Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/717

No. 6.] what was now decisive was that this theory of innate ideas now entered into union with the conviction, that exactly in what is common to all religions is contained that which is essential for the happiness of mankind. Here we see the influence of the Stoic ideas which were due to the study of the ancient classics in the Netherlands.

Schopenhauer in his Satz vom zureichenden Grunde (S. 32, 3te Aufl.), in identifying Spinoza's causa sui with causa prima, confuses two notions. The notion causa sui with Spinoza presents many difficulties. Hegel developed the notion and built his system on it, by creating out of it the notion of evolution. Spinoza, however, gives this notion an entirely different meaning. He defines causa sui as that cuius essentia involvit existentiam. The determination of this notion, then, is concerned chiefly with the inseparability of essence and existence. In the interpretation of the notion of substance, which is determined by causa sui, there are two possibilities: either the inner character of substance is fixed and unchangeable, on all sides from eternity complete and accordingly incapable of further development, or we must regard it as living and capable of development. Spinoza seems to take the first view, which involves the difficult question, how essence, then, can furnish a basis for existence, in view of the fact that, according to his premise, essence can at no time be conceived without existence. A further difficulty is how substance comes to let both the attributes of extensio and cogitatio go out from infinity and pass over into modi; the more so, as the system admits of no consequent development. Schopenhauer, by bringing together the two notions causa sui and causa prima, which Spinoza sharply distinguished, creates a new difficulty, in that he applies contradictio in adiecto of the causa prima also to causa sui. L. Busse characterizes Spinoza's essence and existence as parallel with Kant's Sein an sich and Erscheinungen; the author goes a step further. He asserts that the causa ultima or conditio sine qua non of Spinoza in point of the validity of this notion corresponds to the Kantian category of causality. If with Spinoza we deny to substance all self-consciousness, all living personality which works toward an end, there remain in re the relationship between world and substance, as above, two possibilities: either the essential character of God is fixed and unchangeable, in all directions from eternity complete, or it is living, changeable, and capable of development. The first way, which Spinoza seems to take, would regard the relationship between substance and modi exclusively as the existence of a logical bond of cause and