We now turn to the higher moral life, which is at the same time the religious life, of the heroic soul in its struggle towards perfection. This perfection consists in comprehension of the world as infinitely perfect, in the union with God as the source from which the world flows, the spirit in which it lives, and in the Love of God as at once infinite beauty and infinite goodness.
We have seen that there are to Bruno, as to Plato and to Aristotle, two classes of men, the “vulgar” and the “heroic,”[488] the lower or subject, and the upper or ruling classes: as in each of us there are two principles, a higher, intellect or reason or mind, and a lower, sense and sensual passion. The danger is as great to the world when the lower class attempts to usurp the place of the higher, as it is to the individual soul when passion overwhelms reason. The spread of pedantry, in the universities and in the churches, greater in his time and more menacing to human progress than it had ever been, was an illustration to Bruno’s eye of the results ensuing when lower minds tampered with divine knowledge.[489]
The heroic soul is raised by the divine spirit within it out of the turmoil of the constant change and vicissitude, to which the vulgar soul is, in common with all living things, subjected. “The beginning, middle, and end, birth, growth, and perfection of all earthly things are from contraries, through contraries, in contraries, and to contraries; and where there is contrariety, there is also action, reaction, movement, diversity, multitude, order, degrees, succession, change.” “There is never any pleasure,” we read elsewhere, “without some bitterness;—nay, if there were not the bitter in things, there would not be the pleasurable, for fatigue makes us to find pleasure in repose, separation causes us to find joy in union, and so everywhere we find that one contrary is the reason of another being desired and pleasing:”[490] and so it is with pain. None, therefore, are ever satisfied with their state, except the unfeeling or the foolish who have no knowledge of their own ill, but enjoy the present without fear of the future, can find rest in what is, and have no feeling or desire for what might be: “in short have no sense of contrariety, which is figured by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.[491]” Ignorance is the mother of sensual happiness and joy; hence “the heroic love (in its beginning) is a torment, for it does not rest in the present, as does sensual love, but feels ambition, emulation, suspicious fear for the future, the absent, the contrary.” Yet the wise man is neither happy nor miserable,—knowing that good and evil are alike relative, alike fading and temporary things, he is neither dismayed nor elated, but becomes continent in his inclinations, and temperate in his pleasures. Pleasure is not really pleasure to him, for he has present to him its ceasing; pain is not pain, for he has by force of thought its termination before him: all mutable things therefore are to him as things that are not.[492]
Owing to the ever-moving cycle of change, the ordinary soul must of necessity fall back, in the course of the eternal process of its life, to the lowest stage, however high in the scale it may have risen; but this, although an evil for it, does not prejudice the whole, in which all things work together for good. Some few, however, may escape this danger, through becoming united with the eternal Mind or Source.[493] They then cease to be subject to mutation,—Mind being immutable,—and persist in eternal blessedness and love. For such favoured ones of heaven, the greatest evils of this life are converted into goods, correspondingly great. It is suffering that compels the labour and the striving which lead most frequently to the glory of immortal splendour. Death in one age makes to live in all others.[494]
Kinds of furor.There are, however, two kinds of furori (or inspiration). “In some there is only blindness, stupidity, unreasoning impulse; others consist in a certain divine abstraction by which some men become better in fact than ordinary men. These again are of two kinds, for some becoming the habitation of gods or of divine spirits, say or do miraculous things without themselves or others understanding the reason; these for the most part are promoted to this state from one of rudeness and ignorance: the divine sense and spirit enters into them as into a house swept and garnished, they being void of any spirit or sense of their own. Others being more habituated to or skilled in contemplation, and having innate in them a lucid and intellectual spirit, are moved by an internal impulse and natural fervour, with love of divinity, justice, truth, glory; by the fire of desire, fanned by the breath of purpose, they give edge to their senses, and in the sulphur of the thinking faculty enkindle the light of reason, by which they see further than ordinary men. These come in the end to speak and operate not as vases or instruments, but as principal artificers and agents—the first have worth or dignity, the second are worthy: or the first are worthy as an ass that carries the sacraments, the second as a sacred thing. In the first we see divinity in effect—we admire, adore, obey it; in the second we see the excellence of our own humanity.”[495]
