We have now to consider the relation of particular things one to another. It follows from the argument that all things are in all; each particular thing has the possibility of all reality, has all reality implicit in itself, but only one mode is at any particular time realised, and the life of particular things consists in their constant transmutation from one mode to another. While the universe comprehends all existence and all modes of existence,—of particular things, each has all existence, but not all modes of existence, and cannot actually have all circumstances and accidents, for many forms are incompatible in the same subject, either as contraries or as belonging to diverse species. The same individual subject (supposito) cannot be under the accidents of horse and of man, under the dimensions of a plant and of an animal. Moreover, the universe comprehends all existence wholly, because outside of and beyond infinite existence there is nothing that exists, for there is no outside or beyond: of particular things on the other hand, each comprehends all existence, but not wholly, for beyond each are infinite others. But the ens, substance, essence of all is one, which being infinite and unlimited in its substance as in its duration, in its greatness as in its force, can neither be called principle nor resultant; for as everything concurs in its unity and identity, it is not relative, but absolute. In the one infinite, immovable, which is substance, ens, there is multitude, number; and number, as “mode” of the ens, differentiates thing from thing; it does not therefore make the ens to be more than one, but to be of many modes, forms, and figures. Hence “leaving the logicians to their vain imaginings,” we find that all that makes difference and number is pure accident, pure figure, pure “complexion”; every creation of whatsoever sort it may be is an alteration, the substance remaining always the same, for there is only One Being, divine, immortal.[284]

Beauty, harmony, permanence of nature.Thus all things are in the universe, the universe in all things; we in it, it in us; and so all concurs in a perfect unity. Therefore, cries Bruno, we need not be troubled in spirit, nor be afraid; for this unity is one, stable, and always abides; this one is eternal; every aspect, every face, every other thing, is vanity, is as nought; all that is outside of this One is nought. These philosophers have found the wisdom that they love, who have found this unity. Wisdom, truth, unity, are the same. All difference in bodies, difference of formation, complexion, figure, colour, or other property, is nothing but a varying aspect of one and the same substance,—an aspect that changes, moves, passes away, of one immovable, abiding, and eternal being, in which are all forms, figures, members, but indistinct and “agglomerated,” just as in the seed, or germ, the arm is not distinct from the head, the sinew from the bone, and the distinction or “disglomeration” does not produce another and new substance, but only realises in act and fulfilment certain qualities of the substance, already present.

The coincidence of Bruno’s doctrine with some of Spinoza’s principal positions is striking, although their terms are different. The indeterminate all-comprising unity of Bruno is that which was afterwards called by Spinoza substance; its two aspects, material and spiritual—substances with Bruno,—are attributes in Spinoza, and finally, the innumerable finite and passing modes with both are mere accidents, and therefore do not determine any change in the one reality itself. In a subsequent chapter other more detailed resemblances will be pointed out in their bearing on the history of Spinoza’s development.

Coincidence of Contraries.The concluding portion of this dialogue and of the work is taken up with the doctrine of the Coincidence of Contraries, which derives from that of the unity and coincidence of all differences, and which, although it was undoubtedly contained in his own system, Bruno obtained directly from Nicholas of Cusa. It is an indirect proof, from the side of particular things themselves, of the identity of all in the One. The first illustrations are geometrical.[285] “Signs.”The straight line and the circle, or the straight line and the curve, are opposites; but in their elements, or their minima, they coincide, for, as Cusanus saw, there is no difference between the smallest possible arc and the smallest possible chord. Again, in the maximum there is no difference between the infinite circle and the straight line; the greater a circle is, the more nearly it approximates to straightness ... as a line which is greater in magnitude than another approximates more nearly to straightness, so the greatest of all ought to be superlatively, more than all, straight, so that in the end the infinite straight line is an infinite circle. Thus the maximum and the minimum come together in one existence, as has already been proved, and both in the maximum and in the minimum, contraries are one and indifferent.

These geometrical illustrations are “signs” of the identity of contraries, those which follow are called by Bruno “verifications,”[286] the first of which is taken from the primary qualities of bodies. “Verifications.”The element of heat, its “principle,” must be indivisible—it cannot have differences within itself, and can be neither hot nor cold, therefore it is an identity of hot and cold. “One contrary is the ‘principle’ or starting-point of the other, and therefore transmutations are circular, because there is a substrate, principle, term, continuation and concurrence of both.” So minimal warmth and minimal cold are the same. The movement towards cold takes its beginning from the limit of greatest heat (its “principle” in another sense). Thus not only do the two maxima sometimes concur in resistance, the two minima in concordance, but even the maximum and the minimum concur through the succession of transmutations. Doctors fear when one is in the best of health; it is in the height of happiness that the foreseeing are most timid. So also the “principle” of corruption and of generation is one and the same. The end of decay is the beginning of generation; corruption is nothing but a generation, generation a corruption. Love is hate, hate is love in the end; hatred of the unfitting is love of the fitting, the love of this the hatred of that. In substance and in root, therefore, love and hate, friendship and strife, are one and the same thing. Poison gives its own antidote, and the greatest poisons are the best medicines. There is but one potency of two contraries, because contraries are apprehended by one and the same sense, therefore belong to the same subject or substrate; where the principle (i.e. the source, or faculty) of the knowledge of two objects is the same, the principle (i.e. elementary form) of their existence is also one. (Examples are the curved and the plane, the concave and the convex, anger and patience, pride and humility, miserliness and liberality). In conclusion:—“He who would know the greatest secrets of nature, let him regard and contemplate the minima and maxima of contraries and opposites. Profound magic it is to know how to extract the contrary after having found the point of union.” Aristotle was striving towards it, but did not attain it, said Bruno; “remaining with his foot in the genus of opposition, he was so fettered that he could not descend to the species of contrariety ... but wandered further from the goal at every step, as when he said that contraries could not co-exist at the same time in the same subject.”[287] There is a naïve but at the same time a bold realism in this demand of Bruno’s that reality shall correspond even to the simpler unities of thought—unities which after all are mere limitations. It is only because we cannot distinguish in imagination between an infinite circle and a straight line that their identity in actual existence is postulated, and so the minimal chord and minimal arc coincide to our limited imagination only. Admittedly in the case of sense-qualities the argument is from oneness of faculty knowing to oneness of things known. These, however, are only, as we have said, “signs” and “verifications” of a metaphysical truth which is arrived at by other methods.

