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