The theological fixation of the thought of the Reformation appeared as its ruin, and as Luther had once waged his warfare against the " sophistry " of the Scholastics, so now a movement of Mysticism that was quietly
stirring
farther and wider among the people, directed itself against his own creation.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
R.
Eucken, BeitrSge zur Oesch.
der neueren Philos.
, Heidelberg, 1886.
Of his numerous pupils the most important are Johann Baptist van Helmont (1677-1644 ; Ger man ed.
of his works, 1683), and his son, Franz Mercurius, also Robert Fludd
(1674-1637, Philosophia Mosaica, Guda, 1638), and others.
The most noteworthy deposit of these movements is formed by the doctrine
of Jacob Boehme. He was born', 1676, near Gorlitz, absorbed all kinds of thoughts in his wanderings, and quietly elaborated them. Settled as a shoe maker at Gorlitz, he came forward, 1610, with his main treatise Aurora, which at a later time after he had been temporarily forced to keep silence, was followed by many others, among them especially Viertig Fragen von der Seele (1620),
Mytterium Magnum (1623), Von der Onadenteahl (1623). He died 1624. Coll. works ed. by Schlebler, Leips. 1862. Cf. 11 A. Fechner, . /. B. , sein Lebeu und stint Schriften, Gorlitz, 1863 ; A. Peip, J. B. der deutsche Philosoph, Leips. 1860.
§ 28. The Struggle between the Traditions.
The immediate attachment to the Greek philosophy which became prevalent in the Renaissance, was not entirely without its precedent in the Middle Ages, and men like Bernard of Chartres and William of Conches (cf. p. 302) were prototypes of the union of an increas ing interest for knowledge of Nature with the humanistic move ment. It is noteworthy, and characteristic of the changing fortune of transmitted doctrines, that now, as then, the union between
Humanism and natural philosophy attaches itself to Plato, and stands in opposition to Aristotle.
1. In fact, the revival of ancient literature showed itself at first in the form of a strengthening of Platonism. The humanistic move ment had been flowing on since the days of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and arose from the interest in Roman secular literature which was closely connected with the awakening of the Italian national consciousness ; but this current could not become a vic torious stream until it received the help of the impulse from with out which proceeded from the removal of the Byzantine scholars to
Italy. Among these the Aristotelians were of like number and im portance with the Platonists, but the latter brought that which was
358 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV.
relatively less known, and therefore more impressive. In addition to this, Aristotle was regarded in the West as the philosopher who was in agreement with the Church doctrine, and thus the opposition, which longed for something new, hoped much more from Plato ; and still further there was the aesthetic charm that comes from the writ ings of the great Athenian, and for which no time was more keenly susceptible than this. Thus Italy first became intoxicated with an enthusiasm for Plato that matched that of departing antiquity. As if to connect itself immediately with this latter period, the Academy was again to live in Florence, and under the protection of the Medicis a rich scientific activity actually developed here, in which a reverence was paid to the leaders like Gemistus Pletho and Bes- sarion which was not less than that once given to the Scholarchs of Neo-Platonism.
But the relationship with this latter system of thought went deeper; the Byzantine tradition, in which the Platonic doctrine was received, was the Neo-Platonic tradition. What at that time was taught in Florence as Platonism was in truth Neo-Platonism. Mar- silio Ficino translated Plotinus as well as Plato, and his " Platonic Theology " was not much different from that of Proclus. So, too, the fantastic natural philosophy of Patrizzi is in its coneeptional basis nothing but the Neo-Platonic system of emanation ; but it is significant that in this case the dualistic elements of Neo-Plato nism are entirely stripped off, and the monistic tendency brought out more purely and fully. On this account the Neo-Platonist of the Renaissance places in the foreground the beauty of the universe ; on this account even the deity, the Unomnia (One-all) is for him a sublime world-unity which includes plurality harmoniously within itself ; on this account he is able to glorify even the infinity of the universe in a way to fascinate the fancy.
2. The pantheistic tendency, which is so unmistakable in this, was enough to make this Platonism an object of suspicion to the Church, and thus to give its Peripatetic opponents a welcome in strument with which to combat it j and an instrument that was used not only by the scholastic Aristotelians, but also by the others. On the other hand, to be sure, the Platonists could reproach the new humanistic Aristotelianism for its naturalistic tendencies, and praise their own tendency toward the super-sensuous, as allied to Christianity. Thus the two great traditions of Greek philosophy fought their battle over again, while each charged the other with its unchristian character. 1 In this spirit Pletho, in his vo/xatv ovy-
1 Quite the same relation is repeated in the case of the different groups of Aristotelians, each of which wished to be regarded orthodox, — even at the price
Chap. 1, §28. ] Warring Tradition*: Platonistt, Aristotelians. 359
ypa<£tj. conducted his polemic against the Aristotelians, and incurred thereby condemnation from the Patriarch Gennadios in Constanti nople; in this spirit George of Trebizond attacked the Academy, and in the same spirit, though milder, Bessarion answered him. Thus the animosity between the two schools, and the literary stir it produced in antiquity, were transferred to the Renaissance, and it was in vain that men like Leonicus Thomaeus of Padua (died 1533) admonished the combatants to understand the deeper unity that subsists between the two heroes of philosophy.
3. Meanwhile there was absolutely no unity among the Aristote lians themselves. The Grecian interpreters of the Stagirite and their adherents looked down with as much contempt upon the Averroists as upon the Thomists. Both passed for them in like manner as barbarians ; they themselves, however, were for the most part prepossessed in favour of that interpretation of the Master which was closely allied to Stratonism, and which was best repre sented among the commentators by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Here, too, one transmitted theory stood in opposition to the others. The conflict was especially severe in Padua, where the Averroists saw their fortress threatened by the successful activity of Pomponatius as a teacher. The main point of controversy was the problem of immortality. Neither party admitted a full, individual immor
tality, but Averroism believed that it possessed at least a compensa tion for this in the unity of the intellect, while the Alexandrists attached even the rational part of the soul to its animal conditions, and regarded it as perishable with them. Connected with this were the discussions on theodicy, providence, destiny and freedom of the will, miracles and signs, in which Pomponazzi frequently inclined strongly to the Stoic doctrine.
In the course of time this dependence upon commentators and their oppositions was also stripped off, and the way prepared for a pure, immediate apprehension of Aristotle. This succeeded best with Ceesalpinus, who avowed his complete allegiance to Aristotle. An equally correct understanding of the Peripatetic system was gained by the German Humanists from a philological standpoint, but following Melancthon's precedent they adopted this in their own doctrine only in so far as it agreed with Protestant dogma.
4. In all these cases the adoption of Greek philosophy led to an opposition to Scholasticism as regards the real content or matter of
of the •' twofold truth. " In this the Averroists, especially, were ready, and io it came about that one of tlieni, N'ifo, had himself entrusted by the Pope with the refutation of Komponazzi's doctrine of immortality. The latter, indeed, also covered himself with the same shield.
360 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV.
the opposing systems. Another line of Humanism, which was more in sympathy with Roman literature, inclined to a predominantly formal opposition, of which John of Salisbury may be regarded as
a mediaeval forerunner. The taste of the Humanists rebelled against the barbarous outward form of mediaeval literature. Accustomed to the polished refinement and transparent clearness of the ancient writers, they were not able to value rightly the kernel so full of character, which lay within the rough shell of the scholastic termi nology. The minds of the Renaissance, with their essentially aes thetic disposition, had no longer any feeling for the abstract nature of that science of abstract conceptions. Thus they opened the battle in all directions, with the weapons of jest and of earnest ; instead oj conceptions they demanded things ; instead of artificially constructed words, the language of the cultivated world ; instead of subtle proofs and distinctions, a tasteful exposition that should speak to the imagination and heart of the living man.
Laurentius Valla was the first to make this cry resound. Agric- ola took it up in lively controversy, and Erasmus also joined in. The models of these men were Cicero and Quintilian, and when at their hand the method of philosophy was to be changed, the scho lastic dialectic was dislodged and in its place were introduced the principles of rhetoric and grammar. The true dialectic is the science of discourse. 1 The " Aristotelian " logic therefore becomes the object of most violent polemic ; the doctrine of the syllogism is to be simplified and driven from its commanding situation. The syllogism is incapable of yielding anything new ; it is an unfruitful form of thought. This was later emphasised by Bruno, Bacon, and Descartes, as strongly as by these Humanists.
But the more closely the dominance of the syllogism was con nected with dialectical " Realism," the more nominalistic and teruii- nistic motives connected themselves with the humanistic opposition. This shows itself in the cases of Vives and Nizolius. They are zealous against the reign of universal conceptions; in this, according to Vives, lies the true reason for the mediaeval corruption of the sciences. "Universals, Nizolius teaches,' are collective names which arise by comprehension," not by abstraction ; individual things with their qualities constitute reality. It concerns us to apprehend these, and the secondary activity of the understanding which com pares, is to be carried out as simply and unartificially as possible. Hence all metaphysical assumptions, which have made so great a
1 Petr. Ramus, Dialect. Instil. , at the beginning. * Mar. Nizolius, De Ver. Princ, I. 4-7 ; III. 7.
Chap. 1, § aJ8. ] Warring Traditions : Humanists, Ramus. 361
difficulty in previous dialectic, must be banished from logic. Em piricism can use only a. purely formal logic.
The "natural " dialectic, however, was sought in rhetoric and grammar, for, Ramus held, it should teach us only to follow in our voluntary thinking the same laws which, according to the nature of reason, control also our involuntary thinking, and present themselves
in the correct expression of this involuntary process of thought. In all reflection, however, the essential thing is to discover the point of view that is determinative for the question, and then to apply this correctly to the subject. Accordingly Ramus, following a remark of Vives,1 divides his new dialectic into the doc trines of Inventio and Judicium. The first part is a kind of general logic, which yet cannot avoid introducing again in the form of the
which is accordingly much smaller than formerly. In the second place the judgment is to unite cognitions that belong together to a systematic whole, by definition and division ; its highest task, how ever, it fulfils only when it brings all knowledge into relation to God, and finds it grounded in him. Thus natural dialectic culminates in theosophy. *
Slight as was the depth and real originality of this rhetorical system, it yet excited great respect in a time that was eager for the new. In Germany, especially, Ramists and anti-Ramists engaged in vehement controversy. Among the friends of the system, Jo hannes Sturm is especially worthy of note, a typical pedagogue of
Humanism, who set the task for education of bringing the scholar to the point where he knows things, and how to judge concerning them from a correct point of view, and to sj>eak in cultivated manner.
