The Heroic Enthusiasts | Page 8

physics, metaphysics, and morals; the true aim being illumination, the
true morality the practice of justice, the true redemption the liberation
of the soul from error, its elevation and union with God upon the wings
of thought. This idea is developed in the work in question, which is
dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. After treating of the infinite universe,
and contemplating the innumerable worlds in other works, he comes, in
"Gli Eroici Furori," to the consideration of virtue in the individual, and
demonstrates the potency of the human faculties. After the Cosmos, the
Microcosm; after the infinitely great, the infinitely small. The body is
in the soul, the soul is in the mind, the mind is in God. The life of the
soul is the true life of the man. Of all his various faculties, that which
rules all, that which exalts our nature, is Thought. By means of it we
rise to the contemplation of the universe, and becoming in our turn
creators, we raise the edifice of science; through the intellect the
affections become purified, the will becomes strengthened. True liberty
is acquired, and will and action becoming one through thought, we
become heroes.
This education of the soul, or rather this elevation and glory of thought,
which draws with it the will and the affections, not by means of blind
faith or supernatural grace, not through an irrational and mystical
impulse, but by the strength of a reformed intellect and by a palpable
and well-considered enthusiasm, which science and the contemplation
of Nature alone can give, this is the keynote of the poem. It is
composed of two parts, each of which is divided into five dialogues:
the first part, which may be called psychological, shows, by means of
various figures and symbols drawn from Nature, how the divine light is
always present to us, is inherent in man; it presents itself to the senses
and to the comprehension: man constantly rejects and ignores it;
sometimes the soul strives to rise up to it, and the poet describes the
struggle with the opposing affections which are involved in this effort,

and shows how at last the man of intelligence overcomes these
contending powers and fatal impulses which conflict within us, and by
virtue of harmony and the fusion of the opposites the intellect becomes
one with the affections, and man realizes the good and rises to the
knowledge of the true. All conflicting desires being at last united, they
become fixed upon one object, one great intent--the love of the Divine,
which is the highest truth and the highest good. In "Gli Eroici Furori"
we see Bruno as a man, as a philosopher, and as a believer: here he
reveals himself as the hero of thought. Even as Christ was the hero of
faith, and sacrificed himself for it, so Bruno declares himself ready to
sacrifice himself for science. It is also a literary, a
philosophical, and
a religious work; form, however, is sacrificed to the idea--so absorbed
is the author in the idea that he often ignores form altogether. An exile
wandering from place to place, he wrote hurriedly and seldom or ever
had he the opportunity of revising what he had written down. His mind
in the impulsiveness of its improvisation was like the volcano of his
native soil, which, rent by subterranean flames, sends forth from its
vortices of fire, at the same time smoke, ashes, turbid floods, stones,
and lava. He contemplates the soul, and seeks to understand its
language; he is a physiologist and a naturalist, merged in the mystic
and the enlightened devotee.
Bruno might have made a fixed home for himself in England, as so
many of his compatriots had done, and have continued to enjoy the
society of such men as Sir Philip Sydney, Fulke Greville, and,
perchance, also of Shakespeare himself, who was in London about that
time; but his self-imposed mission allowed him no rest; he must go
forth, and carry his doctrines to the world, and forget the pleasures of
friendship and the ties of comfort in the larger love of humanity; his
work was to awaken souls out of their lethargy, to inspire them with the
love of the highest good and of truth; to teach that God is to be found in
the study of Nature, that the laws of the visible world will explain those
of the invisible, the union of science and humanity with Nature and
with God.
Bruno returned to Paris in 1585, being at that time tutor in the family of
Mauvissier, who had been recalled from England by his Sovereign.

During Bruno's second sojourn in Paris efforts were made by Mendoza,
the Spanish ambassador, and others, to induce him to return to his
allegiance to the Church, and to be reconciled to