212 APPENDICES 



necessity. '2 3 Concerning metaphysical necessity, we have the 

 following note which Taine inserted in his copy of Spinoza: 



^Spinoza's fundamental error is that of having destroyed the 

 world. At bottom, he absorbs it into God. His philosophy leads to 

 this proposition that particular things are distinct only in com- 

 parison with the spirit and not in themselves.'24 



Obviously, rehabilitation of 'the world' would have to be accom- 

 plished by means of the methods of the sciences. 



A second criticism of Spinoza was contained in the characteriza- 

 tion of the world as passing through 'an infinite series of finite and 

 progressive actions'. Here we detect the impact of evolutionary 

 and Hegelian philosophies, whose emphasis was on development: 

 'In Spinoza, movement lacks a cause. The prime mover of 

 Aristotle does not exist.'^s The distinction between a static and a 

 dynamic universe was correlated with a further distinction be- 

 tween the absolute and the infinite; the world ('whose life is pre- 

 cisely this movement which causes new developments to issue 

 perpetually from the womb of substance') ^6 is plural, temporal, a 

 never-ending process. The very affirmation of absolute substance 

 limits its existence, 'reduces it to fragments and makes it fall into 

 time and into extension, which is the determination and the 

 poorest development of substance' ^^ — whereas, for Spinoza, 

 extension is one of the infinite attributes of God-Substance. Thus, 

 another fundamental error of Spinoza's Ethics was that 



'. . . he has given to the mode of existence which he adopts, at 

 once the multiplicity of the world and the eternity of God. But 

 multiplicity can only exist through succession, which, developing 

 the essence, constitutes superior degrees of Being, for example. 

 Extension, and thus permits the existence and the coexistence 

 of distinct individuals. . . . The spinozistic world does not 

 develop.' 28 



These distinctions, of causal versus logical necessity and of a 

 dynamic infinite versus a static absolute, had been made within 

 the framework of rationalistic, deductive procedure; but in the 

 autumn of 1849, ^^er the completion of his freshman 'Notes', 

 Taine began to realize the necessity for a radical revision of his 

 method. In the 'Notes', he had written a paraphrase of Spinoza's 

 opening definition of 'that which is self-caused': 'For one calls 

 necessary that which the Reason is incapable of not conceiving'. 29 



