Finally, he had a firm and vital hold upon that supreme speculation of the universe, considered no longer as the battle-ground of dual principles, or as the finite fabric of an almighty designer, but as the self-effectuation of an infinite unity, appearing to our intelligence as spirit and matter--that speculation which in one shape or another controls the course of modern thought.[125] [Footnote 125: It was my intention to support the statements in this paragraph by translating the passages which seem to me to justify them; and I had gone so far as to make English versions of some twenty pages in length, when I found that this material would overweight my book.

A study of Bruno as the great precursor of modern thought in its more poetical and widely synthetic speculation must be left for a separate essay.

Here I may remark that the most faithful and pithily condensed abstract of Bruno's philosophy is contained in Goethe's poem _Proemium zu Gott und Welt_.

Yet this poem expresses Goethe's thought, and it is doubtful whether Goethe had studied Bruno except in the work of his disciple Spinoza.] It must not be supposed that Bruno apprehended these points with distinctness, or that he expressed them precisely in the forms with which we are familiar.

The hackneyed metaphor of a Pisgah view across the promised land applies to him with singular propriety.