Of the philosophers who represent the main line of development of modern thought on the Continent in the seventeenth century,—Descartes, Gassendi, Spinoza, Leibniz,—there is not one who has not been accused of having borrowed his chief doctrines, without acknowledgment, from the Italian philosopher. Descartes.Bishop Huet[632] described Bruno as the antesignanus of the Cartesian philosophy, and pointed to the De Immenso et innumerabilibus as containing indications of almost all its ideas. The charge is of course absurd so far as Descartes’ characteristic philosophy is concerned—the ideas by which he created a revolution in modern thought. Bruno indeed begged men to throw over all prejudices, all traditional beliefs, before entering upon the study of nature: he agreed with Descartes therefore in rejecting wholly every authority but that of man’s own reason, in demanding complete freedom of thought, not only from outward, but also from inward, subjective fetters. Most nearly he approaches the “Cartesian doubt” in the preface to the Articuli adv. Mathematicos.[633] “As to the liberal arts, so far from me is the custom or institution of believing masters or parents, or even the common sense which (by its own account) often and in many ways is proved to deceive us and lead us astray, that I never settle anything in philosophy rashly or without reason; but what is thought perfectly certain and evident, whenever and wherever it has been brought into controversy, is as doubtful to me as things that are thought too difficult of belief, or too absurd.” But this is still very far from the universal doubt of Descartes,—doubt, not of this or that particular opinion or belief, but of all possible beliefs. Bruno’s aim was knowledge, to add to or correct the sum of general opinion as to the world as a whole, as to man’s relation to it and to God; Descartes’ was certainty, to find a basis from which a system of thought might be built up de novo, and from which at the same time a secure ground for morality and religion might be derived. The doubt was nothing without the certainty to which it led,—the certainty of self-consciousness,—which, as it has been said, is only the other side, the positive expression of the universal doubt itself. On the other hand, in the subsequent steps of the Cartesian philosophy,—the arguments on the nature of God, and the relation of the infinite to the finite substances,—many touches suggest the influence of Bruno’s comprehensive attempt to combine a philosophical pantheism with a scientific atomism. It is unlikely that Descartes should have been ignorant of a writer well known to Mersenne and Huet. The former[634] would have excused Bruno “had he been content to philosophise upon a point, an atom, or on unity,—but because he attacked the Christian religion, it is reasonable to decry him as one of the most wicked men the earth has ever produced!” Certainly the fact that Descartes nowhere mentions the guilty philosopher is of no importance in deciding as to the influence of the latter upon him.[635]
Gassendi 1592–1655.It was only natural that Gassendi’s critics should have placed him in a close relation to the Nolan. There is no improbability in the idea that Gassendi was attracted to the latter as an opponent of the Aristotelian philosophy, against which he himself had already written in his youth—although no part of the work was published until 1624.[636] Both also approached the reform of natural philosophy from the same standpoint, that of sense-experience, and both arrived at an atomic theory of the ultimate constitution of nature. Bruno, before Gassendi, had attempted to place the ethical teaching of Epicurus in a fairer light than popular prejudice allowed, but while Gassendi followed Epicurus in his atomism only too strictly, Bruno was much more independent, and advanced much nearer to the modern view. So in his general theory of the system of the world, Gassendi stops half-way—with the conception of a limited matter, but in an endless space, of a beginning for the world, but in an endless time, of a plurality of worlds with the earth as centre of our system: here also it is Bruno that is the more advanced, and the more daring thinker;—yet, from the respect with which Gassendi writes of Copernicus, it is clear that his sympathies were with the new hypothesis. It may be added that although Gassendi rejected the notion of a world-soul, in the ordinary sense, as distinct from God, and that of souls of the individual worlds, or of stones, etc., yet he too was fain to explain the attraction of the magnet for the iron, of the earth for the stone, of atom for atom, by an influence passing from the one to the other, by which the one became aware of the other’s existence, and was impelled towards it, i.e. by a kind of sense, or feeling, a soul, which was at the same time the principle of movement.
