ii NATURE AS ONE AND AS MANY 169 



That which is all must include every particular exist* 

 ence. 1 In it, absolute potency and absolute actuality, 

 matter and form, do not differ at all ; it is the extreme 

 of purity, simplicity, individuality, and unity, because it 

 is absolutely all. It is individual in the highest sense. 

 Being both matter and form, it is neither : as matter, it 

 has all dimensions and none ; as form, it has all formal 

 existence or qualities and none. The corporeal matter 

 is contracted to this or that dimension, whereas 

 spiritual matter is free (absoluta) of dimensions, there- 

 fore is both above all, and comprising all. Thus matter 

 in itself, being without dimensions, is indivisible : it 

 acquires dimensions according to the nature of the form 

 it receives : the dimensions under the human form 

 differ from those under the horse form, and from those 

 under the olive or the myrtle form. But before it can 

 be under any of these forms, it must have in faculty all 

 their dimensions, as it has the possibility or potency of 

 receiving all the forms. In itself it includes rather than 

 excludes all dimensions, because it does not receive them 

 as from without, but sends them, brings them forth, 

 from itself, as from the womb." 2 In other words, 

 Nature, under one aspect, is a spiritual unity, in which 

 are comprised all possible differences, or all separate 

 existences : under another it is these many existences 

 themselves, in each of which, in succession, all differ- 

 ences are " realised," all modes come into being : and 

 finally, under another aspect, it is the force which brings 

 forth the separate forms or existences out of the 

 formless, indeterminate, undifferentiated unity of being, 

 or God. 



The two kinds of matter, or potentiality, the lower 



1 Lag. 269. 

 2 Lag. 268-271. Bruno refers here to Averroes, and especially to Plotinus, v. ch. i. 



