important conception, which with Boehme appears under very many aspects
and forms, viz. as the Word, the Separator, Revelation—speaking generally
the “I,” the source of all difference, and of the will and implicit Being
which are in the powers of natural things; but in such a way that the
light therein likewise breaks forth which leads them back to rest.

a. God as the simple absolute existence is not God absolutely; in Him
nothing can be known. What we know is something different—but this
“different” is itself contained in God as the perception and knowledge
of God. Hence of the second step Boehme says that a separation must have
taken place in this temperament. “No thing can become manifest to itself
without opposition; for if it has nothing to withstand it, it always
goes forward on its own account and does not go back within itself. But
if it does not go back into itself as into that from which it originally
arose, it knows nothing of its original state.” Original state [Urstand]
he makes use of for substance; and it is a pity that we cannot use this
and many other striking expressions. “Without adversity life would have
no sensibility nor will nor efficacy, neither understanding nor science.
Had the hidden God who is one solitary existence and will not of His
own will brought Himself out of Himself, out of the eternal knowledge
in the _Temperamento_, into divisibility of will, and introduced this
same element of divisibility into an inclusiveness” (Identity) “so as
to constitute it a natural and creaturely life, and had this element of
separation in life not come into warfare, how was the will of God which
is only one to be revealed to Himself? How could a knowledge of itself
be present in a solitary will?”[135] We see that Boehme is elevated
infinitely above the empty abstraction of the highest reality, etc.

Boehme continues: “The commencement of all Beings is the Word as the
breath of God, and God has become the eternal One of eternity and
likewise remains so in eternity. The Word is the eternal beginning and
remains so eternally, for it is the revelation of the eternal One through
and by which the divine power is brought into one knowledge of somewhat.
By the Word we understand the revealed will of God: by the Word we
mean God the hidden God, from whom the Word eternally springs forth.
The Word is the efflux of the divine One, and yet God Himself as His
revelation.” Λόγος is more definite than Word, and there is a delightful
double significance in the Greek expression indicating as it does both
reason and speech. For speech is the pure existence of spirit; it is a
thing which when once heard goes back within itself. “What has flowed
out is wisdom, beginning and cause of all powers, colours, virtue and
qualities.”[136]

Of the Son Boehme says: “The Son is” of the Father and “in the Father,
the heart of the Father or light, and the Father beareth him ever, from
eternity to eternity.” Thus “the Son is” indeed “another Person from
the Father, though no other,” but the same “God as the Father,” whose
image he is.[137] “The Son is the Heart” or the pulsating element “in
the Father; all the powers which are in the Father are the propriety of
the Father; and the Son is the heart or the kernel in all the powers in
the whole Father, and he is the cause of the springing joy in all powers
in the whole Father. From the Son the eternal joy rises and springs
in all the powers of the Father, as the sun does in the heart of the
stars. It signifies the Son, as the circle of the stars signifies the
manifold powers of the Father; it lightens the heavens, the stars and
the deep above the earth, working in all things that are in this world;
it enlightens and gives power to all the stars and tempers their power.
The Son of God is continually generated from all the powers of his Father
from eternity, just as the sun is born of the stars; He is ever born and
is not made, and is the heart and lustre shining forth from all powers.
He shines in all powers of the Father, and his power is the moving,
springing joy in all the powers of the Father, and shines in the whole
Father as the sun does in the whole world. For if the Son did not shine
in the Father, the Father would be a dark valley; for the Father’s power
would not rise from eternity to eternity, and so the divine Being would
not subsist.”[138] This life of the Son is an important matter; and
in regard to this issuing forth and manifestation Boehme has likewise
brought forward the most important assertions.

b. “From such a revelation of powers in which the will of the eternal
One contemplates itself, flows the understanding and the knowledge of
the something [Ichts], since the eternal will contemplates itself in the
something [Ichts].” “Ichts” is a play upon the word “Nichts” (nothing),
for it is simply the negative; yet it is at the same time the opposite of
nothing, since the Ich (Ego) of self-consciousness is contained in it.
The Son, the something, is thus “I,” consciousness, self-consciousness:
God is not only the abstract neutral but likewise the gathering together
of Himself into the point of Being-for-self. The “other” of God is thus
the image of God. “This similitude is the _Mysterium magnum_, viz. the
creator of all beings and creatures; for it is the separator” (of the
whole) “in the efflux of the will which makes the will of the eternal One
separable—the separability in the will from which powers and qualities
take their rise.” This separator is “constituted the steward of nature,
by whom the eternal will rules, makes, forms and constitutes all things.”
The separator is effectuating and self-differentiating, and Boehme calls
this “Ichts,” likewise Lucifer, the first-born Son of God, the creaturely
first-born angel who was one of the seven spirits. “But this Lucifer has
fallen and Christ has come in his place.”[139] This is the connection
of the devil with God, namely other-Being and then Being-for-self or
Being-for-one, in such a way that the other is for one; and this is
the origin of evil in God and out of God. This is the furthest point
of thought reached by Jacob Boehme. He represents this Fall of Lucifer
as that the “Ichts,” _i.e._ self-knowledge, the “I” [Ichheit] (a word
which we find used by him), the inward imagining of self, the inward
fashioning of self (the being-for-self), is the fire which absorbs all
things. This is the negative side in the separator, the anguish; or it is
the wrath of God. This divine wrath is hell and the devil, who through
himself imagines himself into himself. This is very bold and speculative;
Boehme here seeks to show in God Himself the sources of the divine
anger. He also calls the will of the something [“Ichts”] self-hood;
it is the passing over of the something [“Ichts”] into the nothing
[Nichts], the “I” imagining itself within itself. He says: “Heaven and
hell are as far removed from one another as day and night, as something
and nothing.” Boehme has really here penetrated into the utmost depths
of divine essence; evil, matter, or whatever it has been called, is the
I = I, the Being-for-self, the true negativity. Before this it was the
_nonens_ which is itself positive, the darkness; but the true negativity
is the “I.” It is not anything bad because it is called the evil; it is
in mind alone that evil exists, because it is conceived therein as it
is in itself. “Where the will of God willeth in anything, there God is
manifested, and in that manifestation the angels also dwell; but where
God in any thing willeth not with the will of the thing, there God is
not manifested to it, but dwelleth” (there) “in Himself without the
co-operating of the thing;” in that case “in that thing is its own will,
and there the devil dwelleth and all whatever is without God.”[140]

Boehme in his own way sets forth the form further assumed in this process
in a pictorial manner. This “_Separator_ deduces qualities from itself,
from which the infinite manifold arises, and through which the eternal
One makes itself perceptible” (so that it is for others) “not according
to the unity, but in accordance with the efflux of the unity.” Implicit
Being and the manifold are absolutely opposed through the Notion, which
Boehme did not have: Being-for-self implies Being-for-another and
retrogression into the opposite. Boehme sways backwards and forwards
in apparent contradictions, and does not well know how to find a way
out of the difficulty. “But the efflux is carried on to the greatest
extreme possible, to the generation of fire”—dark fire without light,
darkness, the hidden, the self;[141]—“in which fiery nature,” however,
since this fire rises and shoots up, “the eternal One becomes majestic
and a light,” and this light which there breaks forth is the form which
the other principle assumes. This is the return to the One. “Thereby”
(through fire) “the eternal power becomes desirous and effectual
and” (fire) “is the original condition” (essence) “of the sensitive”
(feeling) “life, where in the Word of power an eternal sensitive life
first takes its origin. For if life had no sensitiveness, it would have
no will nor efficacy; but pain”—anguish, suffering—first “makes it”
(all life) “effectual and endows it with will. And the light of such
kindling through fire makes it joyous, for it is an anointment,” joy and
loveliness “of painfulness.”[142]

Boehme turns this round in many ways in order to grasp the something
[Ichts], the Separator, as it “rises”[143] from the Father. The qualities
rise in the great Salitter, stir, raise, and move [rügen] themselves.
Boehme has there the quality of astringency in the Father, and he then
represents the process of the something [Ichts] as a sharpness, a drawing
together, as a flash of lightning that breaks forth. This light is
Lucifer. The Being-for-self, the self-perception, is by Boehme called
the drawing together into a point. That is astringency, sharpness,
penetration, fierceness; to this pertains the wrath of God, and here
Boehme in this manner grasps the “other” of God in God Himself. “This
source can be kindled through great motion or elevation. Through the
contraction the creaturely Being is formed so that a heavenly _Corpus_
may be” intelligibly “formed. But if it”—the sharpness—“be kindled
through elevation, which those creatures only can do which are created
out of the divine Salitter, then it is a burning source-vein of the wrath
of God. The flash is the mother of light; for the flash generates the
light, and is the Father of the fierceness; for the fierceness abides in
the flash as a seed in the father, and that flash generates also the tone
or sound”—the flash is, speaking generally, the absolute generator. The
flash is still connected with pain; light is what brings intelligence.
The divine birth is the going forth of the flash, of the life of all
qualities.[144] This is all from the Aurora.

