and sympathy, since every one of those infinite worlds must have its
sympathetic inhabitants. Scruples of conscience, if he felt such,
might well be pushed aside for the "excellency" of such knowledge as
this. To shut the eyes, whether of the body or the mind, would be a
kind of dark ingratitude; the one sin, to believe directly or
indirectly in any absolutely dead matter anywhere, because involving
denial of the indwelling spirit. A free spirit, certainly, as of
old! Through all his pantheistic flights, from horizon to horizon,
it was still the thought of liberty that presented itself to the
infinite relish of this "prodigal son" of Dominic. God the Spirit
had made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence,
impiously belied by any theory of restrictions, distinctions,
absolute limitations. Touch, see, listen, eat freely of all the
trees of the garden of Paradise with the voice of the Lord God
literally everywhere: here was the final counsel of perfection. The
world was even larger than youthful appetite, youthful capacity. Let
theologian and every other theorist beware how he narrowed either.
The plurality of worlds! how petty in comparison seemed the sins, to
purge which was the chief motive for coming to places like this
convent, whence Bruno, with vows broken, or obsolete for him,
presently departed. A sonnet, expressive of the joy with which he
returned to so much more than the liberty of ordinary men, does not
suggest that he was driven from it. Though he must have seemed to
those who surely had loved so lovable a creature there to be
departing, like the prodigal of the Gospel, into the furthest of
possible far countries, there is no proof of harsh treatment, or even
of an effort to detain him.

It happens, of course most naturally, that those who undergo the
shock of spiritual or intellectual change sometimes fail to recognise