 His doctrine of minims (see  Section 3)  explained the individual soul’s survival of bodily death. A soul was an incorporeal centre of animation governing the atoms conglomerating around it as the body grew and flourished. As the body grew older and decayed, the soul contracted its powers inwardly, eventually dissociating itself altogether from the body. It remained, nevertheless, an individual centre of animation capable of forming another body. Insofar, however, as it was disengaged from dimension, it “expanded” seamlessly into the infinite space of the universe. Or rather, given that infinite space was replete with souls, it expanded into the aether or spiritus diffused throughout space. Hence, in the Kabbala of the Pegasean Horse (1585), one of his most irreligious works, Bruno described an ass who, on his death, passed into the underworld and noticed there “that all spirits are from the sea of one spirit and that all return to that spirit” (BOI II, 450–451). This interpretation of spiritus as the unity of discrete individual souls, distinct from the undifferentiated unity of the Universal Soul, conformed with Bruno’s elemental theory and definition of space in relation to Universal Matter (see  Section 3). Scripture, as always, supported his view.