i8 4 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



called physical, because it can not be separated from the 

 existence of natural things. It is itself not contained, 

 because it equals with its dimensions those of body as 

 the transparency of a crystal has the same dimensions 

 with the crystal itself. Neither body nor space can be 

 thought of the one apart from the other. 1 Granted the 

 infinity of space, that of matter necessarily follows by an 

 inverse of the principle of sufficient reason : for there 

 is no reason, according to Bruno, why this small part 

 alone of space, where our earth is, should be filled ; the 

 eternal operation is not distinct from the eternal power, 

 nor could it be the will of God to cramp nature, which 

 is the hand of the all-powerful, his force, act, reason, 

 word, voice, order and will. 2 " There is one matter, 

 one power, one space, one efficient cause, God and 

 Nature, everywhere equally, and everywhere powerful. 

 We insult the infinite cause when we say that it may be 

 the cause of a finite effect ; to a finite effect it can have 

 neither the name nor the relation of an efficient." 3 



The corresponding argument from the capacity of 

 our human imagination to think always of a greater 

 than any given magnitude, i.e. its inability to rest short 

 of the infinite, is expanded elsewhere. Our imaginative 

 faculty is the umbra or shadow of nature ; its power, 

 therefore, of adding quantity to quantity, ad infinitum, 

 must have something in nature to which it corresponds ; 

 nature does not give a faculty for which there is no 

 satisfaction. There is then in truth an infinite universe, 

 such as our imagination demands. Bruno notices the 

 objection that on this theory anything whatever might 

 be said about the universe, e.g. that it is infinite man, 

 since one can imagine a human form filling the universe ; 



1 Op. Lot. i. i. p. 232. On Space, cf. Acrot. Art. 31, 33-37 (Vacuum, Ether, etc.), 

 and Infinite, Lag. 365. 2 p. 2 ^ 3 p > 2 ^^ 



