amused a corrupt though highly cultivated age.

III. Campanella held the doctrine of an Anima Mundi in the fullest and
deepest sense of the term. The larger and more complex the organism,
the more it held, in his opinion, of thought and sentient life. Thus
the stars, in the language of Aristotle, are [Greek: thiotera aemon].
Compare Sonnets VIII., XIX.

IV. Though the material seat of the mind is so insignificant, the mind
itself is infinite, analogous to God in its capacity. Aristarchus and
Metrodorus symbolise, perhaps, the spheres of literature and
mathematics. This infinitude of the intellect is our real proof of God,
our inner witness of the Deity. We may arrive at God by reasoning; we
may trust authority; but it is only by impregnating our minds with God
in Nature that we come into immediate contact with Him. Cp. Sonnet VI.,
last line.

V. The theme of this sonnet is the well-known Baconian principle of the
interrogation of Nature. The true philosopher must go straight to the
universe, and not confine himself to books. Cp. Sonnets I., LV., LVI.

VI. A further development of the same thought. Tyrants, hypocrites,
sophists are the three plagues of humanity, standing between our
intellect and God, who is the source of freedom, goodness, and true
wisdom. In the last line Campanella expresses his opinion that God is
knowable by an immediate act of perception analogous to the sense of
taste: _Se tutti al Senno non rendiamo il gusto_. Compare Sonnet IV.,
last line.

VII. Ignorance is the parent of tyranny, sophistry, hypocrisy; and the
arms against this trinity of error are power, wisdom, love, the three
main attributes of God.

VIII. Human egotism inclines men to deny the spiritual life of the
universe, to favour their own nation, to love their individual selves
exclusively, to eliminate the true God from the world, to worship false
gods fashioned from them selves, and at last to fancy themselves
central and creative in the Cosmos. Adami calls this sonnet
_scoprimento stupendo_.

IX. The quatrains set forth the condition of the soul besotted with
self love. We may see in this picture a critique of Machiavelli's
_Principe_, which was for Campanella the very ideal portrait of a
tyrant. The love of God, rightly understood, places man _en rapport_
with all created things. S. Francis, for example, loved not only his
fellow men, but recognised the brotherhood of birds and fishes.

X. Ignorance, the source of all ou