GIORDANO BRUNO. 247 it is the symbol of non-existence. The " Shadows of Ideas" are things in nature and thoughts in the mind. They partake of the nature of light and of darkness. Any natural thing can change its form and (within certain limits), assume any other form. Similarly the intellect can pass from any par- ticular thought to any other thought, if it has thoughts that can serve as means between the extremes. The end that the intellect ought to propose to itself is ascent to the region of Ideas, to the knowledge of the One as distinguished from the Many, of the permanent as distinguished from forms that change. The vision of the absolute unity must be des- cribed as a state, not as a process. Since the human mind is continually disturbed by sense and imagination, this state cannot last long, and is therefore spoken of in the past rather than in the present tense. There is a very interesting passage in the De Unibris Idearum on the relation of Art to Nature. 1 It is declared that "daedal Nature is the fountain of all arts". For arts proceed from the mind of man ; and Nature first gave birth to man with all his faculties. Unless we turn away from her, Nature herself will be present to us in all things. Nature (or the soul of the world, or fate, or necessity, or by whatever other name we may speak of the same' power) pro- ceeds from the imperfect to the perfect, and so also does Art, which Nature leads by the hand. Thus the art of writing being taken as an illustration men at first wrote on the bark of trees ; then succeeded the age that wrote on stone ; afterwards the papyrus was used, then parchment, then paper. As there was progress in the materials so also in the instruments of writing ; first the knife was used, then the stylus, and so on continually. This idea again appears in the last book of De Tmmcnso et Innumerabilibus. Here a certain reaction from Platonism is perceptible. "Forms without matter," "light without body," are declared to be as absurd as other " separate substances," " abstract species," and " essences without being ". The light that the Platonists feign outside things they are told to seek nowhere but in nature and the human mind. The reaction, however, is not from any position taken up by Bruno himself in his first work. It is merely from the use of the language of the Platonists, which expresses his doc- trine inadequately so far as it gives the impression that he regards the absolute light, the region of Ideas, as entirely distinct from things. And when we come to the passages 1 De Umbris Idearum, ed. Tugini, pp. 59-64.
