The work of the divine Spirit, as he conceives it,
exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to
take the place of prayer, sacrifice, communion. It would be a
mistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely
passive or receptive. She, too, possesses, not less than the soul of
the world, initiatory power, responding with the free gift of a light
and heat that seem her own.
Yet a nature so opulently endowed can hardly have been lacking in
purely physical ardours. His pantheistic belief that the Spirit of
God was in all things, was not inconsistent with, might encourage, a
keen and restless eye for the dramatic details of life and character
for humanity in all its visible attractiveness, since there, too, in
[238] truth, divinity lurks. From those first fair days of early
Greek speculation, love had occupied a large place in the conception
of philosophy; and in after days Bruno was fond of developing, like
Plato, like the Christian platonist, combining something of the
peculiar temper of each, the analogy between intellectual enthusiasm
and the flights of physical love, with an animation which shows
clearly enough the reality of his experience in the latter. The
Eroici Furori, his book of books, dedicated to Philip Sidney, who
would be no stranger to such thoughts, presents a singular blending
of verse and prose, after the manner of Dante's Vita Nuova.
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