A corresponding passage in the De Minimo[288] explains more fully the coincidence of contraries in the minimum:—“In the minimum, the simple, the monad, all opposites coincide, odd and even, many and few, finite and infinite; therefore that which is minimum is also maximum, and any degree between these.” Besides the coincidence of contraries in God as the monad of monads, the examples are given of the indifference of all dimensions in the universe, and the ubiquity of its centre; the indifference of the radial directions from the centre of a particular sphere; the indifference of all points in the diurnal rotation of the earth, so that any point whatever is east, west, north, or south; the “subjective” coincidence of concave and convex in the circle (“subjective” meaning “in the thing itself”); the coincidence of the acute and the obtuse angle in the inclination of one line to another; that of smallest arc and chord as of greatest arc and chord, “whence it follows that the infinite circle and the infinite straight line, also the infinite diameter, area, and centre are one and the same.” Lastly, we have the coincidence of swiftest motion with slowest, or with rest, “for the absolutely swift (swift ‘simpliciter,’ i.e. in its highest possible manifestation, without any degree of the contrary, slowness) which moves from A to B, and from B to A, is at once in A, and in B, and in the whole orbit, therefore, it stands still.”

These coincidences are again of two kinds: some “subjective” in the modern sense, e.g. the coincidences of directions in the globe; any one may be taken as depth according to the spectator’s standpoint; others are “objective,” e.g. when in God the one and the many are said to coincide. According as the stress is laid on one or on the other, the theory may be regarded as either dualistic (as Cusanus’ really was) or as pantheistic. There is no doubt, however, that it was in the latter sense that Bruno held the coincidence of contraries.

CHAPTER III
THE INFINITE UNIVERSE—THE MIRROR OF GOD[289]

In the contemplation of the infinite, writes Bruno, man attains his highest good. All things aspire to the end for which they are ordained, and the more perfect its nature the more nobly and effectively does each aspire. Man alone, however, as endowed with a twofold nature, pursues a twofold good,—“on the boundary line of eternity and time, between the archetypal world and the copy, the intelligible and the sensible, participating in either substance.”[290] Human effort can find satisfaction in none but the highest and first truth and goodness. Neither our intellect nor our will ever rests. It is clear therefore that their end lies not in particular goods or truths which lead us on from one to another and to another, but in universal good and truth, outside of and beyond which no good or truth exists. So long as we believe that any truth is left to know, or any good to gain, we seek always further truth, desire always further good. The end of our inquiry, therefore, and of our effort cannot be in a truth or in a good that is limited. In each and all is the desire in-born to become all things. Such infinite desire implies the existence in reality of that which will satisfy it. If “Universal Nature” or Spirit is able to satisfy the appetite of each “particular nature” or mode of itself, and that of itself as a whole, then the understanding and desire which are innate, inseparable from and co-substantial with each and all shall not be in vain, nor look hopelessly to a false and impossible end. Again, were universal nature and the efficient cause content with finite truth and good, they would not satisfy the infinite aspiration of particular things. It is true that even the desire for continuance of our present life is not satisfied; a particular mode of matter cannot realise all “forms” or ideas at once, but only in succession and one by one; it knows and therefore desires only that which is present to it at any given time: by force of nature, therefore, it comes in its ignorance (which arises from the “contraction” of the form to this or that particular matter and the limitation of matter by this or that form) to desire to be always that which it now is. The wise soul, however, will not fear death, will indeed sometimes wish for it, since there awaits every substance eternity of duration, immensity of space, and the realisation of all being. “Whatever the good be for which a man strives, let him turn his eyes to the heavens and the worlds; there is spread before him a picture, a book, a mirror, in which he may behold, read, contemplate the imprint (vestigium), the law, and the reflection of the highest good—and with his sensible ears drink in the highest harmony, and raise himself as by a ladder, according to the grades of the forms of things, to the contemplation of another, the highest world.”[291] The contemplation of the extended infinite and “explicate” or unfolded nature is thus only a means by which we may rise to the contemplation of the infinite in itself, “implicate” nature, God. “It is no frivolous or futile contemplation, but one most weighty and worthy of the perfect man, which we pursue, when we seek the splendour, the fusion, and the intercommunication of divinity and of nature not in an Egyptian, Syrian, Greek or Roman individual, not in food, drink, or any ignoble matter, with the gaping many, but in the august palace of the all-powerful, in the immeasurable space of the Ether, in the infinite potency of twofold nature, all-becoming and all-creating. So from the eternal vast and immeasurable effect in visible things, we comprehend the eternal and the immeasurable majesty and goodness. Let us then turn our eyes to the omniform image of the omniform God, and gaze upon the living and mighty reflection of Him.”

The three characteristics of the universe as a mirror of God which Bruno sought to drive home to the minds of men were its infinite extent, the infinite number of its parts, and its uniformity, or the similarity of its constituent elements throughout its whole extent. His illustrations and his arguments would in many cases cause a smile if they were put forward seriously at the present day, but no absurdities can outbalance his enthusiasm, the readiness and thoroughness of his polemic against Aristotle and the old cosmology, and the fertility of imagination by which he is able to look, and to make others look, at things from his new, and therefore, at first, confusing point of view.

Bruno’s arguments rest partly on inferences from sense-knowledge, partly on the principle of sufficient reason. The universe infinite.Thus the infinity of extent is evidenced, first, by the teaching of sense, in the constant change which our circle of vision undergoes as we move from one place to another. There always appears to be an ultimate limit, but no sooner do we move than the limit is seen to have been only apparent; so, it may be inferred, could we transfer ourselves with our senses to any of the distant stars, we should still seem to ourselves to be in the centre of a closed sphere,—the very same appearance which is presented to us on this earth.

