COMMON BASIS OF EMPIRICISM AND RATIONALISM 43 



According to the latter, substance is clearly the only simple con- 

 cept. But in one of Spinoza's letters to Oldenburg the very 

 same definition is applied to attribute. "You must observe that 

 by attribute I mean everything, which is conceived through itself 

 and in itself, so that the conception of it does not involve the 

 conception of anything else. For instance, extension is conceived 

 through itself and in itself, but motion is not." 1 The tremendous 

 gap between the two standpoints is covered by the much dis- 

 cussed but perhaps inexplicable formula: "By attribute, I mean 

 that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of 

 substance." 2 



So much, then, by way of parenthesis. We turn now to other 

 considerations connected with the general doctrine of the exter- 

 nality, and implied unreality, of relations. 



In the mind of the rationalist, this scepticism of the relation 

 had much to do with the persistence of that gap, which, as has 

 been pointed out, ever lay for him between the universal and the 

 particular, the necessary and the contingent. This becomes most 

 strikingly evident when we inquire into the grounds of his rejec- 

 tion of the senses as evidence of reality; for, in a word, it is the 

 relativity of sense-perception that is for him its fatal weakness. 

 There is a remarkable passage in Descartes's second Meditation, 

 which may be taken as illustrative of the common attitude of 

 the whole school. In this passage he proposes the examination 

 of a piece of wax in order to ascertain what we can really be said 

 to know about it. Apparently we know it through our senses 

 as white, hard, cold, fragrant, etc. But change its surroundings, 

 place it near the fire, and all this changes. It loses its color and 

 fragrance, and becomes a shapeless mass of soft, warm substance. 

 Yet, although it loses every quality which we observe in it, we 

 do not hesitate to call it the same wax. These sense-qualities, 

 then, which change with change of conditions, and hence are 



^Letter II. 



^Ethics, Book I, Def, IV. For specific illustration of the difficulties inherent 

 in Spinoza's double standpoint, see Tschirnhausen's last letter to Spinoza, with the 

 latter's reply. 



