ii PLURALITY OF WORLDS 197 



were, for it is not as if a creator came from on high, to 

 give it order and form from without. Matter pours 

 forth all things from its own lap, Nature itself is the 

 inward workman, a living art, a wondrous virtue which 

 is endowed with mind, giving realisation to a matter 

 which is its own, not foreign to itself; not hesitating, 

 but producing all things easily out of itself, as fire 

 shines and burns, as light spreads without effort through 

 space. . . . Nature is not so miserably endowed as to 

 be excelled by human art, which is directed by a kind 

 of internal sense, while several kinds of animals, guided 

 by their inward mind, show an innate foresight of a 

 wonderful kind, ants and the industrious bees, which 

 have no type or model spread before them. For there 

 is a nature which is more than present /0, which is 

 immanent in things, remote from none as none is remote 

 from being, except the false : and while only the surface 

 of things without changes, deeper in the heart of all 

 than is each to itself it lives, the principle of existence, 

 source of all forms, . . . Mind, God, Being, One, 

 Truth, Fate, Reason, Order." 1 Natura naturata is thus 

 not a resultant or outcome of natura naturans with 

 Bruno ; they are one and the same thing under 

 different aspects, and both are one with God, the living 

 force in things. 



The arguments of Aristotle against the plurality of Aristotle on 



i 111 i j plurality of 



worlds are in the seventh book set out one by one, and worlds. 

 controverted from Bruno's own standpoint, at times 

 with great fulness and subtlety. It would be unprofit- 

 able to enter far into this debate, where the advantage 

 lay so obviously on one side. We have already seen 

 that Bruno was able to lay his finger upon the weak 

 spot in Aristotle's system, the definitions of space and 



1 /., ch. x. p. 312 ff. 