5. A characteristic feature of this movement is its cool relation toward metaphysics ; this very fact proves its derivation from the Roman popular philosophy. Cicero, to whom it especially attached
itself, was particularly influential by virtue of his Academic Scepti cism or Probabilism. Surfeit of abstract discussions alienated a considerable part of the Humanists from the great systems of
' Lad. Vires, Dt Cautis Corr. Art. (first put of Dt Ditciplinis), III. 6, •CI. E. Laaa, Die PUdagogik de$ J. St. kritisch und hittoritch beleuchttt
spontaneously
•• loci " the categories, such as Causality, Inherence, Genus, etc. , and thus, enumerating them without system, falls into the naive meta physics of the ordinary idea of the world. The doctrine of judgment is developed by Ramus in three stages. The first is the simple de cision of the question by subsuming the object under the discovered point of view ; here the doctrine of the syllogism has its place,
(Badio, 1872).
362 Tlie Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Pabt IV.
antiquity also. The extension of religious unbelief or indifferent- ism was an additional motive to make scepticism appear in many circles as the right temper for the cultivated man. The charm of outer life, the glitter of refined civilisation, did the rest to bring about indifference toward philosophical subtleties.
This scepticism of the man of the world was brought to its complete expression by Montaigne. With the easy grace and fine ness of expression of a great writer, he thus gave French literature a fundamental tone which has remained its essential character. But this movement also runs in the ancient track. Whatever of philosophical thought is found in the "Essays" arises from Pyr rhonism. Hereby a thread of tradition which had for a long time been let fall is again taken up. The relativity of theoretical opin ions and ethical theories, the illusions of the senses, the cleft between subject and object, the constant change in which both are involved, the dependence of all the work of the intellect upon such doubtful data, — all these arguments of ancient Scepticism meet us
here, not in systematic form, but incidentally in connection with the discussion of individual questions, and thus in a much more impressive manner.
Pyrrhonism was at the same time revived in a much more scho lastic form by Sanchez, and yet in a lively manner, and not without hope that a sure insight might yet at some time be allowed to man. He concludes individual chapters, and -the whole work, with "Nescisf At ego nescio. Quid? " To this great "Quid? "he has indeed given no answer, and guidance to a true knowledge was a debt that he did not discharge. But he left no doubt as to the direction in which he sought it. It was the same which Montaigne also pointed out : science must free itself from the word-lumber of the wisdom of the schools, and put its questions directly to things themselves. Thus Sanchez demands a new knowledge, and has, indeed, a dim foreboding of but where and how to be sought he not prepared to say. In many passages seems as though he would proceed to empirical investigation of Nature, but just here he cannot get beyond the sceptical doctrine of outer perception, and he recognises the greater certainty of inner experience, this inner experience in turn loses its value because of its indefiniteness.
Charron comes forward with firmer step, since he keeps before him the practical end of wisdom. Like his two predecessors he doubts the possibility of certain theoretical knowledge; in this respect all three set up the authority of the Church and of faith
metaphysics can be revealed only the human power of knowl edge not sufficient for it. But, proceeds Charron, the human
a is
is
;
:
if
it
it,
it is
Chap. 1, § 28. ] Warring Tradition* : Sanchez, Catholicism. 363
knowing faculty is all the more sufficient for that self-knowledge which is requisite for the moral life. To this self-knowledge belongs, above all, the humility of the sceptic who has no confidence that he knows anything truly, and in this humility is rooted the freedom of spirit with which he everywhere withholds his theoretical judgment. On the other hand, the ethical command of righteous ness and of the fulfilment of duty is known without a doubt in this self-knowledge.
This diversion toward the practical realm, as might be expected from the general tendency of the time, was not permanent. The later Sceptics turned the theoretical side of the Pyrrhonic tradi tion again to the front, and the effect which resulted from this tendency for the general tone of the time applied ultimately, for the most part, to the certainty of dogmatic convictions.
6. The Church doctrine could no longer master these masses of thought which now made their way so powerfully into the life of this period, as it had succeeded in doing with the Arabian-Aristote lian invasion : this new world of ideas was too manifold and too full of antitheses, and, on the other hand, the assimilative power of the Church dogma was too far exhausted. The Roman Church limited itself, therefore, to defending its spiritual and external power with all the means at its disposal, and was only concerned to fortify its own tradition and make it as sure as possible within itself. In this changed form the Jesuits now performed the same task that in the thirteenth century had fallen to the mendicant orders. With their help the definitive and complete form of Church dogma was fixed against all innovations at the Council of Trent (1563), and Thomism declared to be authoritative in essentials for philosophical doctrine. Thereafter there could be no more any question as to changes of principle, but only as to more skilful presentations and occasional insertions. In this way the Church excluded itself from the fresh
movement of the time, and the philosophy dependent upon it fell into unavoidable stagnation for the next following centuries. Even the short after-bloom which Scholasticism experienced about 1600 in the universities of the Iberian ]>cninsula bore no real fruit Suarez was an important writer, clear, acute, accurate, and with a gTeat capacity for a luminous disposition of his thoughts ; he sur passes also, to a considerable degree, hiost of the older Scholastics in the form of his expression ; but in the content of his doctrine he is bound by tradition, and a like constraint will be understood as a matter of course in the case of the collective work of the Jesuits of Coimbra.
Over against this form of religious tradition, another now made
364 The Renaissance : Humanittic Period. [Part IV.
its appearance in the Protestant churches. Here, too, the opposition claimed the older tradition, and put aside its mediaeval modifications and developments. The Reformation desired to renew original Chris tianity as against Catholicism. It drew the circle of the canonical books narrower again ; putting aside the Vulgate, it recognised only the Greek text as authoritative ; it returned to the Nicene creed. The controversy over dogmas in the sixteenth century — theoretically considered — hinges upon the question, which tradition of Chris tianity shall be the binding one.
But the theological antithesis drew the philosophical antithesis after and here again relation was repeated which had appeared at many points during the Middle Ages. In the doctrine of Angus tine, the religious need found a deeper, richer satisfaction, and more immediate expression than in the conceptions worked out by the Scholastics. Earnestness in the consciousness of sin, passionate longing for redemption, faith that was internal in its source and its nature, — all these were traits of Augustine's nature which repeated themselves in Luther and Calcin. But only in the doctrine of Calvin that the permanent influence of the great Church Father shown and yet just by this means an antagonism between
Tkomi8tn and Augustinianism was once more created, which evinced itself as especially important in the French literature of the seven teenth century (cf. 30 f. ). For the Catholics under the guidance of Jesuitism, Thomas was the ruling authority for the Reformed Churches, and for the freer tendencies in Catholicism itself, Augus tine held the same position.
German Protestantism followed other courses. In the develop ment of the Lutheran dogma, Luther's genius was aided by the co operation of Melancthon and thus of Humanism. Little as the theoretico-aesthetical and religiously indifferent nature of the Humanists1 might accord with the mighty power of Luther's soul with its profound faith, he was, nevertheless, obliged, when he would give his work scientific form, to accommodate himself to the neces sity of borrowing from philosophy the conceptions with which to lay his foundations. Here, however, Melancthon's harmonising nature came in, and while Luther had passionately rejected scholastic Aristotelianism, his learned associate introduced
totelianism as the philosophy of Protestantism, here, too, opposing the older tradition to the remodelled tradition. This Aristotelianism had to be corrected in many passages, to be sure, by
On the relation of the Reformation and Humanism cf. Th. Ziegler, Gesrh der-Ethik, II. 414 ff.
humanistic Aris- original
1
;
; §
is
it,
it is
a
a
Chap. 1, § 28. ] Warring Tradition* : Protestantism. 365
means of the Scriptures, and the combination of doctrines could not reach such an organic union as had been attained by the slow ripen ing of Thoinism in the Middle Ages ; but the Peripatetic system was in this instance treated rather as but a supplement to theology in the department of profane science, and for this end, Melancthon knew how to sift, arrange, and set forth the material in his text-books with so great skill that it became the basis for a doctrine which was in the main one in its nature, and as such was taught at the Protestant universities for two centuries.
7. But in Protestantism there were still other traditional forces active. Luther's work of liberation owed its origin and its success not least to Mysticism, — not indeed to that sublime, spiritualised form of viewing the world to which the genius of Master Eckhart had given expression, but to the movement of deepest piety which, as " practical Mysticism," had spread from the Rhine in the " League of the Friends of God," and in the " Brothers of the Common Life. "
For this Mysticism, the disposition, purity of heart, and the imita tion of Christ were the sole content of religion; assent to dog mas, the external works of holiness, the whole worldly organisation of Church life, appeared to be matters of indifference and even hindrances : the believing soul demands only the freedom of its own religious life, — a demand that transcends all these outward works. This was the inner source of the Reformation. Luther himself had not only searched Augustine, he had also edited the " German The ology " : and his word let loose the storm of this religious longing, with which, in the conflict against Rome, an impulse of national independence was also mingled.
But when the Protestant State Church became again consolidated in the fixed forms of a theoretical system of doctrine, and clung to this the more anxiously in proportion as it was obliged to struggle for its existence in the strife of Confessions, then the supra-confes- sional impulse of Mysticism became undeceived, as did also the national consciousness.
The theological fixation of the thought of the Reformation appeared as its ruin, and as Luther had once waged his warfare against the " sophistry " of the Scholastics, so now a movement of Mysticism that was quietly stirring farther and wider among the people, directed itself against his own creation. In men like Osiander and Schwenckfeld he had to contend against parts of his own nature and its development. But in this movement it became evident that the doctrines of mediaeval Mysticism had been quietly maintained and continued in legendary form amid all kinds of fantastic ideas and obscure imagery. The Mysticism which conies to light in the teachings of men like Sebastian Franck, or in the
366 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [1'akt VI
secretly circulated tracts of Valentine Weigel, has its support in the idealism of Eckhart, which transformed all the outer into the inner, all the historical into the eternal, and saw in the process of Nature and history but the symbol of the spiritual and divine. This con stituted, though frequently in strange form, the deeper ground of the battle which the Mystics of the sixteenth century waged in Germany against the " letter " of theology.
8. Look where we will in the intellectual movement of the fif teenth and sixteenth centuries, we see everywhere tradition arrayed against tradition, and every controversy is a battle between trans mitted doctrines. The spirit of the Western peoples has now taken up into itself the entire material which the past offers for its cul ture, and in the feverish excitement into which it is finally put by direct contact with the highest achievements of ancient science, it struggles upward to the attainment of complete independence. It feels sufficiently hardened to execute work of its own, and overflow ing with its wealth of thought, it seeks new tasks. One feels the impulsive blood of youth pulsate in its literature, as though some thing unheard of, something which had never before been, must now come into being. The men of the Renaissance announce to us nothing less than the approach of a total renovation of science and of the state of humanity. The warfare between the transmitted doctrines leads to a surfeit of the past; learned research into the old wisdom ends with throwing aside all book-rubbish, and full of the youthful joy of dawning, growing life, the mind goes forth into the cosmic life of Nature ever young.