In the _Quæstionibus theosophicis_ Boehme makes particular use of the
form of Yes and No for the separator, for this opposition. He says:
“The reader must know that in Yes and No all things consist, whether
divine, devilish, earthly, or what they may be called. The One as the
Yes is pure power and life, and it is the truth of God or God Himself.
He would be unknowable in Himself, and in Him there would be no joy nor
elevation, nor feeling”—life—“without the No. The No is a counterstroke
of the Yes, or of the truth” (this negativity is the principle of all
knowledge, comprehension), “that the truth may be manifest and be a
something wherein there is a _contrarium_ in which there is the eternal
love, moving, feeling, and willing, and demanding to be loved. And yet
we cannot say that the Yes is separated from the No, and that they are
two things in proximity; for they are only one thing, but they separate
themselves into two beginnings and make two _centra_, where each works
and wills in itself. Without those two, which are continually in strife,
all things would be a nothing, and would stand still without movement.
If the eternal will did not itself flow from itself and introduce itself
into receptibility, there would be no form nor distinction, for all
powers would” then “be one power. Neither could there be understanding
in that case, for the understanding arises” (has its substance) “in the
differentiation of the manifold, where one property sees, proves and
wills the others. The will which has flowed out wills dissimilarity, so
that it may be distinguished from similarity and be its own something—and
that something may exist, that the eternal seeing may see and feel.
And from the individual will arises the No, for it brings itself into
ownness, _i.e._ receptivity of self. It desires to be something and
does not make itself in accordance with unity; for unity is a Yes which
flows forth, which ever stands thus in the breathing forth of itself,
being imperceptible; for it has nothing in which it can find itself
excepting in the receptivity of the dissentient will, as in the No which
is counterstroke to the Yes, in which the Yes is indeed revealed,
and in which it possesses something which it can will. And the No is
therefore called a No, because it is a desire turned inwards on itself,
as if it were a shutting up into negativity. The emanated seeking will
is absorbent and comprehends itself within itself, from it come forms
and qualities: (1) Sharpness, (2) Motion, (3) Feeling. (4) The fourth
property is Fire as the flash of light; this rises in the bringing
together of the great and terrible sharpness and the unity. Thus in the
contact a _Flagrat_ [Schrack] results, and in this _Flagrat_ [Schrack]
unity is apprehended as being a Flash or Gleam, an exulting joy.” That
is the bursting forth of the unity. “For thus the light arises in the
midst of the darkness, for the unity becomes a light, and the receptivity
of the carnal will in the qualities becomes a Spirit-fire which has its
source and origin out of the sharp, cold astringency. And according to
that, God is an angry” and “jealous God,” and in this we have evil.
“(_a_) The first quality of the absorption is the No; (_b_) Sharpness;
(_c_) Hardness; (_d_) Feeling; (_e_) the source of fire, hell or
hollowness, Hiddenness. (5) The fifth quality, Love, makes in the fire,
as in pain, another _Principium_ as a great fire of love.”[145] These
are the main points under the second head. In such depths Boehme keeps
struggling on, for to him conceptions are lacking, and there are only
religious and chemical forms to be found; and because he uses these in a
forced sense in order to express his ideas, not only does barbarism of
expression result, but incomprehensibility as well.

c. “From this eternal operation of the sensation the visible world
sprang; the world is the Word which has flowed forth and has disposed
itself into qualities, since in qualities the particular will has
arisen. The _Separator_ has made it a will of its own after such a
fashion.”[146] The world is none other than the essence of God made
creaturely.[147] Hence “If thou beholdest the Deep” of the heavens, “the
Stars, the Elements and the Earth,” and what they have brought forth,
“then thou” certainly “comprehendest not with thy eyes the bright and
clear Deity, though indeed it is” likewise “there and in them.” Thou
seest only their creaturely manifestation. “But if thou raisest thy
thoughts and considerest ... God who rules in holiness in this government
or dominion, then thou breakest through the heaven of heavens and
apprehendest God at His holy heart. The powers of heaven ever operate in
images, growths and colours, in order to reveal the holy God, so that He
may be in all things known.”[148]

3. Finally what comes third in these three-fold forms is the unity of the
light, of the separator and power: this is the spirit, which is already
partially implied in what has preceded. “All the stars signify the power
of the Father, and from them issues the sun” (they make themselves a
counterstroke to unity). “And from all the stars there goes forth the
power which is in every star, into the Deep, and the power, heat and
shining of the sun goes likewise into the Deep”—back to the stars,
into the power of the Father. “And in the Deep the power of all stars,
together with the heat and lustre of the sun, are all but one thing,
a moving, boiling Hovering, like a spirit or matter. Now in the whole
deep of the Father, externally without the Son, there is nothing but the
manifold and unmeasurable or unsearchable power of the Father and the
Light of the Son. The Light of the Son is in the Deep of the Father a
living, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-hearing, all-seeing, all-smelling,
all-tasting, all-feeling Spirit, wherein is all power, splendour, and
wisdom, as in the Father and the Son.”[149] That is Love, the softener of
all powers through the light of the Son. We see that the sensuous element
thus pertains to this.

Boehme really has the idea that “God’s essence” (which has proceeded
from the eternal deep as world) “is thus not something far away which
possesses a particular position or place, for” essence, “the abyss of
nature and creation, is God Himself. Thou must not think that in heaven
there was some manner of _Corpus_”—the seven spirits generate this
_Corpus_ or heart—“which above all other things is called God. No; but
the whole divine power which itself is heaven and the heaven of all
heavens, is so generated, and that is called God the Father; of whom all
the holy angels are generated, in like manner also the spirit of all men.
Thou canst name no place, either in heaven or in this world, where the
divine birth is not. The birth of the divine Trinity likewise takes place
in thine own heart; all three persons are generated in thy heart, God the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In the divine power everywhere we find the
fountain spring of the divine birth; and there already are all the seven
qualifying or fountain spirits of God, as if thou wouldst make a spacious
creaturely circumscribed circle and hadst the deity therein.”[150] In
every spirit all are contained.

To Boehme this trinity is the complete universal life in each individual,
it is absolute substance. He says: “All things in this world are
according to the similitude of this ternary. Ye blind Jews, Turks, and
Heathens, open wide the eyes of your mind: I will show you, in your
body, and in every natural thing, in men, beasts, fowls, and worms, also
in wood, stone, leaves, and grass, the likeness of the holy ternary in
God. You say, there is but one Being in God, and that God has no Son.
Open your eyes and consider your selves: man is made according to the
similitude and out of the power of God in his ternary. Behold thy inward
man, and then thou wilt see it most plainly and clearly, if thou art not
a fool and an irrational beast. Therefore observe, in thy heart, in thy
veins, and in thy brain, thou hast thy spirit; and all the powers which
move in thy heart, in thy veins, and in thy brain, wherein thy life
consists, signify God the Father. From that power springs up [gebaret]
thy light, so that thou seest, understandest, and knowest in the same
power what thou art to do; for that light glimmers in thy whole body; and
the whole body moves in the power and knowledge of the light; this is the
Son which is born in thee.” This light, this seeing and understanding, is
the second determination; it is the relationship to itself. “Out of thy
light goes forth into the same power, reason, understanding, skill, and
wisdom, to govern the whole body, and to distinguish all whatsoever is
externally without the body. And both these are but one in the government
of thy mind, viz. thy spirit, which signifies God the Holy Ghost. And the
Holy Ghost from God rules in this spirit in thee, if thou art a child of
light and not of darkness. Now observe: in either wood, stone, or herbs
there are three things contained, neither can anything be generated or
grow, if but one of the three should be left out. First, there is the
power, from which a body comes to be, whether wood, stone, or herbs;
after that there is in that” thing “a sap which is the heart of the
thing. And thirdly there is in it a springing, flowing power, smell, or
taste, which is the spirit of the thing whereby it grows and increases.
Now if any of these three fail, the thing cannot subsist.”[151] Thus
Boehme regards everything as this ternary.

When he comes into particulars we see that he is obscure; from his
detailed explanations there is therefore not much to be derived. As
showing his manner of apprehending natural things I shall give one
more example of the manner in which, in the further working out of
the existence of nature as a counterstroke to the divine knowledge,
he makes use of what we call things as Notions (_supra_, p. 192).
The creaturely, he says, has “three kinds of powers or _Spiritus_ in
different _Centris_, but in one _Corpore_. (α) The first and external
_Spiritus_ is the coarse sulphur, salt and _Mercurius_, which is a
substance of four elements” (fire, water, earth, air) “or of the stars.
It forms the visible _Corpus_ according to the constellation of the
stars or property of the planets and now enkindled elements—the greatest
power of the _Spiritus mundi_. The _Separator_ makes the signature or
sign”—the self. The salt, the salitter, is approximately the neutral:
mercury [Merk or Mark] the operating, unrest as against nourishment;
the coarse sulphur, the negative unity. (β) “The other _Spiritus_ is
found in the oil of sulphur, the fifth essence, viz. a root of the four
elements. That is the softening and joy of the coarse, painful spirit
of sulphur and salt; the real cause of growing life, a joy of nature
as is the sun in the elements”—the direct principle of life. “In the
inward ground of that coarse spirit we see a beautiful, clear _Corpus_
in which the ideal light of nature shines from the divine efflux.” The
outward separator signs what is taken up with the shape and form of the
plant which receives into itself this coarse nourishment. (γ) “What comes
third is the tincture, a spiritual fire and light; the highest reason
for which the first separation of qualities takes place in the existence
of this world. _Fiat_ is the Word of each thing and belongs according
to its peculiar quality to eternity. Its origin is the holy power of
God. Smell [Ruch] is the sensation of this tincture. The elements are
only a mansion and counterstroke of the inward power, a cause of the
movement of the tincture.”[152] Sensuous things entirely lose the force
of sensuous conceptions. Boehme uses them, though not as such, as thought
determinations, that constitutes the hard and barbarous element in
Boehme’s representations, yet at the same time this unity with actuality
and this present of infinite existence.

Boehme describes the opposition in creation in the following way. If
nature is the first efflux of the _Separator_, two kinds of life must
yet be understood as in the counterstroke of the divine essence, beyond
that temporal one there is an eternal, to which the divine understanding
is given. It stands at the basis of the eternal, spiritual world, in the
_Mysterium Magnum_ of the divine counterstroke (personality)—a mansion
of divine will through which it reveals itself and is revealed to no
peculiarity of personal will. In this _centrum_ man has both lives in
himself, he belongs to time and eternity. He is (α) universal in the
“eternal understanding of the one good will which is a temperament;
(β) the original will of nature, viz. the comprehensibility of the
_Centra_, where each _centrum_ in the divisibility shuts itself in one
place to egotism and self-will as a personal _Mysterium_ or mind. The
former only requires a counterstroke to its similarity; this latter, the
self-generated natural will also requires in the place of the egotism
of the dark impression a likeness, that is a counterstroke through its
own comprehensibility, through which comprehension it requires nothing
but its corporality as a natural ground.” Now it is this “I,” the dark,
pain, fire, the wrath of God, implicitude, self-comprehension, which is
broken up in regeneration; the I is shattered, painfulness brought into
true rest—just as the dark fire breaks into light.[153]

Now these are the principal ideas found in Boehme; those most profound
are (α) the generating of Light as the Son of God from qualities, through
the most living dialectic; (β) God’s diremption of Himself. Barbarism
in the working out of his system can no more fail to be recognized than
can the great depths into which he has plunged by the union of the most
absolute opposites. Boehme grasps the opposites in the crudest, harshest
way, but he does not allow himself through their unworkableness to be
prevented from asserting the unity. This rude and barbarous depth which
is devoid of Notion, is always a present, something which speaks from
itself, which has and knows everything in itself. We have still to
mention Boehme’s piety, the element of edification, the way in which
the soul is guided in his writings. This is in the highest degree deep
and inward, and if one is familiar with his form these depths and this
inwardness will be found. But it is a form with which we cannot reconcile
ourselves, and which permits no definite conception of details, although
we cannot fail to see the profound craving for speculation which existed
within this man.

