It must not be supposed that Bruno apprehended these points with distinctness, or that he expressed them precisely in the forms with which we are familiar.  The hackneyed metaphor of a Pisgah view across the promised land applies to him with singular propriety.  Moreover, as an acute critic has remarked, things old and new are so curiously blended in his writings that what at first sight appears modern, is often found upon reflection to be antique, and what is couched in obsolete scholastic terminology, turns out upon analysis to contain the germs of advanced theories.[126] The peculiar forms adapted for the exposition of his thoughts contribute to the difficulty of obtaining a methodical view of Bruno’s philosophy.  It has, therefore, been disputed whether he was a pantheist or an atheist, a materialist or a spiritualist, a mystic or an agnostic.  No one would have contended more earnestly than Bruno himself, that the sage can hold each and all of these apparent contradictions together, with the exception of atheism; which last is a simple impossibility.  The fragmentary and impassioned exposition which Bruno gave to his opinions in a series of Italian dialogues and Latin poems will not discourage those of his admirers who estimate the conspicuous failure made by all elaborate system-builders from Aristotle to Hegel.  To fathom the mystery of the world, and to express that mystery in terms of logic, is clearly beyond the faculty of man.  Philosophies that aim at universe-embracing, God-explaining, nature-elucidating, man-illuminating, comprehensiveness, have justly, therefore, become objects of suspicion.  The utmost that man can do, placed as he is at obvious disadvantages for obtaining a complete survey of the whole, is to whet his intelligence upon confessedly insoluble problems, to extend the sphere of his practical experience, to improve his dominion over matter, to study the elevation of his moral nature, and to encourage himself for positive achievements by the indulgence in those glorious dreams from which regenerative creeds and inspiring philosophies have sprung—­

    Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
    And ever moving as the restless spheres.

[Footnote 126:  Spaventa in his Saggi di Critica.]

Faith and poetry are the highest regions in which his spirit can profitably move.  The study of government, law, and social ethics, the analysis of physical conditions to which he is subject, and over which he has an undefined, though limited, control, form the practical sphere of his intelligence.  Bruno traversed these regions; and, forasmuch as the outcome of his exploration was no system, but a congeries of poetic visions, shrewd guesses, profound intuitions, and passionate enthusiasms, bound together and sustained by a burning sense of the Divine unity in nature and in man, we may be permitted to regard him as more fortunate than those cloud-castle-builders whose classifications of absolute existences are successively proved by