The classical portrayal of this temper of the Renaissance is the first monologue in Goethe's Faust.
§ 29. Hacrocosm and Microcosm.
By Scotism and Terminism the faith -metaphysics of the Middle Ages had become disintegrated and split in twain : everything supersensuous had been given to dogma, and as the object of philos ophy there remained the world of experience. But before thought had as yet had time to become clear as to the methods and special problems of this secular knowledge, Humanism, and with it above all, the Platonic Weltanschauung, burst in. No wonder that the solu tion of the problem, which was itself at first seen but dimly, was first sought in connection with this theory : and this doctrine must have been the more welcome, especially in its Neo-Platonic form, as it showed the world of the supersensuous presageful in the back ground, but made the particulars of the world of sense stand out
Chap. 1, § 20. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm: Bruno, Boehme. 367
distinctly in purposefully defined outlines. The supersensuous itself, and all therein that was connected with man's religious life, might be cheerfully set off to theology ; philosophy could dedicate itself to the task of being natural science, with all the calmer con science in proportion as it followed the Neo-Platonic precedent of
Nature as a product of spirit, and thus believed that in the conception of the deity it retained a point of unity for the diverging branches of science, the spiritual and the secular. Did theology teach how God reveals himself in the Scripture, it was now the business of philosophy to apprehend with admiration his revela tion in Nature. On this account the beginnings of modern natural science were theosophical and thoroughly Neo-Platonic.
1. The characteristic fact, however, is that in this revival of Neo-Platonisra, the last dualistic motives which had belonged to the same were also completely set aside. They disappeared together with the specifically religious interest which had supported them, and the theoretical element of recognising in Nature the creative divine power came forward pure and unmixed. 1 The fundamental tendency in the natural philosophy of the Renaissance was therefore the fanciful or imaginative conception of the divine unity of the liv ing All. the admiration of the macrocosm : the fundamental thought of Plotinus of the beauty of the universe has been taken up by no other time so sympathetically as by this ; and this beauty was now also regarded as a manifestation of the divine Idea. Such a view is expressed in almost entirely Neo-Platonic forms by Patrizzi, in a more original form and with strongly ]>oetical quality by Giordano Bruno, and likewise by Jacob Boehme. With Bruno the symbol of the all-forming and all-animating primitive light is still dominant (cf. p. 245) ; with Boehme, on the contrary, we find that of the organism ; the world is a tree which from root to flower and fruit is permeated by one life-giving sap, and which is formed and ordered from within outward by its own germinal activity. *
In this inheres naturally the inclination to complete monism and pantheism. Everything must have its cause, and the last cause can be but one, — God. ' He according to Bruno, at the same time
the formal, the efficient, and the final cause according to Boehme he " at once the rational ground and efficient cause Urgrund " and Ursache") of the world (principium and causa with Bruno).
In certain senae thU might also be expressed by saying that thereby the Stoic elements of Neo-Platonism came with controlling force into the fore ground.
Cf. the remarkable agreement between Bruno, Delta Cauia Pr. e. U. , TL (Lag. 231 f. ) and Boehme, Aurora, Vorrede.
Aurora, Chap. HI.
apprehending
»11
I.
is a
("
;
is,
868 The Renai$$ance : Humanistic Period. [Pakt IV
Hence the universe is also nothing but " the essential nature of God himself made creatural. " ' And yet the idea of the transcendence of God is here, too, connected with this view, as it had been in Xeo- Platonism. Boehme holds that God should be thought not as a force devoid of reason and " science," but as the " all-knowing, all- seeing, all-hearing, all-smelling, all-tasting" spirit: and Bruno adds another analogy ; for him God is the artist who works unceasingly and shapes out his inner nature to rich life.
Harmony is accordingly, for Bruno also, the inmost nature of the world, and he who can apprehend it with the gaze of enthusiasm
(as does the philosopher in the dialogues and poetic inventions Degli Eroici Furori), for him the apparent defects and imperfections of detail vanish in the beauty of the whole. He needs no special the odicy ; the world is perfect because it is the life of God, even down to every detail, and he only complains who cannot raise himself to a view of the whole. The world-joy of the aesthetic Renaissance sings philosophical dithyrambs in Bruno's writings. A universalistic optimism that carries everything before it prevails in his poetic thought.
2. The conceptions which lie at the basis of this unfolding of the metaphysical fantasy in Bruno had their source in the main in Nicolau* Cusanus, whose teachings had been preserved by Charles Bouille, though in his exposition they had to some degree lost their vivid freshness. Just this the Nolan knew how to restore. He not only raised the principle of the coincidentia oppositorum to the artis tic reconciliation of contrasts, to the harmonious total action of opposing partial forces in the divine primitive essence, but above all he gave to the conceptions of the infinite and the finite a far wider reaching significance. As regards the deity and its relation to the world, the Neo-Platonic relations are essentially retained. God himself, as the unity exalted above all opposites, cannot be appre hended through any finite attribute or qualification, and there fore is unknowable in his own proper essence (negative theology) ; but at the same time he is still thought as the inexhaustible, world-force, as the natura naturans, which in eternal change forms and " unfolds " itself purposefully and in conformity with law, into the natura naturata. This identification of the essence of God and the world is a general doctrine of the natural philosophy of the Renaissance ; it is found likewise in Paracelsus, in Sebastian Franck, in Boehme, and finally also with the whole body of the " Platonists. " That it could also assume an extremely naturalistic form, and could
1 Aurora, Chap. II.
infinite
Crap. 1, § 29. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm : hruno. 369
lead to the denial of all transcendence, is proved by the agitative and boastfully polemical doctrine of Vanini. 1 " —
For the natura naturata, on the other hand, for the "universe
the sum-total of creatures — the characteristic of true " infinity " is not Claimed, but rather that of unlimitedness in space and time. This conception gained an incomparably clearer form and more fixed significance by the Copernican theory. The spherical form of the earth and its revolution about its axis had been a familiar idea to Cusanua as well as to the old Pythagoreans, perhaps, indeed, through them ; but only the victoriously proved hypothesis of the motion of the earth about the sun could furnish a rational basis for the completely new view of man's position in the universe, which is peculiar to modern science. The anthropocentric idea of the world which had ruled the Middle Ages became out of joint. Man, as well as the earth, must cease to be regarded as centre of the universe and centre of the world. Men like Patrizzi and Boehme also raised themselves above such " restriction " on the basis of the teaching of Copernicus, which for that reason was condemned by the dogmatic authorities of all confessions ; but the fame of having thought out the Copernican system to its end, both in natural philosophy and in metaphysics, belongs to Giordano Bruno.
He developed from this system the theory that the universe forms a system of countless worlds, each of which moves about its central sun, leads its own proper life, grows from chaotic conditions to clear and definite formation, and again yields to the destiny of dissolution. The tradition of Democritus and Epicurus had perhaps a share in the formation of this conception of a plurality of worlds arising and perishing again ; but it is the peculiar feature of Bruno's doctrine, that he regarded the plurality of solar systems not as a mechanical juxtaposition, but as an organic living whole, and regarded the pro cess of the growth and decay of worlds as maintained by the pulse- beat of the one divine All-life.
3. While in this way universalism, with its bold flight into spatial and temporal boundlessness, threatened to claim the fantasy entirely for its own, there was an effective counterpoise in the Peripatetic- Stoic doctrine of the analogy between macrocosm and microcosm, which found in man's nature the sum, the '• quintessence " of the cosmical powers. We see this doctrine reviving in the most varied
* Lucilio Vanini (born 1686 at Naples, burned 1619 at Toulouse), a dissolute adrenturer, wrote Amphitheatrum Acttrnot Providential (Lyons, 1616) and Dt admirandu natura; regina drtrque mortalium arcanin (Paris, 1616).
* Nlcolaus Copernicus, De lievnlutinnibitt Orbium Ctrlrntium (Nuremberg, IMS).
370 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV.
forms during the Renaissance ; it controls entirely the theory of knowledge at this period, and moreover the Neo-Platonic triple division is almost universally authoritative in connection with furnishing a scheme for metaphysical anthropology. One can know only what one himself the mode in which this was expressed by Valentine Weigel: man knows the all in so far as he the all. This was a pervading principle of Eckhart's Mysticism. But this idealism now took on definite form. As body, man belongs to the material world indeed, he unites within himself, as Paracelsus, and following him Weigel and Boehme teach, the essence of all material things in finest and most compact form. Just on this account he competent to understand the corporeal world. As intellectual being, however, he of " sidereal " origin, and therefore able to know the intellectual world in all its forms. Finally, as divine " spark," as spiraculum vital, as a partial manifestation of the highest princi ple of life, he also able to become conscious of the divine nature whose image he is.
A more abstract application of this same principle, according to which all knowledge of the world rooted in man's knowledge himself, found in the thought of Campanella, involving not the Neo-Platonic separation of world-strata (although this too present in Campanella), but the fundamental categories of all reality. Man — the thought here too — knows in the proper sense only himself, and knows all else only from and through himself. All knowledge
perception (sentire), but we perceive, not the things, but only the states into which these set us. In this process, however, we learn by experience that inasmuch as we are, we can do something, we know something and will something, and further, that we find ourselves limited by corresponding functions of other beings. From this " follows that power, knowledge, and will are the " primali- ties of all reality, and that they belong to God in an unlimited degree, he known as all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.
The doctrine that all knowledge of God and of the world ultimately locked up in man's knowledge of himself, nevertheless only an epistemological inference from the more general metaphys ical principle according to which the divine nature was held to be fully and entirely contained in each of its finite manifestations. Giordano Bruno follows the Cusan also in holding that God the smallest as well as the greatest, as truly the vital principle of the individual being as that of the universe. And accordingly every individual thing, and not merely man, becomes a " mirror " of the world-substance. Each without exception according to its essen tial nature the deity itself, but each in its own way, which is
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Chap. 1, § 29. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm : Campanella, Bruno. 371
different from all the rest. This thought Bruno incorporated in his conception of the monad. He understood by this the individual substance (Einzelwesen), which, as continually "formed" matter, constitutes one of the partial manifestations of the world-force, in the interaction of which the world-life consists. It is living from the beginning, and is imperishable ; it is corporeal as well as spiritual in its nature. Each monad is a form in which the Divine Being finds individual existence, a finite existence-form of the infinite essence. Since, now, there is nothing but God and the monads, the universe is animated even to the smallest nook and corner, and the infinite all-life individualises itself at every point to a special and peculiar nature. It results from this that each thing, in the move
ments of its life, follows in part the law of its special nature, and in part a more general law, just as a planet or heavenly body moves at the same time on its own axis and about its sun. Cam panella, who took up this doctrine also in connection with the Copernican system, designated this striving toward the whole, this tendency toward the original source of all reality, as religion, and spoke in this sense of a " natural " religion, that is of religion as "natural impulse," — one would now perhaps say centripetal im pulse, — which he with logical consistency ascribed to all things in general, and which in man was held to assume the special form of " rational " religion ; that of the striving to become one with God by love and knowledge.
