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INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO “LIFE OF GIORDANO BRUNO”

[The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 1(49), October, 1883, pp. 12-15.]

It is suggestive that in these Numbers which close the 4th and begin the 5th year of our Magazine, several scientific and philosophical articles should be brought together,—through no predetermination, but owing simply to chance—showing how sooner or later, universal truths will break through the clouds of ignorance and vindicate themselves in this world of routine and prejudice. Mr. Gilbert Elliot’s fine article is one instance—the one that follows—another.*
We owe this chapter from the Life of Bruno to the kindness of Mr. N. Trübner, who, as appears, is the translator of it. We regret—space forbidding—to be unable to reproduce it not only more fully, but to give in each instance chapter and verse from the Aryan philosophies of which Giordano Bruno could know nothing, and in which the reader would find a complete identity of thought and conclusion. But we shall not refrain from the temptation of
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* [Reference is to the article entitled “Fundamental Truths Eternal,” by Gilbert Elliott, F.T.S., The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 12(48), pp. 294-295, on evolution, fossils and Maori creation myths. See H.P.B.’s footnotes appended to that article, in “Miscellaneous Notes” for September, 1883.
As to the work Life of Bruno, no author seems to be indicated and the work has not been positively identified.—Compiler.]
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republishing, at least those parts which show the extraordinary similarity of thought regarding the most puzzling mysteries of nature and man, between most of the great minds that lived during our period of history—beginning with Pythagoras and ending with the German metaphysician Schopenhauer. In the speculations that follow, the martyred philosopher, Giordano Bruno, seems to have come to the same conclusions as Lessing, Germany’s great author, and both to have taken them bodily from our Occult Doctrines. As every new discovery in the world of science vindicates one or another of the esoteric tenets, so every time that a hitherto unknown page of the history of a great thinker is published, it brings out to light some philosophical thought that has its very source in the teachings of Occult Science. Content with drawing the readers’ attention to the fact, we will say no more and leave our occultists to judge whether the notion is too exaggerated.

[Here follows a long extract, to which two Notes by the Translator are appended.]

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