SECTION TWO

PERIOD OF THE THINKING UNDERSTANDING

After Neo-Platonism and all that is associated with it is left behind,
it is not until Descartes is arrived at that we really enter upon a
philosophy which is, properly speaking, independent, which knows that
it comes forth from reason as independent, and that self-consciousness
is an essential moment in the truth. Philosophy in its own proper soil
separates itself entirely from the philosophizing theology, in accordance
with its principle, and places it on quite another side. Here, we may
say, we are at home, and like the mariner after a long voyage in a
tempestuous sea, we may now hail the sight of land; with Descartes
the culture of modern times, the thought of modern Philosophy, really
begins to appear, after a long and tedious journey on the way which has
led so far. It is specially characteristic of the German that the more
servile he on the one hand is, the more uncontrolled is he on the other;
restraint and want of restraint—originality, is the angel of darkness
that buffets us. In this new period the universal principle by means of
which everything in the world is regulated, is the thought that proceeds
from itself; it is a certain inwardness, which is above all evidenced
in respect to Christianity, and which is the Protestant principle in
accordance with which thought has come to the consciousness of the
world at large as that to which every man has a claim. Thus because the
independently existent thought, this culminating point of inwardness,
is now set forth and firmly grasped as such, the dead externality of
authority is set aside and regarded as out of place. It is only through
my own free thought within that thought can however be recognized and
ratified by me. This likewise signifies that such free thought is the
universal business of the world and of individuals; it is indeed the duty
of every man, since everything is based upon it; thus what claims to rank
as established in the world man must scrutinize in his own thoughts.
Philosophy is thus become a matter of universal interest, and one
respecting which each can judge for himself; for everyone is a thinker
from the beginning.

On account of this new beginning to Philosophy we find in the old
histories of Philosophy of the seventeenth century—_e.g._ that of
Stanley—the philosophy of the Greeks and Romans only, and Christianity
forms the conclusion. The idea was that neither in Christianity nor
subsequently any philosophy was to be found, because there was no longer
a necessity for it, seeing that the philosophic theology of the Middle
Ages had not free, spontaneous thought as its principle (Vol. I. pp. 111,
112). But though it is true that this has now become the philosophic
principle, we must not expect that it should be at once methodically
developed out of thought. The old assumption is made, that man only
attains to the truth through reflection; this plainly is the principle.
But the determination and definition of God, the world of the manifold as
it appears, is not yet revealed as necessarily proceeding from thought;
for we have only reached the thought of a content which is given through
ordinary conception, observation, and experience.

On the one hand we see a metaphysic, and, on the other, the particular
sciences: on the one hand abstract thought as such, on the other its
content taken from experience; these two lines in the abstract stand
opposed to one another, and yet they do not separate themselves so
sharply. We shall indeed come to an opposition, viz. to that between
_a priori_ thought—that the determinations which are to hold good
for thought must be taken from thought itself—and the determination
that we must commence, conclude and think from experience. This is
the opposition between rationalism and empiricism; but it is really
a subordinate one, because even the metaphysical mode in philosophy,
which only allows validity to immanent thought, does not take what is
methodically developed from the necessity of thought, but in the old
way derives its content from inward or outward experience, and through
reflection and meditation renders it abstract. The form of philosophy
which is first reached through thought is metaphysics, the form of the
thinking understanding; this period has, as its outstanding figures,
Descartes and Spinoza, likewise Malebranche and Locke, Leibnitz and
Wolff. The second form is Scepticism and Criticism with regard to the
thinking understanding, to metaphysics as such, and to the universal
of empiricism; here we shall go on to speak of representatives of the
Scottish, German, and French philosophies; the French materialists again
turn back to metaphysics.

CHAPTER I

THE METAPHYSICS OF THE UNDERSTANDING

Metaphysics is what reaches after substance, and this implies that one
unity, one thought is maintained in opposition to dualism, just as Being
was amongst the ancients. In metaphysics itself we have, however, the
opposition between substantiality and individuality. What comes first
is the spontaneous, but likewise uncritical, metaphysics, and it is
represented by Descartes and Spinoza, who assert the unity of Being and
thought. The second stage is found in Locke, who treats of the opposition
itself inasmuch as he considers the metaphysical Idea of experience, that
is the origin of thoughts and their justification, not yet entering on
the question of whether they are absolutely true. In the third place we
have Leibnitz’s monad—the world viewed as a totality.

A. FIRST DIVISION.

We here encounter the innate ideas of Descartes. The philosophy of
Spinoza, in the second place, is related to the philosophy of Descartes
as its necessary development only; the method is an important part of
it. A method which stands alongside of Spinozism and which is also a
perfected development of Cartesianism, is, in the third place, that by
which Malebranche has represented this philosophy.

1. DESCARTES.

René Descartes is a bold spirit who re-commenced the whole subject
from the very beginning and constituted afresh the ground-work on which
Philosophy is based, and to which, after a thousand years had passed, it
once more returned. The extent of the influence which this man exercised
upon his times and the culture of Philosophy generally, cannot be
sufficiently expressed; it rests mainly in his setting aside all former
presuppositions and beginning in a free, simple, and likewise popular
way, with popular modes of thought and quite simple propositions, in his
leading the content to thought and extension or Being, and so to speak
setting up this before thought as its opposite. This simple thought
appeared in the form of the determinate, clear understanding, and it
cannot thus be called speculative thought or speculative reason. There
are fixed determinations from which Descartes proceeds, but only of
thought; this is the method of his time. What the French called exact
science, science of the determinate understanding, made its appearance at
this time. Philosophy and exact science were not yet separated, and it
was only later on that this separation first took place.

To come to the life of Descartes—he was born in 1596, at La Haye in
Touraine, of an ancient and noble race. He received an education
of the usual kind in a Jesuit school, and made great progress; his
disposition was lively and restless; he extended his insatiable zeal
in all directions, pursued his researches into all systems and forms;
his studies, in addition to ancient literature, embraced such subjects
as philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. But the
studies of his youth in the Jesuit school, and those studies which
he afterwards prosecuted with the same diligence and strenuous zeal,
resulted in giving him a strong disinclination for learning derived from
books; he quitted the school where he had been educated, and yet his
eagerness for learning was only made the keener through this perplexity
and unsatisfied yearning. He went as a young man of eighteen to Paris,
and there lived in the great world. But as he here found no satisfaction,
he soon left society and returned to his studies. He retired to a suburb
of Paris and there occupied himself principally with mathematics,
remaining quite concealed from all his former friends. At last, after
the lapse of two years, he was discovered by them, drawn forth from his
retirement, and again introduced to the great world. He now once more
renounced the study of books and threw himself into the affairs of actual
life. Thereafter he went to Holland and entered the military service;
soon afterwards, in 1619, and in the first year of the Thirty Years’ War,
he went as a volunteer with the Bavarian troops, and took part in several
campaigns under Tilly. Many have found learning unsatisfying; Descartes
became a soldier—not because he found in the sciences too little, but
because they were too much, too high for him. Here in his winter quarters
he studied diligently, and in Ulm, for instance, he made acquaintance
with a citizen who was deeply versed in mathematics. He was able to carry
out his studies even better in winter quarters at Neuberg on the Danube,
where once more, and now most profoundly, the desire awoke in him to
strike out a new departure in Philosophy and entirely reconstruct it;
he solemnly promised the Mother of God to make a pilgrimage to Loretto
if she would prosper him in this design, and if he should now at last
come to himself and attain to peace. He was also in the battle at Prague
in which Frederick the Elector-Palatine lost the Bohemian crown. Yet
since the sight of these wild scenes could not satisfy him, he gave up
military service in 1621. He made several other journeys through the rest
of Germany, and then proceeded to Poland, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy
and France. On account of its greater freedom he withdrew to Holland, in
order there to pursue his projects; here he lived in peace from 1629 to
1644—a period in which he composed and issued most of his works, and
also defended them against the manifold attacks from which they suffered,
and which more especially proceeded from the clergy. Queen Christina
of Sweden finally called him to her court at Stockholm, which was the
rendezvous for all the most celebrated men of learning of the time, and
there he died in 1650.[154]

As regards his philosophic works, those which contain his first
principles have in particular something very popular about their method
of presentation, which makes them highly to be recommended to those
commencing the study of philosophy. Descartes sets to work in a quite
simple and childlike manner, with a narration of his reflections as they
came to him. Professor Cousin of Paris has brought out a new edition of
Descartes in eleven octavo volumes; the greater part consists of letters
on natural phenomena. Descartes gave a new impetus to mathematics as well
as to philosophy. Several important methods were discovered by him, upon
which the most brilliant results in higher mathematics were afterwards
built. His method is even now an essential in mathematics, for Descartes
is the inventor of analytic geometry, and consequently the first to point
out the way in this field of science to modern mathematics. He likewise
cultivated physics, optics, and astronomy, and made the most important
discoveries in these; we have not, however, to deal with such matters.
The application of metaphysics to ecclesiastical affairs, investigations,
etc., has likewise no special interest for us.

1. In Philosophy Descartes struck out quite original lines; with him the
new epoch in Philosophy begins, whereby it was permitted to culture to
grasp in the form of universality the principle of its higher spirit in
thought, just as Boehme grasped it in sensuous perceptions and forms.
Descartes started by saying that thought must necessarily commence from
itself; all the philosophy which came before this, and specially what
proceeded from the authority of the Church, was for ever after set aside.
But since here thought has properly speaking grasped itself as abstract
understanding only, in relation to which the more concrete content still
stands over on the other side, the determinate conceptions were not
yet deduced from the understanding, but taken up only empirically. In
Descartes’ philosophy we have thus to distinguish what has, and what
has not universal interest for us: the former is the process of his
thoughts themselves, and the latter the mode in which these thoughts are
presented and deduced. Yet we must not consider the process as a method
of consistent proof; it is indeed a deep and inward progress, but it
comes to us in an ingenuous and naïve form. In order to do justice to
Descartes’ thoughts it is necessary for us to be assured of the necessity
for his appearance; the spirit of his philosophy is simply knowledge as
the unity of Thought and Being. And yet on the whole there is little to
say about his philosophy.

a. Descartes expresses the fact that we must begin from thought as such
alone, by saying that we must doubt everything (_De omnibus dubitandum
est_); and that is an absolute beginning. He thus makes the abolition
of all determinations the first condition of Philosophy. This first
proposition has not, however, the same signification as Scepticism,
which sets before it no other aim than doubt itself, and requires that
we should remain in this indecision of mind, an indecision wherein mind
finds its freedom. It rather signifies that we should renounce all
prepossessions—that is, all hypotheses which are accepted as true in
their immediacy—and commence from thought, so that from it we should in
the first place attain to some fixed and settled basis, and make a true
beginning. In Scepticism this is not the case, for with the sceptics
doubt is the end at which they rest.[155] But the doubting of Descartes,
his making no hypotheses, because nothing is fixed or secure, does not
occur in the interests of freedom as such, in order that nothing should
have value except freedom itself, and nothing exist in the quality of
an external objective. To him everything is unstable indeed, in so
far as the Ego can abstract from it or can think, for pure thought is
abstraction from everything. But in consciousness the end is predominant,
and it is to arrive at something fixed and objective—and not the moment
of subjectivity, or the fact of being set forth, known and proved by me.
Yet this last comes along with the other, for it is from the starting
point of my thought that I would attain my object; the impulse of freedom
is thus likewise fundamental.

