The Heroic Enthusiasts | Page 7

centre of the whole, towards which centre they all tend
with infinite passional ardour. For in this centre resides the sun of suns,
the unity of unities, the temple, the altar of the universe, the sacred fire
of Vesta, the vital principle of the universe.
That which occurs in the world of stars is reflected in the telluric world;
everything has its centre, towards which it is attracted with fervour. All
is thought, passion, and aspiration.
From this unity, which governs variety, from this movement of every
world around its sun, of every sun around its centre sun--the sun of
suns--which informs all with the rays of the spirit, with the light of
thought--is generated that perfect harmony of colours, sounds, forms,
which strike the sight and captivate and enthrall the intellect. That
which in the heavens is harmony becomes, in the individual, morality,
and in companies of human beings, law. That which is light in the
spheres becomes intelligence and science in the world of the spirit and
in humanity. We must study this harmony that rules the celestial worlds
in order to deduce the laws which should govern civil bodies.
In the science of numbers dwells harmony, and therefore it behoves us
to identify ourselves with this harmony, because from it is derived the
harmonic law which draws men together into companies. Through the
revolution of the worlds through space around their suns, from their
order, their constancy and their measure, the mind comprehends the
progress and conditions of men, and their duties towards each other.
The Bible, the sacred book of man, is in the heavens; there does man
find written the word of God.
Human souls are lights, distinct from the universal soul, which is
diffused over all and penetrates everything. A purifying process guides
them from one existence to another, from one form to another, from
one world to another. The life of man is more than an experience or
trial; it is an effort, a struggle to reproduce and represent upon earth
some of that goodness, beauty, and truth which are diffused over the
universe and constitute its harmony.
Long, slow, and full of opposition is this educational process of the

soul. As the terraqueous globe becomes formed, changed, and perfected,
little by little, through the cataclysms and convulsions which, by means
of fire, flood, earthquake, and irruptions, transform the earth, so it is
with humanity. Through struggle is man educated, fortified, and raised.
In the midst of social cataclysms and revolutions humanity has one
guiding star, a beacon which shows its light above the storms and
tempests, a mystical thread running through the labyrinth of
history--namely, the religion of philosophy and of thought. The vulgar
creeds would not, and have not dared to reveal the Truth in its purity
and essence. They covered it with veils with allegories, with myths and
mysteries, which they called sacred; they enshrouded thought with a
double veil, and called it Revelation. Humanity, deceived by a
seductive form, adored the veil, but did not lift itself up to the idea
behind it; it saw the shadow, not the light.
But we must return to our wandering hero.
Bruno was about thirty-six years old when he left Paris and went to
England. He was invited to visit the University of Oxford, and opened
his lectures there with two subjects which, apparently diverse, are in
reality intimately connected with each other--namely, on the Quadruple
Sphere and on the Immortality of the Soul. Speaking of the immortality
of the soul, he maintained that nothing in the universe is lost,
everything changes and is transformed; therefore, soul and body, spirit
and matter, are equally immortal. The body dissolves, and is
transformed; the soul transmigrates, and, drawing round itself atom to
atom, it reconstructs for itself a new body. The spirit that animates and
moves all things is one; everything differentiates according to the
different forms and bodies in which it operates. Hence, of animate
things some are inferior by reason of the meanness of the organ in
which they operate; others are superior through the richness of the same.
Thus we see that Bruno anticipates the doctrine, proclaimed later by
Goethe and by Darwin, of the transformation of species and of the
organic unity of the animal world; and this alternation from segregation
to aggregation, which we call death and life, is no other than mutation
of form.

After having criticised and scourged the religions of chimera, of
ignorance, and hypocrisy, in "Lo Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante" and
in "L'Asino Cillenico," the author, in "Gli Eroici Furori," lays down the
basis for the religion of thought and of science. In place of the so-called
Christian perfections (resignation, devotion, and ignorance), Bruno
would put intelligence and the progress of the intellect in the world of