IV. On Images, Signs and Ideas

At the same autumn fair appeared the last work given to the world by Bruno himself. There is no record extant of permission for its publication ; but it is mentioned, with the date of its appearance, in Bassaus' Frankfurt Catalogue of 1592. "The Arrangement Of Images, Signs And Ideas" * is preceded by a dedicatory letter to Heinrich Hainzell, the "distinguished and most generous" lord of Elgg. Bruno informs Hainzell that this is one of his most important works, having for its object the description of how images, signs and ideas may be so ordered in the mind as to sub- serve a general scheme for the discovery and arrangement of truths and for the fixing of them in the memory. The greater part of the treatise is in prose, but there are excur- sions into verse. There are three books, the first consisting of two sections. The author extracts all that he considers of first importance from the De Utnbris, Cantus Circaus and Sigillus, condensing and improving without greatly altering. The wprk is indeed an important one, for, although Neo-PIatonic distinctions are adopted, Neo-Platonic doctrine is widely departed from, and a position is taken up which is, in essence, that of the great German Idealists. " The simplest operations of arithmetic are very easy," he says, yet " to do these is to do everything ; to say them is to say everything. . . . Herein the whole light is more
> He immenso, VI, xx.
' De Imaginwn, Signorum ei Idearum Comp., Frcf. ap. Jo. Wechelium et P. Ficherum consortes, 1591. We know that it was the last work published at Frankfurt from the De Monade, Cap. Ill, schol. and from the work itself, ///, vij.
Q
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present, clear and obvious to our intelligence than is the outer light of the sun to the eyes. . . . Shall I call it a power, however, because so few know and understand ? . . . Because the eye beholdeth other things, itself it doth not see. But what is that eye which beholdeth other things in such wise that it may perceive itself? It is that ej^e which seeth all things in itself, and which even is all things." ^ At the commencement of the book we come across a passage where, couched in scholastic terminology, is the identification of thought and thing, intellect and substance, memory and nature, knowledge and fact. " Ideas are the cause of things prior to the things, the vestiges of ideas are the things themselves, that is to say, they exist in things ; the shadows of ideas are derived from things, that is to say, they are subsequent on them."
He again records his belief in mystic intuition, writing of " the interior intuition which is both the light and that which it illumines, differing from external intuition as a mirror which only reflects would from a mirror illuminated of its own nature . . . wherein object and sensitive subject are one." ^
That same Pythagorean fallacy is repeated which runs through all Bruno's work and all the philosophy of his time, viz., that, since simple numbers can be clearly con- ceived and are without contradiction, they represent the ultimate constitution of the Universe and possess objective existence.
He perceived the unity of the fine arts and that know- ledge is a constructive art; and one may infer from the following passage that he found keener enjoyment in sight than in hearing : " There be men who find harmony through the eye ; others, though in less measure, through the ear.
' Prefatory letter to Hainzell. ' De Compositione, I, sec. i, c. i
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The minds of such as be true poets, musicians, painters and philosophers are akin ; for all true philosophy is at once music, poetry and painting; true poetry hath both music and philosophy in it, and music and philosophy are a kind of divine wisdom and painting.",
V, A Philosophical Lexicon
The "List Of Metaphysical Terms For Taking The Study Of Logic And Philosophy In Hand " ^ was published at Zurich four years after the lessons, of which it is a digest, were given in that city, and fourteen years later Eglin had them reprinted at Marburg with the addition of a " Proposi- tion Of Descent Or The Unfolding Of Being." ^ The first part was written perhaps with the encyclopaedic efforts of Aquinas and Albertus Magnus in bis mind and certainly with the fifth book of Aristotle's Metaphysic serving as a guide. It is a crude but bold attempt at a philosophical dictionary.^ The additional part is an application of the definitions (of the first part) of Neo-Platonism.
Here, as elsewhere, Bruno employs the language of the schools in order to rise above the conceptions it conveys. The work thi'ows great light on his attitude towards religion. He says that, according to the Schoolmen, faith is implicit in babes and common, folk and explicit in the wise and learned. God acts in time and space, but is above time and change, and with him liberty and necessity are one. Everything, however far it may be from being good in
' Summa terminorum meiaphysicorum ad capessendum Logicae et Philosophiae Studium, ex Jordani Bruni Nolani Entis descensu manusc. excerpta ; nunc primum luci commissa ; a Raphaele Eglino Iconio, Tigurino : Zurich, 1 595.
* A ccessit ejusdem Praxis Descensus seu Multiplicatio Entis ex manuscripto. . . . Marpurgi, 1609.
' Mclntyre, op. cit., p. 113.
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itself, is nevertheless a means to good. We can observe Will operant in Nature {voluntas naturalta) as a self- moving principle, intelligent and prescient. God is not merely transcendent ; but, in fact, operates through Nature and is in Nature. Wherefore thorough investigation of Nature can never give what is base or false. Philosophic truth is certitude, procurable by setting forth from the gates of sense. It cannot be at variance with theologic truth, as the upholders of the Twofold truth maintained, although the latter is given by revelation from a superior intelligence {Summa sub evidentia).