454 CKITICAL NOTICES :

see in Bruno greater agreement with his own philosophico- religious ideas, and with those of the mystics whom he equally admires, than really exists. As Prof. Carriere would have us return to Giordano Bruno in order to recover a totality of view that the moderns have lost, so he would have us return to Jacob Bohme and to the German mystics of the 14th century, Bohme's predecessors, in order to set reformed Christianity free from the dogmatic fetters imposed by Luther and Calvin. Now, of course, he cannot help recognis- ing the differences between Bruno's poetical philosophy and Bohme's mystical theology ; yet he tries to show that in spite of all differences the Italian philosopher and the German mystic are in agreement "in their highest ideas". Above all, there is in both alike a final " reconciliation of Theism and Pantheism ". This reconciliation, he. contends, is to be found in Christianity rightly understood. Already in the 14th century Eckhart, Suso and Tauler had caught sight of it as by inspiration. Marsilio Ficino and other Platonists of the early Italian Eenaissance also had glimpses of it. Towards the clearer vision of this reconcilia- tion the whole of modern philosophy has been tending. Opposite ideals of life, too, are approaching their reconciliation. Protes- tantism, favourable as it was in the end to exact learning not- withstanding the dogmatic formulas by which its growth was long checked, has brought about a new revival of Hellenism in Germany ; and ' ' this reawakened Hellenism is no other than what the Christian Jacob Bohme has depicted as the life of the new birth ". Of the manner in which " philosophical Mysticism " overcomes and reconciles the opposition of " Deism " and " ordinary Pan- theism " two different accounts are given. Sometimes it is represented as combining in a single conception the ideas of the universe or of the Infinite, and of God as " self-conscious Spirit " ; sometimes as a union of the ideas of the " transcendence and the " immanence " of God. If, however, theism and pantheism are to be combined in a single conception, it is the last contrast that is all-important. God may be identified with self-conscious spirit to the entire exclusion of nature, which may be regarded as an illusion or a mere negation, and the doctrine may still remain pure pantheism. Theism, in any intelligible sense, means the idea of God, in Spinoza's phrase, as " princeps et legislator," as a personal being ruling the course of things and judging the actions of men. This is what seems to be meant by the doctrine of " transcendence ". On the other hand, what is common to all forms of pantheism is the doctrine of " immanence ". The ultimate explanation that deism and monotheistic theology seek outside and above the universe, pantheistic philosophy seeks within the universe. But for pantheism itself there remains the opposition of nature and mind, an opposition which is expressed with perfect clearness by Euripides (Troades, 886) in