This principle of the infinite variability of the divine ground of the world which presents itself in a special form in every particular thing, found in similar form also with Paracelsus. Here, as with Kicolaus Cusanus, taught that all substances are present in everything, that each thing therefore presents microcosm, and yet that each has also its special principle of life and activity. This special mind or spirit of the individual called by Paracelsus the Archeus Jacob Boehme, to whom this doctrine passed over, calls
the Primus.
With Bruno the conception of the monad connects itself in very interesting manner, though without further effect upon his physical view with that of the atom, which was brought to him, as to the earlier period, by the Epicurean tradition through Lucretius. The "smallest" — in metaphysics the monad, in mathematics the point — in physics the atom, the indivisible spherical element of the corporeal world. Memories of the Pythagorean and Platonic theory of the elements, and of the related atomic theory of Deinocritus, became thus alive in the midst of Neo-Platonism they found also an independent revival with men like Basso, Sennert, and others,
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372 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV
and so led to the so-called corpuscular theory, according to which the corporeal world consists of inseparable atom-complexes, the coi- puscles. In the atoms themselves, the theory assumed in conneo tion with their mathematical form an original and unchangeable law of action, to which, it held, the mode of action of the corpuscles is also to be traced. 1
5. Here the workings of mathematics assert themselves in the old Pythagorean form, or as modified by Democritus and Plato. The ultimate constituents of physical reality are determined by- their geometrical form, and the qualitative determinations of experience must be traced back to this. The combination of elements presup poses numbers and their order as the principle of multiplicity. 1 Thus spatial forms and number-relations again make their appear ance as the essential and original in the physical world, and thereby the Aristotelian-Stoic doctrine of the qualitatively determined forces, of the inner Forms of things, of the quulitates occulta, was displaced. As this latter doctrine had formerly gained the victory over the principle of Pythagoras, Democritus, and Plato, so it must in turn yield to this : and herein lies one of the most important prepara tions for the origin of modern natural science.
The beginnings of this are found already with Nicolaus Cusanus ; but now they receive an essential strengthening from the same source from which their presence in his thought is explained : namely, from the old literature, and in particular from the Neo- Pythagorean writings. Just for this reason, however, they still have the fantastic m-taphysical garb of number-mysticism and num ber-symbolism. The book of Nature is written in numbers ; the har mony of things is that of the number-system. All is arranged by God according to measure and number ; all life is an unfolding of mathematical relations. But just as in antiquity, so here, this thought is unfolded at first as an arbitrary interpretation of concep tions, and a mysterious speculation. The procedure of the world forth from God, from the construction of the Trinity on, — as, for example, in the attempt of Bouille", — is again to be conceived as the process of the transformation of unity into the number-system. Such fantasies were followed by men like Cardan and Pico. Reuchlin added further the mythological creations of the Jewish Cabbala.
6. Thus the principle which was destined for the most fruitful development made its entrance into the new world wrapped again in the old metaphysical fantasticalness, and fresh forces were
i Cf. K. Lasswitz, Geschichte des Atomismus, I. pp. 359 ft°. (Hamburg and
Leips. 1890).
* Cf . for this especially G. Bruno, De. Triplid Minimo.
Chap. 1, §29. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm : Paracelsus. 373
needed to strip off this covering, and free it for its right working. Meanwhile, however, it became mingled with quite other efforts, which likewise had their origin in the Neo-Platonic tradition. To the idea of a universal psychical life, to the fanciful spiritualisation of Nature, belonged also the impulse to interfere in the course of things with mysterious means, with conjurations and magic arts, and so to guide it according to the will of man. Here, too, a higher thought hovered before the fantastic impulse of the excited age, — the thought of mastering Nature by a knowledge of the forces working in it. But this thought was also received in the wrappings of ancient superstition. If, as was the case with the Neo-Platonists, the life of Nature was regarded as a dominance of spirits, as a mys teriously connected system of internal forces, it was a proper aim to make these subject by knowledge and will. Thus magic became a favourite subject of thought in the Renaissance, and science again concerned itself with the task of bringing system into superstition.
Astrology, with its influences of the stars upon human life, the interpretation of dreams and signs, necromancy, with its conjura tions of spirits, the predictions of persons in the ecstatic state, — all these elements of the Stoic and Ne>Platonic divination were then in most luxuriant bloom. Pico and Reuchlin brought them into con nection with the number-mysticism ; Agrippa of Nettesheim adopted all the sceptical attacks against the possibility of rational science, in order to seek help in mystical illuminations and secret magic arts. Cardan proceeded with all seriousness to the task of deter mining the laws of these operations, and Campanella conceded them an unusually wide space in his idea of the world.
Physicians especially, whose vocation demanded an interference in the course of Nature and might seem permitted 10 expect special advantage in secret arts, showed an inclination toward these magic arts. From this point of view Paracelsus desired to reform medi
cine. He also proceeds from the sympathy of all things, from the idea of the universe as a spiritually connected system. He finds the essence of disease in the injuring of the individual vital prin ciple, the Archeus, by foreign powers, and seeks the means where with to free and strengthen the Archeus. Since this latter process must come about by a corresponding composition of materials, all sorts of magical drinks, tinctures, and other secret remedies must be brewed, and thus the arts of alchemy were set in motion, which, in spite of all its fantastic performances, ultimately yielded a number of useful results for chemical knowledge in the course of its incred ibly extended pursuits.
In this connection the fundamental metaphysical presupposition
374 The Menaistance : Humanistic Petiod. [Pabx IV.
of the unity of all vital force led of itself to the thought that there must be also a simple, most efficacious, universal remedy for the strengthening of every Archeus whatever, a panacea against all diseases and for the maintenance of all the vital forces ; and con nection with the macrocosmic efforts of magic nourished the hope that the possession of this secret would lend the highest magic power, and afford the most desirable treasures. All this was to be achieved by the " philosopher's stone " ; it was to heal all diseases, transmute all substances into gold, conjure all spirits into the power of its possessor. And thus the purposes which it was thought would be satisfied in the ventures of alchemy, were ultimately very real and sober.
7. The introduction of this magical view of Nature into the subtle religious system of German Mysticism constitutes the peculiar feat ure of Boehme's philosophy. He, too, is seized by the thought that philosophy should be knowledge of Nature ; but the deep earnest ness of the religious need which lay at the basis of the German Reformation did not allow him to content himself with the separa tion of religious metaphysics and natural science, customary at his time, and he sought to work the two into one again. Similar efforts which tended to transcend the dogmatic, fixed form of Protestant ism, and hoped to solve the problems of the new science with the aid of a Christian metaphysics, throve also by the side of the official Peripatetic system. TaureUus aimed to produce such a supra-con- fessional philosophy of Christianity, and with a true instinct for his purpose, adopted many elements of the Augustinian doctrine of the will, but was not able to work enough real material from the inter ests of his time into these thoughts, and so came ultimately rather to a complete separation of empirical research from all metaphysics. A similar process went on in the mystical movement, which grew with the popular opposition against the new orthodoxy all the more in proportion as the latter dried and hardened within itself. The mystical doctrines also remained suspended in vague generality until the teaching of Paracelsus was brought to them, at first by Weigel, and then completely by Boehme.
In Boehme's doctrine Neo-Platonism assumes again a completely religious colouring. Here, too, man is regarded as the microcosm from and by which the bodily, the " sidereal," and the divine worlds can be known, if one follows the right illumination and is not mis led by learned theories. Self-knowledge, nevertheless, is religious knowledge, which finds the opposition of good and evil as a funda mental trait of human nature. The same opposition fills the whole world; it rules in heaven as on earth, and since God is the sole
Chap. I, § 29. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm : Boehme. 375
cause of all, this opposition must be sought in him also. Boehme extends the coincidentia oppositorum to the extreme limit, and finds the ground of duality in the necessity of the self-revelation of the divine Primordial Ground. As light can be revealed only in con nection with darkness, so God's goodness can be revealed only in connection with his anger. Thus Boehme portrays the process of the eternal self-generation of God, describing how from the dark ground of Being within him the urgent impulse ("Drang"), or will, which has only itself for its object, attains self-revelation in the divine wisdom, and how that which has thus become revealed forms itself into the world. While the theogonic development thus passes over immediately into the cosmogonic, the effort is everywhere shown in this latter development to carry the fundamental religious antithesis into the physical categories of the system of Paracelsus. Thus three kingdoms of the world and seven forms, or "qualia" (" Qualen "), are constructed, which ascend from the material forces of attraction and repulsion to those of light and warmth, and from there on to those of the sensible and intellectual functions. To this portrayal of the eternal nature of things is then attached the history of the earthly world, which begins with the fall of Lucifer and the process of rendering the spiritual essence perceptible to the senses, and ends with the overcoming of the proud infatuation (" Vergafflsei n " ) for the creature, with the mystical devotion of man to the deity, and ultimately with the restoration of the spiritual nature. All this is presented by Boehme in prophetic discourse, full of deep conviction, with a unique mingling of profundity and dilettantism. It is the attempt of the Eckhartian Mysticism to become master of the modern interests of science, and the first still tentatively uncertain step toward raising natural science into an idealistic metaphysics. But because this is made from the stand point of the deepest religious life, the intellectualistic features of
the older Mysticism retreat, with Boehme, more into the background. While with Eckhart, the world-process both in its arising and in its passing was regarded as a knowing process, with Boehme it is rather a struggling of the will between good and evil.
8. In all these ways the result of the separation of philosophy from dogmatic theology always was that the knowledge of Nature that was sought took on the form of the older metaphysics. This procedure was inevitable so long as the desire for a knowledge of Nature could provide neither a material of facts which it had itself acquired, nor new conceptions to serve as forms for the elaboration
of this material. As a prerequisite for this, it was necessary to see the inadequacy of metaphysical theories, and putting them aside,
376 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV.
to turn to empiricism. This service was rendered to the genesis of modern thought by the tendencies of Nominalism aud Terminism, in part, also, by the rhetorical and grammatical opposition to the science of the schools, and also by the revival of ancient Scepticism.