Aristotle’s theory of the limitation of space by the ultimate sphere of the heavens was open to objections, many of which were raised in the early schools. The “subtle Averroes” had endeavoured to avoid some of these by the doctrine that beyond this outer sphere is the divine being, the eternal self-sufficient Mind.[292] “But how,” asks Bruno, “can body be bounded by that which is not body? The divine nature is no less nor in any other manner within the whole than without; it is neither place nor in place.”[293] Space therefore is always bounded by space, body by body, that is, each is infinite in extent. Were divinity that which bounds space, it would itself be space under another name.[294] Aristotle’s theory implied that the universe as a whole was not in any place or space. The “place” of each body, he had said, is the containing surface of the sphere above it; the outermost sphere, therefore, as there is no other beyond it, is itself uncontained and without place. The theory implied also the identity of body and space, and was the ground of Aristotle’s rejection of the vacuum in nature. For a truer conception of Space, Bruno turned to an earlier commentator (or group of commentators—“Philoponus”) on Aristotle, who defined it as “a continuous physical quantity in three dimensions, in which the magnitude of bodies is contained, in nature before and apart from all bodies, receiving all indifferently, beyond all conditions of action and passion, not mixing with things, impenetrable, without form or place.”[295] It is called physical, because it can not be separated from the existence of natural things. It is itself not contained, because it equals with its dimensions those of body as the transparency of a crystal has the same dimensions with the crystal itself. Neither body nor space can be thought of the one apart from the other.[296] Granted the infinity of space, that of matter necessarily follows by an inverse of the principle of sufficient reason:—for there is no reason, according to Bruno, why this small part alone of space, where our earth is, should be filled; the eternal operation is not distinct from the eternal power, nor could it be the will of God to cramp nature, which is the hand of the all-powerful, his force, act, reason, word, voice, order and will.[297] “There is one matter, one power, one space, one efficient cause, God and Nature, everywhere equally, and everywhere powerful.—We insult the infinite cause when we say that it may be the cause of a finite effect; to a finite effect it can have neither the name nor the relation of an efficient.”[298]

The corresponding argument from the capacity of our human imagination to think always of a greater than any given magnitude, i.e. its inability to rest short of the infinite, is expanded elsewhere. Our imaginative faculty is the umbra or shadow of nature; its power, therefore, of adding quantity to quantity, ad infinitum, must have something in nature to which it corresponds; nature does not give a faculty for which there is no satisfaction. There is then in truth an infinite universe, such as our imagination demands. Bruno notices the objection that on this theory anything whatever might be said about the universe, e.g. that it is infinite man, since one can imagine a human form filling the universe; and he replies, “it is infinite man, or infinite ass, or infinite tree, each and all, since in the infinite all particular things are one and the same.”[299]

The arguments we have traced are:—(1) What appears to be a limit to our senses always proves to be imaginary, when we are able to test it, therefore we may infer that it is imaginary in other cases; (2) the very notion of space, implying that it has neither form nor place, means that it is infinite, limitless; (3) we cannot imagine a portion of space than which there is not another greater, and so ad infinitum: but reality cannot fall short of thought, therefore space is infinite. Aristotle.The arguments of Aristotle against the infinity of the world are taken up in detail in the second book of the De Immenso. As the controversy, however important at the time, has lost much of its interest for us, we need only give a brief sketch of its main lines. 1. The primum mobile.The first argument was drawn from the assumption of an ultimate sphere or primum mobile which moved about the earth as a centre.[300] It was clear that if the universe were infinite the radii of this sphere would be infinitely prolonged, and therefore the termini of any two given radii at an infinite distance one from another. The motion of the sphere would thus be inconceivable, for it would require infinite time in which to pass from one point to another. The answer of Bruno was that the universe as a whole was not moveable at all, nor had it any centre; only its parts were moved and each of these had its own relative and finite centre. The apparent motion of the sphere was due to the real movement of the earth about its axis. 2. The elements.A similar answer was given to the argument from the movements of bodies according to their elements. As to us on the earth, the earth appears to be the centre of the universe, so to the inhabitants of the moon, the moon will appear to be such. Matter rising from the earth to the moon would appear to the inhabitants of the latter to fall. These distinctions were relative to the finite worlds, but might not be referred to the whole universe. As the earth is one world, the moon another, so each has its own centre, each its own up and down: nor can these differences be assigned absolutely to the whole and its parts together, but only relatively to the position and condition of the latter.[301] 3. The whole and its parts.In his third argument Aristotle sought to prove that infinite body in general was impossible.[302] If the whole is infinite its simple elements must be so also. These must be either of an infinite number of kinds, different from one another, or of a finite number of kinds, or all of the same kind. But the first of the alternatives is impossible on the a priori ground that each element must have a special kind of movement corresponding to it, and the kinds of movement are actually few in number; the second and third, because the movement of the elements should then be infinite, whereas in the actual universe motion is limited both in centre and circumference. The arguments, however, do not apply to Bruno’s theory of the universe. Motion is always from one definite point to another; we do not set out from Italy in order to go on ad infinitum, but to go to some definite point. He does not, as Epicurus did, regard all minima as in infinite motion downwards through the universe; there is no down, no centre, no up, all is simply and generally in flux. It is not the elements that are innumerable in kind, but the composite bodies, the stars, which are constituted by them; and of these the parts move about their natural body, as the parts of the earth towards the earth, and those of the moon toward the moon in their own regions; all motion is therefore limited,—each world has, as it were, margins of its own. The idea that if any of the elements, as fire or water, were infinite, there would be infinite lightness or gravity, and hence that the universe would move as a whole upwards or downwards, is equally at fault. To the universe as a whole the terms heavy and light do not apply, but only to its parts, the finite and determinate bodies consisting of finite and determinate elements. These elements, whether they be taken as of one or more kinds, since they cannot move outside of the universe, must have finite movements.

