Nevertheless, Bruno is involved in all the inconsistencies of the Mystic. In a neo-Platonic fashion he frequently speaks of God as if he were a plural number of atoms. God is not only the world unity, but in every particle of the world is He writ small. The elements of the world are monads, and each is the mirror of the All. The Absolute is the primal unity; and yet in the paradoxical fashion in which the neo-Platonist is so successful, Bruno says that all creation is unfolded out of God and is included in him. The speculative poet is so in love with the world that he does not stop to make consistent the distinctions which he has drawn. The _natura naturans_ and the _natura naturata_, the unity and plurality of the world, are the two aspects of the reality in his own life――and that reality is God. Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE BIRTHPLACES OF THE CHIEF PHILOSOPHERS OF THE RENAISSANCE (The names of the philosophers are given in brackets beneath the towns in which they were born) CHAPTER IV THE NATURAL SCIENCE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE (1600–1690)[5] =The Philosophers of the Natural Science Period.= 1. Galileo, 1564–1641, and the group of scientists. 2. Bacon, 1561–1626. 3. Hobbes, 1588–1679. 4. The Rationalists. Descartes, 1596–1650. Spinoza, 1632–1677. Leibnitz, 1646–1716. Countries other than Italy and Germany come upon the philosophic stage during the eighty-nine years of the period of teeming natural science. England is represented by Bacon and Hobbes, France by Descartes, Holland by the Jew, Spinoza, and, at the end of the period, Germany by Leibnitz. Still Italy yields the most influential thinker of them all,――Galileo, who is the most prominent of a long series of astronomers coming from many countries. The most completely representative is Descartes, who was the founder of the Rationalistic school; for he was not only interested in mathematics itself, but in the application of mathematics to metaphysical questions. Neither as influential as Galileo, nor as comprehensive as Descartes, the Englishmen, Bacon and Hobbes, were nevertheless important as the forerunners of the English empirical school. Spinoza is more of a “world’s philosopher” than any of the others, and he joins in his doctrine the scholasticism of the Middle Ages and the mathematics of the Renaissance; while Leibnitz occupies the position between the Enlightenment and the Renaissance.