In the propositions in which Descartes gives in his own way the ground
of this great and most important principle, there is found a naïve and
empirical system of reasoning. This is an example: “Because we were born
as children, and formed all manner of judgments respecting sensuous
things before we had the perfect use of our reason, we are through many
preconceived ideas hindered from the knowledge of the truth. From these
we appear not to be able to free ourselves in any other way but by once
in our lives striving to doubt that respecting which we have the very
slightest suspicion of an uncertainty. Indeed it is really desirable to
hold as false everything in respect to which we have any doubt, so that
we may find more clearly what is most certain and most knowable. Yet
this doubt has to be limited to the contemplation of the truth, for in
the conduct of our life we are compelled to choose the probable, since
there the opportunity for action would often pass away before we could
solve our doubts. But here, where we have only to deal with the search
for truth, we may very reasonably doubt whether any thing sensuous and
perceptible exists—in the first place because we find that the senses
often deceive us and it is prudent not to trust in what has even once
deceived us, and then because every day in dreaming we think we feel or
see before ourselves innumerable things which never were, and to the
doubter no signs are given by which he can safely distinguish sleeping
from waking. We shall hereby likewise doubt everything else, even
mathematical propositions, partly because we have seen that some err
even in what we hold most certain, and ascribe value to what to us seems
false, and partly because we have heard that a God exists who has created
us, and who can do everything, so that He may have created us liable to
err. But if we conceive ourselves not to derive our existence from God,
but from some other source, perhaps from ourselves, we are all the more
liable, in that we are thus imperfect, to err. But we have so far the
experience of freedom within us that we can always refrain from what is
not perfectly certain and well founded.”[156] The demand which rests
at the basis of Descartes’ reasonings thus is that what is recognized
as true should be able to maintain the position of having the thought
therein at home with itself. The so-called immediate intuition and inward
revelation, which in modern times is so highly regarded, has its place
here. But because in the Cartesian form the principle of freedom as such
is not brought into view, the grounds which are here advanced are for the
most part popular.

b. Descartes sought something in itself certain and true, which should
neither be only true like the object of faith without knowledge, nor the
sensuous and also sceptical certainty which is without truth. The whole
of Philosophy as it had been carried on up to this time was vitiated by
the constant presupposition of something as true, and in some measure,
as in the Neo-Platonic philosophy, by not giving the form of scientific
knowledge to its matter, or by not separating its moments. But to
Descartes nothing is true which does not possess an inward evidence
in consciousness, or which reason does not recognize so clearly and
conclusively that any doubt regarding it is absolutely impossible.
“Because we thus reject or declare to be false everything regarding which
we can have any doubt at all, it is easy for us to suppose that there is
no God, no heaven, no body—but we cannot therefore say that we do not
exist, who think this. For it is contradictory to say that what thinks
does not exist. Hence the knowledge that ‘I think, therefore I am,’ is
what we arrive at first of all, and it is the most certain fact that
offers itself to everyone who follows after philosophy in an orderly
fashion. This is the best way of becoming acquainted with the nature of
spirit and its diversity from body. For if we inquire who we are who can
set forth as untrue everything which is different from ourselves, we
clearly see that no extension, figure, change of position, nor any such
thing which can be ascribed to body, constitutes our nature, but only
thought alone; which is thus known earlier and more certainly than any
corporeal thing.”[157] ‘I’ has thus significance here as thought, and
not as individuality of self-consciousness. The second proposition of
the Cartesian philosophy is hence the immediate certainty of thought.
Certainty is only knowledge as such in its pure form as self-relating,
and this is thought; thus then the unwieldy understanding makes its way
on to the necessity of thought.

Descartes begins, just as Fichte did later on, with the ‘I’ as
indubitably certain; I know that something is presented in me. By this
Philosophy is at one stroke transplanted to quite another field and
to quite another standpoint, namely to the sphere of subjectivity.
Presuppositions in religion are given up; proof alone is sought for,
and not the absolute content which disappears before abstract infinite
subjectivity. There is in Descartes likewise a seething desire to
speak from strong feeling, from the ordinary sensuous point of view,
just as Bruno and so many others, each in his own fashion, express as
individualities their particular conceptions of the world. To consider
the content in itself is not the first matter; for I can abstract from
all my conceptions, but not from the ‘I.’ We think this and that, and
hence it is—is to give the common would-be-wise argument of those
incapable of grasping the matter in point; that a determinate content
exists is exactly what we are forced to doubt—there is nothing absolutely
fixed. Thought is the entirely universal, but not merely because I
can abstract, but because ‘I’ is thus simple, self-identical. Thought
consequently comes first; the next determination arrived at, in direct
connection with it, is the determination of Being. The ‘I think’ directly
involves my Being; this, says Descartes, is the absolute basis of all
Philosophy.[158] The determination of Being is in my ‘I’; this connection
is itself the first matter. Thought as Being and Being as thought—that
is my certainty, ‘I’; in the celebrated _Cogito, ergo sum_ we thus have
Thought and Being inseparably bound together.

On the one hand this proposition is regarded as a syllogism: from thought
Being is deduced. Kant more especially has objected to this that Being
is not contained in thinking, that it is different from thinking. This
is true, but they are still inseparable, or constitute an identity;
their difference is not to the prejudice of their unity. Yet this maxim
of pure abstract certainty, the universal totality in which everything
implicitly exists, is not proved;[159] we must therefore not try to
convert this proposition into a syllogism. Descartes himself says:
“There is no syllogism present at all. For in order that there should be
such, the major premise must have been ‘all that thinks exists’”—from
which the subsumption would have followed in the minor premise, ‘now
I am.’ By this the immediacy which rests in the proposition, would be
removed. “But that major premise” is not set forth at all, being “really
in the first instance derived from the original ‘I think, therefore, I
am.’”[160] For arriving at a conclusion three links are required—in this
case we ought to have a third through which thought and Being should have
been mediated, and it is not to be found here. The ‘Therefore’ which
binds the two sides together is not the ‘Therefore’ of a syllogism; the
connection between Being and Thought is only immediately posited. This
certainty is thus the _prius_; all other propositions come later. The
thinking subject as the simple immediacy of being-at-home-with-me is
the very same thing as what is called Being; and it is quite easy to
perceive this identity. As universal, thought is contained in all that
is particular, and thus is pure relation to itself, pure oneness with
itself. We must not make the mistake of representing Being to ourselves
as a concrete content, and hence it is the same immediate identity which
thought likewise is. Immediacy is, however, a one-sided determination;
thought does not contain it alone, but also the determination to mediate
itself with itself, and thereby—by the mediation being at the same time
the abrogation of the mediation—it is immediacy. In thought we thus have
Being; Being is, however, a poor determination, it is the abstraction
from the concrete of thought. This identity of Being and Thought,
which constitutes the most interesting idea of modern times, has not
been further worked out by Descartes; he has relied on consciousness
alone, and for the time being placed it in the fore-front. For with
Descartes the necessity to develop the differences from the ‘I think’ is
not yet present; Fichte first applied himself to the deduction of all
determinations from this culminating point of absolute certainty.

Other propositions have been set against that of Descartes.
Gassendi,[161] for example, asks if we might not just as well say
_Ludificor, ergo sum_: I am made a fool of by my consciousness, therefore
I exist—or properly speaking, therefore I am made a fool of. Descartes
himself recognized that this objection merited consideration, but he
here repels it, inasmuch as it is the ‘I’ alone and not the other
content which has to be maintained. Being alone is identical with pure
thought, and not its content, be it what it may. Descartes further says:
“By thought I, however, understand all that takes place in us within
our consciousness, in as far as we are conscious of it; thus will,
conception, and even feeling are identical with thought. For if I say
‘I see,’ or ‘I walk out,’ and ‘therefore I am,’ and understand by this
the seeing and walking which is accomplished by the body, the conclusion
is not absolutely certain, because, as often happens in a dream, I may
imagine that I can see or walk even if I do not open my eyes nor move
from my place, and I might also possibly do so supposing I had no body.
But if I understand it of the subjective feeling or the consciousness of
seeing or walking itself, because it is then related to the mind that
alone feels or thinks that it sees or walks, this conclusion is perfectly
certain.”[162] “In a dream” is an empirical mode of reasoning, but there
is no other objection to it. In willing, seeing, hearing, &c., thought is
likewise contained, it is absurd to suppose that the soul has thinking
in one special pocket, and seeing, willing, &c., in others. But if I say
‘I see,’ ‘I walk out,’ there is present on the one hand my consciousness
‘I,’ and consequently thought, on the other hand, however, there is
present willing, seeing, hearing, walking, and thus a still further
modification of the content. Now because of this modification I cannot
say ‘I walk, and therefore I am,’ for I can undoubtedly abstract from
the modification, since it is no longer universal Thought. Thus we must
merely look at the pure consciousness contained in the concrete ‘I.’ Only
when I accentuate the fact that I am present there as thinking, is pure
Being implied, for only with the universal is Being united.

