ii LEIBNIZ AND BRUNO 343 



which he like Spinoza was at any rate a partial adherent, 

 but nowhere else than in Bruno is to be found the same 

 " collocation " of these ideas as occur in this tractate of 

 Spinoza. It is an open question whether the movement 

 of the latter away from the Italian's philosophy was 

 entirely a progressive, and not in some respects a retro- 

 grade movement. 



At first sight it might seem much more natural to Leibniz, 

 connect Leibniz with Bruno, because of the obvious 

 correspondence of many of their fundamental ideas : 

 their analysis of the universe into a system of inde- 

 pendent realities, each differing from every other each 

 mirroring the universe in itself from its own individual 

 point of view ; each therefore in a sense containing or 

 comprising the all in itself, as each is again a necessary 

 constituent of the all. In place of Spinoza's dead 

 world, we find in Leibniz, as in Bruno, finite things in 

 constant flow, constant change, each passing necessarily 

 through every phase through which any other has 

 passed representing the universe as it is in time, as 

 well as the universe as it is at any moment in actual 

 existence ; each experiencing, in other words, the life, 

 the process, as well as the quality, the being of the all. 

 Everything that is, is necessarily, everything that occurs, 

 occurs necessarily, in Bruno because the whole flows 

 out from the thought of God, as God thinks it (i.e. in 

 the relations in which it stands in the one all-embracing 

 thought of God) ; in Leibniz, because of the will of 

 God, who in His goodness has chosen the best of all 

 ideal systems, within which each thing or event has its 

 necessary place. In both, all things are, from the point 

 of view of the whole, good : in Bruno because in God 

 truth and goodness, will and understanding, are one ; 

 in Leibniz because of the will of God, which has chosen 



