be deductive, mathematical. And yet, on the other hand, since thought and being are one, there is everywhere a harmony of opposites, thought is nothing if it cannot be "put into the mould of phantasy or sensuous imagination, imagination is nothing if not a vehicle of thought," and all theoretical investigation of nature must have as its corrective and complement, experience. In the study of nature we have to regard, as far as possible, the higher forms of existence as consequences of the lower, and gaps in our knowledge of the higher must be filled from our knowledge of the lower. True method is an art of discovery as well as of memory. Such an art supersedes the Scholastico-Aristotelian logic.

The primal Unity: God. All things have their source and their truth and explanation in a single simple substance. Without opposition or difference in itself, it is the ground of all differentiated being. In it are contained simultaneously and in one act the, to finite intelligence, infinite variety and succession of beings. Matter and form, power and end, in it fall together into perfect unity: matter is, from the beginning, form, power, and end. Form, power, and end are in themselves matter; and all are but manifestations of the one single substance, nature of nature,-God. The manifestations of this substance are not personalities nor even attributes of it, since it is not in the least affected with plurality, but are merely aspects which this substance presents to finite intelligence. In itself it is absolutely simple; and it is consequently incognoscible, all its manifestations are but shadows and reflections, negative manifestations. It is directly perceived by the eye of pure reason alone, to which all contrariety appears as resolved into pure identity.

In

Nature. Nature is not God, but his manifestation. nature there are two highest principles, matter and form. In the last analysis these two are one; form proceeds from, and returns into, matter, which, consequently, cannot be conceived as mere barren possibility, as Aristotle attempted

to conceive it. Form, indeed, is merely a (self-) determination of it. Matter is thus force, soul, spirit. Nature, therefore, must be conceived as working in the manner of an artist, and though distinct from God, is not, in reality, separate from him. Nature as God's image contains in itself at every moment all that it is and can be. The whole of nature is present in every part, as the life of the body is in the juices and the blood of the whole body. But it is present in a different manner in different parts: hence multiplicity and change, which obviously cannot belong to being as such, but only to the mode of being. Nature, as in itself one and as subject of multiform and changing modes, is a harmony of opposites; its working is at one and the same time both union and opposition; the resolution or dissolution of one individuality is also the formation of a new individuality. The elementary constituents of nature are point-like material spheres (termed monads), having, in different degrees, a psychical nature. Of these there are as many classes as there are classes of things perceivable by the senses. The monads, as the elements of all that is, are, on the one hand, the "minima" (smallest), and, on the other (since all else has its source in them), the "maxima" (greatest) of things. God is the monad of monads. Space is merely a necessary thought-form, correlative to body, and is an infinite continuum. Time is not (as Aristotle held) the measure of motion, but motion, rather, of time, which would exist even were there no motion (motion is necessary, however, to the perception of time). Objective time would be that measured off by the motions of the heavenly bodies if such motions were perfectly regular in every regard.

The Concrete Universe.—The visible universe is not bounded by the region of the fixed stars (as Aristotle and even Copernicus held), but is infinite [as Nicolas of Cusa had said]. There is an infinity of worlds infinitely various in degree of perfection, so reflecting the infinite perfection of the Creator. They are living organisms, and contain an infinite variety of organic life, in the maintenance of which

