Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/220

204 is its effort to self-preservation, and this effort may either be called will or appetite, according as it is referred solely to the mind, or to the mind and body at the same time. Thus Schopenhauer only repeats Spinoza's thought that the essence of things consists in the "will to live." Spinoza's philosophy, then, is not a mere system of intellectualism which, as has been so often asserted, identifies will and intellect, but it recognizes, as the fundamental essence of each thing, the active principle whereby it perseveres in existing.

But the essence of things must not be confounded with existence in a certain time and place. "Although every single thing is determined by another individual thing to exist in a certain way, nevertheless the force by which it perseveres in existing follows from the necessity of the divine nature" (II, 45). It is when things are seen as contained in God that their real essence is apprehended, and they are said to be known sub æternitatis specie. This conception of essence when applied to man denotes that permanent direction of will which is to be distinguished from single acts of will, and which corresponds to Kant's "intelligible character." The authors, like Kant, seem to imply something more by the conception than mere regularity of action. They assert that besides the laws, there must remain the eternal essence as a permanent element in all changes of phenomena (p. 151). The essence however must continually manifest itself or else it would be an Unding (p. 147). Thus we find the continual reappearance in different times and places of the same persons and states and even of inanimate things. The essence of Achilles reappears many times in history in Alexander, in Cromwell, and even in Prince Bismarck. Rome lives again in modern Prussia.

It appears to me that these surprising and fantastic results by no means follow from Spinoza's system. Granting that essences must always be manifested, we must remember that the essence of an individual thing is only a certain fixed mode which expresses the eternal essence of God. This eternal essence expresses itself in an infinite variety of ways, and there is no reason to suppose that it continually repeats itself. It is through substantializing the individual essence, quite contrary to the spirit of Spinoza, through forgetting that this denotes only a certain mode of divine action, that the authors have been led to this strange speculation. One would like to inquire, too, what a posteriori considerations have determined the authors' views, and what is the metaphysical test of identity which they apply.

Whether or not we may agree with the interpretation given by the authors of Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge, the book is extremely valuable and suggestive. They apply Spinoza's philosophy (which is also their own) to many of the problems of our time, and if they do