GIORDANO BRUNO. 243 They are, as Berti calls them, "sibylline and unintelligible " ; and as he goes on to say, they do not seem to be of any importance so far as their meaning can be conjectured. The Italian works are free from passages of this kind, and on the whole they are of more interest and importance than the Latin works. The exposition is, besides, more syste- matic in the chief Italian dialogues than in the Latin poems on the same subjects. But there are many passages in the Latin works that are scarcely inferior to anything in the Italian works, and an account of Bruno's philosophy would be incomplete without reference to them. Bruno's mode of exposition, both in the Latin and in the Italian works, is literary rather than scientific. He did not, indeed, make any attempt at that elegance of Latin style which was the chief object of the " Ciceronians ". And in writing Italian, he thought it absurd to reject a word merely because it had not been used by any classical Italian author. But, on the other hand, he did not make for himself a rigid terminology. He says in the introduction to the earliest of his works that he does not refuse to make use of the ter- minology of any school, if only it is that by which he can best convey his idea ; l and in his latest work he protests against the rigid method of interpreting philosophical terms practised by the " Grammarians ". 2 Again, he uses quite freely, in order to convey his metaphysical ideas in an imaginative form, both the poetical and the philosophical conceptions he has met with in his reading. He takes pleasure in paradoxes, in ingenious combinations of ideas, so far as they help to bring out more clearly his own thought. He does not, like some philosophers, attempt to construct a system of which every detail shall be expressive of a con- clusion that is logically connected with all the rest. But his essential ideas are none the less clear for this. And the vivid colouring that is given to his expositions by the use of illustrations from all sources only makes more evident the originality of his philosophy as a whole. Bruno's essential originality is in philosophy in the strict sense of the term. He had, however, as has been seen, given special attention to the study of physical science. Some of the scientific speculations that are met with inci- dentally in his works are interesting as anticipations of modern ideas. He would probably not have laid much stress on them as parts of his contribution to thought ; for 1 De Umbris Idearum, ed. Tugini, pp. 20-3. Summa Terminorum metaphysicorum, Gfrorer, p. 455.
