On the Threefold Minimum and Measure

The body is a compacted thing; only the order, place,
and function of its parts are ever changed, while the simple
substance of things remains entirely unmoved.
Furthermore, no composite thing is true substance;
30 but rather that which you compose—the ultimate part of composites
around which you build yourself. Thus you will see
that you are in no way inferior to the underlying body,
(which is the first thing, falls back into nothing prior, and is perennial,
integrating things now here, now there, just as now your limbs—
which you move—serve you in a certain and ordered sequence.
For (as we have shown at length in our Physics original: "Physicis"; likely referring to his work De Physico auditu or his general lectures on natural philosophy) from here comes
the origin of life, and the ripening of our physical mass.
Just as the expansion of the center unfolds itself into a great circle,
the architect-spirit, original: "spiritus architectus"; the soul viewed as the master builder that organizes matter according to a divine or natural blueprint having gathered atoms from all sides,
40 governs itself entirely by being infused, right up until
the time when, the numbers being fulfilled, or the thread
of the body broken, it withdraws itself into the center, and from there
it introduces itself anew through the wide world; and this we
are accustomed to call death; because we proceed into an unknown light; and although
it is granted to few to perceive how this living of ours
is a perishing; and that to die in this way is sometimes to rise to true life:
for not all climb out of this body,
for they also fall into the enclosures of a greater depth,
driven by their own weight, lacking the divine flame. Bruno suggests that souls lacking "divine flame" or intellectual light may sink into lower forms of existence rather than ascending.
50 Therefore the mind, by clustering bodies around the minimal atoms, original: "minima... tomorum corpora"; refers to the indivisible points or atoms that form the basis of his cosmology
wraps itself as if in a blind order within them,
shaping limbs for itself as if in a fatal prison,
so that soon this whole body may diffuse itself into everything;
and again from the whole and the all, the spirit, having been lulled to sleep,
migrates back, stirred from the expanded thread into the heart: