y; at war with society, authority, opinion; self-sustained by
the prescience of ultimate triumph, and invincible through the sheer
force of passionate conviction. The men of whom I speak were conscious
of Pariahdom, and eager to be martyred in the glorious cause. 'A very
Proteus is the philosopher,' says Pomponazzo: 'seeking to penetrate the
secrets of God, he is consumed with ceaseless cares; he forgets to
thirst, to hunger, to sleep, to eat; he is derided of all men; he is
held for a fool and irreligious person; he is persecuted by
inquisitors; he becomes a gazing-stock to the common folk. These are
the gains of the philosopher; these are his guerdon. Pomponazzo's words
were prophetic. Of the five philosophers whom I mentioned, Vanini was
burned as an atheist, Bruno was burned, and Campanella was imprisoned
for a quarter of a century. Both Bruno and Campanella were Dominican
friars. Bruno was persecuted by the Church, and burned for heresy.
Campanella was persecuted by both Church and State, and was imprisoned
on the double charge of sedition and heresy. _Dormitantium animarum
excubitor_ was the self-given title of Bruno. _Nunquam tacebo_ was the
favourite motto of Campanella.

Giovanni Domenico Campanella was born in the year 1568 at Stilo in
Calabria, one of the most southern townships of all Italy. In his
boyhood he showed a remarkable faculty for acquiring and retaining
knowledge, together with no small dialectical ability. His keen
interest in philosophy and his admiration for the great Dominican
doctors, Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, induced him at the age of
fifteen to enter the order of S. Dominic, exchanging his secular name
for Tommaso. But the old alliance between philosophy and orthodoxy,
drawn up by scholasticism and approved by the mediaeval Church, had
been succeeded by mutual hostility; and the youthful thinker found no
favour in the cloister of Cosenza, where he now resided. The new
philosophy taught by Telesio placed itself in direct antagonism to the
pseudo-Aristotelian tenets of the theologians, and founded its own
principles upon the Interrogation of Nature. Telesio, says Bacon, was
the prince of the _novi homines,_ or inaugurators of modern thought. It
was natural that Campanella should be drawn towards this great man. But
the superiors of his convent prevented his forming the acquaintance of
Telesio; and though the two men dwelt in the same city of Cosenza,
Campanella never knew the teache