n
the effect, the genus in the individual, the soul in the body, reason
in the senses, and conversely. To perfect, is simply to make active a
potential possession, to unfold capacities and to elevate the unconscious
into consciousness. Here we have the germ of the philosophy of Bruno and of
Leibnitz.

As we have noticed a struggle between two opposite tendencies, one
dualistic and Christian, one pantheistic and modern, in the theology of
Nicolas, so at many other points a conflict between the mediaeval and the
modern view of the world, of which our philosopher is himself unconscious,
becomes evident to the student. It is impossible to follow out the details
of this interesting opposition, so we shall only attempt to distinguish in
a rough way the beginnings of the new from the remnants of the old. Modern
is his interest in the ancient philosophers, of whom Pythagoras, Plato, and
the Neoplatonists especially attract him; modern, again, his interest in
natural science[1] (he teaches not only the boundlessness of the world, but
also the motion of the earth); his high estimation of mathematics, although
he often utilizes this merely in a fanciful symbolism of numbers; his
optimism (the world an image of the divine, everything perfect of its kind,
the bad simply a halt on the way to the good); his intellectualism (knowing
the primal function and chief mission of the spirit; faith an undeveloped
knowledge; volition and emotion, as is self-evident, incidental results of
thought; knowledge a leading back of the creature to God as its source,
hence the counterpart of creation); modern, finally, the form and
application given to the Stoic-Neoplatonic concept of individuality, and
the idealistic view which resolves the objects of thought into products
thereof.[2] This last position, indeed, is limited by the lingering
influence of nominalism, which holds the concepts of the mind to be merely
abstract copies, and not archetypes of things. Moreover, _explicatio,
evolutio_, unfolding, as yet does not always have the meaning of
development to-day, of progressive advance. It denotes, quite neutrally,
the production of a multiplicity from a unity, in which the former has lain
confined, no matter whether this multiplicity and its procession signify
enhancement or attenuation. For the most part, in fact, involution,
_complicatio_ (which, moreover, always means merely a primal, germinal
condition, never, as in Leibnitz, the return thereto)