“In this it is implied,” says Descartes, “that thought is more certain to
me than body. If from the fact that I touch or see the earth I judge that
it exists, I must more certainly judge from this that my thought exists.
For it may very well happen that I judge the earth to exist, even if it
does not exist, but it cannot be that I judge this, and that my mind
which judges this does not exist.”[163] That is to say, everything which
is for me I may assert to be non-existent, but when I assert myself to be
non-existent, I myself _assert_, or it is _my_ judgment. For I cannot set
aside the fact that I judge, even if I can abstract from that respecting
which I judge. In this Philosophy has regained its own ground that
thought starts from thought as what is certain in itself, and not from
something external, not from something given, not from an authority,
but directly from the freedom that is contained in the ‘I think.’ Of all
else I may doubt, of the existence of bodily things, of my body itself;
or this certainty does not possess immediacy in itself. For ‘I’ is just
certainty itself, but in all else this certainty is only predicate; my
body is certain to _me_, it is not this certainty itself.[164] As against
the certainty we feel of having a body, Descartes adduces the empirical
phenomenon that we often hear of persons imagining they feel pain in
a limb which they have lost long ago.[165] What is actual, he says is
a substance, the soul is a thinking substance; it is thus for itself,
separate from all external material things and independent. That it is
thinking is evident from its nature: it would think and exist even if no
material things were present; the soul can hence know itself more easily
than its body.[166]

All else that we can hold as true rests on this certainty; for in order
that anything should be held as true, evidence is requisite, but nothing
is true which has not this inward evidence in consciousness. “Now the
evidence of everything rests upon our perceiving it as clearly and
vividly as that certainty itself, and on its so entirely depending from,
and harmonizing with this principle, that if we wished to doubt it we
should also have to doubt this principle likewise” (our _ego_).[167] This
knowledge is indeed on its own account perfect evidence, but it is not
yet the truth, or if we take that Being as truth, it is an empty content,
and it is with the content that we have to do.

c. What comes third is thus the transition of this certainty into
truth, into the determinate; Descartes again makes this transition
in a naïve way, and with it we for the first time begin to consider
his metaphysics. What here takes place is that an interest arises in
further representations and conceptions of the abstract unity of Being
and Thought; there Descartes sets to work in an externally reflective
manner. “The consciousness which merely knows itself to be certain now
however seeks to extend its knowledge, and finds that it has conceptions
of many things—in which conceptions it does not deceive itself, so long
as it does not assert or deny that something similar outside corresponds
to them.” Deception in the conceptions has meaning only in relation to
external existence. “Consciousness also discovers universal conceptions,
and obtains from them proofs which are evident, _e.g._ the geometric
proposition that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two
right angles is a conception which follows incontrovertibly from others.
But in reflecting whether such things really exist doubts arise.”[168]
That there is such a thing as a triangle is indeed in this case by
no means certain, since extension is not contained in the immediate
certainty of myself. The soul may exist without the bodily element, and
this last without it, they are in reality different; one is conceivable
without the other. The soul thus does not think and know the other as
clearly as the certainty of itself.[169]

Now the truth of all knowledge rests on the proof of the existence of
God. The soul is an imperfect substance, but it has the Idea of an
absolute perfect existence within itself; this perfection is not begotten
in itself, just because it is an imperfect substance; this Idea is thus
innate. In Descartes the consciousness of this fact is expressed by his
saying that as long as the existence of God is not proved and perceived
the possibility of our deceiving ourselves remains, because we cannot
know whether we do not possess a nature ordered and disposed to err
(_supra_, p. 226).[170] The form is rather a mistaken one, and it only
generally expresses the opposition in which self-consciousness stands to
the consciousness of what is different, of the objective; and we have
to deal with the unity of both—the question being whether what is in
thought likewise possesses objectivity. This unity rests in God, or is
God Himself. I shall put these assertions in the manner of Descartes:
“Amongst these various conceptions possessed by us there likewise is
the conception of a supremely intelligent, powerful, and absolutely
perfect Being; and this is the most excellent of all conceptions.” This
all-embracing universal conception has therefore this distinguishing
feature, that in its case the uncertainty respecting Being which appears
in the other conceptions, finds no place. It has the characteristic that
“In it we do not recognize existence as something merely possible and
accidental, as we do the conceptions of other things which we perceive
clearly, but as a really essential and eternal determination. For
instance, as mind perceives that in the conception of a triangle it is
implied that the three angles are equal to two right angles, the triangle
has them; and in the same way from the fact that mind perceives existence
to be necessarily and eternally implied in the Notion of the most
perfect reality, it is forced to conclude that the most perfect reality
exists.”[171] For to perfection there likewise pertains the determination
of existence, since the conception of a non-existent is less perfect.
Thus we there have the unity of thought and Being, and the ontological
proof of the existence of God; this we met with earlier (p. 63, _seq._)
in dealing with Anselm.

The proof of the existence of God from the Idea of Him is in this wise:
In this Notion existence is implied; and therefore it is true. Descartes
proceeds further in the same direction, in so far as after the manner
of empirical axioms he sets forth: (α) “There are different degrees of
reality or entity, for the substance has more reality than the accident
or the mode, and infinite substance has more than finite.” (β) “In the
Notion of a thing existence is implied, either the merely potential
or the necessary,” _i.e._ in the ‘I’ there is Being as the immediate
certainty of an other-being, of the not-I opposed to the I. (γ) “No
thing or no perfection of a thing which really exists _actu_ can have
the Nothing as original cause of its existence. For if anything could
be predicated of nothing, thought could equally well be predicated of
it, and I would thus say that I am nothing because I think.” Descartes
here arrives at a dividing line, at an unknown relationship; the Notion
of cause is reached, and this is a thought indeed, but a determinate
thought. Spinoza says in his explanation, “That the conceptions contain
more or less reality, and those moments have just as much evidence as
thought itself, because they not only say that we think, but how we
think.” These determinate modes as differences in the simplicity of
thought, had, however, to be demonstrated. Spinoza adds to this step in
advance that “The degrees of reality which we perceive in ideas are not
in the ideas in as far as they are considered merely as kinds of thought,
but in so far as the one represents a substance and the other a mere
mode of substance, or, in a word, in so far as they are considered as
conceptions of things.” (δ) “The objective reality of Notions” (_i.e._,
the entity of what is represented in so far as it is in the Notion),
“demands a first cause in which the same reality is contained not merely
objectively” (that is to say in the Notion), “but likewise formally or
even _eminenter_—formally, that is perfectly likewise: _eminenter_, more
perfectly. For there must at least be as much in the cause as in the
effect.” (ε) “The existence of God is known immediately”—_a priori_—“from
the contemplation of His nature. To say that anything is contained in
the nature or in the Notion of a thing is tantamount to saying that it
is true: existence is directly contained in the Notion of God. Hence
it is quite true to say of Him that existence pertains of necessity to
Him. There is implied in the Notion of every particular thing either a
possible or a necessary existence—a necessary existence in the Notion
of God, _i.e._ of the absolutely perfect Being, for else He would be
conceived as imperfect.”[172]

Descartes likewise argues after this manner: “Problem: to prove _a
posteriori_ from the mere Notion within us the existence of God. The
objective reality of a Notion demands a cause in which the same reality
is not merely contained objectively” (as in the finite), “but formally”
(freely, purely for itself, outside of us) “or _eminenter_” (as
original). (Axiom δ.) “We now have a Notion of God, but His objective
reality is neither formally nor _eminenter_ contained within us, and it
can thus be only in God Himself.”[173] Consequently we see that with
Descartes this Idea is an hypothesis. Now we should say we find this
highest Idea in us. If we then ask whether this Idea exists, why, this
is the Idea, that existence is asserted with it. To say that it is only
a conception is to contradict the meaning of this conception. But here
it is unsatisfactory to find that the conception is introduced thus: ‘We
have this conception,’ and to find that it consequently appears like an
hypothesis. In such a case it is not proved of this content in itself
that it determines itself into this unity of thought and Being. In the
form of God no other conception is thus here given than that contained
in _Cogito, ergo sum_, wherein Being and thought are inseparably bound
up—though now in the form of a conception which I possess within me.
The whole content of this conception, the Almighty, All-wise, &c., are
predicates which do not make their appearance until later; the content
is simply the content of the Idea bound up with existence. Hence we
see these determinations following one another in an empirical manner,
and not philosophically proved—thus giving us an example of how in _a
priori_ metaphysics generally hypotheses of conceptions are brought in,
and these become objects of thought, just as happens in empiricism with
investigations, observations, and experiences.

Descartes then proceeds: “Mind is the more convinced of this when it
notices that it discovers within itself the conception of no other thing
wherein existence is necessarily implied. From this it will perceive that
that idea of highest reality is not imagined by it, it is not chimerical,
but a true and unalterable fact which cannot do otherwise than exist,
seeing that existence is necessarily involved in it. Our prejudices
hinder us from apprehending this with ease, for we are accustomed to
distinguish in all other things the essence” (the Notion) “from the
existence.” Respecting the assertion that thought is not inseparable
from existence, the common way of talking is as follows: ‘If what men
think really existed, things would be different.’ But in saying this men
do not take into account that what is spoken of in this way is always a
particular content, and that in it the essential nature of the finality
of things simply signifies the fact that Notion and Being are separable.
But how can one argue from finite things to the infinite? “This Notion,”
Descartes continues, “is furthermore not made by us.” It is now declared
to be an eternal truth which is revealed in us. “We do not find in
ourselves the perfections which are contained in this conception. Thus
we are certain that a first cause in which is all perfection, _i.e._
God as really existent, has given them to us; for it is certain to us
that from nothing, nothing arises” (according to Boehme God derived the
material of the world from Himself), “and what is perfect cannot be the
effect of anything imperfect. From Him we must thus in true science
deduce all created things.”[174] With the proof of the existence of God
the validity of and evidence for all truth in its origin is immediately
established. God as First Cause is Being-for-self, the reality which is
not merely entity or existence in thought. An existence such as this
first cause (which is not what we know as a thing) rests in the Notion of
the not-I, not of each determinate thing—since these as determinate are
negations—but only in the Notion of pure existence or the perfect cause.
It is the cause of the truth of ideas, for the aspect that it represents
is that of their Being.

d. Fourthly, Descartes goes on to assert: “We must believe what is
revealed to us by God, though we cannot understand it. It is not to
be wondered at, since we are finite, that there is in God’s nature as
inconceivably infinite, what passes our comprehension.” This represents
the entrance of a very ordinary conception. Boehme on the other hand says
(_supra_, p. 212): ‘The mystery of the Trinity is ever born within us.’
Descartes, however, concludes: “Hence we must not trouble ourselves with
investigations respecting the infinite; for seeing that we are finite, it
is absurd for us to say anything about it.”[175] This matter we shall
not, however, enter upon at present.

