ii MATTER AND FORM 163 



ferred to above. It is emphasised in the argument to 

 this part of the Causa given in the introductory 

 epistle, 1 where matter, although formless in itself, is 

 spoken of as " consisting in diverse grades of active 

 and passive qualities? " Bruno seems, however, at this 

 time unconscious of the difficulty. Certainly from pure 

 matter and pure form, body and spirit, standing over 

 against one another, no start could be made. Diversity 

 had to come into the world somehow. 



We have not yet solved the problem as to the 

 relation between these two principles themselves matter 

 and form. Bruno confesses to have held at one period 

 the "Epicurean view that matter was the only substance, 

 the forms being merely accidental dispositions of it ; but 

 on further consideration he was compelled to recognise 

 a formal as well as a material substance." 2 In fact, 

 however, both form and matter tend as the philosophy 

 develops to coincide in a higher unity which is at last 

 the ultimate reality. The " proof" of <c Matter " is The deduc- 

 from the analogy between Nature and Art. All who 

 have attempted, said Bruno, to distinguish matter from 

 form have made use of the analogy of the arts (e.g. the 

 Pythagoreans, Platonists, Peripatetics). Take some art 

 such as that of the wood-worker ; in all its forms and 

 all its operations it has as subject (or material) wood 

 as the iron-worker has iron ; the tailor, cloth. All these 

 arts produce each in its own material various pictures, 

 arrangements, figures, none of which is proper or natural 

 to that material. So Nature, which art resembles, must 



1 Epist. Proem., Lag. 203. 19. When he wrote the De Minima the question had 

 at least presented itself to Bruno as requiring solution : vide bk. iv. (Op. Lat. i. 3. 

 274). Individual differences are referred to two possible sources the different com- 

 positions of the forms or ideal types, and the varied dispositions of matter j and it is 

 suggested that the latter of these may derive from the former. 



2 Lag. 246. 37. 



