Page:Journal of Speculative Philosophy Volume 16.djvu/263

256 something else. If the third and fourth are accepted, this latter must be necessarily denied, unless we hold that there exists something besides substance and mode, which is contradictory to the first and second axioms. The similar contradiction between the two former and the sixth has been sufficiently brought out in the scholium to our last proposition.

It would not be much better than a waste of time to follow Spinoza through his other Parts and show that in every case his apparent reconciliation of the finite and the infinite is brought about either by the introduction of the thing to be accounted for, or that it is contradictory to some other part of his system, or both. The clew is now in the possession of the reader, and any one who wishes to, may develop it at length.

We wish, however, to simply direct attention to a few points in Part Second, "De Mente." Axiom fifth of this book, upon which he relies for his proof that the object of the idea which constitutes the real existence of the human mind is the body (see Prop. XIII, Pt. 2), declares that we neither feel, nor perceive, any particular objects except bodies and modes of thought. But Prop. XVI, Pt. 1, declares that infinite things in infinite modes must exist, from each of which (Prop. XXXVI, Pt. 1) some effect must necessarily follow, which effect must involve the knowledge of its cause (Ax. 4, Pt. 1). Again, as the first book attempted to explain finite things as accidents of substance, so the second attempts to explain error as nothing positive, but simply inadequacy or privation. To do this he is obliged to assume three kinds of Gods. First, God in so far as he is infinite (Prop. XI, Cor.: quatenus infinitus est), in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind (ibid.: quatenus humanæ Mentis essentiam constituit), and in so far as he is considered as aflfected with the idea of a particular object actually existing (Prop. IX, quatenus rei singularis actu existentis idea affectus consideratur). It is needless to say that these different notions are either meaningless or else contradictory to each other, and brought in as the exigencies of the case happen to require one rather than the other. But the reader can easily demonstrate for himself, that error, even in the sense of privation or inadequate knowledge, is impossible by using the propositions of the first book. Another contradiction may be shown as follows: In the scholium to Prop. XV he shows that