“Now the first attribute of God is that He is true and the Giver of all
light; it is hence quite contrary to His nature to deceive us. Hence the
light of nature or the power of acquiring knowledge given us by God can
affect no object which is not really true in as far as it is affected by
it” (the power of acquiring knowledge) “_i.e._ as it is perceived clearly
and distinctly.” We ascribe truth to God. From this Descartes goes on to
infer the universal bond which exists between absolute knowledge and the
objectivity of what we thus know. Knowledge has objects, has a content
which is known; we call this connection truth. The truth of God is just
this unity of what is thought by the subject or clearly perceived, and
external reality or existence. “Thereby an end is put to doubt, as if it
could be the case that what appears quite evident to us should not be
really true. We can thus no longer have any suspicion of mathematical
truths. Likewise if we give heed to what we distinguish by our senses in
waking or in sleeping, clearly and distinctly, it is easy to recognize
in each thing what in it is true.” By saying that what is rightly and
clearly thought likewise is, Descartes maintains that man comes to know
by means of thought what in fact is in things; the sources of errors lie
on the other hand in the finitude of our nature. “It is certain, because
of God’s truth, that the faculty of perceiving and that of assenting
through the will, if it extends no further than to that which is clearly
perceived, cannot lead to error. Even if this cannot be in any way
proved, it is by nature so established in all things, that as often as we
clearly perceive anything, we assent to it from ourselves and can in no
wise doubt that it is true.”[176]

All this is set forth very plausibly, but it is still indeterminate,
formal, and shallow; we only have the assertion made to us that this is
so. Descartes’ method is the method of the clear understanding merely.
Certainty with him takes the first place; from it no content is deduced
of necessity, no content generally, and still less its objectivity as
distinguished from the inward subjectivity of the ‘I.’ At one time we
have the opposition of subjective knowledge and actuality, and at another
their inseparable union. In the first case the necessity of mediating
them enters in, and the truth of God is asserted to be this mediating
power. It consists in this, that His Notion contains reality immediately
in itself. The proof of this unity then rests solely upon the fact of its
being said that we find within us the idea of complete perfection; thus
this conception here appears simply as one found ready to hand. With this
is compared the mere conception of God which contains no existence within
it, and it is found that without existence it would be imperfect. This
unity of God Himself, of His Idea, with His existence, is undoubtedly
the Truth; in this we find the ground for holding as true what is for us
just as certain as the truth of ourselves. As Descartes proceeds further
we thus find that in reality everything has truth for him only in so far
as it is really an object of thought, a universal. This truth of God has
been, as we shall see, expressed even more clearly and in a more concise
way by a disciple of Descartes, if one may venture to call him so—I mean
Malebranche (who might really be dealt with here),[177] in his _Recherche
de la vérité_.

The first of the fundamental determinations of the Cartesian metaphysics
is from the certainty of oneself to arrive at the truth, to recognize
Being in the Notion of thought. But because in the thought “I think,”
I am an individual, thought comes before my mind as subjective;
Being is hence not demonstrated in the Notion of thought itself, for
what advance has been made is merely in the direction of separation
generally. In the second place the negative of Being likewise comes
before self-consciousness, and this negative, united with the positive
I, is so to speak implicitly united in a third, in God. God, who before
this was a non-contradictory potentiality, now takes objective form to
self-consciousness, He is all reality in so far as it is positive, _i.e._
as it is Being, unity of thought and Being, the highest perfection of
existence; it is just in the negative, in the Notion of this, in its
being an object of thought, that Being is contained. An objection to
this identity is now old—Kant urged it likewise—that from the Notion of
the most perfect existence more does not follow than that _in_ thought
existence here and now and the most perfect essence are conjoined, but
not _outside_ of thought. But the very Notion of present existence is
this negative of self-consciousness, not out of thought,—but the thought
of the ‘out of thought.’

2. Descartes accepts Being in the entirely positive sense, and has
not the conception of its being the negative of self-consciousness:
but simple Being, set forth as the negative of self-consciousness,
is extension. Descartes thus separates extension from God, remains
constant to this separation, unites the universe, matter, with God in
such a way as to make Him its creator and first cause: and he has the
true perception that conservation is a continuous creation, in so far
as creation as activity is asserted to be separated. Descartes does
not, however, trace extension in a true method back to thought; matter,
extended substances, stand over against the thinking substances which
are simple; in as far as the universe is created by God, it could not
be as perfect as its cause. As a matter of fact the effect is less
perfect than the cause, since it is that which is posited, if we are to
remain at the conception of cause pertaining to the understanding. Hence
according to Descartes extension is the less perfect. But as imperfect
the extended substances cannot exist and subsist through themselves or
their Notion; they thus require every moment the assistance of God for
their maintenance, and without this they would in a moment sink back into
nothing. Preservation is, however, unceasing reproduction.[178]

Descartes now proceeds to further particulars, and expresses himself as
follows: “We consider what comes under consciousness either as things or
their qualities, or as eternal truths which have no existence outside
our thought”—which do not belong to this or that time, to this or that
place. He calls those last something inborn within us, something not
made by us or merely felt,[179] but the eternal Notion of mind itself
and the eternal determinations of its freedom, of itself as itself. From
this point the conception that ideas are inborn (_innatæ ideæ_) hence
proceeds; this is the question over which Locke and Leibnitz dispute. The
expression “eternal truths” is current even in these modern times, and it
signifies the universal determinations and relations which exist entirely
on their own account. The word ‘inborn’ is however a clumsy and stupid
expression, because the conception of physical birth thereby indicated,
does not apply to mind. To Descartes inborn ideas are not universal,
as they are to Plato and his successors, but that which has evidence,
immediate certainty, an immediate multiplicity founded in thought
itself—manifold conceptions in the form of a Being, resembling what
Cicero calls natural feelings implanted in the heart. We would rather say
that such is implied in the nature and essence of our mind and spirit.
Mind is active and conducts itself in its activity in a determinate
manner; but this activity has no other ground than its freedom. Yet if
this is the case more is required than merely to say so; it must be
deduced as a necessary product of our mind. We have such ideas, for
instance, in the logical laws: “From nothing comes nothing,” “A thing
cannot both be and not be,”[180] as also in moral principles. These are
facts of consciousness which Descartes however soon passes from again;
they are only present in thought as subjective, and he has thus not yet
inquired respecting their content.

As regards things, on which Descartes now directs his attention, the
other side to these eternal verities, the universal determinations
of things are substance, permanence, order, &c.[181] He then gives
definitions of these thoughts, just as Aristotle draws up a list of the
categories. But although Descartes laid it down formerly as essential
that no hypotheses must be made, yet now he takes the conceptions, and
passes on to them as something found within our consciousness. He defines
substance thus: “By substance I understand none other than a thing
(_rem_) which requires no other something for existence; and there is
only one thing, namely God, which can be regarded as such a substance
requiring no other thing.” This is what Spinoza says; we may say that it
is likewise the true definition, the unity of Notion and reality: “All
other” (things) “can only exist by means of a concurrence (_concursus_)
of God”; what we still call substance outside of God thus does not exist
for itself, does not have its existence in the Notion itself. That is
then called the system of assistance (_systema assistentiæ_) which
is, however, transcendental. God is the absolute uniter of Notion and
actuality; other things, finite things which have a limit and stand in
dependence, require something else. “Hence if we likewise call other
things substances, this expression is not applicable both to them and
to God _univoce_, as is said in the schools; that is to say no definite
significance can be given to this word which would equally apply both to
God and to the creatures.”[182]

“But I do not recognize more than two sorts of things; the one is that
of thinking things, and the other that of things which relate to what
is extended.” Thought, the Notion, the spiritual, the self-conscious,
is what is at home with itself, and its opposite is contained in what
is extended, spatial, separated, not at home with itself nor free.
This is the real distinction (_distinctio realis_) of substances: “The
one substance can be clearly and definitely comprehended without the
other. But the corporeal and the thinking and creating substance can
be comprehended under this common notion, for the reason that they
are things which require God’s support alone in order to exist.” They
are universal; other finite things require other things as conditions
essential to their existence. But extended substance, the kingdom of
nature, and spiritual substance, do not require one another.[183]
They may be called substances, because each of them constitutes an
entire range or sphere, an independent totality. But because, Spinoza
concluded, each side, the kingdom of thought as well as nature, is one
complete system within itself, they are likewise in themselves, that is
absolutely, identical as God, the absolute substance; for thinking spirit
this implicit is thus God, or their differences are ideal.

Descartes proceeds from the Notion of God to what is created, to thought
and extension, and from this to the particular. “Now substances
have several attributes without which they cannot be thought”—that
signifies their determinateness—“but each has something peculiar to
itself which constitutes its nature and essence”—a simple universal
determinateness—“and to which the others all relate. Thus thought
constitutes the absolute attribute of mind,” thought is its quality;
“extension is” the essential determination of corporeality, and this
alone is “the true nature of body. What remains are merely secondary
qualities, modes, like figure and movement in what is extended,
imagination, feeling and will in thinking; they may be taken away or
thought away. God is the uncreated, thinking substance.”[184]

Descartes here passes to what is individual, and because he follows
up extension he arrives at matter, rest, movement. One of Descartes’
main points is that matter, extension, corporeality, are quite the same
thing for thought; according to him the nature of body is fulfilled in
its extension, and this should be accepted as the only essential fact
respecting the corporeal world. We say that body offers resistance, has
smell, taste, colour, transparency, hardness, &c., since without these
we can have no body. All these further determinations respecting what is
extended, such as size, rest, movement, and inertia, are, however, merely
sensuous, and this Descartes showed, as it had long before this been
shown by the Sceptics. Undoubtedly that is the abstract Notion or pure
essence, but to body or to pure existence, there likewise of necessity
pertains negativity or diversity. By means of the following illustration
Descartes showed that with the exception of extension, all corporeal
determinations may be annihilated, and that none can be absolutely
predicated. We draw conclusions respecting the solidity and hardness
of matter from the resistance which a body offers to our disturbance,
and by means of which it seeks to hold its place. Now if we admit that
matter as we touch it always gives way to us like space, we should have
no reason for ascribing to it solidity. Smell, colour, taste, are in
the same way sensuous qualities merely; but what we clearly perceive is
alone true. If a body is ground into small parts, it gives way, and yet
it does not lose its nature; resistance is thus not essential.[185] This
not-being-for-itself is however a quantitatively slighter resistance
only; the resistance always remains. But Descartes desires only to think;
now he does not think resistance, colour, &c., but apprehends them by the
senses only. Hence he says that all this must be led back to extension
as being special modifications of the same. It is undoubtedly to the
credit of Descartes that he only accepts as true what is thought; but the
abrogation of these sensuous qualities simply represents the negative
movement of thought: the essence of body is conditioned through this
thought, that is, it is not true essence.