VOL. I.- -4

the creative world-soul finds its infinite satisfaction. Reason never tires of drawing forth from matter all sorts of forms. The immanent end of the existence of every living thing is the perfection of the whole. The world is the most beautiful possible, the perfect harmony of all oppositions. It is the work of an in-dwelling reason,- gives evidence, by the wonderful structure and manifoldness of its parts, the tendency of objects to "preserve their being," flee their opposites, and struggle towards that which is useful to them, of the presence in it of a universal intelligence. There are three degrees of this intelligence. On the plane of the lowest degree neither the nature nor any property of objects is clearly distinguished, there is at most but an indefinite feeling of bodily properties. Such intelligence belongs to plants. A higher stage is that which distinctly perceives the constitution and character of objects: this is animal intelligence. The third and highest stage is that of rational knowledge. There are degrees of life in ascending scale, and corresponding changes from one to another resulting in a gradual development of higher forms of life out of lower. Change is universal and constant, but gradual and occurring in infinitely long periods. In a period of twenty thousand years one genus may develop into another. Real infinitude is predicable of the genus only: the genus alone has infinite capacity for development. Man's place in the scale of living things is midway between the divine and the earthly, - he is the harmony of these two opposites, the bond between them; his nature contains implicitly all others. The soul lives in the whole body, returning towards the heart (from which it extended itself, as a web) at death. The present life of the soul is but death, death the awakening of a new life. Sense, imagination, understanding, and spiritual intelligence are the forms of human knowledge. In spiritual intelligence everything is embraced in a single perception"life, light, sense, and thought, are one essence, one power, one act, the All-One." This is the only real intelligence. Viewing the world with the eye of this intelligence, man sees

it as the image and law of God, nay, God himself. In such intelligence and the longing and hope corresponding to it, man passes into God and "becomes all as he is all." In so doing he becomes the Good, which is precisely the One, King, the Divine. Evil is relatively non-existent, - is mere defect and opposition, finitude, not-being in being. To become evil is merely to fall away from God. Only as good does the soul find true joy in itself and its environment. Goodness is, first of all, truth, since truth is just that One which is in and above all things. In truth and goodness, thought and action are united and become love, which is their consummation. He who is filled with love is filled with God, who is precisely Love, which pours itself forth on all things, and towards which all things struggle.

Result. In the doctrine of Bruno, the nature-philosophy of the First Period reaches its highest form; in it there is manifested a fuller conception of the presuppositions, method, and results of a philosophy of nature, whether speculative or empirical, than in any of these systems we have contemplated before it. By his conception of nature as the sum and unity of all possible determinations, Bruno holds the position of forerunner of Spinoza; by his conception of the monad that of forerunner of Leibnitz. The philosophy of Bruno stands almost entirely alone among the systems of this First Period as being wholly "non-Christian' in principle and result: it is simply Platonism, or NeoPlatonism, purified of medieval accretions, and blended with the widest truths of nature as known to the science of the age of Bruno, or as divined by a mind gifted with high poetico-philosophical insight. The kernel of it is, doubtless, the conception of the unity of opposites, a conception which has played (and is playing) a vast rôle in modern speculative thought. as we shall have abundant occasion to see.

33.

(2) Ethical Philosophers (chiefly Political). — The names which occur here are those of Nicolò Macchiavelli,

Thomas More, Johannes Oldendorp, Nicolaus Hemming, Jean Bodin, Albericus Gentilis, Benedict Winckler, Hugo Grotius, Richard Hooker.

§ 34.

Nicolò Macchiavelli (1469–1527), the Italian statesman, in his two works, "Il Principe" (The Prince), (1513, pub. 1532), and "Discorsi sul Primo Libro delle Deche di Tito Livio (Discourses on the First Book of the Decades of Titus Livius), (1520?), gives not so much a theory of the State as such, as a theory of a State under conditions like those existing in Italy in his own day. He separates political methods entirely from moral and religious, and upholds the maxim that the "end justifies the means."

$ 35.

Thomas More (1478-1535).—More, the well-known Lord Chancellor of King Henry VIII. of England, in a philosophical romance, "Utopia" (Latin, 1516; English translation by Ralph Robinson, 1551), portrays an "ideal commonwealth," agricultural in basis, in which community of property is the universal rule, the form of government is republican, transgression of the laws (which are but few) is punished by degradation to a condition of slavery, the sciences are assiduously cultivated, education is compulsory, religious toleration prevails except towards those denying the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and of a divine providence, and the priesthood (numerically small) enjoys special respect and is irresponsible.

8 36.

Johannes Oldendorp (d. 1561). - Oldendorp, professor at Marburg, whose "Juris Naturalis Gentium et Civilis eioaywyń" (1539) has been called the "first attempt to establish a system of natural law," 1 based natural right on universal reason, but held that Revelation (i. e., the Deca

1 See Erdmann, § 252, 4.