SPINOZA, BENEDICT. 



SPINOZA, BENEDICT. 



649 



adhered aa closely aa possible to Spinoza's barbarous but energetic 

 and expressive Latin) is rightly understood, and their signification 

 seized, which a very slight etudy of their development will assist, 

 they will appear as some of the most curious positions of speculative 

 philosophy. 



Two substances, having different attributes, have nothing in 

 common with each, other ; hence one cannot be the cause of the 

 other, since one may be conceived without involving the conception of 

 the other; but an effect cannot be conceived without involving a 

 knowledge of the cause (per Axiom 4). This must be understood .is 

 meaning a complete conception of the effect, which necessarily depends 

 on a complete conception of the cause, not that the relation of cause 

 and effect itself depends on our conception of them. Two or more 

 things cannot be distinguished except by the diversity of their attri- 

 butes, or by that of their modes. For there is nothing out of 

 ourselves except substances and their modes. But there cannot 

 be two substances of the same attribute, since there would be 

 no means of distinguishing them except their modes or affections ; 

 and every substance, being prior in order of time to its modes, may be 

 considered independently of them ; hence two such substances could 

 not be distinguished at all. One substance therefore cannot be the cause 

 of another, for they cannot have the same attribute, that is, anything 

 in common with another. Every substance is therefore self-caused ; 

 that is, its existence is implied in its essence. It is also necessarily 

 infinite, for it would otherwise be terminated by some other of the 

 same nature and necessarily existing; but two substances cannot have 

 the same attribute, and therefore cannot both possess necessary 

 exigence. The more existence anything possesses, the more attri- 

 butes are to be ascribed to it. This follows from the definition of an 

 attribute. The more attributes we ascribe to anything therefore, the 

 more we are forced to believe in its existence ; and from this is 

 derived the existence of God. God, or a substance consisting of 

 infinite attributes, each expressing an eternal and infinite power, 

 necessarily exists, for such an essence involves existence. If anything 

 does not exist, a cause must be given for its non-existence. If only 

 twenty men exist, an extrinsic reason must be given for this number, 

 since the definition of man does not involve it or any number. 



Thei'e can be only one substance, God. Whatever is, is in God, and 

 without God nothing can be conceived. For he is the sole substance, 

 and modes cannot be conceived without substance ; but besides modes 

 and substance nothing exists. God is not corporeal, but body is a 

 mode of God, and therefore uncreated. God is the cause of all things, 

 and that immanently, but not transiently. He is the efficient cause of 

 their essence as well as their existence, since otherwise their essence 

 might be conceived without God, which is absurd. Thus all particular 

 and concrete things are only the accidents or affections of God's attri- 

 butes, or modes in which they are determinately expressed. God's 

 power is the same as his essence ; for he is the necessary cause both 

 of himself and of all things, and it is as impossible for us to conceive 

 him not to act as not to exist. God viewed in the attributes of his 

 infinite substance is the same as nature, that is, to use his fine and 

 subtle expression, the ' natura naturans ; ' but in another sense, 

 nature, or ' natura naturata,' expresses only the modes under which 

 the divine attributes appear. An intelligence considered in act, even 

 though infinite, should be referred to ' natura naturata;' for intelli- 

 gence in this sense is but a mode of thinking, which can only be con- 

 ceived by means of our conception of thinking in the abstract, that is, 

 by an attribute of God. The faculty of thinking, as distinguished 

 from the act, as also those of desiring, loving, and the rest, have no 

 existence. This is an anticipation of Hume's doctrine. There is, 

 says Spinoza, an infinite power of thinking, which, considered in its 

 infinity, embraces all nature as its object, and of which the thoughts 

 proceed according to the order of nature, being its correlative ideas. 

 This agrees with Plato, who says a law of nature is an idea in its 

 objective reality ; that is, idea and law (in this sense) are correlai ions. 

 This opinion is indeed as old as philosophy itself, and is found in 

 every country. The universe is taken as the manifestation of the 

 Deity; not, as many suppose, as the Deity himself, but, to use the 

 words of Cousin, " the Deity passing into activity, but not exhausted 

 by the act." (' Cours de Phil. Intro.') It is owing to the abstract and 

 subtle nature of Spinoza's method that his system has been so often 

 misunderstood. The positions, for example, which we have set down 

 require patient meditation and an acquaintance with metaphysical 

 language to be intelligible, and some of them are open to the grossest 

 misinterpretations. Thus Spinoza is usually accused of atheism, 

 while not only are his doctrines found in St. Augustin and the 

 Greek writers, but all the modern German philosophy, from Kant 

 downwards, owns him as its master. 



Spinoza does not confound God with the material universe ; his 

 words distinctly absolve him from such a charge : " God is the 

 identity of the natura naturans and the natura uaturata " (natura 

 naturans et natura naturata in identitate Deus est). God and nature 

 are not two distinct entities, but one living whole. God is the " idea 

 immanens," the true spiritual existence, the living principle which 

 permeates the whole. The material universe is only one phasis of 

 his infinite attributes, namely, extension; but Spinoza rigidly and 

 universally teaches that the One Infinite Substance has two infinite 

 attributes, extension and thought. Extension is visible thought, and 



BIOG. DIV. VOL. V. 



thought is invisible extension. The use of the word substance, by 

 which he signifies existence, the 'prima materia' of the schoolmen, 

 has led to much misunderstanding, and his adversaries have replied 

 as if he meant by substance what we express by matter and body. 

