In the second place, the atom or minimum is also a metaphysical [Greek: pou stô]; 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. [Sidenote: Uniqueness of all things.] [Sidenote: Sense and knowledge.] [Sidenote: Relativity.]