If this be regarded as the fancies of an enthusiast, by such as deem themselves most free, When they within this gross and visible sphere Proud in their meanness, * by such as pronounce every man out of his senses who has not lost his reason; even such men may find some weight in the historical fact that from persons, who had previously strengthened their intellects and feelings by the contemplation of principles-principles, the actions correspondent to which involve one half of their consequences, by their ennobling influence on the agent's own soul, and have omnipotence, as the pledge for the remainder we have derived the surest and most general maxims of prudence. Of high value are they all. Yet there is one among them worth all the rest, which in the fullest and primary sense of the word is, indeed, the truth, amid many prejudices, which from the state of the Romish Church, in which he was born, have a claim to much indulgence. One of them (entiled Ember Week) is curious for its lively accounts of the rude state of London, at that time, both as to the streets and the manners of the citizens. (La cena de le ceneri. See particularly the second dialogue.-Ed.) The most industrious historians of speculative philosophy, have not been able to procure more than a few of his works. Accidentally I have been more fortunate in this respect, than those who have written hitherto on the unhappy philosopher of Nola; as out of eleven works, the titles of which are preserved to us, I have had an opportunity of perusing six. I was told, when in Germany, that there is a complete collection of them in the royal library at Copenhagen. If so, it is unique. (Wagner has collected and published seven of the Italian works of Bruno Leipzig, 1830. These are, Il Candelajo; La cena de le ceneri; De la causa, principio et uno; De l'infinito, universo e mondi; Spaccio de la bestia trionfante; Cabala del caballo Pegaseo; and De gli eroici furori. Two others are mentioned by Bruno himself in the Cena, &c. ; namely, L'arca di Noè, and Purgatorio dell' inferno. Wagner could not discover these. The titles of twenty-three works in Latin are given by Wagner.-Ed.) * Poetical Works, I. p. 99.-Ed. : maxim, that is, maximum, of human prudence; and of which history itself in all that makes it most worth studying, is one continued comment and exemplification. It is this that there is a wisdom higher than prudence, to which prudence stands in the same relation as the mason and carpenter to the genial and scientific architect; and it is from the habits of thinking and feeling, which in this wisdom had their first formation, that our Nelsons and Wellingtons inherit that glorious hardihood, which completes the undertaking, ere the contemptuous calculator, who has left nothing omitted in his scheme of probabilities, except the might of the human mind, has finished his pretended proof of its impossibility. You look to facts, and profess to take experience for your guide. Well! I too appeal to experience: and let facts be the ordeal of my position! Therefore, although I have in this and the preceding essays quoted more frequently and copiously than I shall permit myself to do in future, I owe it to the cause I am pleading, not to deny myself the gratification of supporting this connection of practical heroism with previous habits of philosophic thought, by a singularly appropriate passage from an author whose works can be called rare only from their being, I fear, rarely read, however commonly talked of. It is the instance of Xenophon as stated by Lord Bacon, who would himself furnish an equal instance, if there could be found an equal commentator. "It is of Xenophon the philosopher, who went from Socrates' school into Asia, in the expedition of Cyrus the younger, against King Artaxerxes. This Xenophon, at that time, was very young, and never had seen the wars before; neither had any command in the army, but only followed the war as a volunteer, for the love and conversation of Proxenus, his friend. He was present when Falinus came in message from the great King to the Grecians, after that Cyrus was slain in the field, and they, a handful of men, left to themselves in the midst of the King's territories, cut off from their country by many navigable rivers, and many hundred miles. The message imported, that they should deliver up their arms and submit themselves to the King's mercy. To which message, before answer was made, divers of the army conferred familiarly with Falinus, and amongst the rest Xenophon happened to say: 'Why, Falinus! we have now but these two things left, our arms and our virtue; and if we yield up our arms, how shall we make use of our virtue ?' Whereto Falinus, smiling on him, said, 'If I be not deceived, young gentleman, you are an Athenian, and I believe, you study philosophy, and it is pretty that you say; but you are much abused, if you think your virtue can withstand the King's power.' Here was the scorn: the wonder followed ;-which was, that this young scholar or philosopher, after all the captains were murdered in parley, by treason, conducted those ten thousand foot through the heart of all the King's high countries from Babylon to Græcia, in safety, in despite of all the King's forces, to the astonishment of the world, and the encouragement of the Grecians, in time succeeding, to make invasion upon the kings of Persia ; as was after purposed by Jason the Thessalian, attempted by Agesilaus the Spartan, and achieved by Alexander the Macedonian, all upon the ground of the act of that young scholar." Often have I reflected with awe on the great and disproportionate power, which an individual of no extraordinary talents or attainments may exert, by merely throwing off * Advancement of Learning. B. I.— Ed. all restraint of conscience. What then must not be the power, where an individual, of consummate wickedness, can organise into the unity and rapidity of an individual will all the natural and artificial forces of a populous and wicked nation? And could we bring within the field of imagination, the devastation effected in the moral world, by the violent removal of old customs, familiar sympathies, willing reverences, and habits of subordination. almost naturalized into instinct; of the mild influences of reputation, and the other ordinary props and aidances of our infirm virtue, or at least, if virtue be too high a name, of our well-doing; and above all, if we could give form and body to all the effects produced on the principles and dispositions of nations by the infectious feelings of insecurity, and the soul-sickening sense of unsteadiness in the whole edifice of civil society; the horrors of battle, though the miseries of a whole war were brought together before our eyes in one disastrous field, would present but a tame tragedy in comparison. Nay it would even present a sight of comfort and of elevation, if this field of carnage were the sign and result of a national resolve, of a general will, so to die, that neither deluge nor fire should take away the name of country from their graves, rather than to tread the same clods of earth, no longer a country, and themselves alive in nature, but dead in infamy. What is Greece at this present moment? It is the country of the heroes from Codrus to Philopamen ; and so it would be, though all the sands of Africa should cover its corn-fields and olive gardens, and not a flower were left on Hymettus for a bee to murmur in. If then the power with which wickedness can invest the human being be thus tremendous, greatly does it behove us to inquire into its source and causes. So doing we shall quickly discover that it is not vice, as vice, which is thus mighty; but systematic vice. Vice self-consistent and entire ; crime corresponding to crime; villany entrenched and barricadoed by villany; this is the condition and main constituent of its power. The abandonment of all principle of right enables the soul to choose and act upon a principle of wrong, and to subordinate to this one principle all the various vices of human nature. For it is a mournful truth, that as devastation is incomparably an easier work than production, so may all its means and instruments be more easily arranged into a scheme and system: even as in a siege every building and garden, which the faithful governor must destroy, as impeding the defensive means of the garrison, or furnishing means of defence to the besieger, occasions a wound in feelings which virtue herself has fostered and virtue, because it is virtue, loses perforce part of her energy in the reluctance with which she proceeds to a business so repugnant to her wishes, as a choice of evils. But he, who has once said with his whole heart, Evil, be thou my good! has removed a world of obstacles by the very decision, that he will have no obstacles but those of force and brute matter. The road to justice. : Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines, but the path of the lightning is straight; and straight the fearful path Of the cannon-ball Direct it flies and rapid, Shatt'ring that it may reach, and shatt'ring what it reaches.† Happily for mankind, however, the obstacles which a consistently evil mind no longer finds in itself, it finds in * Poetical Works, III. p. 24.-Ed. + Ib. p. 23.-Ed. |