Spinoza.It is, however, on the development of Spinoza’s[637] thought that the most direct influence of Bruno can be shown. Sigwart[638] and Avenarius[639] have proved that in preparing the short treatise on “God, Man, and his Blessedness,” Spinoza must have had the Causa and Infinito of Bruno almost before his eyes. The treatise consists of several parts which are more or less independent of one another, and which represent tentative approaches towards the finished Ethics; but it differs from the Ethics in the far greater prominence of the mystical, Neoplatonist element. Pollock suggests that it may have been his free-thinking teacher Dr. Van den Ende who introduced Spinoza to Bruno’s writings: there is no external evidence of the acquaintanceship, but that, it is needless to say, is of slight importance. Spinoza certainly read Italian, and he practised in other cases the same neglect of authorities, of whose substance he was making use: it was indeed the custom of the time—there were few who followed Burton’s example.
There are certain general resemblances between the finished philosophies of the two authors, so far as Bruno can be said to have a finished philosophy. The first principle of both is the unity out of which all things spring, to which all return, and in which all have their true nature, or highest reality,—a unity with which both identify nature and spirit alike, and which is for both God. God is accordingly beyond the reach of all human knowledge; determination is negation, limit, by which the infinite is untouched. All attributes in God are one only, or none; thought is one with extension, love with intelligence; yet in strictness God is neither thought nor extension, intelligence nor love, or he is these in another than our human meaning. So far as this central thought is concerned, it is Bruno that is the deeper thinker. In him the One is not a dead negation, in which real things are absorbed to the loss of all their reality and life, as it is with Spinoza: rather it is a living fountain, gushing forth in the infinite streams of living beings: the whole of nature is the expression of its own inward being. The One is in process; the whole, in which this process results, is a harmony every member of which has its own independent reality and worth, over against all others, as a manifestation of divinity. The life of the one is that of its members; all are necessary to it, as it to them. Carrière[640] indeed places Bruno above Spinoza as having found in the one a self-consciousness, a subject infinite in that it knows itself and all things in itself, preserving all things, as necessary to its external enjoyment and love; while Spinoza is still within the bonds of substance—in God there is neither understanding nor will, in Him all difference vanishes, the modes are an illusion. So the Spinozistic parallelism between thought and matter finds its counterpart in Bruno, with whom all that is thought, all that is possible, is also real, or actual, i.e. has extended or material existence. It is true that this conception is much more precisely expressed in Spinoza, with his clean-cut distinction between the world of body and the world of mind or ideas, to which the possible belongs, but it was a distinction which he could not consistently uphold; on the other hand, the universal animism, the doctrine that to every material thing or event there corresponds a spiritual reality or process, which is only the other side of the parallelism of soul and body, is more clearly and vigorously defended by the earlier philosopher. The natural and the spiritual, matter and form, are not two principles, or elements which combine to produce a given result, or which harmonise with one another: they are one and the same thing, and their truth is their life, their soul, their thought. Bruno was in earnest with his animism, as his confident belief in magical correlations showed.[641]
From their principles both derived a conviction of the necessity[642] and of the goodness of all things, but it is Bruno rather than Spinoza who attempted to reconcile individual liberty with determinism in the universe as a whole, and individual moral responsibility with the necessary goodness of the all. The corresponding relativity of evil, the fallacy of “fortune” or “chance” (as anything but “uncertainty” of the finite mind), were already asserted by Bruno, and his ideas as to the relation between the religion of the Church, or the teaching of the Bible, and the investigations of science, are precisely those which Spinoza adopts.
