be mentioned to the great credit of Taurellus, that, like his younger
contemporaries, Galileo and Kepler, he vigorously opposed the Aristotelian
and Scholastic animation of the material world and the anthropomorphic
conception of its forces, thus preparing the way for the modern view of
nature to be perfected by Newton.


%3. The Italian Philosophy of Nature%.

We turn now from the restorers of ancient doctrines and their opponents to
the men who, continuing the opposition to the authority of Aristotle, point
out new paths for the study of nature. The physician, Hieronymus Cardanus
of Milan (1501-76), whose inclinations toward the fanciful were restrained,
though not suppressed, by his mathematical training, may be considered the
forerunner of the school. While the people should accept the dogmas of the
Church with submissive faith, the thinker may and should subordinate all
things to the truth. The wise man belongs to that rare class who neither
deceive nor are deceived; others are either deceivers or deceived, or both.
In his theory of nature, Cardanus advances two principles: one passive,
matter (the three cold and moist elements), and an active, formative one,
the world-soul, which, pervading the All and bringing it into unity,
appears as warmth and light. The causes of motion are attraction and
repulsion, which in higher beings become love and hate. Even superhuman
spirits, the demons, are subject to the mechanical laws of nature.

The standard bearer of the Italian philosophy of nature was Bernardinus
Telesius[1] of Cosenza (1508-88; _De Rerum Natura juxta Propria Principia_,
1565, enlarged 1586), the founder of a scientific society in Naples called
the Telesian, or after the name of his birthplace, the Cosentian Academy.
Telesius maintained that the Aristotelian doctrine must be replaced by an