe, without reason, limits to reason, and condemn the law of nature; the most corrupt of them call it corrupt, because by it they are not raised above nature to become heroic spirits, but are depraved, contrary to nature and below all worth, to become brutes.”[468]

The Golden Age.In the third dialogue of the Spaccio is a digression on Otium, Idleness, and the Golden Age, which had been brought into popularity by the pastoral poem of Tasso, the Aminta, and its imitators (e.g. Guarini in the Pastor Fido). Otium presses its claim to a place in the heavens as being more truly a virtue than solicitude or strenuous effort, to which the place of Perseus had been given. Its chief argument is that through it the golden age had been instituted and maintained, by the law of idleness which is the law of nature, while it was through solicitude, with its following of vainglory, contempt of others, violence, oppression, torment, fear, and death, that the age had departed. “All praise the fair age of gold, when I kept minds quiet and peaceful, safe from this virtuous goddess of yours. For their bodies, hunger was sufficient sauce to make a delicious and satisfying repast out of acorns, apples, chestnuts, peaches, and roots, which benign nature administered at a time when such food was the best nourishment for them, gave them most pleasure, and kept them longest in life, which the many artificial sauces that industry and zeal have discovered cannot do.”[469] Industry had introduced property, and divided up not only the earth, which is given to all its children, but also the sea, and perhaps the air as well; so that instead of sufficiency for all there is too much for some and too little for others. It had introduced an unnatural inequality, and confused together peoples whom nature had intended to live apart, with the consequence that the vices of one race were being implanted upon those of others. The right of the stronger had taken the place of the law of nature, violence that of the peace of nature, which are the law and peace of God.