The short tractate.In the De Deo seu Homine, however, the correspondences are much greater and more definite between Spinoza and Bruno, showing that the former passed through a phase of Neoplatonism, in which his pantheism was much less formal or abstract than it afterwards became. Thus the predicates applied in the Ethics to God are applied here to nature, as by Bruno also:—Nature is infinite in the sense of “without limits or bounds,” containing no parts in itself, and therefore not a whole over against other wholes; there cannot be two infinites, or boundless worlds.[643] The parallelism between outward nature and the thought or understanding of God is also more after Bruno’s mode of expression (ch. ii. § 11, 19). “Neither substance nor qualities can be in the infinite understanding of God, which are not formaliter in nature (1) because of the infinite power of God—there is no cause or ground in Him why He should create one thing rather than another, hence He creates all; (2) because of the simplicity of His will; (3) because He cannot refrain from doing what is good.” The thesis, and the first and third of the arguments by which it is supported, are all verbally close to Bruno’s argument in the Infinito and in the De Immenso. So the effort of all finite things after self-conservation,[644] and their consequent movement, are explained not mechanically, through the action of one material thing upon another, but rather spiritually, through the unity of nature in which all share. Thus even that possibility of an action of thought upon matter (extension) is allowed, which in the Ethics is, formally at least, denied. In the Tractate also there is more emphasis laid upon the goodness of God, as the source of the infinite world of finite beings, whereas in the Ethics a logical, mechanical necessity takes its place. It is in the second, more mystical and ethical part, of the treatise, however, that the influence of the Nolan philosopher is most apparent, and here it is the Summa Terminorum or Heroici Furori that seems to have formed the direct or indirect source of many of the conceptions—such, for example, as the distinction between Ratio and Intellectus. Ratio.Ratio is discursive thought, building up knowledge by successive steps; Intellectus “intuitive thought,” direct and simultaneous perception of the whole of the object—the only adequate or complete form of knowledge, for which reasoning is merely a preparation in us. Our knowledge of God, so far as it is possible at all, is of the second type: we cannot know Him as he is, through His effects, His creation: it is only the few to whom He reveals Himself that can know Him as He is, by direct contact with Him. Yet this revelation is constantly open to all men; for each and all God is, always, intimately present, “more intimately than each is to himself.”[645] Other ideas which Sigwart has found common to the Short Tractate and the writings of Bruno, are those of the Love of God as springing from the knowledge of God; the correspondence between the degrees or stages of love and those of knowledge; the inability of our minds to rest in a finite object or finite good, the constant pressure onwards towards other and other objects; the contrast between sensible love and intellectual love; God as the highest, most complete object, the knowledge of Him above and embracing in itself all other knowledge, making the knower one with his object, transforming him into God himself; the divine Harmony in the soul which ensues; the love of God which is man’s highest blessedness, which is wholly disinterested, and blind to all earthly good or beautiful things; love which is unlimited in its possibility, as its object is infinite: with this limitless possibility of Love is the idea of immortality connected; but “Bruno deduces from the immortality of man the possibility of a love which increases infinitely; while for Spinoza, on the contrary, the infinitely increasing love of God is a ground of proof for immortality.”[646] When there is added to these many instances of doctrines in Spinoza’s earlier work which were later modified in the direction of greater rigidity and mechanical systematisation, the fact that the Tractate embraces two tentative dialogues, in one of which Spinoza is represented by a Theophilus (as Bruno in so many of his dialogues is represented), it is impossible not to feel convinced that Spinoza for a period of his life at least was a follower of Bruno. It is true that many of these ideas are not the property of Bruno alone, but of the school of Neoplatonism of which he like Spinoza was at any rate a partial adherent, but nowhere else than in Bruno is to be found the same “collocation” of these ideas as occur in this tractate of Spinoza. It is an open question whether the movement of the latter away from the Italian’s philosophy was entirely a progressive, and not in some respects a retrograde movement.
Leibniz.At first sight it might seem much more natural to connect Leibniz with Bruno, because of the obvious correspondence of many of their fundamental ideas:—their analysis of the universe into a system of independent realities, each differing from every other—each mirroring the universe in itself from its own individual point of view; each therefore in a sense containing or comprising the all in itself, as each is again a necessary constituent of the all. In place of Spinoza’s dead world, we find in Leibniz, as in Bruno, finite things in constant flow, constant change, each passing necessarily through every phase through which any other has passed—representing the universe as it is in time, as well as the universe as it is at any moment in actual existence; each experiencing, in other words, the life, the process, as well as the quality, the being of the all. Everything that is, is necessarily, everything that occurs, occurs necessarily, in Bruno because the whole flows out from the thought of God, as God thinks it (i.e. in the relations in which it stands in the one all-embracing thought of God); in Leibniz, because of the will of God, who in His goodness has chosen the best of all ideal systems, within which each thing or event has its necessary place. In both, all things are, from the point of view of the whole, good:—in Bruno