1 68 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



absolute possibility, the first principle becomes itself 

 matter ', and as there is no possibility without an actuality, 

 present or to come, the absolute possibility is also 

 Matter and absolute reality, or matter and form coincide in the 

 one. One} We approach this conclusion first from the con- 



sideration of matter as * * subj ect ' ' ( su bstr ate ) . From the 

 changes of one natural substance into others we inferred 

 a universal substrate, undifferentiated, which formed at 

 once the basis of the community of nature in things, 

 Matter or and the ground of their difference. 2 But the spiritual 

 ofth e ate and the corporeal worlds, also, as distinguished from 

 world 181 one anot her, imply a common " subject " or substrate 

 in which they are one or identical. Bruno refers, as we 

 have seen, to Plotinus 3 as having held that distinction 

 and difference imply a common ground or unity, and 

 that " intelligible " distinctions are not exempt from 

 this rule. " As man qud man is different from lion 

 qud lion, but in the common nature of animal or of 

 corporeal substance they are one and the same, so the 

 matter of things corporeal, as such, is different from the 

 matter of things incorporeal, as such : but from another 

 point of view it is the same matter which in dimensions 

 or extension is corporeal matter, and which when 

 without dimensions or extension is an incorporeal sub- 

 stance. In things eternal (spiritual) there is one matter 

 in one simple realisation, in things variable (corporeal) 

 matter has now one, now another ; in the former, it has 

 at one time and all together all that which it can have, 

 and is all that it may be ; in the latter, at many times, 

 on different occasions, and in succession. The former 

 has all species of figure and dimension, and because 

 it has all, it has none : for that which is so many 

 diverse things, cannot be any one of them in particular. 



1 Lag. 261. 2 Lag. 266. 3 Supra, ch. i. Cf. Plotinus, Ennead, ii. 4. 4. 



