Читать книгу Modern cosmogonies онлайн

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One great thought—that of the unity of nature—lay behind them, but its significance was lost amid the phantasmagoria of Neo-Platonist exaltations. Hence the Bacchic fervours of Giordano Bruno took their inspiration; here was the groundwork of Spinoza's pantheism. Shelley's Demiorgon, felt as 'a living spirit,' seen as 'a mighty darkness,' descended lineally from that strange essence—formless, inarticulate, devoid of individual self-consciousness—which animated the submerged philosophy of Neo-Pagan times with the barren ardours of mysticism. The doctrine, in its original and more sober version, obtained memorable expression in Virgil's melodious hexameters:

'Principio cœlum, ac terras, camposque liquentes,

Lucentemque globum lunæ, Titaniaque astra, Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.'

In Conington's rhymed version they run as follows:

'Know first, the heaven, the earth, the main,

The moon's pale orb, the starry train,

Are nourished by a soul,