of individuality. Endlessness belongs to the universe as well as to God,
only its endlessness is not an absolute one, beyond space and time, but
weakened and concrete, namely unlimited extension in space and unending
duration in time. Similarly, the universe is unity, yet not a unity
absolutely above multiplicity and diversity, but one which is divided into
many members and obscured thereby. Even the individual is infinite in a
certain sense; for, in its own way, it bears in itself all that is, it
mirrors the whole world from its limited point of view, is an abridged,
compressed representation of the universe. As the members of the body, the
eye, the arm, the foot, interact in the closest possible way, and no one
of them can dispense with the rest, so each thing is connected with each,
different from it and yet in harmony with it, so each contains all the
others and is contained by them. All is in all, for all is in the universe
and in God, as the universe and God in all. In a still higher degree man is
a microcosm (_parvus mundus_), a mirror of the All, since he not merely,
like other beings, actually has in himself all that exists, but also has
a knowledge of this richness, is capable of developing it into conscious
images of things. And it is just this which constitutes the perfection of
the whole and of the parts, that the higher is in the lower, the cause in
the effect, the genus in the individual, the soul in the body, reason
in the senses, and conversely. To perfect, is simply to make active a
potential possession, to unfold capacities and to elevate the unconscious
into consciousness. Here we have the germ of the philosophy of Bruno and of
Leibnitz.

As we have noticed a struggle between two opposite tendencies, one
dualistic and Christian, one pantheistic and modern, in the theology of
Nicolas, so at many other points a conflict between the mediaeval and the
modern view of the world, of which our philosopher is himself unconscious,
becomes evident to the student. It is impossible to follow out the details