3i 8 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



them forth when it will. Therefore they are more 

 truly in the Monad itself, and consequently are more 

 truly known in it, in simplicity and togetherness, where 

 all things are one in an ineffable sense, without distinc- 

 tion, distribution, or number/' l God is the source of 

 the determinations, the forms of all things. " The first 

 measure is Mind itself: for all measure receives its 

 denomination from mind " 2 (mensura, mens). " One is 

 mind, everywhere wholly, giving measure to all things ; 

 one intellect ', giving order to all things ; one love, pro- 

 ducing harmony between all things." 3 The first 

 section of the Praxis Descensus sums up the relation, 

 the meaning of "creation," thus: 4 " God is the 

 universal substance, being, by which all things are ; 

 essence, the soul of all essence, by which whatever is, 

 is ; more intimate in every being than its form or its 

 nature ; for as nature is the ground of the being of 

 each thing, so the deeper ground of the nature of each 

 thing is God." 



In the second place, the order and life of things has 

 its source in God, as the Monas ordinatrix ; the whole 

 order of nature, both as it is simultaneously, as it has 

 been, and as it shall be, lies " complicitly," grasped in 

 one thought, and realised in one act, in his Mind. 

 " What immutable substance wills, it wills immutably, 

 i.e. it wills necessarily, not as determined by an alien 

 will, which enforces the necessity, but of its own will ; 

 this necessity is far from being contrary to liberty ; 

 liberty itself, will, and necessity are one and the same " 

 (in God). 5 Divine necessity differs from natural causa- 

 tion, the sequence of causes and effects, in that in 

 nature the causes, will, and knowledge may be frus- 



1 Summa, Op. Lot. i. 4. 117. It does not imply their formal identity. 

 2 Art. adv. Math. Op. Lat. i. 3. 16. 3 i. 2. 346. 4 i. 4. 73. 5 i. 4. 95. 



