Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/166

154 the second order, and we cannot stop short of the idea of &quot; all nature as one individual whose parts vary through an infinite number of modes, without change of the whole individual.&quot; At first we think of pieces of matter as independent individuals, either because we can picture them separately, or because they preserve a certain proportion or relation of parts through their changes. But on further consideration, these apparent substances sink into modes, each of which is dependent on all the others. All nature is bound together by necessary law, and not an atom could be other than it is without the change of the whole world. Hence it is only in the whole world that there is any true individuality or substance. And the same principle applies to the minds of men. Their individuality is a mere semblance caused by our abstraction from their con ditions. Isolate the individual man, and he will not display the character of a thinking being at all. His whole spiritual life is bound up with his relations to other minds, past and present. He has such a life, only in and through that universal life of which he is so infinitesimal a part that his own contribution to it is as good as nothing. &quot; Vis qua homo in existendo per sever at limitata est, et a potentia causarum externarum infinite superatur.&quot; What can be called his own? His body is a link in a cyclical chain of movement which involves all the matter of the world, and which as a whole remains without change through all. His mind is a link in a great movement of thought, which makes him the momentary organ and expression of one of its phases. His very consciousness of self is marred by a false abstraction, above which he must rise ere he can know himself as he really is. &quot; Let us imagine,&quot; says Spinoza in his fifteenth letter, &quot; a little worm living in blood which has vision enough to discern the particles of blood, lymph, &c., and reason enough to observe how one particle is repelled by another with which it comes into contact, or communicates a part of its motion to it. Such a worm would live in the blood as we do in this part of the universe, and would regard each particle of it, not as a part, but as a whole, nor could it know how all the parts are influenced by the universal nature of the blood, and are obliged to accommodate them selves to each other as is required by that nature, so that they co-operate together according to a fixed law. For if we suppose that there are no causes outside of the blood .which could communicate new motions to it, and no space beyond the blood, nor any other bodies to which its par ticles could transfer their motion, it is certain that the blood as a whole would always maintain its present state, and its particles would suffer no other variations than those which may be inferred from the given relation of the motion of blood to lymph, chyle, &c. And thus in that case the blood would require to be considered always as a whole and not as a part. But since there are many other causes which influence the laws of the nature of blood, and are in turn influenced thereby, other motions and other variations must arise in the blood which are not due to the proportion of motion in its constituents but also to the relation between that motion and external causes. And therefore we cannot consider the blood as a whole, but only as a part of a greater whole.&quot; &quot; Now we can think, and indeed ought to think, of all natural bodies in the same manner in which we have thought of this blood, for all bodies the surrounded by other bodies, and reciprocally determine and are deter mined by them, to exist and operate in a fixed and definite way, so as to preserve the same ratio of motion and rest in the whole universe. Hence it follows that every body, in so far as it exists under a certain definite modification, ought to be considered as merely a part of the whole uni verse, which agrees with its whole, and thereby is in intimate union with all the other parts ; and since the nature of the universe is not limited like that of the blood, but absolutely infinite, it is clear that by this nature with its infinite powers, the parts are modified in an infinite number of ways, and compelled to pass through an infinity of variations. Moreover, when I think of the universe as a substance, I conceive of a still closer union of each part with the whole ; for, as I have elsewhere shown, it is the nature of substance to be infinite, and therefore every single part belongs to the nature of the corporeal substance, so that apart therefrom it neither can exist nor be con ceived. And as to the human mind, I think of it also as of part of nature, for I think of nature as having in it an infinite power of thinking, which, as infinite, contains in itself the idea of all nature, and whose thoughts run parallel with all existence.&quot; From this point of view it is obvious that our knowledge of things cannot be real and adequate, except in so far as it is determined by the idea of the whole, and proceeds from the whole to the parts. A knowledge that proceeds from part to part must always be imperfect; it must remain external to its object, it must deal in abstractions or mere entia rationis, which it may easily be led to mistake for realities. Hence Spinoza, like Plato, distinguishes reason whose movement is regressive (from effect to cause, from variety to unity) from scientia intuitiva, whose movement is progressive, which &quot; proceeds from the &quot;adequate idea of certain of God s attributes to an adequate knowledge of the nature of things.&quot; The latter alone deserves to be called science in the highest sense of the term. For in order that our mind may correspond to the exemplar of nature, it must develop all its ideas from the idea that represents the origin and source of nature, so that that idea may appear as the source of all other ideas.&quot; The regressive mode of knowledge has its highest value in preparing for the progressive. The knowledge of the finite, ere it can become perfectly adequate, must be absorbed and lost in the knowledge of the infinite. In a remarkable passage in the Ethics, Spinoza declares that the defect of the common consciousness of men lies not so much in their ignorance, either of the infinite or of the finite, as in their incapacity for bringing the two thoughts together, so as to put the latter in its proper relation to the former. All are ready to confess that God is the cause both of the existence and of the nature of things created, but they do not realize what is involved in this confession and hence they treat created things as if they were substances, that is, as if they were Gods. &quot; Thus while they are contemplating finite things, they think of nothing less than of the divine nature; and again when they turn to consider the divine nature, they think of no thing less than of their former fictions on which they have built up the knowledge of finite things, as if these things could contribute nothing to our understanding of the divine nature. Hence it is not wonderful that they are always contradicting themselves.&quot; As Spinoza says else where, it belongs to the very nature of the human mind to know God, for unless we know God, we could know nothing else. The idea of the absolute unity is involved in the idea of every particular thing, yet the generality of men, deluded by sense and imagination, are unable to bring this implication into clear consciousness, and hence their knowledge of God does not modify their view of the finite. It is the business of philosophy to correct this defect, to transform our conceptions of the finite by relating it to the infinite, to complement and complete the partial knowledge 