The writings of Ludovico Vices must be regarded as a common starting-point for these various efforts ; but they prove also that the importance of these endeavours is essentially negative in char acter. In place of the obscure words and arbitrary conceptions of metaphysics, a demand is made in nominalistic fashion for the im mediate, intuitive apprehension of things themselves by experience : but the remarks as to the manner in which this should be scientifi cally set about are meagre and uncertain ; he speaks of experiment, but without any very deep insight into its nature.
(1674-1637, Philosophia Mosaica, Guda, 1638), and others.
The most noteworthy deposit of these movements is formed by the doctrine
of Jacob Boehme. He was born', 1676, near Gorlitz, absorbed all kinds of thoughts in his wanderings, and quietly elaborated them. Settled as a shoe maker at Gorlitz, he came forward, 1610, with his main treatise Aurora, which at a later time after he had been temporarily forced to keep silence, was followed by many others, among them especially Viertig Fragen von der Seele (1620),
Mytterium Magnum (1623), Von der Onadenteahl (1623). He died 1624. Coll. works ed. by Schlebler, Leips. 1862. Cf. 11 A. Fechner, . /. B. , sein Lebeu und stint Schriften, Gorlitz, 1863 ; A. Peip, J. B. der deutsche Philosoph, Leips. 1860.
§ 28. The Struggle between the Traditions.
The immediate attachment to the Greek philosophy which became prevalent in the Renaissance, was not entirely without its precedent in the Middle Ages, and men like Bernard of Chartres and William of Conches (cf. p. 302) were prototypes of the union of an increas ing interest for knowledge of Nature with the humanistic move ment. It is noteworthy, and characteristic of the changing fortune of transmitted doctrines, that now, as then, the union between
Humanism and natural philosophy attaches itself to Plato, and stands in opposition to Aristotle.
1. In fact, the revival of ancient literature showed itself at first in the form of a strengthening of Platonism. The humanistic move ment had been flowing on since the days of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and arose from the interest in Roman secular literature which was closely connected with the awakening of the Italian national consciousness ; but this current could not become a vic torious stream until it received the help of the impulse from with out which proceeded from the removal of the Byzantine scholars to
Italy. Among these the Aristotelians were of like number and im portance with the Platonists, but the latter brought that which was
358 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV.
relatively less known, and therefore more impressive. In addition to this, Aristotle was regarded in the West as the philosopher who was in agreement with the Church doctrine, and thus the opposition, which longed for something new, hoped much more from Plato ; and still further there was the aesthetic charm that comes from the writ ings of the great Athenian, and for which no time was more keenly susceptible than this. Thus Italy first became intoxicated with an enthusiasm for Plato that matched that of departing antiquity. As if to connect itself immediately with this latter period, the Academy was again to live in Florence, and under the protection of the Medicis a rich scientific activity actually developed here, in which a reverence was paid to the leaders like Gemistus Pletho and Bes- sarion which was not less than that once given to the Scholarchs of Neo-Platonism.
But the relationship with this latter system of thought went deeper; the Byzantine tradition, in which the Platonic doctrine was received, was the Neo-Platonic tradition. What at that time was taught in Florence as Platonism was in truth Neo-Platonism. Mar- silio Ficino translated Plotinus as well as Plato, and his " Platonic Theology " was not much different from that of Proclus. So, too, the fantastic natural philosophy of Patrizzi is in its coneeptional basis nothing but the Neo-Platonic system of emanation ; but it is significant that in this case the dualistic elements of Neo-Plato nism are entirely stripped off, and the monistic tendency brought out more purely and fully. On this account the Neo-Platonist of the Renaissance places in the foreground the beauty of the universe ; on this account even the deity, the Unomnia (One-all) is for him a sublime world-unity which includes plurality harmoniously within itself ; on this account he is able to glorify even the infinity of the universe in a way to fascinate the fancy.
2. The pantheistic tendency, which is so unmistakable in this, was enough to make this Platonism an object of suspicion to the Church, and thus to give its Peripatetic opponents a welcome in strument with which to combat it j and an instrument that was used not only by the scholastic Aristotelians, but also by the others. On the other hand, to be sure, the Platonists could reproach the new humanistic Aristotelianism for its naturalistic tendencies, and praise their own tendency toward the super-sensuous, as allied to Christianity. Thus the two great traditions of Greek philosophy fought their battle over again, while each charged the other with its unchristian character. 1 In this spirit Pletho, in his vo/xatv ovy-
1 Quite the same relation is repeated in the case of the different groups of Aristotelians, each of which wished to be regarded orthodox, — even at the price
Chap. 1, §28. ] Warring Tradition*: Platonistt, Aristotelians. 359
ypa<£tj. conducted his polemic against the Aristotelians, and incurred thereby condemnation from the Patriarch Gennadios in Constanti nople; in this spirit George of Trebizond attacked the Academy, and in the same spirit, though milder, Bessarion answered him. Thus the animosity between the two schools, and the literary stir it produced in antiquity, were transferred to the Renaissance, and it was in vain that men like Leonicus Thomaeus of Padua (died 1533) admonished the combatants to understand the deeper unity that subsists between the two heroes of philosophy.
3. Meanwhile there was absolutely no unity among the Aristote lians themselves. The Grecian interpreters of the Stagirite and their adherents looked down with as much contempt upon the Averroists as upon the Thomists. Both passed for them in like manner as barbarians ; they themselves, however, were for the most part prepossessed in favour of that interpretation of the Master which was closely allied to Stratonism, and which was best repre sented among the commentators by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Here, too, one transmitted theory stood in opposition to the others. The conflict was especially severe in Padua, where the Averroists saw their fortress threatened by the successful activity of Pomponatius as a teacher. The main point of controversy was the problem of immortality. Neither party admitted a full, individual immor
tality, but Averroism believed that it possessed at least a compensa tion for this in the unity of the intellect, while the Alexandrists attached even the rational part of the soul to its animal conditions, and regarded it as perishable with them. Connected with this were the discussions on theodicy, providence, destiny and freedom of the will, miracles and signs, in which Pomponazzi frequently inclined strongly to the Stoic doctrine.
In the course of time this dependence upon commentators and their oppositions was also stripped off, and the way prepared for a pure, immediate apprehension of Aristotle. This succeeded best with Ceesalpinus, who avowed his complete allegiance to Aristotle. An equally correct understanding of the Peripatetic system was gained by the German Humanists from a philological standpoint, but following Melancthon's precedent they adopted this in their own doctrine only in so far as it agreed with Protestant dogma.
4. In all these cases the adoption of Greek philosophy led to an opposition to Scholasticism as regards the real content or matter of
of the •' twofold truth. " In this the Averroists, especially, were ready, and io it came about that one of tlieni, N'ifo, had himself entrusted by the Pope with the refutation of Komponazzi's doctrine of immortality. The latter, indeed, also covered himself with the same shield.
360 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV.
the opposing systems. Another line of Humanism, which was more in sympathy with Roman literature, inclined to a predominantly formal opposition, of which John of Salisbury may be regarded as
a mediaeval forerunner. The taste of the Humanists rebelled against the barbarous outward form of mediaeval literature. Accustomed to the polished refinement and transparent clearness of the ancient writers, they were not able to value rightly the kernel so full of character, which lay within the rough shell of the scholastic termi nology. The minds of the Renaissance, with their essentially aes thetic disposition, had no longer any feeling for the abstract nature of that science of abstract conceptions. Thus they opened the battle in all directions, with the weapons of jest and of earnest ; instead oj conceptions they demanded things ; instead of artificially constructed words, the language of the cultivated world ; instead of subtle proofs and distinctions, a tasteful exposition that should speak to the imagination and heart of the living man.
Laurentius Valla was the first to make this cry resound. Agric- ola took it up in lively controversy, and Erasmus also joined in. The models of these men were Cicero and Quintilian, and when at their hand the method of philosophy was to be changed, the scho lastic dialectic was dislodged and in its place were introduced the principles of rhetoric and grammar. The true dialectic is the science of discourse. 1 The " Aristotelian " logic therefore becomes the object of most violent polemic ; the doctrine of the syllogism is to be simplified and driven from its commanding situation. The syllogism is incapable of yielding anything new ; it is an unfruitful form of thought. This was later emphasised by Bruno, Bacon, and Descartes, as strongly as by these Humanists.
But the more closely the dominance of the syllogism was con nected with dialectical " Realism," the more nominalistic and teruii- nistic motives connected themselves with the humanistic opposition. This shows itself in the cases of Vives and Nizolius. They are zealous against the reign of universal conceptions; in this, according to Vives, lies the true reason for the mediaeval corruption of the sciences. "Universals, Nizolius teaches,' are collective names which arise by comprehension," not by abstraction ; individual things with their qualities constitute reality. It concerns us to apprehend these, and the secondary activity of the understanding which com pares, is to be carried out as simply and unartificially as possible. Hence all metaphysical assumptions, which have made so great a
1 Petr. Ramus, Dialect. Instil. , at the beginning. * Mar. Nizolius, De Ver. Princ, I. 4-7 ; III. 7.
Chap. 1, § aJ8. ] Warring Traditions : Humanists, Ramus. 361
difficulty in previous dialectic, must be banished from logic. Em piricism can use only a. purely formal logic.
The "natural " dialectic, however, was sought in rhetoric and grammar, for, Ramus held, it should teach us only to follow in our voluntary thinking the same laws which, according to the nature of reason, control also our involuntary thinking, and present themselves
in the correct expression of this involuntary process of thought. In all reflection, however, the essential thing is to discover the point of view that is determinative for the question, and then to apply this correctly to the subject. Accordingly Ramus, following a remark of Vives,1 divides his new dialectic into the doc trines of Inventio and Judicium. The first part is a kind of general logic, which yet cannot avoid introducing again in the form of the
which is accordingly much smaller than formerly. In the second place the judgment is to unite cognitions that belong together to a systematic whole, by definition and division ; its highest task, how ever, it fulfils only when it brings all knowledge into relation to God, and finds it grounded in him. Thus natural dialectic culminates in theosophy. *
Slight as was the depth and real originality of this rhetorical system, it yet excited great respect in a time that was eager for the new. In Germany, especially, Ramists and anti-Ramists engaged in vehement controversy. Among the friends of the system, Jo hannes Sturm is especially worthy of note, a typical pedagogue of
Humanism, who set the task for education of bringing the scholar to the point where he knows things, and how to judge concerning them from a correct point of view, and to sj>eak in cultivated manner.