Descartes now makes his way from the Notion of extension to the laws of
motion, as the universal knowledge of the corporeal in its implicitude;
he shows (α) that there is no vacuum, for that would be an extension
without bodily substance, _i.e._ a body without body; (β) that there are
no atoms (no indivisible independent existence), for the same reason,
viz., because the essence of body is extension. (γ) He further shows
that a body is set in motion by something outside of it, but of itself
it continues in a condition of rest, and likewise it must, when in a
condition of movement, be brought to rest by another outside of it—this
is the property of inertia.[186] These are unmeaning propositions, for
an abstraction is involved for instance in asserting simple rest and
movement in their opposition.

Extension and motion are the fundamental conceptions in mechanical
physics; they represent the truth of the corporeal world. It is thus
that ideality comes before the mind of Descartes, and he is far elevated
above the reality of the sensuous qualities, although he does not reach
so far as to the separation of this ideality. He thus remains at the
point of view of mechanism pure and simple. Give me matter (extension)
and motion and I will build worlds for you, is what Descartes virtually
says.[187] Space and time were hence to him the only determinations of
the material universe. In this, then, lies the mechanical fashion of
viewing nature, or the natural philosophy of Descartes is seen to be
purely mechanical.[188] Hence changes in matter are due merely to motion,
so that Descartes traces every relationship to the rest and movement
of particles, and all material diversity such as colour, and taste—in
short, all bodily qualities and animal phenomena—to mechanism. In living
beings processes such as that of digestion are mechanical effects which
have as principles, rest and movement. We here see the ground and origin
of the mechanical philosophy; but further on we find that this is
unsatisfactory, for matter and motion do not suffice to explain life.
Yet the great matter in all this is that thought goes forward in its
determinations, and that it constitutes from these thought-determinations
the truth of nature.

In his consideration of the system of the world and the movement of the
heavenly bodies, Descartes has worked out the mechanical view more fully.
He thus comes to speak of the earth, the sun, &c., and of his conception
of the circling motion of the heavenly bodies in the form of vortices:
of metaphysical hypotheses as to how small particles pass into, out of,
and through pores and act on one another; and finally to saltpetre and
gunpowder.[189]

Universal reflections should have the first claim on our attention; but
on the other hand the transition to the determinate is accomplished in a
system of Physics which is the result of observations and experiences,
and this is done entirely by means of the understanding. Descartes thus
mingles many observations with a metaphysic of this nature, and to us
the result is hence obscure. In this philosophy the thinking treatment
of empiricism is thus predominant, and a similar method has been adopted
by philosophers from this time on. To Descartes and others, Philosophy
had still the more indefinite significance of arriving at knowledge
through thought, reflection, and reasoning. Speculative cognition, the
derivation from the Notion, the free independent development of the
matter itself, was first introduced by Fichte, and consequently what
is now called philosophic knowledge is not yet separated in Descartes
from the rest of scientific knowledge. In those times all the knowledge
of mankind was called philosophy; in Descartes’ metaphysics we thus
saw quite empirical reflection and reasoning from particular grounds,
from experiences, facts, phenomena, being brought into play in the
naivest manner, and one has no sense of speculation in the matter. The
strictly scientific element here really consisted mainly in the method of
proof as it has long been made use of in geometry, and in the ordinary
method of the formal logical syllogism. Hence it likewise happens that
Philosophy, which ought to form a totality of the sciences, begins with
logic and metaphysics; the second part is composed of ordinary physics
and mathematics, mingled no doubt with metaphysical speculations, and
the third part, ethics, deals with the nature of man, his duties, the
state, the citizen. And this is the case with Descartes. The first part
of the _Principia philosophiæ_ treats _De principiis cognitionis humanæ_,
the second _De principiis rerum materialium_. This natural philosophy,
as a philosophy of extension, is, however, none other than what a quite
ordinary physics or mechanics might at that time be, and it is still
quite hypothetical; we, on the other hand, accurately distinguish
empirical physics and natural philosophy, even though the first likewise
pertains to thought.

3. Descartes never reached the third part, the philosophy of Mind, for,
while he made a special study of physics, in the region of ethics he
published one tract only, _De passionibus_. In this reference Descartes
treats of thought and human freedom. He proves freedom from the fact of
the soul thinking that the will is unrestrained, and of that constituting
the perfection of mankind. And this is quite true. In respect to the
freedom of the will he comes across the difficulty of how to reconcile it
with the divine prescience. As free, man might do what is not ordained of
God beforehand—this would conflict with the omnipotence and omniscience
of God; and if everything is ordained of God, human freedom would thereby
be done away with. Yet he does not solve the contradiction contained
in these two different aspects without falling into difficulty. But
conformably to the method which he adopts, and which we pointed out
above (pp. 238, 239), he says: “The human mind is finite, God’s power
and predetermination are infinite; we are thus not capable of judging of
the relationship in which the freedom of the human soul stands to the
omnipotence and omniscience of God—but in self-consciousness we have
the certainty of it given us as a fact. And we must hold only to what
is certain.”[190] When he proceeds further much appears to him still
incapable of explanation; but we see obstinacy and caprice likewise
exhibited in his stopping short at the assertion as to the best of his
knowledge. The method of knowledge as set forth by Descartes, takes the
form of a reasoning of the understanding, and is thus without special
interest.

These, then, are the principal points in the Cartesian system. Some
particular assertions made by Descartes, which have been specially
instrumental in giving him fame, have still to be mentioned—particular
forms which have been formerly considered in metaphysics, and likewise
by Wolff. For example, in the first place we gather that Descartes
regarded animals and other organisms as machines moved by another,
and not possessing the principle of the spontaneity of thought within
them[191]—a mechanical physiology, a cut and dry thought pertaining
to the understanding, which is of no further importance. In the sharp
opposition between thought and extension, the former is not considered
as sensation, so that the latter can isolate itself. The organic must as
body reduce itself to extension; any further development of this last
thus only proves its dependence on the first determinations.

In the second place, the relation between soul and body now becomes an
important question, that is, the return of the object within itself
in such a way that thought posits itself in another, in matter. As to
this, many systems are offered to us in metaphysics. One of these is
the _influxus physicus_, that the relation of spirit is of a corporeal
nature, that the object is related to mind as bodies are to one another—a
conception like this is very crude. How does Descartes understand the
unity of soul and body? The former belongs to thought, the latter to
extension; and thus because both are substance, neither requires
the Notion of the other, and hence soul and body are independent of
one another and can exercise no direct influence upon one another.
Soul could only influence body in so far as it required the same, and
conversely—that is, in so far as they have actual relation to one
another. But since each is a totality, neither can bear a real relation
to the other. Descartes consistently denied the physical influence
of one on the other; that would have signified a mechanical relation
between the two. Descartes thus established the intellectual sphere in
contradistinction to matter, and on it based the independent subsistence
of mind; for in his _cogito_ ‘I’ is at first only certain of itself,
since I can abstract from all. Now we find the necessity of a mediator
to bring about a union of the abstract and the external and individual.
Descartes settles this by placing between the two what constitutes the
metaphysical ground of their mutual changes, God. He is the intermediate
bond of union, in as far as He affords assistance to the soul in what
it cannot through its own freedom accomplish, so that the changes in
body and soul may correspond with one another.[192] If I have desires,
an intention, these receive corporeal realization; this association of
soul and body is, according to Descartes, effected through God. For
above (p. 239) we saw that Descartes says of God that He is the Truth of
the conception: as long as I think rightly and consistently, something
real corresponds to my thought, and the connecting link is God. God
is hereby the perfect identity of the two opposites, since He is, as
Idea, the unity of Notion and reality. In the Idea of Spinoza this is
worked out and developed in its further moments. Descartes’ conclusion
is quite correct; in finite things this identity is imperfect. Only the
form employed by Descartes is inadequate; for it implies that in the
beginning there are two things, thought or soul and body, and that then
God appears as a third thing, outside both—that He is not the Notion of
unity, nor are the two elements themselves Notion. We must not however
forget that Descartes says that both those original elements are created
substances. But this expression ‘created’ pertains to the ordinary
conception only and is not a determinate thought; it was Spinoza,
therefore, who first accomplished this return to thought.

2. SPINOZA.

The philosophy of Descartes underwent a great variety of unspeculative
developments, but in Benedict Spinoza a direct successor to this
philosopher may be found, and one who carried on the Cartesian principle
to its furthest logical conclusions. For him soul and body, thought and
Being, cease to have separate independent existence. The dualism of
the Cartesian system Spinoza, as a Jew, altogether set aside. For the
profound unity of his philosophy as it found expression in Europe, his
manifestation of Spirit as the identity of the finite and the infinite in
God, instead of God’s appearing related to these as a Third—all this is
an echo from Eastern lands. The Oriental theory of absolute identity was
brought by Spinoza much more directly into line, firstly with the current
of European thought, and then with the European and Cartesian philosophy,
in which it soon found a place.

