ii MATTER AS THE ULTIMATE UNITY 171 



of the real, is all things and none could not be other 

 than the highest principle. Further, this unity already 

 has the distinction applied formerly to the Highest 

 Intelligence, it " is all," and at the same time it 

 "creates all," in producing the forms out of itself. 

 The unity then is only the world-soul from a special 

 point of view, or the world-soul is at once the unity of 

 itself and of the corporeal world. 1 This means that of 

 the spiritual and the corporeal worlds each is a unity in 

 itself, and each only a special aspect of a final unity 

 which embraces both. It is no wonder then that 

 Schelling found a congenial spirit in Bruno. The 

 reality of this final matter or unity is moreover higher, 

 truer, than that of any of the forms to which it gives 

 birth, and finally it is divine. Little more is wanting 

 to prove the entire superfluity of the theological highest 

 principle. The unity (or matter) is by no means an 

 " abstract " identity, but a concrete whole, which con- 

 tains all differentiation in itself, and a " dynamic " being, 

 which produces, or realises, its own modes. " Deter- 

 minate, sensible, explicate existence is not the highest 

 characteristic (raggione) of actuality, but is a thing 

 consequent, an effect of the latter ; thus the principal 

 essence of wood, e.g. the characteristic of its actuality, 

 does not consist in its being ' bed ' ; but in its being 

 of such a substance and consistency that it may be bed, 

 bench, beam, idol, or anything formed of wood. 

 Nature, however, from its material produces all things, 

 not as art, by mechanical removal or addition of parts, 

 but by separation, birth, efflux, as the Pythagoreans 

 understood," Bruno adds Anaxagoras, Democritus, 

 the Wise Men of Babylon, Moses ! " Rather, then, it 

 contains the forms and includes them, than is empty of 



1 Compare the ambiguity in Spinoza's definition of mind in relation to body. 