5. A characteristic feature of this movement is its cool relation toward metaphysics ; this very fact proves its derivation from the Roman popular philosophy. Cicero, to whom it especially attached
itself, was particularly influential by virtue of his Academic Scepti cism or Probabilism. Surfeit of abstract discussions alienated a considerable part of the Humanists from the great systems of
' Lad. Vires, Dt Cautis Corr. Art. (first put of Dt Ditciplinis), III. 6, •CI. E. Laaa, Die PUdagogik de$ J. St. kritisch und hittoritch beleuchttt
spontaneously
•• loci " the categories, such as Causality, Inherence, Genus, etc. , and thus, enumerating them without system, falls into the naive meta physics of the ordinary idea of the world. The doctrine of judgment is developed by Ramus in three stages. The first is the simple de cision of the question by subsuming the object under the discovered point of view ; here the doctrine of the syllogism has its place,
(Badio, 1872).
362 Tlie Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Pabt IV.
antiquity also. The extension of religious unbelief or indifferent- ism was an additional motive to make scepticism appear in many circles as the right temper for the cultivated man. The charm of outer life, the glitter of refined civilisation, did the rest to bring about indifference toward philosophical subtleties.
This scepticism of the man of the world was brought to its complete expression by Montaigne. With the easy grace and fine ness of expression of a great writer, he thus gave French literature a fundamental tone which has remained its essential character. But this movement also runs in the ancient track. Whatever of philosophical thought is found in the "Essays" arises from Pyr rhonism. Hereby a thread of tradition which had for a long time been let fall is again taken up. The relativity of theoretical opin ions and ethical theories, the illusions of the senses, the cleft between subject and object, the constant change in which both are involved, the dependence of all the work of the intellect upon such doubtful data, — all these arguments of ancient Scepticism meet us
here, not in systematic form, but incidentally in connection with the discussion of individual questions, and thus in a much more impressive manner.
Pyrrhonism was at the same time revived in a much more scho lastic form by Sanchez, and yet in a lively manner, and not without hope that a sure insight might yet at some time be allowed to man. He concludes individual chapters, and -the whole work, with "Nescisf At ego nescio. Quid? " To this great "Quid? "he has indeed given no answer, and guidance to a true knowledge was a debt that he did not discharge. But he left no doubt as to the direction in which he sought it. It was the same which Montaigne also pointed out : science must free itself from the word-lumber of the wisdom of the schools, and put its questions directly to things themselves. Thus Sanchez demands a new knowledge, and has, indeed, a dim foreboding of but where and how to be sought he not prepared to say. In many passages seems as though he would proceed to empirical investigation of Nature, but just here he cannot get beyond the sceptical doctrine of outer perception, and he recognises the greater certainty of inner experience, this inner experience in turn loses its value because of its indefiniteness.
Charron comes forward with firmer step, since he keeps before him the practical end of wisdom. Like his two predecessors he doubts the possibility of certain theoretical knowledge; in this respect all three set up the authority of the Church and of faith
metaphysics can be revealed only the human power of knowl edge not sufficient for it. But, proceeds Charron, the human
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;
:
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Chap. 1, § 28. ] Warring Tradition* : Sanchez, Catholicism. 363
knowing faculty is all the more sufficient for that self-knowledge which is requisite for the moral life. To this self-knowledge belongs, above all, the humility of the sceptic who has no confidence that he knows anything truly, and in this humility is rooted the freedom of spirit with which he everywhere withholds his theoretical judgment. On the other hand, the ethical command of righteous ness and of the fulfilment of duty is known without a doubt in this self-knowledge.
This diversion toward the practical realm, as might be expected from the general tendency of the time, was not permanent. The later Sceptics turned the theoretical side of the Pyrrhonic tradi tion again to the front, and the effect which resulted from this tendency for the general tone of the time applied ultimately, for the most part, to the certainty of dogmatic convictions.
6. The Church doctrine could no longer master these masses of thought which now made their way so powerfully into the life of this period, as it had succeeded in doing with the Arabian-Aristote lian invasion : this new world of ideas was too manifold and too full of antitheses, and, on the other hand, the assimilative power of the Church dogma was too far exhausted. The Roman Church limited itself, therefore, to defending its spiritual and external power with all the means at its disposal, and was only concerned to fortify its own tradition and make it as sure as possible within itself. In this changed form the Jesuits now performed the same task that in the thirteenth century had fallen to the mendicant orders. With their help the definitive and complete form of Church dogma was fixed against all innovations at the Council of Trent (1563), and Thomism declared to be authoritative in essentials for philosophical doctrine. Thereafter there could be no more any question as to changes of principle, but only as to more skilful presentations and occasional insertions. In this way the Church excluded itself from the fresh
movement of the time, and the philosophy dependent upon it fell into unavoidable stagnation for the next following centuries. Even the short after-bloom which Scholasticism experienced about 1600 in the universities of the Iberian ]>cninsula bore no real fruit Suarez was an important writer, clear, acute, accurate, and with a gTeat capacity for a luminous disposition of his thoughts ; he sur passes also, to a considerable degree, hiost of the older Scholastics in the form of his expression ; but in the content of his doctrine he is bound by tradition, and a like constraint will be understood as a matter of course in the case of the collective work of the Jesuits of Coimbra.
Over against this form of religious tradition, another now made
364 The Renaissance : Humanittic Period. [Part IV.
its appearance in the Protestant churches. Here, too, the opposition claimed the older tradition, and put aside its mediaeval modifications and developments. The Reformation desired to renew original Chris tianity as against Catholicism. It drew the circle of the canonical books narrower again ; putting aside the Vulgate, it recognised only the Greek text as authoritative ; it returned to the Nicene creed. The controversy over dogmas in the sixteenth century — theoretically considered — hinges upon the question, which tradition of Chris tianity shall be the binding one.
But the theological antithesis drew the philosophical antithesis after and here again relation was repeated which had appeared at many points during the Middle Ages. In the doctrine of Angus tine, the religious need found a deeper, richer satisfaction, and more immediate expression than in the conceptions worked out by the Scholastics. Earnestness in the consciousness of sin, passionate longing for redemption, faith that was internal in its source and its nature, — all these were traits of Augustine's nature which repeated themselves in Luther and Calcin. But only in the doctrine of Calvin that the permanent influence of the great Church Father shown and yet just by this means an antagonism between
Tkomi8tn and Augustinianism was once more created, which evinced itself as especially important in the French literature of the seven teenth century (cf. 30 f. ). For the Catholics under the guidance of Jesuitism, Thomas was the ruling authority for the Reformed Churches, and for the freer tendencies in Catholicism itself, Augus tine held the same position.
German Protestantism followed other courses. In the develop ment of the Lutheran dogma, Luther's genius was aided by the co operation of Melancthon and thus of Humanism. Little as the theoretico-aesthetical and religiously indifferent nature of the Humanists1 might accord with the mighty power of Luther's soul with its profound faith, he was, nevertheless, obliged, when he would give his work scientific form, to accommodate himself to the neces sity of borrowing from philosophy the conceptions with which to lay his foundations. Here, however, Melancthon's harmonising nature came in, and while Luther had passionately rejected scholastic Aristotelianism, his learned associate introduced
totelianism as the philosophy of Protestantism, here, too, opposing the older tradition to the remodelled tradition. This Aristotelianism had to be corrected in many passages, to be sure, by
On the relation of the Reformation and Humanism cf. Th. Ziegler, Gesrh der-Ethik, II. 414 ff.
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Chap. 1, § 28. ] Warring Tradition* : Protestantism. 365
means of the Scriptures, and the combination of doctrines could not reach such an organic union as had been attained by the slow ripen ing of Thoinism in the Middle Ages ; but the Peripatetic system was in this instance treated rather as but a supplement to theology in the department of profane science, and for this end, Melancthon knew how to sift, arrange, and set forth the material in his text-books with so great skill that it became the basis for a doctrine which was in the main one in its nature, and as such was taught at the Protestant universities for two centuries.
7. But in Protestantism there were still other traditional forces active. Luther's work of liberation owed its origin and its success not least to Mysticism, — not indeed to that sublime, spiritualised form of viewing the world to which the genius of Master Eckhart had given expression, but to the movement of deepest piety which, as " practical Mysticism," had spread from the Rhine in the " League of the Friends of God," and in the " Brothers of the Common Life. "
For this Mysticism, the disposition, purity of heart, and the imita tion of Christ were the sole content of religion; assent to dog mas, the external works of holiness, the whole worldly organisation of Church life, appeared to be matters of indifference and even hindrances : the believing soul demands only the freedom of its own religious life, — a demand that transcends all these outward works. This was the inner source of the Reformation. Luther himself had not only searched Augustine, he had also edited the " German The ology " : and his word let loose the storm of this religious longing, with which, in the conflict against Rome, an impulse of national independence was also mingled.
But when the Protestant State Church became again consolidated in the fixed forms of a theoretical system of doctrine, and clung to this the more anxiously in proportion as it was obliged to struggle for its existence in the strife of Confessions, then the supra-confes- sional impulse of Mysticism became undeceived, as did also the national consciousness.
The theological fixation of the thought of the Reformation appeared as its ruin, and as Luther had once waged his warfare against the " sophistry " of the Scholastics, so now a movement of Mysticism that was quietly stirring farther and wider among the people, directed itself against his own creation. In men like Osiander and Schwenckfeld he had to contend against parts of his own nature and its development. But in this movement it became evident that the doctrines of mediaeval Mysticism had been quietly maintained and continued in legendary form amid all kinds of fantastic ideas and obscure imagery. The Mysticism which conies to light in the teachings of men like Sebastian Franck, or in the
366 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [1'akt VI
secretly circulated tracts of Valentine Weigel, has its support in the idealism of Eckhart, which transformed all the outer into the inner, all the historical into the eternal, and saw in the process of Nature and history but the symbol of the spiritual and divine. This con stituted, though frequently in strange form, the deeper ground of the battle which the Mystics of the sixteenth century waged in Germany against the " letter " of theology.
8. Look where we will in the intellectual movement of the fif teenth and sixteenth centuries, we see everywhere tradition arrayed against tradition, and every controversy is a battle between trans mitted doctrines. The spirit of the Western peoples has now taken up into itself the entire material which the past offers for its cul ture, and in the feverish excitement into which it is finally put by direct contact with the highest achievements of ancient science, it struggles upward to the attainment of complete independence. It feels sufficiently hardened to execute work of its own, and overflow ing with its wealth of thought, it seeks new tasks. One feels the impulsive blood of youth pulsate in its literature, as though some thing unheard of, something which had never before been, must now come into being. The men of the Renaissance announce to us nothing less than the approach of a total renovation of science and of the state of humanity. The warfare between the transmitted doctrines leads to a surfeit of the past; learned research into the old wisdom ends with throwing aside all book-rubbish, and full of the youthful joy of dawning, growing life, the mind goes forth into the cosmic life of Nature ever young.
The classical portrayal of this temper of the Renaissance is the first monologue in Goethe's Faust.
§ 29. Hacrocosm and Microcosm.