4. Action between the infinite and the finite.The fourth argument[303] was based upon the impossibility of action between an infinite body and a second body whether finite or infinite. An infinite cannot act upon a finite because the action would necessarily be timeless. Were it in time we could then find a finite body which in the same time would produce the same effect; but there can be no such equality between the finite and the infinite. Similarly action between two infinites would occur in infinite time; in other words, would not take place at all. The conclusion is that neither fire nor earth nor any of the elements can be infinite in quantity. Bruno suggests, in the first place,[304] that a change may be produced timelessly; thus if a body in a large circle cover a certain space in the minimum of time, a body in a smaller circle will cover a less space in no time, for nothing can be smaller than the minimum.[305] In the second place, no action of the whole or effect upon the whole exists, it is only the finite bodies within it, each with its finite force, that act upon one another. Even if two infinite bodies, over against one another, were supposed, their action would not be of one whole upon another, but of the parts on the contiguous parts.[306] Force is exerted by bodies not intensively but extensively, because as, where one part of a body is, there another is not, so at the point where one part of the body acts another does not.[307]

5. Proportion of parts to whole in the infinite.A difficulty, not unknown to recent philosophy, occurred as to the relation of infinites to one another. Whatever is an element of the infinite must be infinite also; hence both earths and suns are infinite in number. But the infinity of the former, said Bruno, is not greater than that of the latter; nor, where all are inhabited, are the inhabitants in greater proportion to the infinite than the stars themselves.[308] Each sun is surrounded by several earths or planets, but the one class is not greater in respect of its infinite than the other. A single sun, earth, constellation, is not really a part of the infinite nor a part in it, for it can bear no proportion to it. A thousand infinities are not more than two or three, and even one is not comprehensible by finite numbers. In the innumerable and the immeasurable there is no place for more or less, few or many, nor for any distinctions of number or measure.[309] The matter of the stars is immeasurable, and no less immeasurable is that of the fiery type or suns than of the aqueous type or earths. Nor does the fact that these infinities are not given to sense disprove their existence, as Aristotle had maintained. To imagine there is nothing beyond the sphere which limits our range of sight, is to be like Bruno as a child, when he believed there was nothing beyond Mount Vesuvius because there was nothing to strike his senses.[310] Though each class be infinite, we have seen that the infinite does not act infinitely, that is intensively, but acts finitely, i.e. extensively. Each individual and species is finite, but the number of all individuals is infinite, and infinite are the matter in which they consist and the space in which they move. Everywhere, therefore, limit and measure are only in the particular and the individual, which, compared with the universe, are nothing.

6. Figure and body.A further argument was derived from the necessity of figure in body and from the relation of body to space.[311] Every body is known to us as of a certain and definite figure, whereas infinite body would necessarily be unfigured. In this case, said Bruno, Aristotle is confounding body with space, although he elsewhere separates the two notions. That space is something other than the bodies which fill it, that it is more than limit or figure, is evident from the fact that always between any two corporeal surfaces, between any two atoms, there is space. Nor is space merely an accident of body, a special quality of it, as colour is, for example, for we cannot think of colour without a body in which it exists, and when the body is abstracted the colour goes also, whereas space may be thought of apart from body, and body, when removed does not take with it its space. Perhaps we should say that space is really the continuous ether or light which penetrates throughout the universe, and seems to fill space more continuously than wood, stone, or iron, in which there is an admixture of vacuum. Must all bodies be figured, then the figure of the infinite is the sphere. The dimensions of space coincide with those of body, and the definition given of body as tri-dimensional quantity applies also to space:—there cannot be any body which is not in place, nor can its dimensions exist without equal dimensions of the containing space.

7. The centre of the earth, etc.A seventh argument, closely related to some of the others, is drawn from the old belief in the earth as the centre of gravity, the heaviest body in the universe, and in the empyrean as the outermost limit and the lightest body.[312] But, as we have seen, there is in the universe no centre—as the stars and their inhabitants are heavenly beings to us, so are we and our earth to them. “Just as the earth knows no centre or downward direction proper which is away from its own body, but only a centre of its mass, a central cavern of its heart, from which the precious life is diffused through the whole body, and which we may believe to be the chief seat of the soul; so there must be in the moon and other bodies a centre which connects all parts, to which every member contributes, and which is nourished by all the forces of the living body.” The old belief, therefore, that if there were inhabitants at the antipodes they would be apt to fall downwards into space, or that the parts of the moon and its living beings might fall upon our earth, was absurd, for the face of the earth always looks upward in the direction of the radii from the centre to the superficies.[313]

8. The perfect as the self-limited.The last argument was that drawn from the supposed perfection of the universe.[314] Aristotle defined the perfect as that which was limited by itself, not by another. Hence the immeasurable would not be perfect, while the world was perfect because limited by its own terminus. Again body does not pass over into any other kind of quantity, but it is the limit into which the line and the point flow. The first argument, said Bruno, would hold of any fragment of body, while the second would apply to any animal or member of an animal, for these also are self-contained and do not pass over into any other kind. Perfection has no reference to quantity, nor to limitation by self, which is a geometrical determination.[315] For this mechanical idea of perfection, Bruno substitutes a teleological; the perfect is that which consists of a number of parts or members, working together towards the end for which the whole is ordained: the universe is perfect “as adorned by so many worlds, which are so many deities, and as that in and to which, as a unity embracing the perfection of all, innumerable things perfect in their kind are reduced, referred, united.”[316]

