e one
Being. Ideas are at once creative and created, subjective and objective.
God is the end of all, and all return to Him. As every variety of
humanity forms one manhood, so the world contains individual forms
of one eternal essence." David of Dinant only varied upon this by
"imagining a corporeal unity. Although body, soul, and eternal substance
are three, these three are one and the same being."

Giordano Bruno maintained the world of sense to be "a vast animal having
the Deity for its living soul." The inanimate part of the world is
thus excluded from participation in the Deity, and a conception that
our minds can embrace is offered us instead of one which they cannot
entertain, except as in a dream, incoherently. But without such a view
of evolution as was prevalent at the beginning of this century, it was
impossible to see "the world of sense" intelligently, as forming "a vast
animal." Unless, therefore, Giordano Bruno held the opinions of Buffon,
Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, with more definiteness than I am
yet aware of his having done, his contention must be considered as a
splendid prophecy, but as little more than a prophecy. He continues,
"Birth is expansion from the one centre of Life; life is its
continuance, and death is the necessary return of the ray to the centre
of light." This begins finely, but ends mystically. I have not, however,
compared the English translation with the original, and must reserve a
fuller examination of Giordano Bruno's teaching for another opportunity.

Spinoza disbelieved in the world rather than in God. He was an Acosmist,
to use Jacobi's expression, rather than an Atheist. According to him,
"the Deity and the Universe are but one substance, at the same time
both spirit and matter, thought and extension, which are the only known
attributes of the Deity."

My readers will, I think, agree with me that there is very little of the
above which conveys ideas with the fluency and comfort which accompany
good words. Words are like servants: it is not enough that we should
have them-we must have the most able and willing that we can find, and
at the smallest wages that will content them. Having got them we must
make the best and not the worst of them. Surely, in the greater part of
what has been quoted above, the words are barren letters only: they do
not quicken within us and enable us to conceive a thought, such as we
can in our turn impress upon dead matter, and mould [sic] th