Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/261

GIORDANO BRUNO. 249 " potency " but also as " subject ". In itself it has no ex- tended form ; it is not restricted to any one mode of being. Just as Art deals with various kinds of matter, each capable of receiving many shapes without change as to its composi- tion, so Nature deals with a matter that is common to all things, both corporeal and incorporeal, both sensible and intelligible, and that remains under all changes the same in substance. This matter which is limited to no specific mode of being is identical with " pure act " and with the efficient cause. It has no particular figure or dimensions because it has them all implicitly. It is said to include all forms rather than to exclude them all, because it does not receive them as from without, but produces them from within. This truth was in part perceived by Aristotle, who makes Nature an internal and not an external principle. But instead of declaring that matter, being permanent, coincides with " act," he places actuality in his " forms " and "entelechies," which are accidental and changing, not truly substantial. The Infinite, in which matter and form, act and possi- bility, coincide, contains in itself all being and all modes of being. Each particular thing contains the whole as regards its substances, but has not all modes of being. All evil and imperfection consists in this, that particular things, striving to attain the modes of being which they do not possess, lose one mode of being in order to assume another. In the In- finite all things are one ; no quality is different from its opposite ; a moment is not different from a century, unity from multitude, a solid from a mathematical point. The doctrine of the coincidence of contraries, by the help of which the unity of all things is demonstrated, has great importance in Bruno's philosophy. It was suggested to him in the first place by the logical law that " the knowledge of opposites is the same ". He quotes the opinion of Hera- clitus to the effect that since the One, through the mutability of things, contains in itself all forms, contradictory proposi- tions must be true of it. But he ascribes to Nicholas of Cusa the special mathematical development which he gives to this idea. The treatment of the circle may be taken as an example of his development of Cusa's doctrine. It is shown that in the circle a very small arc coincides with its chord and again that the circumference of an infinite circle coincides with a straight line. Hence, it is argued, con- trariesin this case the straight line and the curve are coincident in the maximum and the minimum. The maxi- mum and the minimum themselves coincide in the infinite, 17