older even than Copernicus, and nearer in his intuition to the truth,
he denied that the universe had 'flaming walls' or any walls at all.
That 'immaginata circonferenza,' 'quella margine immaginata del cielo,'
on which antique science and Christian theology alike reposed, was the
object of his ceaseless satire, his oft-repeated polemic. What, then,
rendered Bruno the precursor of modern thought in its various
manifestations, was that he grasped the fundamental truth upon which
modern science rests, and foresaw the conclusions which must be drawn
from it. He speculated boldly, incoherently, vehemently; but he
speculated with a clear conception of the universe, as we still
apprehend it. Through the course of three centuries we have been engaged
in verifying the guesses, deepening, broadening and solidifying the
hypotheses, which Bruno's extension of the Copernican theory, and his
application of it to pure thought, suggested to his penetrating and
audacious intellect, Bruno was convinced that religion in its higher
essence would not suffer from the new philosophy. Larger horizons
extended before the human intellect. The soul expanded in more
exhilarating regions than the old theologies had offered. The sense of
the Divine in Nature, instead of dwindling down to atheism, received
fresh stimulus from the immeasurable prospect of an infinite and living
universe. Bruno, even more than Spinoza, was a God-intoxicated man. The
inebriation of the Renaissance, inspired by golden visions of truth and
knowledge close within man's grasp, inflamed with joy at escaping from
out-worn wearying formula into what appeared to be the simple intuition
of an everlasting verity, pulses through all his utterances. He has the
same cherubic confidence in the renascent age, that charms us in the
work of Rabelais. The slow, painful, often thwarted, ever more dubious
elaboration of modern metaphysic in _rapport_ with modern science--that
process which, after completing the cycle of all knowledge and sounding
the fathomless depth of all ignorance, has left us in grave
disillusionment and sturdy patience--swam before Bruno in a rapturous
vision. The Inquisition and the stake put an end abruptly to his dream.
But the dream was so golden, so divine, that it was worth the pangs of
martyrdom. Can we say the same for Hegel's system, or for Schopenhauers
or for the encyclopaedic ingenuity of Herbert Spencer?

Bruno imagined the universe as infinite space, fil