Cause Principle Unity

On magic
Furthermore, the soul, in its power, is present in some way in the entire
universe, because it apprehends substances which are not included in the
body in which it lives, although they are related to it. Thus, if certain
impediments are excluded, the soul has an immediate and sudden presence
with the most distant things, which are not joined to it by any motion,
which nobody would deny, but rather are directly present in a certain sense.
Experience teaches this also in the case of those whose nose has been cut
off; if they arrange to grow a new nose for themselves from the flesh of some
other animal, and if that animal whose flesh was used dies, then as the body
of that animal rots, so does the borrowed nose. From this, it is clear that the
soul diffuses outside of the body in every aspect of its nature. 5 It also
follows that the soul knows not only the members of its own body, but also
everything for which it has any use, participation, or interaction.
There is no value in the stupid argument, advanced by those who lack
true philosophical principles, that a thing which is touched by something
else does not itself perceive that. Indeed, in one sense, this is true if we are
distinguishing between species or individuals, but it is false if we are distinguishing
one bodily part from another. For example, if someone injures
a finger or pricks one part of the body with a pin, the whole body is immediately
disturbed everywhere and not just in that part where the injury
occurred.
And so, since every soul is in contact with the universal soul, it is not possible
to find in this case the same effects which occur in bodies which do
not mutually penetrate into each other. Rather, for spiritual substances, a
different comparison is needed. For instance, if innumerable lamps are lit,
they all act together as though they were one light, and no one light
impedes or reflects or excludes another. The same thing happens when
many voices are diffused through the same air, or if many visible rays, to
use the common saying, spread out to reveal the same visible whole. All
these rays pass through the same medium, and while some move in straight
lines and others obliquely, they do not interfere with each other. In the same
way, innumerable spirits and souls, when spread out through the same
space, do not interfere with each other such that the diffusion of one would
affect the diffusion of an infinity of others.
This power belongs not only to the soul but also to certain accidents,
like sound, light and vision. The reason is that the whole soul is located
in the whole body and in every part of the body, and that the whole soul
5 This is Thesis XV in Bruno’s Theses de magia. See his Opera latine conscripta, III, 466.
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