This is the confession and apology of Giordano Bruno, taken from the minutes of the Inquisition of Venice, so far as I have been able to interpret the ungrammatical, ill-punctuated report of the secretary. The examinations were held on May 26 and 30, June 2, 3, 4, and July 30, 1592; and as there were, consequently, many repetitions of statement, I have condensed where it seemed advisable. From Bruno’s lips we hear the explanation of his philosophical system, his doubts, his belief, and his recantation of any opinions which clashed with the dogmas of Catholicism. Was his recantation sincere? Before answering this question, let us glance at his opinions as he expressed them freely in his works; for upon Bruno’s value as a thinker must finally rest the justification of our interest in him. True, the romance of his strange vagabond career and the pathos of his noble death will always excite interest in his personality; but the final question which mankind asks of prophet, philosopher, poet, preacher, or man of science is, “What can you tell us concerning our origin and our destiny?” Be warned at the outset that Bruno furnished no complete, systematic reply to this question. He did not, like Spinoza, reduce his system to the precision of a geometrical text-book, all theorems and corollaries; nor, like Herbert Spencer, did he stow the universe away in a cabinet of pigeonholes. He is often inconsistent, often contradicts himself. Perhaps his chief merit is that he stimulated thought on every subject he touched, and that he made sublime guesses which experiment, toiling patiently after him, has established as truths. Like all searchers for truth, his purpose was to discover the all-embracing Unity. Our reason shows us an unbridgeable chasm between matter and mind; the world of ideas and the outward world are in perpetual flux; nature is composed of innumerable separate objects, yet a superior unity pervades them. Life and death subsist antagonistically side by side: what is that, greater than both, which includes both? What is the permanence underlying this shifting, evanescent world? Conscience likewise reports the conflict between good and evil: what is the cause anterior to both? Many solutions have been offered; perhaps the commonest is that which, taught by the Manicheans and adopted by early Christians, announces that there are two principles in the universe,--one good, God, the other evil, Satan. But insuperable difficulties accompany this view. If God be, as assumed, all-powerful, why does he not exterminate Satan; if he be just, why does he permit evil to exist at all?