Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/159

 SPINOZA: PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 137 the cause only in part. A cause is termed adequate, when its effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived from it alone. The human mind, as a modus of thought, is active when it has adequate ideas ; all its passion consists in confused ideas, among which belong the affections pro- duced by external objects. The essence of the mind is thought ; volition is not only dependent on cognition, but at bottom identical with it. Descartes had already made the will the power of affirmation and negation. Spinoza advances a step further: the afifirmation cannot be separated from the idea affirmed, it is impossible to conceive a truth without in the same act affirming it, the idea involves its own affirmation. " Will and understanding are one and the same {W. prop. 49, cor.). For Spinoza moral activity is entirely resolved into cogni- tive activity. To the two stages of knowing, imaginatio d^n intcllectus, correspond two stages of willing — desire, which' is ruled by imagination, and volition, which is guide by reason. The passive emotions of sensuous desire are directed to perishable objects, the active, which spring from reason, have an eternal object — the knowledge of the truth, the intuition of God. For reason there are no distinctions of persons, — she brings men into concord and gives them a common end {lY.prop. 35-37,40), — and no distinctions of time (IV. prop. 62, 66), and in the active emotions, which are always good, no excess {VV.prop. 61). The passive emotions arise from confused ideas. They cease to be passions, when the confused ideas of the modi- fications of the body are transformed into clear ones ; as soon as we have clear ideas, we become active and cease to be slaves of desire. We master the emotions by gaining a clear knowledge of them. Now, an idea is clear when we cognize its object not as an individual thing, but in its connection, as a link in the causal chain, as necessary, and as a mode of God. The more the mind conceives things in their necessity, and the emotions in their reference to God, / the less it is passively subject to the emotions, the more power it attains over them : " Virtue is power " (IV. def. 8 ;' prop. 20, dem^. It is true, indeed, that one emotion can be conquered only by another stronger one, a passive emotion