Infinite number of worlds.The infinity of space or ether and of matter being proved, it follows again, by the principle of sufficient reason, that the “worlds” are “innumerable” or infinite in number.—As it is good that the world exists, and would be bad did it not exist, so in a similar space, and where similar causes are, it is good that there be a world, and bad should there not be one. If the world is single, then there is a single, finite, particular good, and infinite wide-spread universal evil. He who is able to produce good, and does not do so, without cause, is evil; “as not to be able is privatively evil, to be able and to be unwilling would be so positively, and God in regard to the finite effect would be a finitely good cause, in regard, however, to the repression of infinite realisation, would be infinitely evil.”[317] Perfection does not belong to our world, our system, taken by itself, since there are innumerable other possible worlds which cannot be contained in it. Given a man endowed with all human perfections, the existence of other men subordinate to him is not excluded, but rather demanded in order that he may fulfil the harmony of his being. So the best, the first, of the monads,—which comprises all particular things in itself,—embraces, in spite of its unity, innumerable worlds, without limit, under its corporeal aspect. One does not suffice, for the productive mind diffuses itself throughout the whole universe, wholly in every part, in equal goodness and power, and fills the void in order that its great image may be presented throughout the whole.[318] Nature thus puts forth an infinite mirror of itself and a fitting reflection; its substance is infinite and its force eternal, there is an explicit immeasurable, as God is implicitly in the whole and everywhere wholly.[319] To the infinite nothing finite bears any proportion, nor can be a fitting product of it. Hence if it communicate itself at all to corporeal things, or unfold its magnitude in corporeal existences and in multitude, the reflection of its essence and imprint of its power must be infinite in magnitude and without number. “Although, when we consider individuals singly, under that proximate and immediate respect in which they are particulars, they must be referred to a finite principle and cause (since a finite effect demands a finite power), in the consideration of the universe, however, each and all the innumerable existences in immeasurable space point to an infinite first cause.”[320]

Argument from God to the world.In the simplicity and unity of God’s being, all attributes are one, therefore knowledge, will, and power coincide. The consequences of this doctrine Bruno unfolds in a series of aphorisms or propositions—which are interesting as anticipating Spinoza’s method of “proof”:[321]—1. The Divine essence is infinite. 2. As the measure of being, so is the measure of power. 3. As the measure of power, so is the measure of action. 4. God is absolutely simple essence or being in which there can be no complexity nor internal diversity. 5. Consequently in him, being, power, action, volition, and whatever can be truly attributed to him, are one and the same. 6. Therefore the will of God is above all things, and can be frustrated neither by himself nor by another. 7. Consequently the Divine will is not only necessary, but is necessity itself, and its opposite is not only impossible but impossibility itself. 8. In simple essence there cannot be contrariety of any kind, nor inequality: will, therefore, is not contrary to, nor unequal to, power. 9. Necessity and liberty are one, hence what acts by the necessity of nature acts freely; it would not act freely at all did it act otherwise than is demanded by necessity and nature, or by the necessity of nature.[322] 10. There is not an infinite power, unless there be an infinite possible; i.e. there is not that which is able to create an infinite unless there be that which is able to be created. What is a power which is impossible of realisation or which is relative to an impossible? 11. As there is a world in this space, so also there is able to be one in any space similar to that which, were this world removed, would remain equal to the world. 12. There is no ground for denying, outside the world, a similar space to that in which the world is, nor any for regarding it as finite.[323] 14. It is better to be than not to be; it is more worthy to create what is good than not to create it. To posit (create) being and truth is incomparably better than to allow not-being or nothing. 15. The potency of nature ought not to be frustrated, nor space remain unfilled for infinite duration, for then potency would be relative to an impossible. 16. That infinite potency (whether extensive or intensive) should be frustrated of existence means that infinite evil should be actually posited, as space is actually infinite. 17. As this space can receive this world and be adorned thereby, so also any similar space whatever, indiscernible from it, a similar principle being present, could have received a similar world.[324] 19. Of God and of nature we should think as highly as possible. 20. Of the greatest things nothing should be rashly asserted which is contrary to sense and reason.

The infinite number of worlds is thus made to depend for its proof upon the identity of power and will, of will and knowledge, i.e. thought, in God. Whatever is in the mind of God is realised in the universe. Knowledge of God.Before God past, present, and future are one, present, and eternal;[325] he is unable to change his purpose or to deny himself. What he wills and what he can are one and the same; nor can he do what he wills not, for fate is the Divine will itself. Hence, as he cannot be other than he is, so nothing can be done by him otherwise than as it is done. The nature of God is a simple substance; however many names be predicated of it, they signify, one and all, the same thing.[326] Infinite virtue, if limited neither by itself nor by another, acts by the necessity of its own nature, not by a necessity alien to itself and to its will; it is itself necessity. The necessity by which it acts, therefore, can be frustrated neither from within, by itself, nor from without, by another: not the former, for it cannot be both one thing and another, nor the latter, because its necessity is the law of all other things. There can be nothing which may prevent this nature, necessity, will, power, from proceeding according to its whole power, which is goodness itself, according to its whole goodness, which is power itself, and both are infinite, and diffuse themselves infinitely. Man’s liberty of action is expressed imperfectly, and sometimes in an imperfect object, is continually being disturbed by passion and ignorance of things; for if we acted without any disturbance of the will, or course of thought, without ignorance, or passion, then our action would be determined always towards the better of two opposed ends. Before we act we stand between the two ways and deliberate, and at last determine, but in uncertainty and perturbedness of spirit; while God, as in nature most perfect, acts in the one of two ways that is the most fitting. Nor is it an imperfection of nature to be determined in one direction only, away from that which may lead to error. Thus we may not refer the will and action of God to a liberty of this kind, of being equally or unequally disposed to two contradictory volitions or acts—a liberty of indifference—but his liberty is of the kind which is identical with necessity. Over it is nothing greater, in the way of it there is nothing equal, all things in all and throughout all serve it. God’s knowledge is not discursive, involves no effort. To be in the mind of God is to be realised (species concepta deo est effectio resque). Thus as the perfect monad, he is intrinsically and extrinsically the whole, sustaining all things. There is on the one side infinite goodness and infinite desire for its realisation, on the other infinite desire of being realised; the result must be perfect satisfaction and perfect good.

