. But before the new republic
stretched a vast field for thought, and within its almost boundless
limits, hidden beneath the husks of old theories, lay the seed ready for
the ripening. Far back toward the east rolled, like a mighty desert, the
history of the Progress of Mind. Here and there, on its arid surface,
rose, stately and awe-inspiring, great pyramids which marked those eras
of agitation when Humanity, awaking suddenly to her power, grappled with
giant strength the mighty enigmas of Being, and endeavored to wrench
from their mute souls the great secrets that Faith alone has expounded
to the satisfaction of her devotees. It availed little that one by one,
in the vaults of these temples, the axioms and deductions of their
founders were laid away lifeless and powerless. Another generation,
vigorous and persevering, laid stone after stone the foundations of
another edifice that strove to reach, with its yearning apex of desire,
the very heavens. Still high and unmoved curved the blue infinitude
above, while below its mirror in the soul of man surged wildly against
shores stern, rock-bound, immutable, unanswering.

The 'limits of the forefathers' (_fines quos posuerunt patres nostri_)
had been first transgressed by Abelard, and the speculating spirit of
Scholasticism disseminated by him overwhelmed Europe with that rage for
investigations, so futile yet so laborious, that terrified the
theologians of the mediaeval church, and marked the first modern epoch in
Philosophy--the beginning of the revolt of Reason against Authority.
Next, colossal against the still unrelenting skies, towered what may be
called the _Natur-Philosophie_, 'Nature Philosophy' of Giordano Bruno.
The echoes of Luther's bugle still pierced the mountain-fastnesses of
Northern Italy and the gorges of Spain. In the church, Bruno found only
skepticism and licentiousness, ignorance and tyranny. Before him four
centuries had been swallowed up in debate on the fruitless question of
Nominalism, and others equally insignificant, but were visible to him by
the light of a logic so shallow, futile, and despotic, that it was known
only to be scorned. With an energy that astonished the feeble and
degraded clergy of his time, a fearlessness that exacted the admiration
while it aroused the indignation of his contemporaries, and a genius
that compelled the attention of those who were most zealous to combat
its evidences, Bruno, casting off the shackles of the cloist