By Scotism and Terminism the faith -metaphysics of the Middle Ages had become disintegrated and split in twain : everything supersensuous had been given to dogma, and as the object of philos ophy there remained the world of experience. But before thought had as yet had time to become clear as to the methods and special problems of this secular knowledge, Humanism, and with it above all, the Platonic Weltanschauung, burst in. No wonder that the solu tion of the problem, which was itself at first seen but dimly, was first sought in connection with this theory : and this doctrine must have been the more welcome, especially in its Neo-Platonic form, as it showed the world of the supersensuous presageful in the back ground, but made the particulars of the world of sense stand out
Chap. 1, § 20. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm: Bruno, Boehme. 367
distinctly in purposefully defined outlines. The supersensuous itself, and all therein that was connected with man's religious life, might be cheerfully set off to theology ; philosophy could dedicate itself to the task of being natural science, with all the calmer con science in proportion as it followed the Neo-Platonic precedent of
Nature as a product of spirit, and thus believed that in the conception of the deity it retained a point of unity for the diverging branches of science, the spiritual and the secular. Did theology teach how God reveals himself in the Scripture, it was now the business of philosophy to apprehend with admiration his revela tion in Nature. On this account the beginnings of modern natural science were theosophical and thoroughly Neo-Platonic.
1. The characteristic fact, however, is that in this revival of Neo-Platonisra, the last dualistic motives which had belonged to the same were also completely set aside. They disappeared together with the specifically religious interest which had supported them, and the theoretical element of recognising in Nature the creative divine power came forward pure and unmixed. 1 The fundamental tendency in the natural philosophy of the Renaissance was therefore the fanciful or imaginative conception of the divine unity of the liv ing All. the admiration of the macrocosm : the fundamental thought of Plotinus of the beauty of the universe has been taken up by no other time so sympathetically as by this ; and this beauty was now also regarded as a manifestation of the divine Idea. Such a view is expressed in almost entirely Neo-Platonic forms by Patrizzi, in a more original form and with strongly ]>oetical quality by Giordano Bruno, and likewise by Jacob Boehme. With Bruno the symbol of the all-forming and all-animating primitive light is still dominant (cf. p. 245) ; with Boehme, on the contrary, we find that of the organism ; the world is a tree which from root to flower and fruit is permeated by one life-giving sap, and which is formed and ordered from within outward by its own germinal activity. *
In this inheres naturally the inclination to complete monism and pantheism. Everything must have its cause, and the last cause can be but one, — God. ' He according to Bruno, at the same time
the formal, the efficient, and the final cause according to Boehme he " at once the rational ground and efficient cause Urgrund " and Ursache") of the world (principium and causa with Bruno).
In certain senae thU might also be expressed by saying that thereby the Stoic elements of Neo-Platonism came with controlling force into the fore ground.
Cf. the remarkable agreement between Bruno, Delta Cauia Pr. e. U. , TL (Lag. 231 f. ) and Boehme, Aurora, Vorrede.
Aurora, Chap. HI.
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868 The Renai$$ance : Humanistic Period. [Pakt IV
Hence the universe is also nothing but " the essential nature of God himself made creatural. " ' And yet the idea of the transcendence of God is here, too, connected with this view, as it had been in Xeo- Platonism. Boehme holds that God should be thought not as a force devoid of reason and " science," but as the " all-knowing, all- seeing, all-hearing, all-smelling, all-tasting" spirit: and Bruno adds another analogy ; for him God is the artist who works unceasingly and shapes out his inner nature to rich life.
Harmony is accordingly, for Bruno also, the inmost nature of the world, and he who can apprehend it with the gaze of enthusiasm
(as does the philosopher in the dialogues and poetic inventions Degli Eroici Furori), for him the apparent defects and imperfections of detail vanish in the beauty of the whole. He needs no special the odicy ; the world is perfect because it is the life of God, even down to every detail, and he only complains who cannot raise himself to a view of the whole. The world-joy of the aesthetic Renaissance sings philosophical dithyrambs in Bruno's writings. A universalistic optimism that carries everything before it prevails in his poetic thought.
2. The conceptions which lie at the basis of this unfolding of the metaphysical fantasy in Bruno had their source in the main in Nicolau* Cusanus, whose teachings had been preserved by Charles Bouille, though in his exposition they had to some degree lost their vivid freshness. Just this the Nolan knew how to restore. He not only raised the principle of the coincidentia oppositorum to the artis tic reconciliation of contrasts, to the harmonious total action of opposing partial forces in the divine primitive essence, but above all he gave to the conceptions of the infinite and the finite a far wider reaching significance. As regards the deity and its relation to the world, the Neo-Platonic relations are essentially retained. God himself, as the unity exalted above all opposites, cannot be appre hended through any finite attribute or qualification, and there fore is unknowable in his own proper essence (negative theology) ; but at the same time he is still thought as the inexhaustible, world-force, as the natura naturans, which in eternal change forms and " unfolds " itself purposefully and in conformity with law, into the natura naturata. This identification of the essence of God and the world is a general doctrine of the natural philosophy of the Renaissance ; it is found likewise in Paracelsus, in Sebastian Franck, in Boehme, and finally also with the whole body of the " Platonists. " That it could also assume an extremely naturalistic form, and could
1 Aurora, Chap. II.
infinite
Crap. 1, § 29. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm : hruno. 369
lead to the denial of all transcendence, is proved by the agitative and boastfully polemical doctrine of Vanini. 1 " —
For the natura naturata, on the other hand, for the "universe
the sum-total of creatures — the characteristic of true " infinity " is not Claimed, but rather that of unlimitedness in space and time. This conception gained an incomparably clearer form and more fixed significance by the Copernican theory. The spherical form of the earth and its revolution about its axis had been a familiar idea to Cusanua as well as to the old Pythagoreans, perhaps, indeed, through them ; but only the victoriously proved hypothesis of the motion of the earth about the sun could furnish a rational basis for the completely new view of man's position in the universe, which is peculiar to modern science. The anthropocentric idea of the world which had ruled the Middle Ages became out of joint. Man, as well as the earth, must cease to be regarded as centre of the universe and centre of the world. Men like Patrizzi and Boehme also raised themselves above such " restriction " on the basis of the teaching of Copernicus, which for that reason was condemned by the dogmatic authorities of all confessions ; but the fame of having thought out the Copernican system to its end, both in natural philosophy and in metaphysics, belongs to Giordano Bruno.
He developed from this system the theory that the universe forms a system of countless worlds, each of which moves about its central sun, leads its own proper life, grows from chaotic conditions to clear and definite formation, and again yields to the destiny of dissolution. The tradition of Democritus and Epicurus had perhaps a share in the formation of this conception of a plurality of worlds arising and perishing again ; but it is the peculiar feature of Bruno's doctrine, that he regarded the plurality of solar systems not as a mechanical juxtaposition, but as an organic living whole, and regarded the pro cess of the growth and decay of worlds as maintained by the pulse- beat of the one divine All-life.
3. While in this way universalism, with its bold flight into spatial and temporal boundlessness, threatened to claim the fantasy entirely for its own, there was an effective counterpoise in the Peripatetic- Stoic doctrine of the analogy between macrocosm and microcosm, which found in man's nature the sum, the '• quintessence " of the cosmical powers. We see this doctrine reviving in the most varied
* Lucilio Vanini (born 1686 at Naples, burned 1619 at Toulouse), a dissolute adrenturer, wrote Amphitheatrum Acttrnot Providential (Lyons, 1616) and Dt admirandu natura; regina drtrque mortalium arcanin (Paris, 1616).
* Nlcolaus Copernicus, De lievnlutinnibitt Orbium Ctrlrntium (Nuremberg, IMS).
370 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV.
forms during the Renaissance ; it controls entirely the theory of knowledge at this period, and moreover the Neo-Platonic triple division is almost universally authoritative in connection with furnishing a scheme for metaphysical anthropology. One can know only what one himself the mode in which this was expressed by Valentine Weigel: man knows the all in so far as he the all. This was a pervading principle of Eckhart's Mysticism. But this idealism now took on definite form. As body, man belongs to the material world indeed, he unites within himself, as Paracelsus, and following him Weigel and Boehme teach, the essence of all material things in finest and most compact form. Just on this account he competent to understand the corporeal world. As intellectual being, however, he of " sidereal " origin, and therefore able to know the intellectual world in all its forms. Finally, as divine " spark," as spiraculum vital, as a partial manifestation of the highest princi ple of life, he also able to become conscious of the divine nature whose image he is.
A more abstract application of this same principle, according to which all knowledge of the world rooted in man's knowledge himself, found in the thought of Campanella, involving not the Neo-Platonic separation of world-strata (although this too present in Campanella), but the fundamental categories of all reality. Man — the thought here too — knows in the proper sense only himself, and knows all else only from and through himself. All knowledge
perception (sentire), but we perceive, not the things, but only the states into which these set us. In this process, however, we learn by experience that inasmuch as we are, we can do something, we know something and will something, and further, that we find ourselves limited by corresponding functions of other beings. From this " follows that power, knowledge, and will are the " primali- ties of all reality, and that they belong to God in an unlimited degree, he known as all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.
The doctrine that all knowledge of God and of the world ultimately locked up in man's knowledge of himself, nevertheless only an epistemological inference from the more general metaphys ical principle according to which the divine nature was held to be fully and entirely contained in each of its finite manifestations. Giordano Bruno follows the Cusan also in holding that God the smallest as well as the greatest, as truly the vital principle of the individual being as that of the universe. And accordingly every individual thing, and not merely man, becomes a " mirror " of the world-substance. Each without exception according to its essen tial nature the deity itself, but each in its own way, which is
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Chap. 1, § 29. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm : Campanella, Bruno. 371
different from all the rest. This thought Bruno incorporated in his conception of the monad. He understood by this the individual substance (Einzelwesen), which, as continually "formed" matter, constitutes one of the partial manifestations of the world-force, in the interaction of which the world-life consists. It is living from the beginning, and is imperishable ; it is corporeal as well as spiritual in its nature. Each monad is a form in which the Divine Being finds individual existence, a finite existence-form of the infinite essence. Since, now, there is nothing but God and the monads, the universe is animated even to the smallest nook and corner, and the infinite all-life individualises itself at every point to a special and peculiar nature. It results from this that each thing, in the move
ments of its life, follows in part the law of its special nature, and in part a more general law, just as a planet or heavenly body moves at the same time on its own axis and about its sun. Cam panella, who took up this doctrine also in connection with the Copernican system, designated this striving toward the whole, this tendency toward the original source of all reality, as religion, and spoke in this sense of a " natural " religion, that is of religion as "natural impulse," — one would now perhaps say centripetal im pulse, — which he with logical consistency ascribed to all things in general, and which in man was held to assume the special form of " rational " religion ; that of the striving to become one with God by love and knowledge.
