Giordano Bruno

by J. Lewis McIntyre

CHAPTER V[380]
THE LAST AND THE LEAST THINGS: ATOMS AND SOUL-MONADS

The reaction against Aristotelianism had, as one of its results, a renascence of the atomic theory of Democritus and Lucretius; and one of the earliest adherents of the renovated doctrine was Bruno. Although a complete presentation of the theory was not given until his later works, the De Minimo and the Articuli adv. Mathematicos, appeared, yet already in the Italian dialogues there were frequent references to it. In the Cena,[381] for example, it is said that in the physical division of a finite body infinite progress is impossible, and, as we shall afterwards find, in Bruno there is no distinction between physical and mathematical division. Again, in the Cena an animistic atomism is suggested, which presents a curious anticipation of some of Leibniz’ characteristic views. “It is more than probable, as all things partake of life, that many or innumerable individuals live not only in us, but in all composite things; when anything “dies,” as is said, we must believe it to be not death, but change only; the accidental composition or concord ceases, the things that enter into it remaining always immortal; and this is truer of those things we call spiritual than of those we call corporeal or material.”[382] Thus every body or organism, for all bodies are organisms to Bruno, is itself constituted by other living beings, the atoms—living atoms—being alike the origin and the end of all. So Leibniz wrote:—“Every living body has a presiding entelechy, which is the soul in the animal; but the members of this living body are full of other living beings—plants, animals,—each of which, again, has its entelechy or presiding soul.”[383] In the Infinito Bruno refers to the continuous changes of all composite bodies as arising from the ceaseless flux of atoms out of and into each body, even the greater “animals,” the stars and planets, sending out particles, which wander through the universe from one to another.[384] Again, when discussing the four elements, he ascribes to water the power of holding together the atoms of earth, or “the dry.” “If from the earth all water were to be removed, so that there remained purely dry matter, this remainder would necessarily be an incoherent, rare, loose substance, easy to be dispersed through the air, in the form of innumerable discontinuous bodies; for while the air or ether makes a continuum, that which makes a coherent continuum is water or moisture.”[385] These indivisible “prime bodies,” of which the worlds are originally composed, are spoken of as flying throughout space from world to world, in infinite movement, entering now into this, now into that “composition.”[386] Finally, in the Spaccio, we are reminded that “every trifle, however worthless, is of value in the order of the whole, the universe, for great things are composed of little, little things of the least, and these of the individuals (or indivisibles) or minima.”[387] In its main outlines, accordingly, Bruno’s atomic theory was already formed in his mind when he wrote his earlier philosophical works, and even some of his peculiar applications of it had already suggested themselves. It is hardly possible, therefore, to find any very marked development in this regard between the London and the Frankfort periods. There is elaboration and completion rather than development in any definite direction;[388] and, as we have seen, the writing of the larger works, containing the developed system, was projected in London, and even carried out to a certain extent before Bruno left England.[389] In the Acrotismus, which occupies a middle place between the two periods, the doctrine is equally in evidence, in reference both to the atoms and to the continuous ether in which they move. “There is a limit to the division of nature—an indivisible something; the division of nature arrives at ultimate minimal parts, unapproachable by human instruments. Of these minimal bodies every sensible body is composed, and such a body, resolved into its minima, can retain no semblance of complexity; for these are the first bodies out of which all others are made, and which are, in the truest sense, the matter of all things that have corporeal existence. Resolved into these parts, stone has no look of stone, flesh of flesh, bone of bone; in their elements, bone, stone, and flesh do not differ, but only when formed out of these, compounded, compacted, and arranged in diverse manners, do flesh, stone, and bone and other things become different one from another.”[390] And Bruno describes how, between the heavenly bodies, there is a substance, “ingenerable and incorruptible, the immeasurable air, a kind of spiritual body”—the ether.[391]

