I 9 4 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



truth is incomparably better than to allow not- being or 

 nothing. 15. The potency of nature ought not to be 

 frustrated, nor space remain unfilled for infinite duration, 

 for then potency would be relative to an impossible. 



1 6. That infinite potency (whether extensive or intensive) 

 should be frustrated of existence means that infinite evil 

 should be actually posited, as space is actually infinite. 



17. As this space can receive this world and be adorned 

 thereby, so also any similar space whatever, indiscernible 

 from it, a similar principle being present, could have 

 received a similar world. 1 19. Of God and of nature 

 we should think as highly as possible. 20. Of the 

 greatest things nothing should be rashly asserted which 

 is contrary to sense and reason. 



The infinite number of worlds is thus made to de- 

 pend for its proof upon the identity of power and will, 

 of will and knowledge, i.e. thought, in God. Whatever 

 is in the mind of God is realised in the universe. 

 Knowledge Before God past, present, and future are one, 

 present, and eternal ; 2 he is unable to change his 

 purpose or to deny himself. What he wills and what 

 he can are one and the same ; nor can he do what he 

 wills not, for fate is the Divine will itself. Hence, as 

 he cannot be other than he is, so nothing can be done 

 by him otherwise than as it is done. The nature of God 

 is a simple substance ; however many names be predi- 

 cated of it, they signify, one and all, the same thing. 3 

 Infinite virtue, if limited neither by itself nor by 

 another, acts by the necessity of its own nature, not by 

 a necessity alien to itself and to its will ; it is itself 

 necessity. The necessity by which it acts, therefore, 



1 No. 1 8 denies that the perfection of the world in one space should either 

 add to or detract from the perfection of another world in other space or render it less 

 necessary. 



2 Bk. i. ch. 12. 8 P. 245. 



