Cause Principle Unity

A general account of bonding
8. What is bound more easily. A person who is more truly human is bound
most strongly by the most worthy things, and he prefers much more to seek
out more worthy things than to possess base things, for certainly, we are
easily irritated by base things and more ardently seek for things which we
do not easily attain.
9. That the same thing bonds contraries in the same way. Bonding agents
which pertain to the same type of bonding seem to be confusing, and in a
sense even contradictory, when one considers the contrasting effects and
circumstances of the bonds. Consider, for example, the bonds of physical
love, which seem to be both a fire and snare at the same time, which drive
one to shout and to be silent, to joy and to sorrow, to hope and to desperation,
to fear and to boldness, to anger and to gentleness, to weeping and to
laughter. Hence the verses:
I, who carry high the standard of love,
have frozen hopes and burning desires:
at the same time I tremble and freeze, burn and spark,
I am mute and fill heaven with ardent cries.
From the heart I sparkle and from my eyes I shed water;
I live and I die, laugh and lament.
The waters live and the fire does not die,
for in my eyes I have Thetis and in my heart, Vulcan. 4
10. A bonding agent does not bind different things with the same bond. A thing
is not absolutely beautiful if it binds only playfully; it is not absolutely good
if it binds only usefully; it is not absolutely large if it is limited. Regarding
beauty, notice how monkeys and horses please each other; indeed, not even
Venus pleases some types of humans and heroes. Regarding goodness,
notice how all things contain contraries, and how different animals find
what is good for them under the seas or on dry land, in mountains or in
fields, in abysses or on summits.
11. He who binds. Therefore, he who knows how to bind needs to have an
understanding of all things, or at least of the nature, inclination, habits, uses
and purposes of the particular things that he is to bind.
4 The translation of these two quatrains is taken from John Charles Nelson, Renaissance Theory of Love
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) 222. Bruno quotes these verses, with slight variations,
from his Eroici furori, Part I, Dialogue 2, first paragraph.
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