Abstract ideas.In order to understand how far Bruno has moved at this, the final stage of his philosophy, from the Neoplatonism of its beginnings, the ninth chapter of the last book of the De Immenso must be taken into account.[327] It is interesting in view of the relation of Spinoza to Bruno, as well as of the consistency of Bruno’s own thought. In it the existence of abstract ideal types is contended against,—“Nowhere is essence apart from existence;—nature is nothing but the virtue that is immanent (insita) in things, and the law by which all things fulfil their course. There is no abstract that subsists in logical reason but not in reality, no justice by which things are just, no goodness through which they are good, wisdom through which they are wise, nor are deitas and feritas the ground of existence of gods and beasts: nor is it light by which shining bodies shine, nor shadow by which folly, darkness, fictions, nonsense come to exist.” The student of nature must not suppose form and matter, light and colour and motion, to exist separately by themselves because they may be conceived or defined by themselves. There is then no archetypal world to which the Creator looked in fabricating this of ours, but nature produces all things from within itself, without thought or hesitation. “Study to know where Nature and God are, for there are the causes of things, the life of principles, the source of elements, the seeds of the things that are to be brought forth, the typal forms, active potency producing all things, ... there is also matter, the underlying passive potency, abiding, present, ever coming together into one as it were, for it is not as if a creator came from on high, to give it order and form from without. Matter pours forth all things from its own lap, Nature itself is the inward workman, a living art, a wondrous virtue which is endowed with mind, giving realisation to a matter which is its own, not foreign to itself; not hesitating, but producing all things easily out of itself, as fire shines and burns, as light spreads without effort through space.... Nature is not so miserably endowed as to be excelled by human art, which is directed by a kind of internal sense, while several kinds of animals, guided by their inward mind, show an innate foresight of a wonderful kind,—ants and the industrious bees, which have no type or model spread before them. For there is a nature which is more than present to, which is immanent in things, remote from none as none is remote from being, except the false: and while only the surface of things without changes, deeper in the heart of all than is each to itself it lives, the principle of existence, source of all forms, ... Mind, God, Being, One, Truth, Fate, Reason, Order.”[328] Natura naturata is thus not a resultant or outcome of natura naturans with Bruno; they are one and the same thing under different aspects, and both are one with God, the living force in things.

Aristotle on plurality of worlds.The arguments of Aristotle against the plurality of worlds are in the seventh book set out one by one, and controverted from Bruno’s own standpoint, at times with great fulness and subtlety. It would be unprofitable to enter far into this debate, where the advantage lay so obviously on one side. We have already seen that Bruno was able to lay his finger upon the weak spot in Aristotle’s system, the definitions of space and time. There is no absolute norm of time, said Bruno, whether arithmetical, geometrical, or physical; for in this kind we cannot fix a minimum, and least of all on Peripatetic principles; there is always a less than any given period of time, hence we cannot lay down any true measure of time, i.e. all time is relative to the individual. In any case the daily movement (of the outermost sphere, as Aristotle thought, but in fact) of the earth, is not really circular. There are as many moving agents as there are stars, as there are souls, or deities.[329] But “if we must assume some one presiding over the infinite number of agents, we must ascend above all or descend down to the centre of all, to the absolute being, present above all and within all ... more intimate to all things than each is to itself, not more distant from one than from another, for it is equally the nearest to all.”[330] Perfection.Several of the arguments of Aristotle were drawn from abstract conceptions of unity and perfection, and evidently raised interesting problems for the time of Bruno. They are, briefly, that a plurality of worlds would be irrational, since no reason could be given for one number rather than another, that it is more in accordance with the perfection of the monad, that all reality should be massed together in one world, that the economy of nature does not admit of the multiplication of goods, that the passive capacity (matter) is not equal to the active power (the form), that the perfect is by its very nature unique. Bruno answers that there is no definite, but an infinite, number of worlds, and that if the former were the case no reason could be put forward why there should be only one, which in Bruno’s sense of world is no doubt true. As to the monad, the true monad is that which embraces all number or plurality in itself. “We are not compelled to define a number, we who say that there is an infinite number of worlds; there no distinction exists of odd or even, since these are differences of number, not of the innumerable. Nor can I think there have ever been philosophers who, in positing several worlds, did not posit them also as infinite: for would not reason, which demands something further beyond this sensible world, so also outside of and beyond whatever number of worlds is assumed, assume again another and another?”[331]

One life in all the worlds.That there are more worlds than one is due to the presence everywhere throughout space of the same principle of life, which everywhere has the same effect; just as within one of these worlds, the earth, we find different species of the same animal—of man, for example—which cannot be descended from the same parentage. There are “men of different colours, cavemen, mountain-pygmies, the guardians of minerals, the giants of the South,” each of which races must have been produced independently in its own place. And finally, although it is true that nothing can be added to the perfect, why may not the perfect be multiplicable? Though the perfect man is one, nature may produce several within the same species. “Everywhere is one soul, one spirit of the world, wholly in the whole and in every part of it, as we find in our lesser world also. This soul ... (should the kind of place and of element not conflict) produces all things everywhere; so that for the generation of some even time is not required.... The infinite universe, and it only under God, is perfect. Nothing finite is so good that it could not be better; whatever may be better has some degree of evil and defect, as what is not absolutely bright is not without some signs of obscurity.... Therefore the perfect, absolutely and in itself, is one, infinite, which cannot be greater or better, and than which nothing can be greater or better. This is one, everywhere, the only God, universal nature, of which nothing can be a perfect image or reflection, but the infinite. Everything finite therefore is imperfect, every sensible world is imperfect, as good and evil, matter and form, light and darkness, joy and sadness concur in it, and all things everywhere are in alteration and movement; but all of them, in the infinite, are as in unity, truth, and goodness, and in this aspect the infinite is rightly called the universe.”[332] In the infinite, as we have learned from the Causa, all contraries are one. The universe is perfect, not because of its quantity, but because it contains all other things in it.[333] Within the limits of their kind small causes can produce small effects with some perfection; much more effective is that immeasurable and more general cause, of which nothing stands in the way. It is a harmony of the many in one, the only corporeal image of the divine mind. The finite, however, is imperfect only when taken apart from the whole to which it belongs, i.e. evil and defect are appearances only. Although in nature not all things are of their best, and more species than one produce monstrosities, yet we may not find fault with the great building of the mighty architect, for even the small, weak, and diminutive contributes its part to the nobility of the whole. Is a picture most beautiful when it is blazoned all over with gold and purple? Does it not shine out best from a dull background? Can there be any part which, in its order and place within the whole body, is not good, and the best in the end and in the whole? A harmony in music is better the greater the variety within it of length, accent, pause, and the like.[334]

