Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/575

No. 5.] of the real." (3) "Each Attribute includes the whole character which it expresses, and excludes all other characters." (4) "Each Attribute is coextensive with Substance; or Substance is whole in all its Attributes, though different in each" (pp. 22-25). In defending the first proposition, it is shown (conclusively, I think) that the debate as to whether the attributes are to be regarded as 'subjective' or 'objective' is based on an antithesis which is quite foreign to Spinoza's thought. "Attribute is neither the Reality apart from knowledge, nor knowledge apart from Reality. ... And it is a false abstraction which gives isolated being to either side of the antithesis" (p. 27). But with regard to Spinoza's doctrine of the relation of Substance and Attribute, as summed up in the fourth proposition just quoted, the author maintains that there is an inner contradiction, (1) "Substance and Attributes, the two moments in Spinoza's conception of God, involve the fusion of absolute unity and complete variety of character. Spinoza merely states the togetherness of the Attributes in God as a fact; and again, he merely states as a fact that God comprehends in unbroken unity infinite variety of ultimate characters. (2) And Spinoza's conception of Attributes, or again of Substance, renders the intelligible coherence of the two moments of his complete conception of God impossible. There is an inner contradiction in his conception of God as at once excluding all determination, and comprehending an infinite variety of ultimate characters " (p. 106).

The exact content of Spinoza's conception of God has been a matter of much debate with the commentators. Mr. Joachim's conclusions on this point are summed up at the end of the first chapter of his second book: "The question has been much debated whether Spinoza's God is 'personal,' is 'self-conscious,' has 'intellect ' and 'will.' In one sense all these predicates belong to God, so far as they express anything real. But God is not a person, nor is he self-conscious, nor has he intellect and will, in the sense which those terms would bear if unqualified. ... Any of these terms, if applied to God, lose the distinctive meaning which popular thought gives them in their application to man. God is not indeed without these qualities—in the richness of his nature he is not less, but more than human; so far as any human properties express reality, they must be expressed in God's completeness. ... And in any case, the intellect and self-conscious- ness of God belong to him in his modal nature; i.e., he is not intellect any more than he is motion-and-rest. They are but partial expressions of his being, consequents of his substantial nature, and that nature is not exhausted in any or all of them " (pp. 144-45). This