Cause Principle Unity

On magic
Finally, it must be consciously accepted and firmly asserted that all
things are full of spirits, souls, divine power, and God or divinity, and that
the whole of intelligence and the whole soul is everywhere, although they
do not do everything everywhere. The poet has taken this idea from the
teachings of Pythagoras.
To begin: the heavens, the earth, the water wastes,
the lucent globe of the moon, the sun, the stars,
exist through inward spirit. Their total mass
by mind is permeated: hence their motion.
From mind and spirit comes life – of man, of beast,
of bird, of monsters under the foam-flecked seas. 21
The same message is contained in the sacred mysteries received by all
people. Thus, in the Psalms and in the Book of Wisdom, it is said, ‘The
spirit of God has filled the whole earth and everything which it contains’,
and elsewhere, ‘I fill the heavens and the earth’. 22
A material substance differs from the substance of the mind and soul and
sublime spirit as follows. The universal body is contained as a whole in the
whole universe, but the spiritual substance is contained as a whole in each
part. Thus, it exists everywhere as a whole and conveys everywhere an image
of the whole, sometimes more clearly and sometimes more obscurely,
sometimes in one way and sometimes in many ways. Thus, the entire
nature of its form and light is reflected as a whole by all particles of matter,
just as the universal body is reflected by all of matter.
This can clearly be seen in the case of a large mirror which reflects one
image of one thing, but if it has been broken into a thousand pieces, each
one of the pieces still reflects the whole image. Again, when different parts
or bodies of water are separated from the whole or from the universal ocean
by Amphitrite, 23 they have different names and properties; when they later
flow together into one ocean, they have the same name and properties.
Thus, if all the spirits and parts of air were to flow into one ocean, they
would produce one soul, which elsewhere is innumerably multiplied. As a
result, the philosophers say that in the original state of things there was one
matter, one spirit, one light, one soul and one intellect.
21 Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 724–9. Translation is by Frank O. Copley in Virgil, The Aeneid (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1965) 137.
22 Wisdom, 1:7; Jeremiah, 23:24. Bruno’s reference to the Psalms is apparently an error.
23 Amphitrite was the goddess of the ocean and the wife of Poseidon. For Bruno, she represented the
maternal origins of all things.
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