I. The Shadows of Ideas

In 1582, Gorbin, whose shop was under the sign of " Hope," produced the second of Bruno's printed works, but the first which has been preserved down to our own time. " De Umbris Idearum " " The Shadows of Ideas " was dedicated to Henry and issued "with his privilege." Now Chicus ^sculanus asserted in his commentary " In Spheram " that Solomon wrote a work on the shadows of ideas, and perhaps this statement suggested the title to Bruno ; for more than once he refers to Solomon and his Song in this book.^ The work aimed at setting before the King, men of cultured mind, scholars and students an im- proved art of remembering ; but, since the mnemonic system displayed is loosely associated with metaphysical bases, the latter are treated of in the first part of the book as " Shadows of Ideas," while the second part is entitled the "Art of Memory." The first part is frankly Neo-Platonic. Bruno had absorbed much Neo-Platonism ; it was a popular doc- trine in his time. It is true that he despised its Italian ex- ponent, Pico della Mirandola ; ^ but the symbolic doctrine of the One True Light approached so near to the conceptions
1 Bartholmfess, C ; /. Bruno, Paris, 1846, //, p. 190. Tocco, F ; Opere Latine di G. B, Firenze, 1889, p. 44. The Canticles were supposed to be symbolic. " I sat down under his shadow with great delight," Canticles^ II, 3 ; " Until the day break and shadows flee away," ibid., 17 ; also IV, 6.^
2 Auvray, L ; op. cit., sub Dec. "jth.
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he was forming, or had already formed as to the immanence of God that he had no scruple in using it. He accepts, too, the doctrine of universal animism, which was held by the ancient world and generally received by thinkers of his own age. The " Art of Memory," following the philosophic treatise, is in three divisions which contain some rudi- mentary psychology and an attempt at mental analysis. The notions which Lully conceived to be irreducible are replaced by an increased number of concepts, chosen for their convenience in illustrating mnemonic method. '^ Bruno retains Lully's mechanical arrangements, the various com- partments bearing symbolic labels for economy and concen- tration of thought. There is, however, little serious attempt at systematic treatment. Severe orderly arrangement would seem to have been repellent to all the men of the Renais- sance, and it was by no means conformable with the swoop and circlings of Bruno on the wing. The book was in- tended to be generally acceptable ; and therefore its author reserved much which must have been maturing in his brain. His thought was to be quickened and strengthened by the clarifying stimulus of opposition and contumely ; his bold and penetrative insight to be sharpened by the obtuse folly of his foes. His present object was to arouse the mind of his reader without incensing him unduly.
Eastern ideas reached Plato, and he endeavoured to formulate them; but Neo-Platonism retranslated thought into imagery.^ Bruno never entirely departed from the Neo-Platonic method. He often associates his concepts with a mystic symbolism which is not always a mere aid to memory, but implies some subtle and profound cosmic sympathy. Words, nay alphabets, he holds are the shades
^ Tocco ; loc, dt.
* Zimmermann, R ; Gesch. d. Aesthetik als pMlosoph. Wissenschaft, IVien, 1858.
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of things, and things are the vestiges of the Being of beings. Throughout, he presupposes an ultimate identity of thought and thing ; of memory and nature ; of what is knowable and the unknown ; of fact and power. This opinion has been pretty generally held by the profounder thinkers. The age was so convinced of the reality of a single principle that it sought eagerly for the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's stone.
It had been shown by the later Greeks that sense-per- ception was not to be depended on for the discovery of truth. The Neo-Platonists therefore relied on the directness of intuition concerning high matters ; they regarded intuition as having the force of perception on a higher plane. This was also characteristic of the mystics and it greatly influenced Bruno. But he held man to be incapable of achieving the very truth.^ We are but shadows of the Ineffable One ; " for the light which reaches us is confused and contradictory and mixed with darkness; we perceive good and evil together and in contrast, the beautiful associated with the ugly to which it is in opposition.* Looked at from the eternal point of view, all, even the worst evils are perfection; everything descends from the perfect and everything strives to wing a homeward flight.* The human soul is to the human body as is a pilot to the ship : it is in it, but not of it,^ and, being associated with body, the soul perceives truth confusedly and as in flux. But the Idea draws us on ; and, in itself, it is not abstract but concrete and articulated.' Our ideas, we must re- member, are as an admixture of light and shadow and not that absolute truth which they can never reach ; * but none-
> De Umbr, Int. I. ^ Ibid., Int. II. » lUd., Int. XXI.
♦ Ibid., Int. VII. Cfr. Plot. ; Enn., iv, 4, 36 ; v, 5, 12 ; vj, 5, 12. Ibid., Conct IV, V. Cfr. Plot. ; Enn., iv, 3, 21 ; iv, 7, 1. « Ibid., Cone. V, VI ' Ibid., Cone. XV. ' Ibid., Int. II
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theless the mind can rise above the things of sense, perceiv- ing unity in plurality.'- Mystic union with the Divinity was experienced by Plotinus and others.^ From the acceptance of this mystical experience thus avowed in this early work, Bruno never departed. But in his later works, wherein he reproduces far less Neo-Platonism and becomes vastly more original, he proclaims that by the exercise of reason also we can attain comprehensive contact with the Absolute, Who is at once the source and object of our search.'
