ii FIGURE IN BODY AND SPACE 189 



Though each class be infinite, we have seen that the infinite 

 does not act infinitely, that is intensively ', but acts finitely, 

 i.e. extensively. Each individual and species is finite, but 

 the number of all individuals is infinite, and infinite are the 

 matter in which they consist and the space in which they 

 move. Everywhere, therefore, limit and measure are 

 only in the particular and the individual, which, compared 

 with the universe, are nothing. 



A further argument was derived from the necessity of 6. Figure 

 figure in body and from the relation of body to space. 1 a 

 Every body is known to us as of a certain and definite 

 figure, whereas infinite body would necessarily be un- 

 figured. In this case, said Bruno, Aristotle is confounding 

 body with space, although he elsewhere separates the two 

 notions. That space is something other than the bodies 

 which fill it, that it is more than limit or figure, is evident 

 from the fact that always between any two corporeal sur- 

 faces, between any two atoms, there is space. Nor is space 

 merely an accident of body, a special quality of it, as colour 

 is, for example, for we cannot think of colour without a 

 body in which it exists, and when the body is abstracted 

 the colour goes also, whereas space may be thought of 

 apart from body, and body, when removed does not take 

 with it its space. Perhaps we should say that space is really 

 the continuous ether or light which penetrates throughout 

 the universe, and seems to fill space more continuously 

 than wood, stone, or iron, in which there is an admixture of 

 vacuum. Must all bodies be figured, then the figure of 

 the infinite is the sphere. The dimensions of space coincide 

 with those of body, and the definition given of body as tri- 

 dimensional quantity applies also to space : there cannot 

 be any body which is not in place, nor can its dimensions 

 exist without equal dimensions of the containing space. 



1 Bk. ii. ch. 10. p. 293. 



