Hegel took a much less enthusiastic view of Bruno's philosophy than did his contemporary and sometime partner--to place Bruno on a level with Spinoza was to give him a higher reputation than he deserved: his doctrine was a mere re-echo of the Alexandrine. Yet Hegel, too, saw something to admire in this "Bacchantic" spirit, revelling in the discovery of its oneness with the Idea, and with all other beings, with the all of nature which is an externalisation of spirit. It was under the influence of Hegel or of the Hegelian philosophy that the first really complete and satisfactory studies of Bruno appeared:--Christian Bartholmèss' _Jordano Bruno_,[670] and Moritz Carrière's _Philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit_.[671] The quick and generous enthusiasm of the first, the wide philosophic comprehension of the second have probably done more to attract public attention to the forgotten Nolan, and to guarantee him a permanent place in the history of philosophy, than any other writings about him. Since their time the literature upon Bruno has steadily increased, and with it has grown the comprehension of and sympathy with the man as well as with the idea he so fearlessly proclaimed, and so strenuously defended. It is no part of the purpose of this work to parallel Bruno with any of the more modern philosophers. It is foolhardy to say, for example, as Brunnhofer does, that Schopenhauer alone reaches the same height of literary style in modern philosophy, "although the Nolan leaves the Frankfort philosopher far behind him through the strength of his philosophical conception of the universe, which holds its own against pessimism and optimism alike."[672] It is foolhardy, and it is misleading, to place him in comparison with philosophers who have nearly three centuries of thought, of social, industrial, and literary growth, between him and them. Like all the philosophers whom a touch of poetical imagination has redeemed, Bruno stands more or less alone, and he overtops all the others of his century. None of the ordinary rubrics of historical terminology in philosophy apply to him, not even that of "Eclectic." He is far more than that. His philosophy, as perhaps these pages have shown, bears the stamp of individuality, the individuality of a strong mind, fed with nearly all the knowledge, and all the out-reaching guesses at truth of its own time, and of the times that had gone before, striving to turn this difficult mass into nourishment for itself, and to transmit the achievement to others. He was an eclectic, just as every great thinker is an eclectic, but it is the bricks merely, not the style of architecture, that he has borrowed from others. He never founded a school, not merely because the circumstances of his life, and the fate of his writings, precluded him from being widely known or studied in any country, but also because his philosophy was too much a thing of himself to be readily attractive to many of his hearers or readers.