α. Bruno passes over to this art from universal ideas which are given. Since namely one life, one understanding is in all things, Bruno had the dim hope of apprehending this universal understanding in the totality of its determinations, and of subsuming all things under it—of setting up a logical philosophy by its means, and making it applicable in all directions.[82] He says: The object of consideration therein is the universe, in so far as it enters into the relation of the true, the knowable and the rational. Like Spinoza he distinguishes between the intelligible thing of reason and the actual thing: As metaphysics has for object the universal thing, which is divided into substance and accident, so the chief matter is that there is a single and more universal art which knits together and compasses round the thing of reason and the actual thing, and recognizes them both as harmonizing with one another, so that the many, be they of what kind they may, are led back to simple unity.[83] β. For Bruno the principle in all this is the understanding generally: None other than the understanding whose activity extends beyond itself, which brings into existence the sensuous world. It is related to the illumination of the spirit as the sun is related to the eye: it relates therefore to a phenomenal manifold, illuminating this, not itself. The Other is the active understanding in itself, which is related to the objects of thought in their various classes, as the eye is to things visible.[84] The infinite form, the active understanding which dwells in reason, is the first, the principle, which develops; the process in some respects resembles what was met with in the Neo-Platonists. Bruno’s great endeavour is really now to apprehend and demonstrate the modes of organizing this active understanding. γ. This is presented more in detail as follows: To the pure truth itself, the absolute light, man approaches only; his Being is not absolute Being itself, which alone is the One and First. He rests only under the shadow of the Idea, whose purity is the light, but which at the same time partakes of the darkness. The light of substance emanates from this pure First Light, the light of accident emanates from the light of substance. This we met with also in Proclus (_supra_, Vol. II. p. 446) as the third moment in the first triad. This absolute principle in its unity is for Bruno the first matter, and the first act of this principle he names the original light (_actus primus lucis_). But substances and accidents, which are many, cannot receive the full light, they are therefore only included in the shadow of the light; in like manner the ideas also are only shadows thereof.[85] The development of Nature goes on from moment to moment; created things are only a shadow of the first principle, not the first principle itself.