1 66 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



The matter or material of which Bruno here speaks 

 is what afterwards was called extension, or the extended 

 substance, and the natural forms are the various indi- 

 vidual shapes or bodies of nature : both from the 

 transformations of one into the other, and again from 

 the fact that the particular forms come into being and 

 cease to exist, it was argued that there must be an 

 underlying something, material indeed, but different 

 from all the things we know or see, indifferently capable 

 of becoming any one of them, persisting throughout 

 their becoming, their change, and their ceasing to exist, 

 i.e. a permanent reality. 



Matter as Matter, however, meant not only " subject " or 

 tiaiity". substrate, but also " potentiality," or possibility : and 

 we have to consider it in this light also. Everything 

 that exists is therefore possible, and the possibility of 

 coming into existence, "passive potency," implies 

 that of bringing into existence " active potentiality 

 or power " ; the one is never without the other, 

 First prin- not even in the first principle. Thus the first prin- 

 ciple is all that which it has the possibility of being 

 in it reality and possibility are one ; whereas a stone, 

 e.g. is not all that it has the possibility of being, for it 

 is not lime, nor vase, nor dust, nor grass. That which 

 is all that it can be, the Absolute, is also all that any 

 other thing is or can be : it embraces all being within 

 itself. Other things are not thus absolute, but limited 

 to one reality at a time, i.e. one specific and particular 

 existence. They can be more only through succession 

 and change. " Every possibility and actuality that in 

 the (first) principle is as it were complicate, united, one, 

 in other things is explicate, dispersed, many. The 

 universe, which is the great simulacrum and image (of 

 the first principle) is it also all that which it may be 



