The complete title of the work referred to is:
“Jordani Bruni Nolani De Monade Numero et Figura liber consequens Quinque De Minimo Magno et Mensura, item De Innumerabilibus, Immenso et Infigurabili; seu De Universo et Mundis libri octo. (Francofurti, 1591.)”
That the Reader may judge of the value of Bruno’s speculations, I give the following quotations:
Lib. iv. c. 11 (Index). “Tellurem totam habitabilem esse intus et extra, et innumerabilia animantium complecti tum nobis sensibilium tum occultorum genera.”
C. 13. “Ut Mundorum Synodi in Universo et particulares Mundi in Synodis ordinentur,’ &c.
He says (Lib. v. c. 1, p. 461): “Besides the stars and the great worlds there are smaller living creatures carried through the etherial space, in the form of a small sphere which has the aspect of a bright fire, and is by the vulgar regarded as a fiery beam. They are below the clouds, and I saw one which seemed to touch the roofs of the houses. Now this sphere, or beam as they call it, was really a living creature (animal), which I once saw moving in a straight path, and grazing as it were the roofs of the city of Nola, as if it were going to impinge on Mount Cicada; which however it went over.”
There are two recent editions of the works of Giordano Bruno; by Adolf Wagner, Leipsick, 1830, in two volumes; and by Gfrörer, Berlin, 1833. Of the latter I do not know that more than one volume (vol. ii.) has appeared.
Did Francis Bacon reject the Copernican System?
Mr. De Morgan has very properly remarked (Comp. B. A. 1855, p. 11) that the notice of the heliocentric question in the Novum Organon must be considered one of the most important passages in his works upon this point, as being probably the latest written and best [531] matured. It occurs in Lib. ii. Aphorism xxxvi., in which he is speaking of Prerogative Instances, of which he gives twenty-seven species. In the passage now referred to, he is speaking of a kind of Prerogative Instances, better known to ordinary readers than most of the kinds by name, the Instantia Crucis: though probably the metaphor from which this name is derived is commonly wrongly apprehended. Bacon’s meaning is Guide-Post Instances: and the Crux which he alludes to is not a Cross, but a Guide-Post at Cross-roads. And among the cases to which such Instances may be applied, he mentions the diurnal motion of the heavens from east to west, and the special motion of the particular heavenly bodies from west to east. And he suggests what he conceives may be an Instantia Crucis in each case. If, he says, we find any motion from east to west in the bodies which surround the earth, slow in the ocean, quicker in the air, quicker still in comets, gradually quicker in planets according to their greater distance from the earth: then we may suppose that there is a cosmical diurnal motion, and the motion of the earth must be denied.
With regard to the special motions of the heavenly bodies, he first remarks that each body not coming quite so far westwards as before, after one revolution of the heavens, and going to the north or the south, does not imply any special motion; since it may be accounted for by a modification of the diurnal motion in each, which produces a defect of the return, and a spiral path; and he says that if we look at the matter as common people[30] and disregard the devices of astronomers, the motion is really so to the senses; and that he has made an imitation of it by means of wires. The instantia crucis which he here suggests is, to see if we can find in any credible history an account of any comet which did not share in the diurnal revolution of the skies.
[30] Et certissimum est si paulisper pro plebeiis nos geramus (missis astronomorum et scholæ commentis, quibus illud in more est, ut sensui in multis immerito vim faciant et obscuriora malint) talem esse motum istum ad sensum qualem diximus.