to combat both. So Campanella, following out his convictions into this new sphere, consecrated himself to the work of redeeming his country from slavery. In a short time the influence of his virtue and his genius enabled him to organize a powerful conspiracy, spreading over the greater part of the kingdom, the principal centres being Cerifalco, Catanzaro, Nicastro, Stilo, Tropea, Squillace, Sant Agata, Cosenza, Reggio, Cassano, Castrovillari, Satriano, and Terranova. But, a short time before the appointed outbreak, two of the conspirators, Giambattista Biblia and Fabio of Lauro, either through fear or cupidity, betrayed the preparations. The leaders were imprisoned, and among them Campanella. His imprisonment lasted twenty-seven years; and in the preface to one of his works, "Atheismus Triumphatus," he narrates that he was tortured seven times. After this he was thrown into a subterranean dungeon. But torture and the squalor of imprisonment only redoubled Campanella's activity, and sharpened his genius. It is probable that the feeling of his impotence to serve his country, the failure of all his plans, and the effect which the sepulchral silence of his prison must have had on his mind, may have persuaded him that a longer intellectual labour was necessary in order to give new life to his native land. Considering that the existing society was still ruled in a great degree by old ideas and prejudices, he resolved once more to enter the lists against Aristotelianism, and conceived the audacious design of reconstructing human science from its very foundations. In his earlier years he had published a work entitled "Philosophia Sensibus Demonstrata," Naples, 1591, in defence of the doctrines of Telesio; and this work constituted the foundation of his speculations, and determined their method. The foundation of all is the maxim, Sentire est scire—knowledge is derived from sensation: the method is that of ascending from the known to the unknown, in order to declare and prove it. It is, as we said, the philosophical method of Telesio, followed to such glorious results in later times by our own Bacon. But two conditions were requisite in order to reconstruct the edifice of human knowledge, according to the plan conceived by Campanella—"Prodromus Philosophiæ Instaurandæ," Frankfort, 1617. First, a theory of the absolute, or the cogitation of a system of metaphysics, which should form, so to speak, the skeleton. This he provided in two works—"Philosophiæ Rationalis partes quinque," Paris, 1638, in 4to; and "Universalis Philosophiæ, sive metaphysicarum rerum juxta propria dogmata, partes tres," Paris, 1638. In the second place, it was necessary to unite two things which, in the general opinion, were separated, namely, philosophy and religion; because life is a unity resulting from the harmony of all its manifestations. So he wrote "Monarchia Messiæ, ubi per philosophiam demonstrantur jura summi pontificis super universum orbem," Paris, Dubray, 1636, in 4to. But still more important was the conquest of unbelief by a refutation of its theories and arguments. With this view he wrote "Atheismus Triumphatus;" and in order to uphold the rules which are necessary, in order to enter with profit into the sanctuary of science, he wrote a didactic book, "De Rectâ Ratione Studendi." The foundation thus laid, he proceeded to build upon it all that can be known in the whole circle of arts and sciences, physics and politics. In order thus to complete the edifice, he wrote "Realis Philosophiæ partes quatuor, hoc est de rerum natura, hominum moribus, politica, œconomica," &c., Frankfort, 1623.—One cannot avoid asking how it happened that a man of such universal genius, who can only be compared to Aristotle and to Leibnitz, did not attain his goal? Why did his gigantic labours remain almost unfruitful? and why was the subsequent work of Descartes and of Bacon necessary? First, because it is an invariable, logical law, that demolition must precede reconstruction. Catholicism had by this time discharged its functions in the career of universal progress. Luther had appeared. But Campanella, following the example of Marsilio Ficino, strove to use Catholicism as an element in the restoration of human knowledge; and it was this error which frustrated his herculean toil. With such tenacity, indeed, did Campanella espouse the cause of the church, that he waged an implacable war with the German reformation. Secondly, as Leroux observes, "Campanella resolved to lay anew the foundations of everything; whereas Bacon (of whom we may say what he said of Plato, that whatever subject he took into consideration, he grasped the whole as from a lofty rock) spent his whole life on a single work, the perfecting of the natural sciences. In certain epochs the struggles