On the Threefold Minimum and Measure

Just as the monad monas; the unit "one," which Bruno views as the metaphysical source of all numbers and existence is every number; for through its whole body
it shines forth, and every succeeding number is believed to come from it.
So the substance of things varies in nothing from this; indeed,
it is utterly immortal, which no power creates,
nor destroys, harms, diminishes, or increases:
Truly, all things created are born from this and are dissolved back into it;
from this, things that grow are increased, and having been thinned out,
they fail back into this, revisiting their own limits and their origin.

The Minimum is the substance of things insofar as it is distinguished from the category of quantity, but in terms of bodily magnitudes, it is the principle of quantity. It is, I say, the matter or element, the efficient cause, the end, and the whole; it is the point in magnitudes of one and two dimensions. The atom is understood in a "privative" sense meaning the smallest part of a body that cannot be divided further in bodies which are primary parts. The atom is understood in a "negative" sense meaning something that is indivisible because the whole of it is present in every part, like a sound or a soul in those things which are "whole in the whole" and in every individual part, such as in a voice, the soul, and things of that kind. The monad is understood "rationally" in numbers, and "essentially" in all things. Hence, the Maximum is nothing other than the Minimum. Take away the minimum from every side, and there will be nothing anywhere. Take away the monad from every side, and there will be no number anywhere, nothing countable, and no one to count. Hence, the "Best and Greatest" original: "optimus maximus"; a traditional title for God—the substance of substances and the very being by which things exist—is celebrated by the name of the Monad.

¶ 22 The subject and object of Nature and Art meaning human skill or science—composition and resolution in both action and contemplation—arises from the minimum, consists in the minimum, and is reduced back to the minimum. ¶ 26 Nor is it necessary for there to be many kinds and shapes of minimums, just as there need not be many kinds of letters for innumerable species of words to be composed from them. Although for Democritus and Leucippus ancient Greek philosophers who first proposed that the world is made of atoms they consist of only one type of shape, the diversity of forms necessarily follows from spherical atoms due to the differences in the void and the solid, and their various positions and orders. For us, however, a simple "vacuum" empty space along with atoms is not enough; for there must be a certain matter by which they are glued together. But perhaps those thinkers also took "vacuum" to mean "air," though we do not believe that to be the case.

¶ 31 Number is an "accident" a non-essential quality or property of the monad, and the monad is the essence of number; likewise, composition is an accident of the atom, and the atom is the essence of the composite. The monad is the principle of number along with the number itself, just as the atom is the principle of magnitude along with the magnitude itself. These are, in a reductive or primary sense, in the category of quantity and are accidents of substance—which is the "antecedent monad," truly and in itself the minimum principle of magnitude, within which all things exist, rather than out of which they are made. And in this monad, all things are one, just as in the truth of the atom all atoms are one according to their species, even if they are many according to their number. Therefore, to one looking at bodies, the substance of all things is the smallest body, or the atom; but to one looking at the line and the plane, the minimum is the point.