248 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



presuppositions or the possibility of knowledge, Bruno 

 may be regarded as being, to some extent, a forerunner 

 of Kant, in the stress he lays upon the relation of the 

 minimum to measure or knowledge, and in his doctrine 

 of the relativity of the conception of the minimum. 

 The minimum, instead of a last of division, becomes a 

 first of composition a ground which we must necessarily 

 assume in order to account for the experienced fact of 

 composition. To know a composite is to measure it, 

 and measurement implies the minimum or first part, 

 without which quantity in any form cannot be explained. 

 As the comparison of numbers with one another, their 

 determination as greater or less, is only possible on the 

 assumption of a unit, a common measure to which each 

 may be referred, so the comparison of bodies with one 

 another, as to quantity and quality alike, demands a 

 corporeal minimum, to which their differences must be 

 reduced. This relation to knowledge carries with it 

 the relativity of the minimum according to the subject- 

 matter with which the knower is for the time being 

 concerned. If all knowledge is of the same type, then 

 in each application of it each subdivision of knowledge 

 as a whole there is presupposed the corresponding 

 minimum. That which is least in one sphere may be 

 greatest in another ; that which is element of one science 

 may be that which another seeks to analyse into lesser 

 constituents. The celestial body, which is a highly 

 complex combination of elements, may be the unit of 

 astronomical science. The phrase, which is the unit of 

 the rhetorician, is analysed by the logician and the 

 grammarian into terms and words ; these are analysed 

 by another science into syllables and letters ; these by 

 the mathematician into lines and points. Thus every 

 science has its own (relative) minimum. Only one 



