Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/167

] produced by individual experience by bringing it into con nection with the idea of the whole. And the vital question which Spinoza himself prompts us to ask is how far and in what way this transformation is effected in the Spinozistic philosophy. There are two great steps in the transformation of know ledge by the idea of unity as that idea is conceived by Spinoza. The first step involves a change of the concep tion of individual finite things by which they lose their individuality, their character as independent substances, and come to be regarded as modes of the infinite. But secondly, this negation of the finite as such is not conceived as implying the negation of the distinction between mind and matter. Mind and matter still retain that absolute opposition which they had in the philosophy of Des Cartes, even after all limits have been removed. And therefore in order to reach the absolute unity, and transcend the Cartesian dualism, a second step is necessary, by which the independent substantiality of mind and matter is with drawn, and they are reduced into attributes of the one in finite substance. Let us examine these steps successively. The method by which the finite is reduced into a mode of the infinite has already been partially explained. Spinoza follows to its legitimate result the metaphysical or logical principles of Des Cartes and Malebranche. According to the former, as we have seen, the finite presupposes the infi nite, and, indeed, so far as it is real, it is identical with the infi nite. The infinite is absolute reality, because it is pure affir mation, because it is that which negationem nullam involvit. The finite is distinguished from it simply by its limit, i.e., by its wanting something which the infinite has. At this point Spinoza takes up the argument. If the infinite be the real, and the finite, so far as it is distinguished there from, the unreal, then the supposed substantiality or individuality of finite beings is an illusion. In itself the finite is but an abstraction, to which imagination has given an apparent independence. All limitation or determina tion is negative, and in order to apprehend positive reality, we must abstract from limits. By denying the negative, we reach the affirmative ; by annihilating finitude in our thought, and so undoing the illusory work of the imagina tion, we reach the indeterminate or unconditioned being which alone truly is. All division, distinction, and rela tion are but entia rationis. Imagination and abstraction can give to them, as they can give to mere negation and nothingness, &quot; a local habitation and a name,&quot; but they have no objective meaning, and in the highest knowledge, in the scientia intuitiva, which deals only with reality, they must entirely disappear. Hence to reach the truth as to matter, we must free ourselves from all such ideas as figure or number, measure or time, which imply the separation and relation of parts. Thus in his 50th letter, in answer to some question about figure, Spinoza says, &quot;to prove that figure is negation, and not anything positive, we need only consider that the whole of matter conceived indefinitely, or in its infinity, can have no figure; but that figure has a place only in finite or determinate bodies. He who says that he perceives figure, says only that he has before his mind a limited thing and the manner in which it is limited. But this limitation does not per tain to a thing in its esse, but contrariwise in its non- esse, (i.e., it signifies, not that some positive quality belongs to the thing, but that something is wanting to it). Since, then, figure is but limitation, and limitation is but negation, we cannot say that figure is anything.&quot; The same kind of reasoning is elsewhere (Epist. 29) applied to solve the difficulties connected with the divisibility of space or exten sion. Really, according to Spinoza, extension is indivi sible, though modally it is divisible. In other words, parts ad infinitum may be taken in space by the abstracting mind, but these parts have no separate existence. You cannot rend space, or take one part of it out of its connec tion with other parts. Hence arises the impossibility of asserting either that there is an infinite number of parts in space, or that there is not. The solution of the anti nomy is that neither alternative is true. There are many things quce nullo numero explicari possunt, and to understand these things we must abstract altogether from the idea of number. The contradiction arises entirely from the application of that idea to the infinite. We cannot say that space has a finite number of parts, for every finite space must be conceived as itself included in infinite space. Yet, on the other hand, an infinite number is an ab surdity; it is a number .which is not a number. We escape the difficulty only when we see that number is a category in applicable to the infinite, and this to Spinoza means that it is not applicable to reality, that it is merely an abstraction, or ens imaginationis. The same method which solves the difficulties connected with the nature of matter is applied to mind. Here also we reach the reality, or thing in itself, by abstracting from all determination. All conceptions, therefore, that involve the independence of the finite, all conceptions of good, evil, freedom, and responsibility disappear. When Blyenburg accuses Spinoza of making God the author of evil, Spinoza answers that evil is an ens rationis that has no existence for God. &quot; Evil is not something positive, but a state of privation, and that not in relation to the divine, but simply in relation to the human intelligence. It is a con ception that arises from that generalizing tendency of our minds, which leads us to bring all beings that have the external form of man under one and the same definition, and to suppose that they are all equally. capable of the highest perfection we can deduce from such a definition. When, therefore, we find an individual whose works are not consistent with this perfection, straightway we judge that he is deprived of it, or that he is diverging from his own nature, a judgment we should never make if we had not thus referred him to a general definition, and supposed him to be possessed of the nature it defines. But since God does not know things abstractly, or through such general definitions, and since there cannot be more reality in things than the divine intelligence and power bestows upon them, it manifestly follows that the defect which belongs to finite things, cannot be called a privation in relation to the intelligence of God, but only in relation to the intelligence of man.&quot; Thus evil and good vanish when we consider things sub specie ceternitatis, because they are categories that imply a certain independence in finite beings. For the idea of a moral standard implies a relation of man to the absolute good, a relation of the finite to the infinite, in which the finite is not simply lost and absorbed in the infinite. But Spinoza can admit no such relation. In the presence of the infinite the finite disappears, for it exists only by abstraction and negation ; or it seems to us to exist, not because of what is present to our thoughts, but because of what is not present to them. As we think ourselves free because we are conscious of our actions but not of their causes, so we think that we .have an individual existence only because the infinite intelligence is not wholly but only partially realized in us. But as we cannot really divide space, though we can think of a part of it, so neither can we place any real division in the divine intelligence. In this way we can understand how Spinoza is able to speak of the human mind as part of the infinite thought of God, and of the human body as part of the infinite extension of God, while yet he asserts that the divine substance is simple, and not 