The perfect may be either (1) “the perfect absolutely, or (2) the perfect in its kind.” The former again is twofold, according as it is (1) “that which is wholly in the whole and in every part, or (2) that which is wholly in the whole but not in the part.” Of these the one is divinity, the intellect of the universe, absolute goodness and truth, the other the immeasurable corporeal reflection of the divine. As within the universe there are many things perfect in their kind, which it combines in its unity, containing in itself the perfection of all, it may in a second sense be called the absolutely perfect. For no one world singly, nor system of worlds, nor any number of systems, can be brought into comparison with God, except indirectly, through the immeasurable wisdom, power, and goodness. “Nothing is absolutely imperfect or evil, for the highest nature exists in a certain sense in the meanest and lowest, as on the palette of a painter colours are thought little of which presently, unfolded into the scheme of the picture, shall seem to be, along with the painter himself, of chief importance.”[335] Moral evil, itself, as we shall find, has no reality for Bruno’s pantheism. Justice and goodness, not existing as abstract entities, have their only ground in the divine will, i.e. in the course of nature.[336] On the other hand, it is not in the part, the detail, the trivial or minute existence, that the divine will is most adequately declared, but in the whole, its plan and its law. “What is best and most glorious, most beseeming the goodness of His nature, is to be attributed to His will. It is impious to seek this in the blood of insects, in the mummied corpse, in the foam of the epileptic, under the shaking feet of murderers, or in the melancholy mysteries of vile necromancers;[337] it must be sought rather in the inviolable, intemerate law of nature, in the religion of a mind directed duly by that law, in the splendour of the sun, in the beauty of the things which are brought forth from this our parent, after His true image, as expressed bodily in the beauty of those innumerable living things, which, in the immeasurable sweep of the one heaven, shine and live, have sense and intelligence, and sing praises to the One, the highest and best.”[338]

CHAPTER IV
NATURE AND THE LIVING WORLDS

Uniformity of Nature.Nature, he said, is the same in kind, in its substance, and in its elements, throughout its whole extent—a daring conception for a time when the empyrean and all space beyond it were still regarded as the special abode of divinity. He reminded his opponents of his own childish experiences:—when from Cicala he looked towards Mount Vesuvius, he thought it dark, gloomy, bare of trees and flowers; but when he approached it, he found it fairer than Cicala itself, while now the latter looked bare and dark.[339] The Aristotelians were committing a similar error in judging the distant stars and the firmament to be in reality as they appeared to our eyes, and in denying the existence of that which was not visible to us. “As the philosopher must not believe what cannot be demonstrated by evidence, so neither must he foolishly despise or find fault with what cannot be disproved by reason.”[340] Had men, instead of bending so long over the books of Aristotle and his commentators, the nebulosa volumina, but turned their eyes to the book and light of nature, they would have formed a far different conception of the constitution of the heavens than that of the eight, nine, ten, or more spheres and innumerable epicycles of the Ptolemaic system. Bruno showed how as we rise from the surface of the earth our horizon becomes wider, while in detail less vivid, and he supposed himself to continue the ascension upwards to the surface of the moon.[341] A few miles away tree and mountain would not be distinguishable from the rest of the earth, but we should perceive only a wide circle of light with dark spots, the appearance of sea and of land respectively. As the distance increased the form of the earth would become more visible while it lost all appearance of opacity, and the whole would seem continuous light. As we neared the moon, the earth would come to appear exactly as the moon does to us from the earth. The moon also revolves round its own axis, and from it, as with us, the universe will appear to revolve round it as centre. It had been said that the appearance of the heavenly bodies had always been and continued to be the same, but Bruno points to the fact that although a mountain, when seen from at hand, changes its face from day to day, and from season to season, yet from a distance it seems always the same.[342] It is owing to the distance that the face of the moon appears to us never to change, although it is certainly subject to as many alterations as the earth itself; and to the dwellers on the moon the earth will appear equally changeless. The light and shadow seen on the surface of the moon are due to the variety of sea and land in it, the one reflecting light, the other absorbing. On the moon, as on the earth, Nature is in continuous change: for example, the relative positions of sea and land are ever altering; but the magnitude of the distance renders these invisible, and more especially the minuteness and gradual nature of the changes themselves. The lunar spectator will be presented with eclipses of the earth, and, according to the position of sea and land, i.e. of light and shadow, with phases of the earth.[343] In the same way Bruno applied his principle of similarity to show that from distant stars the earth would appear of uniform magnitude and unvarying position, while in the neighbourhood of other suns it and all the other planets would disappear. As matter is the same in kind throughout the universe, so it is subject everywhere to the same law of unceasing change:—“The sun in its rising never seeks twice the same point, all things by stress of the continuous flux are renewed, nor ever seek again the haunts they have left, nor is there any part of the earth which does not pass through every region, and a like force now carries each part in one direction or another, now drives it away; and if by chance any one revisit the centre, it is no longer in the same form, nor in the same connection (ordine).”[344] Not even the whole can ever be twice the same, since the order and arrangement of its parts are continuously changing. Even in things that seem ever to present the same face there is a latent alteration which time will bring to light. There would otherwise be nothing to prevent the whole of Nature being fixed, petrified, as it were, to all eternity. Yet the substance of things—the atom—is unchanging.[345] “All things are in flow; the parts of the earth, seas, and rivers vary their positions, by a certain ebbing and flowing order of Nature. As matter wanders, flowing in and out, now here, now there, so the forms travel through matter. For there is not any form which, once occupying a portion of matter, retains it always, nor any matter which, once obtaining a certain form, maintains it for ever. Hence it is that, matter always taking up one form or another, and having equal capacity for all, consequently by virtue of its eternity it must sometimes fall in with that which is able to bind it to itself for ever; if this were to happen, all things would be so constituted that there would be no alteration or difference in them.”[346]

