226 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



" ingenerable and incorruptible, the immeasurable air, 

 a kind of spiritual body " the ether. 1 



object of Its full extension, however, the theory receives in 

 m ' the De Minima, where the atom, or corporeal unity, is 

 not the sole minimum discussed. The full title of the 

 work is : " On the threefold minimum, and measure, 

 being the principles of the three speculative sciences and 

 of many practical arts." We find nowhere any distinct 

 statement as to what Bruno meant by the "threefold 

 minimum," and the three speculative sciences to which 

 its several members refer. It was supposed that the 

 minima were (i) the monad or unity which is the unit 

 of number, (2) the point, which is the unit of the line, 

 and (3) the atom, which is the unit of body. But 

 arithmetic and geometry can hardly be called specula- 

 tive sciences, and Tocco has shown that Bruno had in 

 view the triad of God, the soul and the atom the three 

 kinds of simple substance, each immortal and inde- 

 structible : God as the supreme and most simple unity, 

 Monad of Monads ; soul as that which lives in each 

 composite being and holds in unity the atoms which 

 from time to time enter into its composition ; and the 

 atom, the most simple of material substances, in the 

 sum of which, with their containing ether, the material 

 universe consists. Had Bruno carried out his sub- 

 division of the speculative sciences, he would probably 

 have referred God, as the substance of all reality, to a 

 speculative theology, of Neoplatonist type ; soul as the 

 simple substance of animate beings to metaphysics 

 proper ; and the atoms, the substance of body, to a 

 speculative physics, dealing with the metaphysical pre- 

 suppositions of the general theory of nature, which was 

 set forth in the De Immenso. The scheme, however, 



1 Acrot. Cam. Art 65. 