Object of De Minimo.Its full extension, however, the theory receives in the De Minimo, where the atom, or corporeal unity, is not the sole minimum discussed. The full title of the work is:—“On the threefold minimum, and measure, being the principles of the three speculative sciences and of many practical arts.” We find nowhere any distinct statement as to what Bruno meant by the “threefold minimum,” and the three speculative sciences to which its several members refer. It was supposed that the minima were (1) the monad or unity which is the unit of number, (2) the point, which is the unit of the line, and (3) the atom, which is the unit of body. But arithmetic and geometry can hardly be called speculative sciences, and Tocco has shown that Bruno had in view the triad of God, the soul and the atom—the three kinds of simple substance, each immortal and indestructible:—God as the supreme and most simple unity, Monad of Monads; soul as that which lives in each composite being and holds in unity the atoms which from time to time enter into its composition; and the atom, the most simple of material substances, in the sum of which, with their containing ether, the material universe consists. Had Bruno carried out his subdivision of the speculative sciences, he would probably have referred God, as the substance of all reality, to a speculative theology, of Neoplatonist type; soul as the simple substance of animate beings to metaphysics proper; and the atoms, the substance of body, to a speculative physics, dealing with the metaphysical presuppositions of the general theory of nature, which was set forth in the De Immenso. The scheme, however, was never fully carried out,[392] the times being not yet ripe for the complete separation of the speculative and the experimental or observational sciences. Atomism a metaphysical doctrine.In referring the atomic theory to metaphysics, Bruno showed a true instinct, for while in one sense atomism is a scientific hypothesis capable of furnishing laws which explain the interaction of bodies,—the corpuscular theory,—and as such has proved its value by the brilliant developments of recent years, on the other hand, it is also a presupposition of knowledge, a ground of the possibility of our knowledge of body, and therefore has its place in speculative theory, or metaphysics, in the widest sense. Both points of view are presented in Bruno’s doctrine, but that from which he starts is the epistemological, following in this the guidance of Nicholas of Cusa.

Knowledge implies the atom.Knowledge is measurement, and all measure implies a minimum in each kind of being. Were it possible to subdivide anything ad infinitum, the half would be potentially equal to the whole, and measurement frustrated. There must be a limit to division, an ultimate part, which itself has no parts, and which is the substance of the composition into which it enters, the composition on the other hand being an “accident” of this minimum. Relativity of minimum.As it is primarily a condition of measurement, the minimum differs in the different spheres of measure or knowledge to which the category of quantity applies. In magnitudes of one or two dimensions it is the point, in bodies the atom, in numbers the monad or unity. Thus number is accident of the monad, monad is the essence of number, as composition is accident of the atom, atom is essence of the composite. Again, the “sensible minimum” must be far greater than the natural or real minimum, for in so far as minimum is qualified by sensible, it is implied that the minimum is not absolutely such, but is a composite. The minimum of taste, touch, etc., must possess certain qualities, by which it has relation to sense, and these can derive only from some form of composition. In their primary form the minima of nature must be without difference; therefore that some are sensible, others not, must be due to some addition in the former.[393]

Thus each species of existence, as light, moisture, vital force,[394] has its own minimum, and the minimum is relative in this sense also, that there are different kinds of existence not resolvable one into another: the absolute minimum would be God, who is also the absolute maximum. The relative minimum, accordingly, is determined either by the thought and design of the observer, or by the species of existence to which the subject belongs; nature has set limits, both lower and upper, within which the individual of any species must stay, or cease to belong to that species. Accordingly, what one regards as great and composite, another may take as first and minimum: the unit of one science may be analysed in another into further elements. “Pythagoras in his philosophy started with the monad and numbers; Plato with atoms, lines and surfaces; Empedocles with the four elements; the physicians with the four humours, and so on; but the Pythagorean monad is prior to the placed monad (the atom), Plato’s matter of bodies to the qualified bodies of Empedocles, the four simple bodies of Empedocles to the four first combinations of these, the four humours. So to the universe the whole solar system, the sun and all its planets, may be a simple unit.”[395]

Here Bruno suggests two principles for the classification and systematising of the sciences, to which it would have been well had he himself and his successors faithfully adhered. The one is, that the modes of measurement, i.e. the methods and laws of the sciences, must differ for the different kinds of existence studied: that a biological law, for example, cannot be adopted as an explanation of mental phenomena, nor the atomic theory account for the phenomena of life. On the other hand there are orders of existence, according to the complexity of the subjects involved. If we regard the science which deals with the more concrete subject as “higher,” then each higher science (e.g. psychology) must take for granted the principles and results of each lower science (biology, physics, mathematics),—each must adopt and retain a unit for itself, which it has not further to analyse.

