body, is not good, and the best in the end and in the whole? A harmony
in music is better the greater the variety within it of length, accent,
pause, and the like.[334]
The perfect may be either (1) "the perfect absolutely, or (2) the
perfect in its kind." The former again is twofold, according as it
is (1) "that which is wholly in the whole and in every part, or (2)
that which is wholly in the whole but not in the part." Of these the
one is divinity, the intellect of the universe, absolute goodness and
truth, the other the immeasurable corporeal reflection of the divine.
As within the universe there are many things perfect in their kind,
which it combines in its unity, containing in itself the perfection of
all, it may in a second sense be called the absolutely perfect. For
no one world singly, nor system of worlds, nor any number of systems,
can be brought into comparison with God, except indirectly, through
the immeasurable wisdom, power, and goodness. "Nothing is absolutely
imperfect or evil, for the highest nature exists in a certain sense
in the meanest and lowest, as on the palette of a painter colours are
thought little of which presently, unfolded into the scheme of the
picture, shall seem to be, along with the painter himself, of chief
importance."[335] Moral evil, itself, as we shall find, has no reality
for Bruno's pantheism. Justice and goodness, not existing as abstract
entities, have their only ground in the divine will, _i.e._ in the
course of nature.[336] On the other hand, it is not in the part, the
detail, the trivial or minute existence, that the divine will is most
adequately declared, but in the whole, its plan and its law. "What
is best and most glorious, most beseeming the goodness of His nature,
is to be attributed to His will. It is impious to seek this in the
blood of insects, in the mummied corpse, in the foam of the epileptic,
under the shaking feet of murderers, or in the melancholy mysteries of
vile necromancers;[337] it must be sought rather in the inviolable,
intemerate law of nature, in the religion of a mind directed duly by
that law, in the splendour of the sun, in the beauty of the things
which are brought forth from this our parent, after His true image,
as expressed bodily in the beauty of those innumerable living things,
which, in the immeasurable sweep of the one heaven, shine and live,
have sense and intelligence, and sing praises to the One, the highest
and best."[338]
CHAPTER IV
NATURE AND THE LIVING WORLDS
We have found that, according to Bruno, the universe is infinite in
extent, and that there are innumerable worlds within it: it remains
to know what are the materials that constitute the universe, and the
moving principles that govern its changes and direct the worlds in
their courses.
[Sidenote: Uniformity of Nature.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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