God is immanent as well as transcendent; for does not man share a measure of the Ineffable Light ? * The inter- connection of ideas naturally corresponds with that of things.^ But memory is apt to break down, and, where it does so, we may mend it by working on the lines of its natural operation.* He feels the significance of the principle of the Association of Ideas, which Aristotle was the first to indicate, and uses it. He also culls the best from all writers of his time on mnemonics, as he told us in the preface he intended to do. Our ideas being shadows of truth,' we use shadows of these shadows in mnemonics. We can economize thought by means of signs the nature of which is that they are shadows or traces.
To fix attention, maintain interest and arouse emotional force, he introduces mythological subjects.*
Imagine what a good "draw" a really useful tool for unearthing the buried treasures of the mind would be to men who found books so hard to come at ! But Bruno was endowed with a prodigious memory, and he falsely attributed his natural power to the artifices he employed. Probably the expectations he excited were not fulfilled. There is no
' Ibid., Cone. V. ' Cone, xvij-xix. Cfr. Porph. ; v, Plot. 23.
" This forms the subject-matter of the Eroiei Furori.
' De Umbris, Int. VII. = Ibid., Int. VIL
' Ibid., Int. XIII. ' Cfr. Plato; Repub. vij. 515.
' De Umb : Ars Memoriae, Pars II, De Subj. §§ 2-5.
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great novelty in his mnemonics ; he was one of the " celestial thieves " of his generation. There are, in De Umbris, fore- shadowings of his philosophic syncretism ; but he has not yet welded the conclusions of others into a vital whole or made them live anew in his own completer thought ; the work is tentative and contains only the germ of the Bruno that was presently to appear ; but such remarks as the one that religious mysteries are mere institutions to train human eyes/for the perception of " the steep passage from darkness to light " are truly Brunian.
He introduces symbolic verse of his own composition and gives us brisk dialogue between Hermes, Philotimus and Logifer, with thrusts, less severe than those which were to follow, at the doctors and masters of the schools.
Scholars had travelled a far road from the elegant Latin of Cicero. Bruno's Latin is full of neologisms ; his syntax is bad ; his prosody, abominable. In a later work he acknow- ledges that his Latin is coarse and rough. But it is alive. One finds the elements of Bruno's manner in this early work and they may be conveniently examined here.
He delights in brisk and varied dialogue which knows no curb. Sometimes the thread of mystical symbolism which runs through it finds a natural expression in metre ; every here and there he breaks into verse, which, no less than prose, he writes with impetuous fury. At its worst, one is reminded that he came from the land of improvvisa- tori. He is far too much in a hurry to be over careful as to style, and never dreams of polish; for the thing he has to declare is infinitely more important than the manner of declaring it. Later, he hinted at being too diffuse,^ but failed to amend his ways. In his verses, there is little of craftsman-like skill. His pen flows as rapidly as his thought; his mind is full to bursting point; he indulges ' Spaccio, III, ij.
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in wide circlings and side-long sweeps. He casts about for the most unlikely allegory; for to him, as to Dante and Swedenborg and Emerson, all nature and all the products of the human mind are symbolic of higher truth ; and in this he fell into line with the conviction of his century, perceiving deep analogies in fact and fable, whether sacred or profane. Hence, in an age of respect for authority, he supports an argument by drawing on his own vast lore; he lugs in learning by the ears, not for display but to reinforce his meaning. He does this quite impartially: the Bible, the Pre-Socratic philosophers, the Cabala and classic myth are introduced as of equal weight. There is real unity underlying each of his works ; but all give the impression of disorder. For, each trivial occasion, each intruding half-thought is as a spark which he allows to burst into vivid and vagrant flame : his imagination plays riotously round his immediate theme, and then sud- denly leaps aside. Sometimes this is a trick, done of set purpose. If the men of the Renaissance rejoiced in life, towards the close of the period they expressed their vigour in violence. Hence Bruno lost no opportunity of keeping his readers awake by the oddness of his antics ; he sur- prises them by bombardments and unexpected raking fires. He thinks to throw each noble design, each lofty thought into relief by the dodge (not wholly unknown to modern authors) of smart paradox. Prolixity and the grossly grotesque entertained his age: they bore ours. All is overdone: there is not a thought of repose. Penetrative insight, soaring imagination, novel wisdom, severe thought have a setting of jest and jeer, clumsy buffoonery and sheer indecency. He was justified in being sure of himself; but his bombastic self-assertion repels the modern reader. He delights in contrast and invective. His polemic is implacable and often unjust, but less so than that of his
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contemporaries and immediate successors ; and he flies less readily than they to the final argument of abuse. As Tocco remarks,^ his motive is always noble ; he " made no thought of life " ^ and proved it by sacrifice and sufier- ing and sealing his faith in death.