His philosophy resembled
that of Spinosa. He taught that God is the substance and life of all
things, and that the universe is an immense animal, of which God is the
soul.
At length he had the imprudence to return to Italy, and became a teacher
at Padua. At Venice he was arrested by order of the Inquisition in 1595,
and conducted to Rome, where, after an imprisonment of two years, in order
that he might be punished as gently as possible without the shedding of
blood, he was sentenced to be burned alive. With a courage worthy of a
philosopher, he exclaimed to his merciless judges, "You pronounce sentence
upon me with greater fear than I receive it." Bruno's other great works
were _Della causa, principio e uno_ (1584), _De infinito universo et
mundis_ (1584), _De monade numero et figura_ (Francfort, 1591).
The Inquisition at Rome at this period was particularly active in its
endeavours to reform errant philosophers, and Bruno was by no means the
only victim who felt its power. Thomas Campanella, born in Calabria, in
Italy, A.D. 1568, conceived the design of reforming philosophy about the
same time as our more celebrated Bacon. This was a task too great for his
strength, nor did he receive much encouragement from the existing powers.
He attacked scholasticism with much vigour, and censured the philosophy of
Aristotle, the admired of the schoolmen. He wrote a work entitled
_Philosophia sensibus demonstrata_, in which he defended the ideas of
Telesio, who explained the laws of nature as founded upon two principles,
the heat of the sun and the coldness of the earth.
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