 The universe was perfect. It could not be otherwise. It was, essentially, a bodily manifestation of God. Nothing in the universe, however “mean”, was “unconducive to the integrity and perfection of what is excellent”. There was “nothing that is bad for some things in some place that is not good and optimal for something elsewhere” (BOL I.3, 272). Philosophers through the ages had said much the same, as had scholastic authors. “The death of a fly”, wrote Thomas Aquinas (Super Sententiis, lib. 1, d. 39, q. 2 a. 2 co.) “is sustenance for a spider”. Then Thomas added a qualification. Creatures nobler than the irrational animals, for example, human beings, have a will, which, the more closely it cleaved to God, was “the more free from the necessity of natural causes” (ibid.). The cosmos provided the setting for human beings to demonstrate that they merited everlasting salvation. For Bruno, however, they were, no less than anything else, transient modes or “corruptible substances”, in essence, “accidents” of the One Being (BOI I, 664, 729; II, 125, 181–182). They were, as for Spinoza (Ethics, pt IV, prop. 4), part of nature, not a privileged species for which, as Christian doctrine maintained, nature had been created.