If the universe is infinite, we must necessarily reason as follows: There cannot be two infinities; now the existence of the world cannot be denied; hence God and the universe are but one and the same being. In order to escape the charge of atheism, Bruno distinguishes between the universe and the world: God, the infinite Being, or the Universe, is the principle or the eternal cause of the world: natura naturans; the world is the totality of his effects or phenomena: natura naturata. It would, he thinks, be atheism to identify God with the world, for the world is merely the sum of individual beings, and a sum is not a being, but a mere phrase. But to identify God with the universe is not to deny him; on the contrary, it is to magnify him; it is to extend the idea of the supreme Being far beyond the limits assigned to him by those who conceive him as a being by the side of other beings, i. e., as a finite being. Hence Bruno loved to call himself Philotheos,1 in order to distinguish clearly between his conception and atheism. This proved to be a useless precaution, and did not succeed in misleading his judges.

As a matter of fact, the God of Bruno is neither the creator nor even the first mover, but the soul of the world; he is not the transcendent and temporary cause, but, as Spinoza would say, the immanent cause, i. e., the inner and permanent cause of things; he is both the material and formal principle which produces, organizes, and governs them from within outwardly: in a word, their eternal substance. The beings which Bruno distinguishes by the words "universe" and "world," natura naturans and natura naturata, really constitute but one and the same thing, considered sometimes from the realistic standpoint (in the medieval sense), sometimes from the nominalistic standpoint. The universe, which contains and produces.

1 Philotheus Jordanus Brunus Nolanus de compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lullii, Paris, 1582.

2 Della causa, 72 ff.

all things, has neither beginning nor end; the world (that is, the beings which it contains and produces) has a beginning and an end. The conception of nature and of necessary production takes the place of the notion of a creator and free creation. Freedom and necessity are synonymous; being, power, and will constitute in God but one and the same indivisible act.1

The creation of the world does not in any way modify the God-universe, the eternally-identical, immutable, incommensurable, and incomparable Being. By unfolding himself, the infinite Being produces a countless number of genera, species, and individuals, and an infinite variety of cosmical laws and relations (which constitute the life of the universe and the phenomenal world), without himself becoming a genus, species, individual, or substance, or subjecting himself to any law, or entering into any rela tions. He is an absolute and indivisible unity, having nothing in common with numerical unity; he is in all things, and all things are in him. In him every existing thing lives, moves, and has its being. He is present in the blade of grass, in the grain of sand, in the atom that floats in the sunbeam, as well as in the boundless All, that is, he is omnipresent, because he is indivisible. The substantial and natural omnipresence of the infinite Being both explains and destroys the dogma of his supernatural presence in the consecrated host, which the ex-Dominican regards as the corner-stone of Christianity. Because of this real all-presence of the infinite One, everything in nature is alive; nothing can be destroyed; death itself is but a transformation of life. The merit of the Stoics consists in their having recognized the world as a living being; that of the Pythagoreans, in having recognized the mathematical necessity and immutability of the laws gov erning eternal creation.2

1 De immenso et innumerabilibus, I., 11.

2 Id, VIII., 10

Bruno sometimes calls the Infinite, the Universe, or God, matter. Matter is not the μǹ ov of Greek idealism and the Schoolmen. It is inextended, i. e., immaterial in its essence, and does not receive its being from a positive principle outside of itself (the form); it is, on the contrary, the real source of all forms; it contains them all in germ, and produces them in succession. What was first a seed becomes a stalk, then an ear of corn, then bread, then chyle, then blood, then animal semen, then an embryo, then a man, then a corpse, and then returns to earth or stone or some other material, only to pass through the same stages again. Thus we have here something that is changed into all things, and yet remains substantially the same. Hence, matter alone seems to be stable and eternal, and deserves to be called a principle. Being absolute, it includes all forms and all dimensions, and evolves out of itself the infinite variety of forms in which it appears. When we say a thing dies, we mean that a new thing has been produced; the dissolution of a combination means the formation of a new one.

The human soul is the highest evolution of cosmical life. It springs from the substance of all things through the action of the same force that produces an ear from a grain of wheat. All beings whatsoever are both body and soul: all are living monads, reproducing, in a particular form, the Monad of monads, or the God-universe. Corporeality is the effect of an outward movement or the expansive force of the monad; in thought the movement of the monad returns upon itself. This double movement of expansion and concentration constitutes the life of the monad. The latter lasts as long as the backward and forward motion producing it, and dies as soon as this ceases; but it disappears only to arise again, in a new form, soon after. The evolution of the living being may be described as the expansion of a vital centre; life, as the duration of

the sphere; death, as the contraction of the sphere and its return to the vital centre whence it sprang.1

All these conceptions, especially the evolutionism of Bruno, we shall meet again in the systems of Leibniz, Bonnet, Diderot, and Hegel, which his philosophy contains in germ and in the undifferentiated state, as it were. As the synthesis of monism and atomism, idealism and materialism, speculation and observation, it is the common source of modern ontological doctrines.

§ 50. Tommaso Campanella

Another Southern Italian and Dominican, TOMMASO CAMPANELLA,2 anticipated the English and German essays concerning human understanding, i. e., modern criticism. This doughty champion of philosophical reform and Italian liberty was born near Stilo in Calabria, 1568, and died at Paris, 1639, after spending twenty-seven years in a Neapolitan dungeon on the charge of having conspired against the Spanish rule.

Campanella is a disciple of the Greek sceptics. This school taught him that metaphysics is built on sand unless it rests on a theory of knowledge. His philosophy consequently first discusses the formal question.3

Our knowledge springs from two sources: sensible experience and reasoning; it is empirical or speculative.

1 De triplici minimo, pp. 10–17.

2 Opere di Tommaso Campanella ed. by A. d'Ancona, Turin, 1854 (Campanella Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, Naples, 1590; Philos rationalis et realis partes V., Paris, 1638; Universalis philosophiæ sive metaphysicarum rerum juxta propria dogmata partes III., id., 1638; Atheismus triumphatus, Rome, 1631; De gentilismo non retinendo, Paris, 1836, etc.); [Cf. Baldachini, Vita e filosofia di T. C., Naples, 1840-43; Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, I., pp. 125 ff. — TR.]

For Campanella's theory of knowledge, see especially the Intro duction to his Universal Philosophy or Metaphysics

Is the knowledge acquired by sensation certain? Most of the ancients are of the opinion that the testimony of the senses must be ignored, and the sceptics sum up their doubts in the following argument: The object perceived by the senses is nothing but a modification of the subject, and the facts which, the senses tell us, are taking place outside of us, are in reality merely taking place in us. The senses are my senses; they are a part of myself; sensation is a fact produced in me, a fact which I explain by an external cause; whereas the thinking subject might be its determining but unconscious cause as easily as any object. In that event, how can we reach a certain knowledge of the existence and nature of external things? If the object which I perceive is merely my sensation, how can I prove that it exists outside of me? By the inner sense, Campanella answers. Sense-perception must derive the character of certitude, which it does not possess in itself, from reason; reason transforms it into knowledge. Though the metaphysician may doubt the veracity of the senses, he cannot suspect the inner sense. Now, the latter reveals to me my existence immediately, and in such a way as to exclude even the shadow of a doubt; it reveals me to myself as a being that exists, and acts, and knows, and wills; as a being, furthermore, that is far from doing and knowing everything. In other words, the inner sense reveals to me both my existence and its limitations. Hence I necessarily conclude that there is a being that limits me, an objective world different from myself, or a non-ego; and thus I demonstrate by the a posteriori method a truth that is instinctive, or a priori, or prior to all reflection: the existence of the non-ego is the cause of the sensible perception in me.1

Does this argument refute scepticism? To tell the truth, it only half refutes it, and our philosopher has no 1 Universalis philos. sive metaphys., Part I., 1, c. 3.