The Ether.The universe to Bruno is transfused with spirit, soul or life, “the soul of the universe,” which animates its every part. “The seat or place of God is the universe, everywhere the whole immeasurable heaven, empty space, of which He is the fulness.” The material aspect, or, as Bruno sometimes seems to say, the body of this spirit is the ether, a subtle fluid distinguished from the air we breathe by the absence of moisture. The ether is a purely passive, non-resisting medium, permeating the universe, without quality, and unimpressionable by force or action; thus it is penetrated by the heat of any radiating body without diminishing its force. It took the place, for Bruno, of the mythical Fifth Essence, which had so long fed the dreams of philosophers—“Divine yet corporeal, material yet without matter, a form without privation, conjoining act with potency, neither heavy nor light, suffering neither generation, nor corruption, nor alteration, neither increase nor decrease; beyond which no sensible existence is, first-born and creatrix of Nature, simplest of beings, all-containing, most powerful, most active, most living, most perfect of existences, endowed with life and intelligence, of its own nature moving circularly, etc., etc.—all this is at length proved to have been a most portentous shadow without body.”[347] Heaven is either empty space, or it is an ethereal substance, “a very subtle kind of air, which is the first and most universal occupant of space.”[348] Again, the ether is described as a vapour or smoke, a nebulous matter, penetrating throughout the depths of the void, interpenetrating all things and embracing all; as not entering into movement of its own accord, for it is but an exhalation of the wind—a kind of continuous vapour such as is contained in the bowels of the earth: in it is neither heat nor cold nor any similar effect (passio), but it is the medium through which these are borne. All these require moisture: moisture alone can “fix” light or darkness or combine atoms into a concrete body and prevent their random flight through the air.[349] It has been claimed that in this and other passages Bruno anticipated the modern theory of the ether; it must be noted, however, that he expressly denies to its parts any kind of motion—it is only the composite body which moves—and that he speaks of this heaven or ether as the soul which is at once immanent in and comprehends the stars, i.e. as the soul of the universe.

Moisture.Of the strictly material elements of the universe, the most important is moisture or water. It is moisture which gives concreteness and therefore weight to things. Nothing has weight which has not been formed into one by the union of innumerable parts under the action of water.[350] Consistently with this, Bruno believed the heaviest bodies, as the metals, to be the most solid and concrete, and therefore to contain most moisture. It is moisture also which, penetrating through the arteries, veins, and bones of the earth, gives to it both variety of aspect and the power of life. The visible moisture on the earth’s surface, the seas and lakes, is a mere nothing as compared to that which is diffused through its interior—is but the sweat, as it were, of the earth’s body.[351] Bruno’s passion for homogeneity led him to understand that in its surface the land under the sea is similar to that above it, with which the former is continually changing place, and it is divided up into plains, mountains, valleys, the islands and rocks of the sea being the tops of the mountains:—a remarkable intuition of the truth, however arrived at. Earth: Fire.As to the familiar elements, earth and fire, Bruno could neither allow a special place or sphere nor a special direction of movement to either, as in the Aristotelian cosmology. The earth was not the centre of the universe, and there were earths or similar planets everywhere. To the several arguments of the Peripatetics[352] for the centrality of the earth,—from the heaviness, the darkness, solidity, composite character of the earth’s matter, and the movements of its parts, from the idea that contraries shun one another so that the coldest element, for example, should be in the centre, the hottest at the extreme,—Bruno opposed the common-sense answers that his own theory suggested to him. His appeal was always from “fictitious order” to the evidence of “sense and reason.” The argument has no longer any interest in itself, and to pursue it into detail would hardly be edifying; but so full is it, so weighty and so vigorous, that one wonders how even the “Peripatetics” failed to be convinced by it. Bruno’s very errors are interesting. Fire for example, far from being the outermost, lightest, subtlest element, was regarded by him as a body of which the substance, (light and heat being accidents) was water mixed with earth;[353] and in general, he maintained, no element was ever found in isolation. As to the supposed coldness of the central element,—the earth,—he believed, again anticipating future discoveries, that the centre of the earth was not cold, but hot, the source of terrestrial warmth; but the theory loses something of its value, scientifically, from the imagined vitality of the planet, by which it is supported.[354] It was natural that the coincidence of contraries should be brought to do duty against the maxim on which the Aristotelian view was really based—namely, that contraries tend to rest at the greatest possible distance from one another, against which Bruno marshalled a whole army of facts. Away from the shadow of the earth there was perhaps no light but that of the sun, too strong for our eyes, for the daylight arose from a mixture of the light of the sun and the darkness of the earth; we could see other colours by it, for the reason that they were similarly composed—mixtures of light and darkness. The heat of the sun also was only bearable when tempered by the coolness of the earth or other planets. The body of the earth, great as it is, can bear this heat only through its swift revolution. As to the objection that if the earth moved we should feel its motion, Bruno remarked that when we are carried in a smoothly and continuously moving vehicle, not striking against any object, we do not perceive that we are moving, except by comparison with some object known to us to be fixed. Thus sense furnishes its own correction.[355] The differences in the distances of the planets from the sun, as seen from the earth, are explained much more readily by the assumption that they and the earth itself are moving about the sun, than by that of the centrality of the earth, which compelled astronomers to the complicated device of the epicycles.[356] The fact that the moon always turns the same face towards the earth disproved the Ptolemaic theory: were it on an epicycle, as was supposed, this would be impossible. According to the old doctrine, the earth was fixed immovably in the centre of the universe, while about it circled the spheres of sun, planets, and fixed stars. With Bruno, on the other hand, the centre of the universe is everywhere, or nowhere,—in other words it is relative to the body on which the spectator is supposed to stand.