1 78 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



the source, or faculty) of the knowledge of two objects 

 is the same, the principle (i.e. elementary form) of their 

 existence is also one. (Examples are the curved and the 

 plane, the concave and the convex, anger and patience, 

 pride and humility, miserliness and liberality). In con- 

 clusion : " He who would know the greatest secrets ot 

 nature, let him regard and contemplate the minima and 

 maxima of contraries and opposites. Profound magic it 

 is to know how to extract the contrary after having found 

 the point of union" Aristotle was striving towards it, 

 but did not attain it, said Bruno ; " remaining with his 

 foot in the genus of opposition, he was so fettered that 

 he could not descend to the species of contrariety. . . . 

 but wandered further from the goal at every step, as 

 when he said that contraries could not co-exist at the 

 same time in the same subject." * There is a naive but 

 at the same time a bold realism in this demand of 

 Bruno's that reality shall correspond even to the simpler 

 unities of thought unities which after ail are mere 

 limitations. It is only because we cannot distinguish in 

 imagination between an infinite circle and a straight line 

 that their identity in actual existence is postulated, and 

 so the minimal chord and minimal arc coincide to 

 our limited imagination only. Admittedly in the case 

 of sense- qualities the argument is from oneness of 

 faculty knowing to oneness of things known. These, 

 however, are only, as we have said, " signs " and " veri- 

 fications " of a metaphysical truth which is arrived at 

 by other methods. 



A corresponding passage in the De Minimo 2 explains 

 more fully the coincidence of contraries in the minimum : 

 " In the minimum, the simple, the monad, all opposites 

 coincide, odd and even, many and few, finite and 



1 Lag. 288, 289. 2 Qp f L at i 3i I47> j 