This principle of the infinite variability of the divine ground of the world which presents itself in a special form in every particular thing, found in similar form also with Paracelsus. Here, as with Kicolaus Cusanus, taught that all substances are present in everything, that each thing therefore presents microcosm, and yet that each has also its special principle of life and activity. This special mind or spirit of the individual called by Paracelsus the Archeus Jacob Boehme, to whom this doctrine passed over, calls
the Primus.
With Bruno the conception of the monad connects itself in very interesting manner, though without further effect upon his physical view with that of the atom, which was brought to him, as to the earlier period, by the Epicurean tradition through Lucretius. The "smallest" — in metaphysics the monad, in mathematics the point — in physics the atom, the indivisible spherical element of the corporeal world. Memories of the Pythagorean and Platonic theory of the elements, and of the related atomic theory of Deinocritus, became thus alive in the midst of Neo-Platonism they found also an independent revival with men like Basso, Sennert, and others,
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372 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV
and so led to the so-called corpuscular theory, according to which the corporeal world consists of inseparable atom-complexes, the coi- puscles. In the atoms themselves, the theory assumed in conneo tion with their mathematical form an original and unchangeable law of action, to which, it held, the mode of action of the corpuscles is also to be traced. 1
5. Here the workings of mathematics assert themselves in the old Pythagorean form, or as modified by Democritus and Plato. The ultimate constituents of physical reality are determined by- their geometrical form, and the qualitative determinations of experience must be traced back to this. The combination of elements presup poses numbers and their order as the principle of multiplicity. 1 Thus spatial forms and number-relations again make their appear ance as the essential and original in the physical world, and thereby the Aristotelian-Stoic doctrine of the qualitatively determined forces, of the inner Forms of things, of the quulitates occulta, was displaced. As this latter doctrine had formerly gained the victory over the principle of Pythagoras, Democritus, and Plato, so it must in turn yield to this : and herein lies one of the most important prepara tions for the origin of modern natural science.
The beginnings of this are found already with Nicolaus Cusanus ; but now they receive an essential strengthening from the same source from which their presence in his thought is explained : namely, from the old literature, and in particular from the Neo- Pythagorean writings. Just for this reason, however, they still have the fantastic m-taphysical garb of number-mysticism and num ber-symbolism. The book of Nature is written in numbers ; the har mony of things is that of the number-system. All is arranged by God according to measure and number ; all life is an unfolding of mathematical relations. But just as in antiquity, so here, this thought is unfolded at first as an arbitrary interpretation of concep tions, and a mysterious speculation. The procedure of the world forth from God, from the construction of the Trinity on, — as, for example, in the attempt of Bouille", — is again to be conceived as the process of the transformation of unity into the number-system. Such fantasies were followed by men like Cardan and Pico. Reuchlin added further the mythological creations of the Jewish Cabbala.
6. Thus the principle which was destined for the most fruitful development made its entrance into the new world wrapped again in the old metaphysical fantasticalness, and fresh forces were
i Cf. K. Lasswitz, Geschichte des Atomismus, I. pp. 359 ft°. (Hamburg and
Leips. 1890).
* Cf . for this especially G. Bruno, De. Triplid Minimo.
Chap. 1, §29. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm : Paracelsus. 373
needed to strip off this covering, and free it for its right working. Meanwhile, however, it became mingled with quite other efforts, which likewise had their origin in the Neo-Platonic tradition. To the idea of a universal psychical life, to the fanciful spiritualisation of Nature, belonged also the impulse to interfere in the course of things with mysterious means, with conjurations and magic arts, and so to guide it according to the will of man. Here, too, a higher thought hovered before the fantastic impulse of the excited age, — the thought of mastering Nature by a knowledge of the forces working in it. But this thought was also received in the wrappings of ancient superstition. If, as was the case with the Neo-Platonists, the life of Nature was regarded as a dominance of spirits, as a mys teriously connected system of internal forces, it was a proper aim to make these subject by knowledge and will. Thus magic became a favourite subject of thought in the Renaissance, and science again concerned itself with the task of bringing system into superstition.
Astrology, with its influences of the stars upon human life, the interpretation of dreams and signs, necromancy, with its conjura tions of spirits, the predictions of persons in the ecstatic state, — all these elements of the Stoic and Ne>Platonic divination were then in most luxuriant bloom. Pico and Reuchlin brought them into con nection with the number-mysticism ; Agrippa of Nettesheim adopted all the sceptical attacks against the possibility of rational science, in order to seek help in mystical illuminations and secret magic arts. Cardan proceeded with all seriousness to the task of deter mining the laws of these operations, and Campanella conceded them an unusually wide space in his idea of the world.
Physicians especially, whose vocation demanded an interference in the course of Nature and might seem permitted 10 expect special advantage in secret arts, showed an inclination toward these magic arts. From this point of view Paracelsus desired to reform medi
cine. He also proceeds from the sympathy of all things, from the idea of the universe as a spiritually connected system. He finds the essence of disease in the injuring of the individual vital prin ciple, the Archeus, by foreign powers, and seeks the means where with to free and strengthen the Archeus. Since this latter process must come about by a corresponding composition of materials, all sorts of magical drinks, tinctures, and other secret remedies must be brewed, and thus the arts of alchemy were set in motion, which, in spite of all its fantastic performances, ultimately yielded a number of useful results for chemical knowledge in the course of its incred ibly extended pursuits.
In this connection the fundamental metaphysical presupposition
374 The Menaistance : Humanistic Petiod. [Pabx IV.
of the unity of all vital force led of itself to the thought that there must be also a simple, most efficacious, universal remedy for the strengthening of every Archeus whatever, a panacea against all diseases and for the maintenance of all the vital forces ; and con nection with the macrocosmic efforts of magic nourished the hope that the possession of this secret would lend the highest magic power, and afford the most desirable treasures. All this was to be achieved by the " philosopher's stone " ; it was to heal all diseases, transmute all substances into gold, conjure all spirits into the power of its possessor. And thus the purposes which it was thought would be satisfied in the ventures of alchemy, were ultimately very real and sober.
7. The introduction of this magical view of Nature into the subtle religious system of German Mysticism constitutes the peculiar feat ure of Boehme's philosophy. He, too, is seized by the thought that philosophy should be knowledge of Nature ; but the deep earnest ness of the religious need which lay at the basis of the German Reformation did not allow him to content himself with the separa tion of religious metaphysics and natural science, customary at his time, and he sought to work the two into one again. Similar efforts which tended to transcend the dogmatic, fixed form of Protestant ism, and hoped to solve the problems of the new science with the aid of a Christian metaphysics, throve also by the side of the official Peripatetic system. TaureUus aimed to produce such a supra-con- fessional philosophy of Christianity, and with a true instinct for his purpose, adopted many elements of the Augustinian doctrine of the will, but was not able to work enough real material from the inter ests of his time into these thoughts, and so came ultimately rather to a complete separation of empirical research from all metaphysics. A similar process went on in the mystical movement, which grew with the popular opposition against the new orthodoxy all the more in proportion as the latter dried and hardened within itself. The mystical doctrines also remained suspended in vague generality until the teaching of Paracelsus was brought to them, at first by Weigel, and then completely by Boehme.
In Boehme's doctrine Neo-Platonism assumes again a completely religious colouring. Here, too, man is regarded as the microcosm from and by which the bodily, the " sidereal," and the divine worlds can be known, if one follows the right illumination and is not mis led by learned theories. Self-knowledge, nevertheless, is religious knowledge, which finds the opposition of good and evil as a funda mental trait of human nature. The same opposition fills the whole world; it rules in heaven as on earth, and since God is the sole
Chap. I, § 29. ] Macrocosm and Microcosm : Boehme. 375
cause of all, this opposition must be sought in him also. Boehme extends the coincidentia oppositorum to the extreme limit, and finds the ground of duality in the necessity of the self-revelation of the divine Primordial Ground. As light can be revealed only in con nection with darkness, so God's goodness can be revealed only in connection with his anger. Thus Boehme portrays the process of the eternal self-generation of God, describing how from the dark ground of Being within him the urgent impulse ("Drang"), or will, which has only itself for its object, attains self-revelation in the divine wisdom, and how that which has thus become revealed forms itself into the world. While the theogonic development thus passes over immediately into the cosmogonic, the effort is everywhere shown in this latter development to carry the fundamental religious antithesis into the physical categories of the system of Paracelsus. Thus three kingdoms of the world and seven forms, or "qualia" (" Qualen "), are constructed, which ascend from the material forces of attraction and repulsion to those of light and warmth, and from there on to those of the sensible and intellectual functions. To this portrayal of the eternal nature of things is then attached the history of the earthly world, which begins with the fall of Lucifer and the process of rendering the spiritual essence perceptible to the senses, and ends with the overcoming of the proud infatuation (" Vergafflsei n " ) for the creature, with the mystical devotion of man to the deity, and ultimately with the restoration of the spiritual nature. All this is presented by Boehme in prophetic discourse, full of deep conviction, with a unique mingling of profundity and dilettantism. It is the attempt of the Eckhartian Mysticism to become master of the modern interests of science, and the first still tentatively uncertain step toward raising natural science into an idealistic metaphysics. But because this is made from the stand point of the deepest religious life, the intellectualistic features of
the older Mysticism retreat, with Boehme, more into the background. While with Eckhart, the world-process both in its arising and in its passing was regarded as a knowing process, with Boehme it is rather a struggling of the will between good and evil.
8. In all these ways the result of the separation of philosophy from dogmatic theology always was that the knowledge of Nature that was sought took on the form of the older metaphysics. This procedure was inevitable so long as the desire for a knowledge of Nature could provide neither a material of facts which it had itself acquired, nor new conceptions to serve as forms for the elaboration
of this material. As a prerequisite for this, it was necessary to see the inadequacy of metaphysical theories, and putting them aside,
376 The Renaissance : Humanistic Period. [Part IV.
to turn to empiricism. This service was rendered to the genesis of modern thought by the tendencies of Nominalism aud Terminism, in part, also, by the rhetorical and grammatical opposition to the science of the schools, and also by the revival of ancient Scepticism.
The writings of Ludovico Vices must be regarded as a common starting-point for these various efforts ; but they prove also that the importance of these endeavours is essentially negative in char acter. In place of the obscure words and arbitrary conceptions of metaphysics, a demand is made in nominalistic fashion for the im mediate, intuitive apprehension of things themselves by experience : but the remarks as to the manner in which this should be scientifi cally set about are meagre and uncertain ; he speaks of experiment, but without any very deep insight into its nature.
