 In this way learned ignorance recognizes that the natural universe itself, as a contracted image of God, has a physical center that can be anywhere and a circumference that is nowhere. That is why Nicholas characterized the natural universe as a contracted maximum or “privative” infinite while God remains the “negative” infinite or absolute maximum. This means that the universe merely lacks set physical bounds or limits, while God has no ontological limits in being all that can possibly be. This enables the “infinite” universe, as the whole constituted by all creatures, to be an image of the divine oneness, but only in a contracted or attenuated fashion.