The “minima” in the classification of sciences.In the same way the minima offer a ground for the distinction of the more abstract sciences one from another. The term “individual nature” (atoma natura) may, according to Bruno, have one of several uses. It may be applied either “negatively or privatively, and if negatively, then either accidentally or substantially.” His instance of the accidental use is a voice or sound, which expands spherically, is wholly wherever it is, i.e. the full content of the sound is heard, wherever its influence extends, not a part here, a part there, although the intensity may vary in degree. Of the substantial use examples are the spirit, which is wholly in the whole body of man, or that spirit which is in the whole extent of the life of the earth, by whose life we live and in which we have our being, or, above this substantial nature or individual soul, that of the universe, and supreme above all, the mind of minds, God, one spirit completely filling all things.[396] The atom-nature is privatively so-called, when it is the element and substance of a magnitude which is the same in kind with it, and may be reduced to it, and it is distinguished from the atom negatively so-called, because it is not divisible, either in genus or in species, either per se or per accidens. Examples are, (1) in discrete quantities:—unity to the mathematician, the universal proposition to the logician, the syllable to the grammarian; and (2) in continuous quantities, varying with the species of continuum:—the minimal pain, sweetness, colour, light, triangle, circle, straight line, curve; in duration, the instant; in place, the minimal space; in length and breadth, the point; in body, the least and first body.

Minimum as substance.In the second place, the atom or minimum is also a metaphysical ποῦ στῶ; not only is it the last result of analysis, but it is also the permanent substance of being, and again it contains all being in itself—it is essence of being. Thus such an individual nature “never comes into existence by way of generation, nor passes out of it by way of corruption or dissolution; only per accidens may we say that it now is, now is not.”[397] Certain of them, however, the souls, deities, God, are in their intrinsic nature eternal, immortal, indissoluble. Of these it was Bruno’s intention to treat at large in a Metaphysics and a De Anima which he purposed to write “if God granted him time.”[398] Unfortunately, it was willed otherwise.

Nothing that becomes, changes, decays, is real (ens). It is by meditating on this perpetual unity of nature, by conforming ourselves, and preserving ourselves in likeness to it, that we come to partake in the life of the gods, and to deserve the name of substance. That which time, movement, fate bring to us is nought; for while they are, they are not. “Let us then,” cries Bruno, “supply the mind with material, in the contemplation of the minimum, through which it may exalt itself to the maximum.”[399] Since the real minimum, whether atom or soul, is immortal and indestructible, we know, as Pythagoras saw, that there is no death, but only transition; death is a dissolution which can occur only to the composite, for the composite is never substance, but is always adventitious. Otherwise we should be changing our substance every moment with the continuous influx of atoms into our bodies. Only by the individual substance of the soul are we that which we are; about it as a centre, which is everywhere in its whole being (ubique totum), the disgregation and aggregation of atoms takes place. According to a law of the soul-world, all bodies and forces tend to the spherical form; God, as monad of monads, is the perfect or infinite sphere, of which the centre is at once nowhere and everywhere; and in Him (as in all minima, simple substances, monads) all opposites coincide, the many and the few, finite and infinite; therefore that which is minimum is also maximum, or anything between these, each is all things, the greatest and the whole.[400] Therefore, if contemplation is to follow in the footsteps of nature, it must begin, continue, and end with the minimum.[401] In other words, the minimum in each sphere of being contains implicitly in itself the whole reality of that sphere. The minimum is its substance, not merely the ultimate of analysis, but the actual source, the dynamic origin of reality, as God is implicitly the whole universe and also the source of the universe as it actually exists. It is because the minimum is all reality, is the maximum, that the knowledge of it gives us that of the whole.