 The natural universe, then, is the whole or contracted maximum collectively constituted by the many beings in space and time. Nicholas proposes the quasi-Anaxagorean slogan that “each thing is in each thing: quodlibet in quolibet” to emphasize that the individual beings or parts are no less “contracted” images of the whole created universe. Just as God is present to each creature that stands as a contracted image of the divine, so the universe as a macrocosm is present to each creature or constitutive part as microcosm. In that way, each natural thing is an image of the collective whole. But since this collectivity is made up of interrelated parts, each thing is also the totality of its connections with everything else. “Each thing is in each thing” because each is an image reflecting the oneness of the whole and thus of all other individuals that are the interrelated parts of that whole.