These coincidences are again of two kinds: some “subjective” in the modern sense, e.g. the coincidences of directions in the globe; any one may be taken as depth according to the spectator’s standpoint; others are “objective,” e.g. when in God the one and the many are said to coincide. According as the stress is laid on one or on the other, the theory may be regarded as either dualistic (as Cusanus’ really was) or as pantheistic. There is no doubt, however, that it was in the latter sense that Bruno held the coincidence of contraries.
CHAPTER III
THE INFINITE UNIVERSE—THE MIRROR OF GOD[289]
In the contemplation of the infinite, writes Bruno, man attains his highest good. All things aspire to the end for which they are ordained, and the more perfect its nature the more nobly and effectively does each aspire. Man alone, however, as endowed with a twofold nature, pursues a twofold good,—“on the boundary line of eternity and time, between the archetypal world and the copy, the intelligible and the sensible, participating in either substance.”[290] Human effort can find satisfaction in none but the highest and first truth and goodness. Neither our intellect nor our will ever rests. It is clear therefore that their end lies not in particular goods or truths which lead us on from one to another and to another, but in universal good and truth, outside of and beyond which no good or truth exists. So long as we believe that any truth is left to know, or any good to gain, we seek always further truth, desire always further good. The end of our inquiry, therefore, and of our effort cannot be in a truth or in a good that is limited. In each and all is the desire in-born to become all things. Such infinite desire implies the existence in reality of that which will satisfy it. If “Universal Nature” or Spirit is able to satisfy the appetite of each “particular nature” or mode of itself, and that of itself as a whole, then the understanding and desire which are innate, inseparable from and co-substantial with each and all shall not be in vain, nor look hopelessly to a false and impossible end. Again, were universal nature and the efficient cause content with finite truth and good, they would not satisfy the infinite aspiration of particular things. It is true that even the desire for continuance of our present life is not satisfied; a particular mode of matter cannot realise all “forms” or ideas at once, but only in succession and one by one; it knows and therefore desires only that which is present to it at any given time: by force of nature, therefore, it comes in its ignorance (which arises from the “contraction” of the form to this or that particular matter and the limitation of matter by this or that form) to desire to be always that which it now is. The wise soul, however, will not fear death, will indeed sometimes wish for it, since there awaits every substance eternity of duration, immensity of space, and the realisation of all being. “Whatever the good be for which a man strives, let him turn his eyes to the heavens and the worlds; there is spread before him a picture, a book, a mirror, in which he may behold, read, contemplate the imprint (vestigium), the law, and the reflection of the highest good—and with his sensible ears drink in the highest harmony, and raise himself as by a ladder, according to the grades of the forms of things, to the contemplation of another, the highest world.”[291] The contemplation of the extended infinite and “explicate” or unfolded nature is thus only a means by which we may rise to the contemplation of the infinite in itself, “implicate” nature, God. “It is no frivolous or futile contemplation, but one most weighty and worthy of the perfect man, which we pursue, when we seek the splendour, the fusion, and the intercommunication of divinity and of nature not in an Egyptian, Syrian, Greek or Roman individual, not in food, drink, or any ignoble matter, with the gaping many, but in the august palace of the all-powerful, in the immeasurable space of the Ether, in the infinite potency of twofold nature, all-becoming and all-creating. So from the eternal vast and immeasurable effect in visible things, we comprehend the eternal and the immeasurable majesty and goodness. Let us then turn our eyes to the omniform image of the omniform God, and gaze upon the living and mighty reflection of Him.”
The three characteristics of the universe as a mirror of God which Bruno sought to drive home to the minds of men were its infinite extent, the infinite number of its parts, and its uniformity, or the similarity of its constituent elements throughout its whole extent. His illustrations and his arguments would in many cases cause a smile if they were put forward seriously at the present day, but no absurdities can outbalance his enthusiasm, the readiness and thoroughness of his polemic against Aristotle and the old cosmology, and the fertility of imagination by which he is able to look, and to make others look, at things from his new, and therefore, at first, confusing point of view.
Bruno’s arguments rest partly on inferences from sense-knowledge, partly on the principle of sufficient reason. The universe infinite.Thus the infinity of extent is evidenced, first, by the teaching of sense, in the constant change which our circle of vision undergoes as we move from one place to another. There always appears to be an ultimate limit, but no sooner do we move than the limit is seen to have been only apparent; so, it may be inferred, could we transfer ourselves with our senses to any of the distant stars, we should still seem to ourselves to be in the centre of a closed sphere,—the very same appearance which is presented to us on this earth.
Aristotle’s theory of the limitation of space by the ultimate sphere of the heavens was open to objections, many of which were raised in the early schools. The “subtle Averroes” had endeavoured to avoid some of these by the doctrine that beyond this outer sphere is the divine being, the eternal self-sufficient Mind.[292] “But how,” asks Bruno, “can body be bounded by that which is not body? The divine nature is no less nor in any other manner within the whole than without; it is neither place nor in place.”[293] Space therefore is always bounded by space, body by body, that is, each is infinite in extent. Were divinity that which bounds space, it would itself be space under another name.[294] Aristotle’s theory implied that the universe as a whole was not in any place or space. The “place” of each body, he had said, is the containing surface of the sphere above it; the outermost sphere, therefore, as there is no other beyond it, is itself uncontained and without place. The theory implied also the identity of body and space, and was the ground of Aristotle’s rejection of the vacuum in nature. For a truer conception of Space, Bruno turned to an earlier commentator (or group of commentators—“Philoponus”) on Aristotle, who defined it as “a continuous physical quantity in three dimensions, in which the magnitude of bodies is contained, in nature before and apart from all bodies, receiving all indifferently, beyond all conditions of action and passion, not mixing with things, impenetrable, without form or place.”[295] It is called physical, because it can not be separated from the existence of natural things. It is itself not contained, because it equals with its dimensions those of body as the transparency of a crystal has the same dimensions with the crystal itself. Neither body nor space can be thought of the one apart from the other.[296] Granted the infinity of space, that of matter necessarily follows by an inverse of the principle of sufficient reason:—for there is no reason, according to Bruno, why this small part alone of space, where our earth is, should be filled; the eternal operation is not distinct from the eternal power, nor could it be the will of God to cramp nature, which is the hand of the all-powerful, his force, act, reason, word, voice, order and will.[297] “There is one matter, one power, one space, one efficient cause, God and Nature, everywhere equally, and everywhere powerful.—We insult the infinite cause when we say that it may be the cause of a finite effect; to a finite effect it can have neither the name nor the relation of an efficient.”[298]
The corresponding argument from the capacity of our human imagination to think always of a greater than any given magnitude, i.e. its inability to rest short of the infinite, is expanded elsewhere. Our imaginative faculty is the umbra or shadow of nature; its power, therefore, of adding quantity to quantity, ad infinitum, must have something in nature to which it corresponds; nature does not give a faculty for which there is no satisfaction. There is then in truth an infinite universe, such as our imagination demands. Bruno notices the objection that on this theory anything whatever might be said about the universe, e.g. that it is infinite man, since one can imagine a human form filling the universe; and he replies, “it is infinite man, or infinite ass, or infinite tree, each and all, since in the infinite all particular things are one and the same.”[299]
The arguments we have traced are:—(1) What appears to be a limit to our senses always proves to be imaginary, when we are able to test it, therefore we may infer that it is imaginary in other cases; (2) the very notion of space, implying that it has neither form nor place, means that it is infinite, limitless; (3) we cannot imagine a portion of space than which there is not another greater, and so ad infinitum: but reality cannot fall short of thought, therefore space is infinite. Aristotle.The arguments of Aristotle against the infinity of the world are taken up in detail in the second book of the De Immenso. As the controversy, however important at the time, has lost much of its interest for us, we need only give a brief sketch of its main lines. 1. The primum mobile.The first argument was drawn from the assumption of an ultimate sphere or primum mobile which moved about the earth as a centre.[300] It was clear that if the universe were infinite the radii of this sphere would be infinitely prolonged, and therefore the termini of any two given radii at an infinite distance one from another. The motion of the sphere would thus be inconceivable, for it would require infinite time in which to pass from one point to another. The answer of Bruno was that the universe as a whole was not moveable at all, nor had it any centre; only its parts were moved and each of these had its own relative and finite centre. The apparent motion of the sphere was due to the real movement of the earth about its axis. 2. The elements.A similar answer was given to the argument from the movements of bodies according to their elements. As to us on the earth, the earth appears to be the centre of the universe, so to the inhabitants of the moon, the moon will appear to be such. Matter rising from the earth to the moon would appear to the inhabitants of the latter to fall. These distinctions were relative to the finite worlds, but might not be referred to the whole universe. As the earth is one world, the moon another, so each has its own centre, each its own up and down: nor can these differences be assigned absolutely to the whole and its parts together, but only relatively to the position and condition of the latter.[301] 3. The whole and its parts.In his third argument Aristotle sought to prove that infinite body in general was impossible.[302] If the whole is infinite its simple elements must be so also. These must be either of an infinite number of kinds, different from one another, or of a finite number of kinds, or all of the same kind. But the first of the alternatives is impossible on the a priori ground that each element must have a special kind of movement corresponding to it, and the kinds of movement are actually few in number; the second and third, because the movement of the elements should then be infinite, whereas in the actual universe motion is limited both in centre and circumference. The arguments, however, do not apply to Bruno’s theory of the universe. Motion is always from one definite point to another; we do not set out from Italy in order to go on ad infinitum, but to go to some definite point. He does not, as Epicurus did, regard all minima as in infinite motion downwards through the universe; there is no down, no centre, no up, all is simply and generally in flux. It is not the elements that are innumerable in kind, but the composite bodies, the stars, which are constituted by them; and of these the parts move about their natural body, as the parts of the earth towards the earth, and those of the moon toward the moon in their own regions; all motion is therefore limited,—each world has, as it were, margins of its own. The idea that if any of the elements, as fire or water, were infinite, there would be infinite lightness or gravity, and hence that the universe would move as a whole upwards or downwards, is equally at fault. To the universe as a whole the terms heavy and light do not apply, but only to its parts, the finite and determinate bodies consisting of finite and determinate elements. These elements, whether they be taken as of one or more kinds, since they cannot move outside of the universe, must have finite movements.
4. Action between the infinite and the finite.The fourth argument[303] was based upon the impossibility of action between an infinite body and a second body whether finite or infinite. An infinite cannot act upon a finite because the action would necessarily be timeless. Were it in time we could then find a finite body which in the same time would produce the same effect; but there can be no such equality between the finite and the infinite. Similarly action between two infinites would occur in infinite time; in other words, would not take place at all. The conclusion is that neither fire nor earth nor any of the elements can be infinite in quantity. Bruno suggests, in the first place,[304] that a change may be produced timelessly; thus if a body in a large circle cover a certain space in the minimum of time, a body in a smaller circle will cover a less space in no time, for nothing can be smaller than the minimum.[305] In the second place, no action of the whole or effect upon the whole exists, it is only the finite bodies within it, each with its finite force, that act upon one another. Even if two infinite bodies, over against one another, were supposed, their action would not be of one whole upon another, but of the parts on the contiguous parts.[306] Force is exerted by bodies not intensively but extensively, because as, where one part of a body is, there another is not, so at the point where one part of the body acts another does not.[307]