Ascent towards union with the divine.The steps towards the highest peak of human excellence are compared, after Neoplatonist example, to the degrees in intensity of light, as we proceed from darkness, in which it is entirely absent, to shadow, then to the colours in their order from black to white, next to the brightness diffused from polished or transparent bodies, the rays outflowing from the sun, finally to the sun itself, in which light is most truly and most vividly itself.[496] First of all it is needful for the soul to turn to the light, “by act of conversion to present the light of intelligence to its eyes, so to regain its lost virtue, to strengthen its sinews, to terrify and put to rout its enemies,”—the lower, sense-feelings and passions. The conversion seems to arise as by an act of grace from above; or, to express this in other words, the soul or spirit tends towards that with which it has greatest affinity, as the sun-flower tends towards the sun, and this affinity in the human soul is Love.[497] The symbol of love is fire, for love converts the object of love into the lover, as fire is of all elements the most active, the most potent to transform others into itself.[498] It is the divine in man that makes him or impels him to love God as He is in reality, and the goal or aim of that love is to take God into himself, to become one with God. No really divine or heroic love can ever rest satisfied in anything but spiritual beauty. For there are three kinds of love, as there are three kinds of Platonic rapture—the contemplative, the practical, the idle or voluptuous. One from the perception of corporeal form and beauty rises to the thought of the spiritual and divine; another enjoys the vision of beauty for itself, and for the grace of the spirit that is reflected in the grace of the body; while still another enjoys only the material pleasure that beauty provides; the last is the love of barbarous natures, incapable of raising themselves to love that which is really worthy of love.[499]
Beauty.To the two higher kinds of love correspond the two kinds of beauty—sensible and intelligible. That in the body which calls forth love—its beauty—is a certain spirituality, which consists not in definite dimensions, “nor in determinate colours or forms, but in a certain harmony and consonance of members and colours.” Corporeal beauty is not, however, true or permanent beauty, and therefore cannot call forth true or permanent love. The beauty of bodies is accidental, “shadowy,” and like other qualities is absorbed, altered, and decays through the change of the subject-body, for the latter frequently from beautiful becomes ugly, without any change taking place in the soul. Reason, however, apprehends the more truly beautiful by conversion to that which makes beauty in body, the source of the beauty, and that is the soul, which has so moulded and formed it. Intellect rises still higher, sees that while the soul is incomparably beautiful above the beauty of bodily things, it is not beautiful in itself, or primitively, otherwise there could not exist the diversity that is found in souls—some being wise, lovable, beautiful, others foolish, hateful, ugly. Hence it must rise to that higher intelligence which of itself is beautiful and of itself is good. That is the One, the Supreme Captain, who when presented to the eyes of the thoughts militant, illuminates them, encourages, strengthens, and leads them to victory in the contempt of every other beauty, and repudiation of every other good. Its presence, therefore, is that which enables us to overcome every difficulty and conquer every force.[500] The Intelligence which is the truest beauty attainable by us, is not yet Divinity itself, but only the highest “intelligible species,” or form, the highest Idea. Divinity itself is the final, the most perfect object of thought and love, not attainable in our present state, in which God cannot become object to us, except through some image.[501] No image of the Divine, however, even the most inadequate, can be abstracted or otherwise derived by the senses, from corporeal beauty or excellence. Such can be formed only by the intellect, and on such the human intellect feeds, in this lower world, until it be allowed to behold with purer eyes the beauty of divinity itself. In a fine simile Bruno describes how one may come to some mansion, most exquisitely adorned, and as he goes about observing now this, now that, is pleased and happy, filled with delight and noble wonder. But if then he sees the living Lord of these beautiful forms, of beauty incomparably greater, he lets go all care or thought of them, intent wholly on this one, their source. Such is the difference between the earthly state, when we see the divine beauty in intelligible or abstract forms, derived from its effects, its works, masterpieces, its shadows and similitudes, and the perfect state, when we are allowed to behold it in its real presence.