undertaken by the human spirit are like ordinary battles; he is the great general who, presenting a wide front and a wise arrangement, concentrates all his forces on one point, breaks the ranks of the enemy, and crushes him by falling on the wings thus separated. Thus did Bacon, with his immense ardour for progress of every kind, concentrate all his strength on one single point. The natural sciences, whose destiny he presaged, have triumphed; and hence his renown. But Campanella, wishing to embrace all, and to construct all, lost the battle through his eagerness to conquer at every point at once, in battle array, as if the conquest of one point would not have sufficed to decide the rest." But the special and undeniable merit of this man of genius is that of having felt, in the presence of a historical epoch dying and crumbling to atoms, the necessity of unifying the functions of thought and its representations, human activity and its products. To this we must add, the merit of having attempted this unification by initiating a work which was to form the special task of the nineteenth century; and of having, with the keen intuition of genius, recognized two centuries before Lessing and Condorcet, the law of the indefinite progress of the human race, bound together by the ties of our common nature. "The partial steps," says Campanella, "made by individuals and by nations, are but the elements and the efforts which advance the human race, considered as one general association. This association follows the laws which preside over its destiny, and which tend to the development of its faculties in harmonious proportions." And the nineteenth century ought to remember this, for assuredly the consciousness of the future is not to be attamed without the consciousness of the past. In that past the modern investigator will find himself arrested by the intellectual monument raised by Campanella, and will find, glistening among the rubbish of a past age, many gems well worthy of being brought to light.
The sepulchral gloom overspreading all Italy, only lighted up to the eye of Campanella, as he watched from his living tomb, by the funeral piles of fresh martyrs, did not in the least degree diminish the hope of the indomitable mind of living to see his speculative system translated into actual fact. Italy, as a nation, was dead, and he concluded that, instead of isolated nations, there would arise a universal monarchy, a cosmopolism which perfectly corresponds to his "Monarchy of Christ." He turned to Spain, and said—"Dare, and thou shalt wield the sceptre of the world." In this view he composed the work "De Monarchiâ Hispanica," Amsterdam, 1640, 24mo. But Spain was deaf to his appeal. One bitter disappointment after another took from him the hope of seeing his desires fulfilled in his lifetime, but nothing could prevent him from dreaming of their realization in the future. So he continued to build up, stone by stone, that city of the future in which the erring human family should hereafter be gathered. His "Utopia" (Civitas Solis) is the republic of Plato presided over by Christ. It is a system of socialism, in which religious tolerance is practised, as the only method of reconciling all men, and as almost an indispensable preliminary of the religious unification which is to come. It results in little less than cancelling the human personality by an association of a monastic character; but it unfolds the precious principle "to every man according to his works," a principle divulged by certain contemporary socialists with the air of men who are announcing a new revelation. In his saddest hours, too, Campanella tempered his sorrows with song. He composed Italian poems, warm with the tenderest affections, and ever bright with the hopes which were the source of constant inspiration, as one illusion after another passed away.
At length, in 1626, Campanella was liberated from the prisons of Naples. But the church of Rome could not forget that this man would have robbed her of all the authority she derived from the doctrines of the humiliation of the faithful, of mortification, of the abnegation of every impulse of conscience. Campanella recognized only Christ, radiant with the glory of his transfiguration; Christ promising the reign of God on earth—a reign of justice, truth, and love: so he was accused of heresy. The church did not forget that he had designed a temple that should embrace all religions, so that the catholic faith would only find itself on a level with others. The church looked on tolerance as a mere philosophical hypocrisy—a blind for infidelity—and she accused him of atheism. The unfortunate philosopher, therefore, passed from the subterranean vaults of Naples to the secret dungeons of the inquisition at Rome, where