because in God truth and goodness, will and understanding, are one; in Leibniz because of the will of God, which has chosen for the best: evil is finitude, or again is ignorance, an error of standpoint. In both freedom and necessity are one, because the necessity belongs to God’s own nature; He wills out of Himself, undetermined, uninfluenced from without, and this is freedom. In both, as we have seen, the principle of sufficient reason is a ground both for the infinite number and infinite variety of the finite beings in the universe, and for the impossibility that two should exist which are exactly identical one with another. Were it known that Leibniz had studied Bruno before his system was formed, we might almost say that he had chosen that aspect of the Nolan philosophy which with Spinoza had been disregarded, viz. the aspect in which all rights are given to the finite individual, and to the world of finite beings, as each representing the infinite, containing the infinite in itself, and, so far as possibility goes, each of infinite divine worth. Whereas just that side which appealed to Spinoza would have failed to touch Leibniz—the side in which God appears as one with the universe, not as beyond or outside of it, but as immanent in the whole, and present in the fulness of His nature to each and every member of the whole. Philosophically Leibniz’ mission was to develop the Cartesian doctrine of the three substances—God, finite spirit, and body—in a direction which identified the first and third with the second, broke up the unity of God into the immeasurable many of the monad spirits, and its infinity into indefiniteness. The God of Leibniz, even as the highest of the monads, is separate from, apart from, the other monads—a finite along with other finites. So each of the ordinary monads is a world by itself, shut up within itself, with no windows from which it can look out upon the world, and really be affected by what is passing without it. There is no without—each is, in a word, God, and so far as it is concerned there may be no other being in existence. Bruno, on the contrary, was fully conscious—at times—of the necessity of holding the balance between the infinite unity of God and the finite units or realities, which are the expression, the manifestation, the self-revelation of the one. Why this revelation? he does not indeed ask; but given it as actual, he finds the reconciliation in it at once of the necessity of the whole and the liberty of the unit, the goodness of the all and the moral frailty of the individual.[647]
Interesting as this speculative comparison of the two philosophies may be, there is not, however, even the slightest ground for attributing any direct historical influence of Bruno upon Leibniz. If influence occurred at all—which is doubtful—it was through Spinoza or some of the minor philosophical writings of the time. Lacroze (in a letter of 1737) accused Leibniz of “having drawn his whole system” from Bruno’s book De Maximo et Minimo (sic!): he added that he had told Leibniz this fact himself, both by word of mouth and in writing, and that the reason why so few had noticed it was that the philosophical writings of Bruno were obscure and repellent. The same suggestion has been repeatedly made since—more especially as regards the name “Monad,” which Leibniz, after much searching and deliberation, gave to his “real unities” from 1696 onwards.[648] Brunnhofer goes so far as to see both the ideas and the main formulas of Leibniz in Bruno—the monad-doctrines, monads as living mirrors of the universe, as fulgurations of God, the Pre-established Harmony—the future as involved in the present, “the present is pregnant with the future,”—the phenomenality of sense-objects—God as the highest monad, etc. He argues that Leibniz derived his idea that “the monads have no windows by which anything can enter or depart” from casual remarks by Bruno as to the “windows of the soul,” “the gates of the senses” by which images enter in, or “the chinks and holes” by which we gaze outwards upon the world. The coup de grâce was given to this legend, for so we must call it, by Ludwig Stein in his Leibniz und Spinoza.[649] He showed that Leibniz was already in full possession of the idea of the monad at least ten years before he found the most fitting expression for it, and that after 1696 he used the word “Monad” always as the distinctive badge or typical name for his substances or forces; that before 1700 he knew of Bruno only one of the Lullian works (the De Arte Combinatoriâ, v. Dutens, ii. 367), and perhaps the mathematical articles (adv. Mathematicos, ib. iii. 147). Apart from these works, which could have no reference to his own philosophy, he was acquainted with Bruno only by hearsay, as a reputed forerunner of Descartes; even as librarian of the Brunswick Library, although some of Bruno’s works were in his guardianship, he is not likely to have read them until his attention was called to them by their alleged resemblance to his own theory. And then, as we learn from the letter to Lacroze (11th April 1708),[650] he hardly appreciated them at their true value—“Mr. Toland has not spoken to me of the Specchio (i.e. Spaccio, an error that does not show much familiarity with Bruno) della Bestia trionfante of Giordano Bruno. I think I have seen the book at some time, and that it is against the Pope. I have two works of his on the Infinite, one in Latin, the other in Italian. The author is not wanting in genius, but is not very profound (ne manque pas d’esprit, mais il n’est pas trop profond).” Elsewhere he speaks of Bruno only as believing in “innumerable worlds” with Leucippus and Democritus, and as having been burnt, not, as he believes, on account of his book the De Immenso, but for other opinions.[651]
There is therefore little reason to suppose that Leibniz had great interest in Bruno, or that he had read his works so carefully as to have derived any sustenance or advancement for his philosophy from them. Stein has in any case shown that the term “Monad” came to Leibniz, not from Bruno at all, but from the younger Van Helmont, in whose theory it plays almost as important a part as in Leibniz—although the difference between the two “Monads” was greater than the resemblance.[652]