 When Spinoza therefore says that God is the infinite substance, he 

 does not mean the material universe, which is only one attribute of 

 existence, namely, extension ; he simply gives the Platonic expression 

 (rb ijv Kal TO iruv), the unique conception of the All. When Spinoza 

 asserts thought to be the other infinite attribute of substance, he 

 follows Parmenides, of whom Hitter says, " Thought appeared to him 

 to exhibit merely one aspect of the All." (' Geschichte der Philos.,' 

 vol. i., p. 460.) It should be observed that the attribute of thought 

 is not proved. He demonstrates the necessity for extension by saying 

 that we cannot conceive substance without conceiving it as extended ; 

 but as we can conceive substance without thought, we may demand a 

 demonstration of the necessity of this attribute, which Spinoza has 

 not given. In other words, from the definition of substance, extension 

 follows as a necessary attribute; but in the definition of substance, 

 there is no necessity involved for thought as an attribute. 



God then, according to Spinoza, is the "idea immanen?," the funda- 

 mental fact and reality of all existence, the only power, the only 

 eternity. What we name the universe is only the visible aspect, the 

 realised form of his existence. All concrete things change and perish; 

 they are only modes of the infinite Being, who alone remains 

 unchangeable. It is a gross error (the origin of which rnay be traced 

 to the misconception of his word ' substance ') to assert, as it often 

 has been, and on which Bayle founds his refutation of Spinoza, that 

 this system is pantheistic, in the common acceptation of the term.! 

 that it identifies all things with God, and consequently that every 

 concrete thing is a part of God. Such a conception is purely material 

 and superficial. Schelliug has well refuted it : " God is that which 

 exists in itself, and is comprehended from itself alone ; the finite is 

 that which is necessarily in another, and can only be comprehended 

 from that other. Things therefore are not only in degree, or through 

 their limitations, different from God, but Mo genere. Whatever their 

 relation to God on other points, they are absolutely divided from him 

 on this, that they exist in another, and he is self-existent or original. 

 From this difference it is manifest that all individual finite things 

 taken together cannot constitute God ; since that which is in its nature 

 derived cannot be one with its original, any more than the single 

 points of a circumference taken together can constitute the circum- 

 ference, which as a whole is of necessity prior to them in idea." 

 (' Philosophische Schriften,' p. 104.) 



We have not space to go through the ideological and moral parts of 

 Spinoza's ' Ethics,' as we have done the metaphysical, but a few o 

 the more important propositions may be usefully quoted. 



The mind does not know itself, except so far as it receives ideas of 

 the affections of the body. But these ideas of sensation do not give 

 an adequate knowledge of an external body, nor of the human body 

 itself. The mind therefore has but an inadequate and confused notion 

 of anything so long as it judges only by fortuitous perceptions ; but 

 it may attain it clear and distinct by internal reflection and comparison. 

 This is the doctrine of Hobbes and Locke explicitly stated. No posi- 

 tive idea can be false ; for there can be no such idea without God, and 

 all ideas in God are true, that is, correspond with their object. Falsity 

 therefore consists in that privation of truth which arises from inade- 

 quate ideas ; an adequate idea being one which contains no incompati- 

 bility, without regard to the reality of its supposed correlative object. 

 Error is imperfect truth. It seizes one aspect of the truth to the 

 neglect of the rest. 



All bodies agree in some things ; and of these all men have adequate 

 ideas ; hence common notions which all possess, such as extension, 

 duration, number. The human mind however can only form, a certain 

 number of distinct images at the same time; if this number be 

 exceeded they become confused : and as the mind perceives distinctly 

 just so many images as can be formed in the body ; when these are 

 confused the mind also will perceive them confusedly, and will com- 

 prehend them under one attribute, as man, horse, dog, &c. ; the mind 

 perceiving a number of such images, but not their differences of 

 stature, colours, &c. Thus are universal ideas formed : first, by 

 singulars, which the senses represent confusedly and imperfectly; 

 secondly, by signs, that is, by associating the remembrances of things 

 with words, which Spinoza calls imagination ; thirdly, by reason ; and 

 fourthly, by intuitive knowledge. Knowledge of the first kind is the 

 source of error; the second and third are necessarily true. It is 

 important to distinguish images from words. Those who think ideas 

 consist in images which they perceive, fancy that ideas of which they 

 can form no image are arbitrary. They look at ideas as pictures on a 

 tablet, and hence do not understand that an idea, as such, involves an 

 affirmation or negation. And those who confound words with ideas 

 fancy they can will something contrary to what they perceive, because 

 they can affirm or deny it in words. , But thought does not involve 

 the conception of extension ; and therefore an idea, or mode of 

 thought, neither consists in images nor in words, the essence of which 

 consists in corporeal motions not involving the conception of thought. 



Men can have an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite 

 being of God, but cannot imagine God as they can bodies; and hence 

 have not that clear perception of his being which they have of that of 



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