i yo GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



and the higher, are thus essentially one ; so we reach 

 the notion, not indeed of "the highest and best 

 principle," as Bruno is again careful to remind us, but 

 of the soul of the world, as reality of all, and potency 

 of all, and all in all. Thus in the end, although in- 

 dividuals are innumerable, all things are one ; and the 

 knowledge of this unity is the goal and limit of all 

 philosophy of nature. 



The unity This unity, which embraces all the knowable, is the 

 anybody, subject of the fifth dialogue of the Causa. The steps by 

 which we have reached it are : first, the identification 

 of a common nature, or substratum in things corporeal, 

 corporeal matter, that which is common to all physical 

 existences ; secondly, the recognition that there must 

 similarly be a corresponding matter, or common ground 

 of things spiritual ; there also differences exist and 

 demand an identity ; and finally, corporeal matter and 

 spiritual matter must themselves coincide in ground; 

 there must exist that which is indifferently either, or 

 which is the potency of both, and their " subject " or 

 substratum. To the objection that to have dimensions 

 is characteristic of matter, it is answered that each kind 

 of matter has dimensions, only the latter has them 

 absolutely, i.e. it has all indifferently, and therefore none, 

 while the other is always " contracted " to one or other 

 at each instant, but has all successively. We have seen 

 that at the close of the fourth dialogue Bruno refers 

 again to the first principle, unknowable, or knowable 

 only by faith, and professes to abstain from any con- 

 sideration of it. It is quite clear, however, that Bruno 

 could not have said of it anything other than he says 

 of this unity of the corporeal and the spiritual itself. 

 That which is implicitly all reality in such a manner 

 that it is at the same time none of the particular forms 