[502] The “intelligible species” of this conception, which Bruno derives from Neoplatonism, are simply the ideas of the “speculative sciences,” which include, however, what would now be called the natural sciences. Human Perfection consists in a form of knowledge, a system of thought, by which the knower becomes one with the mind in which this thought-system originated, the mind of God. Our knowledge—that is, our perfection—can never, however, be complete, since the object, the knowable, can never be perfectly comprehended. But it may be made complete so far as our vision extends; and herein lies a saving clause for the “ordinary” man. Few can reach the goal, but all may run; it is enough that each do his best possible. The generous spirit prefers to fail nobly in the pursuit of the highest rather than to succeed in inferior and baser enterprises.[503] Acteon typifies the human intellect in its pursuit of the divine wisdom and capture of divine beauty.[504] The wild beasts whom he tracks down are the “intelligible species” or ideal forms, rarely sought, and rarely seen by those that seek them. His dogs are the thoughts that issue outwards in search of goodness, wisdom, beauty beyond himself. The fate of Acteon—his death under the fangs of his own hounds—represents how the generous spirit, coming into the presence of that highest beauty, is ravished out of itself, is converted into the very prey which it pursued: itself is now the prey of its own thoughts, for it has contracted divinity into itself, has no longer to seek it outside of itself: as love converts into the thing loved.[505] His death means that he ends his life according to the world of folly, of sense, of blindness and of fancy, only to commence the new intellectual life, the life of the gods.[506]
The first step, however, in the desire of the infinitely beautiful is but the beginning of an endless series; The infinite process.the heart goes out on an endless quest, while the intellect cannot but follow. For the intellect cannot rest in any definite or finite idea or object, but is driven ever forwards towards the source of all ideas, the ocean of all truth and goodness. Whatever form may be presented to it and comprehended by it, it judges that there must be a greater above and beyond that. Hence it is in constant discourse and movement, for whatever it possesses is seen to be a measured thing, and therefore cannot be sufficient in itself, nor good in itself, nor beautiful in itself. It is not the universe, not absolute Being, but Being “contracted” to this or that nature, species, form, represented to the intellect, and presented to the mind (animo). Thus always from beauty comprehended, and therefore measured or limited,—the beautiful by participation,—we progress towards that which is truly beautiful, beautiful without any limit or margin.[507] On the other hand,[508] this infinite process is not in vain, for it is not from imperfect to perfect, but a “circular movement about the degrees of perfection, in order to arrive at the infinite centre which is neither formed nor form.” This paradox Tansillo (taking the part of the Nolan) refuses to explain. It probably hints at the idea, as familiar in Bruno as the infinite process itself, that in each form or degree of perfection, the infinite with all its perfection, is wholly present. It is a centre which is at the same time the circumference.
In a subsequent dialogue[509] the object alike of intellectual pursuit and of the heart’s desire is described as a positive or “perfective” infinite. The will cannot rest satisfied with a finite good; but if there is other good beyond, desires it, seeks it, because, as the common saying goes, the acme of one species is the foot and the beginning of the next higher species. The highest good being infinite, it is communicated infinitely, but also according to the nature of the things to which it is communicated. Neither to the universe, e.g. as regards mass and figure, nor to the intellect, nor to the heart, are any definite limits fixed; yet the intellect and the heart may still become perfect through or by their object, for that object is not merely a “privative infinite[510]” or potentiality, but a perfective or positive[511] infinite as being itself actuality and perfection. When the intellect conceives truth, or light, the good, the beautiful, within the whole capacity of its nature, and the soul drinks of the divine nectar and of the source of eternal life, so much as its vessel can hold, it is seen that the light (of truth) extends beyond, and that the intellect may go on and on, penetrating more deeply into it. The nectar and the source of living water are infinitely productive; the soul may quench its thirst in it again and again.[512]