terms and words; these are analysed by another science into syllables and letters; these by the mathematician into lines and points. Thus every science has its own (relative) minimum. Only one _minimum_ is _absolutely_ so named,--God as the monad of monads. It is to be noted that the relativity of the monad is dependent upon the origin of its conception, in the conditions of knowledge; it is because quantity is universal that a minimum is necessary, and it is because quantity differs in kind, in each subject of knowledge,--because it is, in scholastic phrase, equivocally applied in the different cases,--that the minima differ from one another. The minimal number is no measure of the minimal body nor of the geometrical figure, and the numbers which are in use among men are not those which may be employed by other and higher rational beings. Thus, even number itself is a relative determination; ten horses, said Bruno, are not _really_ equal to ten men, but only _conventionally_. The ancient atomism upon which Bruno founded his theory was, at any rate in its traditional rendering, frankly materialistic. It admitted nothing but atoms and the void, all things else being dependent upon the _composition_ of atoms, which itself, and all that results from it, is merely an appearance to sense, without corresponding reality in nature. All physical operations were explained by mechanical arrangement and movement of the atoms. The method which was pursued thus unscientifically, without consciousness of the extent of its validity, modern atomic theory has followed scientifically, with full comprehension of its bearings, and perhaps without due consideration of its limits. Bruno tells us that he had at one time been an adherent of Democritus' atomic theory, but on reflection had been unable to rest satisfied with his materialistic account of the nature of things. In this case also he showed himself unable to get rid of the ties which bound all the thought of his time--even that thought which most believed itself to be free.