II. The Unit

At the autumn fair, Wechel and Fischer produced the remainder of the great poem, permission for the printing of which is not recorded in the Frankfurt Censorial Register. It was entitled " Of the Unit, Quantity and Shape, A Book Following The Five On The Least, The Great And Measure. Also Eight Books Concerning The Innumerable, Immeasurable And Infigurable, Or Of The Universe And Its Worlds." ^ In fact, two volumes were bound up in one. The first of these, " Of the Unit," commences with laudatory verses addressed to Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick. Bruno contrasts the strenuous life of those who love truth with that led by pleasure-seekers and the idle rich. It is clear that the long struggle with obscurantists, the buffets of exile, persecution by academies, and the general ill- success which attended his mission had left their marks. The iron had entered into his soul. Yet he is still un- daunted, and sings with prophetic instinct : " Whatever cruel fate shall await me, the struggle began far back in boyhood, and, God be witness, I follow the truth unvan- quished, nor may death itself bear the smallest terror to me, nor in any wise do I blench before the violence of any mortal man." ' And later in the book, he sings : " I have
' De minima, V, v.
^ De monade, numero et figura, liber consequens quinque de minima, m,agno et mensura. Item de Innumerabilibus, immense et inftgurabile, seu de universo et mundis, libri acta . . . 1591.
' De manade, cap. I v. 38-45.
THE GREAT LATIN POEM AND LAST BOOKS 237
fought : it is much, . . . Victory lies in the hands of Fate. Be that with me as it may, whoever shall prove conqueror, future ages will not deny that I did not fear to die, was second to none in constancy, and preferred a spirited death to a craven life."^ Here, says Brunnhofer, is Bruno's epitaph.
There are many fine poetic passages, too often marred by ugly neologisms, curious syntax and execrable prosody. Apart from these, the sole interest of the book to the modern reader lies in the singularity of that pronounced occultism which held so much attraction for men of the Renaissance. The scientific education of the day was not built on the secure foundation of careful observation and ex- periment. Stress was laid on word and symbol, with curious results. With greater sagacity, men put faith in intuitions springing from the mind, like Minerva from the brain of her Divine Father ; but they knew little of the methods of verification. Bruno draws largely from many sources in this work, but chiefly from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettes- heim." He tells us that the work deals with revelation, faith and divination, and not with reasoned knowledge and experi- ment. He takes occasion to protest against dogmas which " disturb human calm and the peace of ages, put out the light of the mind and avail not in morals."
The work is, however, chiefly filled with a selection of such mystical and philosophic lore as fell in with the author's own conceptions and with a singular series of geometrical constructions founded upon a theory of distinct mathematical minima, and upon the numerical mysteries of Pythagoras, all invested with metaphysical significance. One is the perfect number, the source of infinite series.
1 De monade, cap. vij, v. 128 sq.
' De occulta philosophia. Cfr. Tocco, F ; Fonti pui recenti della /. di G. B. in Acad, dei Lincei, Rediconti ser., vj, p. 534.
238 GIORDANO BRUNO
Even so does an infinity of worlds proceed from one sub- stance ; the diversity of the universe and all its creatures being due to the union of the One and the Many.