First of all we must, however, glance at the circumstances of Spinoza’s
life. He was by descent a Portuguese Jew, and was born at Amsterdam in
the year 1632; the name he received was Baruch, but he altered it to
Benedict. In his youth he was instructed by the Rabbis of the synagogue
to which he belonged, but he soon fell out with them, their wrath having
been kindled by the criticisms which he passed on the fantastic doctrines
of the Talmud. He was not, therefore, long in absenting himself from the
synagogue, and as the Rabbis were in dread lest his example should have
evil consequences, they offered him a yearly allowance of a thousand
gulden if he would keep away from the place and hold his tongue. This
offer he declined; and the Rabbis thereafter carried their persecution
of him to such a pitch that they were even minded to rid themselves of
him by assassination. After having made a narrow escape from the dagger,
he formally withdrew from the Jewish communion, without, however, going
over to the Christian Church. He now applied himself particularly to the
Latin language, and made a special study of the Cartesian philosophy.
Later on he went to Rhynsburg, near Leyden, and from the year 1664 he
lived in retirement, first at Voorburg, a village near the Hague, and
then at the Hague itself, highly respected by numerous friends: he
gained a livelihood for himself by grinding optical glasses. It was
no arbitrary choice that led him to occupy himself with light, for it
represents in the material sphere the absolute identity which forms the
foundation of the Oriental view of things. Although he had rich friends
and mighty protectors, among whom even generals were numbered, he lived
in humble poverty, declining the handsome gifts offered to him time after
time. Nor would he permit Simon von Vries to make him his heir; he only
accepted from him an annual pension of three hundred florins; in the
same way he gave up to his sisters his share of their father’s estate.
From the Elector Palatine, Carl Ludwig, a man of most noble character
and raised above the prejudices of his time, he received the offer of a
professor’s chair at Heidelberg, with the assurance that he would have
liberty to teach and to write, because “the Prince believed he would not
put that liberty to a bad use by interfering with the religion publicly
established.” Spinoza (in his published letters) very wisely declined
this offer, however, because “he did not know within what limits that
philosophic liberty would have to be confined, in order that he might
not appear to be interfering with the publicly established religion.”
He remained in Holland, a country highly interesting in the history
of general culture, as it was the first in Europe to show the example
of universal toleration, and afforded to many a place of refuge where
they might enjoy liberty of thought; for fierce as was the rage of the
theologians there against Bekker, for example (Bruck. Hist. crit. phil.
T. IV. P. 2, pp. 719, 720), and furious as were the attacks of Voetius
on the Cartesian philosophy, these had not the consequences which they
would have had in another land. Spinoza died on the 21st of February,
1677, in the forty-fourth year of his age. The cause of his death was
consumption, from which he had long been a sufferer; this was in harmony
with his system of philosophy, according to which all particularity
and individuality pass away in the one substance. A Protestant divine,
Colerus by name, who published a biography of Spinoza, inveighs strongly
against him, it is true, but gives nevertheless a most minute and kindly
description of his circumstances and surroundings—telling how he left
only about two hundred thalers, what debts he had, and so on. A bill
included in the inventory, in which the barber requests payment due him
by M. Spinoza of blessed memory, scandalizes the parson very much, and
regarding it he makes the observation: “Had the barber but known what
sort of a creature Spinoza was, he certainly would not have spoken of his
blessed memory.” The German translator of this biography writes under
the portrait of Spinoza: _characterem, reprobationis in vultu gerens_,
applying this description to a countenance which doubtless expresses the
melancholy of a profound thinker, but is otherwise mild and benevolent.
The _reprobatio_ is certainly correct; but it is not a reprobation in the
passive sense; it is an active disapprobation on Spinoza’s part of the
opinions, errors and thoughtless passions of mankind.[193]

Spinoza used the terminology of Descartes, and also published an account
of his system. For we find the first of Spinoza’s works entitled “An
Exposition according to the geometrical method of the principles of the
Cartesian philosophy.” Some time after this he wrote his _Tractatus
theologico-politicus_, and by it gained considerable reputation. Great as
was the hatred which Spinoza roused amongst his Rabbis, it was more than
equalled by the odium which he brought upon himself amongst Christian,
and especially amongst Protestant theologians—chiefly through the medium
of this essay. It contains his views on inspiration, a critical treatment
of the books of Moses and the like, chiefly from the point of view that
the laws therein contained are limited in their application to the Jews.
Later Christian theologians have written critically on this subject,
usually making it their object to show that these books were compiled at
a later time, and that they date in part from a period subsequent to the
Babylonian captivity; this has become a crucial point with Protestant
theologians, and one by which the modern school distinguishes itself from
the older, greatly pluming itself thereon. All this, however, is already
to be found in the above-mentioned work of Spinoza. But Spinoza drew the
greatest odium upon himself by his philosophy proper, which we must now
consider as it is given to us in his Ethics. While Descartes published
no writings on this subject, the Ethics of Spinoza is undoubtedly his
greatest work; it was published after his death by Ludwig Mayer, a
physician, who had been Spinoza’s most intimate friend. It consists of
five parts; the first deals with God (_De Deo_). General metaphysical
ideas are contained in it, which include the knowledge of God and nature.
The second part deals with the nature and origin of mind (_De natura
et origine mentis_). We see thus that Spinoza does not treat of the
subject of natural philosophy, extension and motion at all, for he passes
immediately from God to the philosophy of mind, to the ethical point of
view; and what refers to knowledge, intelligent mind, is brought forward
in the first part, under the head of the principles of human knowledge.
The third book of the Ethics deals with the origin and nature of the
passions (_De origine et natura affectuum_); the fourth with the powers
of the same, or human slavery (_De servitute humana seu de affectuum
viribus_); the fifth, lastly, with the power of the understanding, with
thought, or with human liberty (_De potentia intellectus seu de libertate
humana_).[194] Kirchenrath Professor Paulus published Spinoza’s works
in Jena; I had a share in the bringing out of this edition, having been
entrusted with the collation of French translations.

As regards the philosophy of Spinoza, it is very simple, and on the
whole easy to comprehend; the difficulty which it presents is due
partly to the limitations of the method in which Spinoza presents his
thoughts, and partly to his narrow range of ideas, which causes him in
an unsatisfactory way to pass over important points of view and cardinal
questions. Spinoza’s system is that of Descartes made objective in the
form of absolute truth. The simple thought of Spinoza’s idealism is this:
The true is simply and solely the one substance, whose attributes are
thought and extension or nature: and only this absolute unity is reality,
it alone is God. It is, as with Descartes, the unity of thought and
Being, or that which contains the Notion of its existence in itself. The
Cartesian substance, as Idea, has certainly Being included in its Notion;
but it is only Being as abstract, not as real Being or as extension
(_supra_, p. 241). With Descartes corporeality and the thinking ‘I’ are
altogether independent Beings; this independence of the two extremes
is done away with in Spinozism by their becoming moments of the one
absolute Being. This expression signifies that Being must be grasped as
the unity of opposites; the chief consideration is not to let slip the
opposition and set it aside, but to reconcile and resolve it. Since then
it is thought and Being, and no longer the abstractions of the finite
and infinite, or of limit and the unlimited, that form the opposition
(_supra_, p. 161), Being is here more definitely regarded as extension;
for in its abstraction it would be really only that return into itself,
that simple equality with itself, which constitutes thought (_supra_, p.
229). The pure thought of Spinoza is therefore not the simple universal
of Plato, for it has likewise come to know the absolute opposition of
Notion and Being.

Taken as a whole, this constitutes the Idea of Spinoza, and it is
just what τὸ ὄν was to the Eleatics (Vol. I. pp. 244, 252). This Idea
of Spinoza’s we must allow to be in the main true and well-grounded;
absolute substance is the truth, but it is not the whole truth; in
order to be this it must also be thought of as in itself active and
living, and by that very means it must determine itself as mind. But
substance with Spinoza is only the universal and consequently the
abstract determination of mind; it may undoubtedly be said that this
thought is the foundation of all true views—not, however, as their
absolutely fixed and permanent basis, but as the abstract unity which
mind is in itself. It is therefore worthy of note that thought must
begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower
of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy. For as we
saw above (Vol I. p. 144), when man begins to philosophize, the soul
must commence by bathing in this ether of the One Substance, in which
all that man has held as true has disappeared; this negation of all
that is particular, to which every philosopher must have come, is the
liberation of the mind and its absolute foundation. The difference
between our standpoint and that of the Eleatic philosophy is only this,
that through the agency of Christianity concrete individuality is in the
modern world present throughout in spirit. But in spite of the infinite
demands on the part of the concrete, substance with Spinoza is not yet
determined as in itself concrete. As the concrete is thus not present in
the content of substance, it is therefore to be found within reflecting
thought alone, and it is only from the endless oppositions of this last
that the required unity emerges. Of substance as such there is nothing
more to be said; all that we can do is to speak of the different ways
in which Philosophy has dealt with it, and the opposites which in it
are abrogated. The difference depends on the nature of the opposites
which are held to be abrogated in substance. Spinoza is far from having
proved this unity as convincingly as was done by the ancients; but what
constitutes the grandeur of Spinoza’s manner of thought is that he is
able to renounce all that is determinate and particular, and restrict
himself to the One, giving heed to this alone.

1. Spinoza begins (Eth. P. I pp. 35, 36) with a series of definitions,
from which we take the following.

a. Spinoza’s first definition is of the Cause of itself. He says: “By
that which is _causa sui_, its own cause, I understand that whose
essence” (or Notion) “involves existence, or which cannot be conceived
except as existent.” The unity of existence and universal thought is
asserted from the very first, and this unity will ever be the question
at issue. “The cause of itself” is a noteworthy expression, for while we
picture to ourselves that the effect stands in opposition to the cause,
the cause of itself is the cause which, while it operates and separates
an “other,” at the same time produces only itself, and in the production
therefore does away with this distinction. The establishing of itself as
an other is loss or degeneration, and at the same time the negation of
this loss; this is a purely speculative Notion, indeed a fundamental
Notion in all speculation. The cause in which the cause is identical
with the effect, is the infinite cause (_infra_, p. 263); if Spinoza had
further developed what lies in the _causa sui_, substance with him would
not have been rigid and unworkable.

b. The second definition is that of the finite. “That thing is said to be
finite in its kind which can be limited by another of the same nature,”
For it comes then to an end, it is not there; what is there is something
else. This something else must, however, be of a like nature; for those
things which are to limit each other must, in order to be able to limit
each other, touch each other, and consequently have a relation to each
other, that is to say they must be of one nature, stand on a like basis,
and have a common sphere. That is the affirmative side of the limit.
“Thus a thought is” only “limited by another thought, a body by another
body, but thoughts are not limited by bodies nor” conversely “bodies by
thoughts.” We saw this (p. 244) with Descartes: thought is an independent
totality and so is extension, they have nothing to do with one another;
they do not limit each other, each is included in itself.

c. The third definition is that of substance. “By substance I understand
that which exists in itself and is conceived by itself, _i.e._ the
conception of which does not require the aid of the conception of any
other thing for its formation (_a quo formari debeat_);” otherwise it
would be finite, accidental. What cannot have a conception formed of it
without the aid of something else, is not independent, but is dependent
upon that something else.

d. In the fourth place Spinoza defines attributes, which, as the moment
coming second to substance, belong to it. “By attribute I understand
that which the mind perceives as constituting the essence of substance;”
and to Spinoza this alone is true. This is an important determination;
the attribute is undoubtedly a determinateness, but at the same time it
remains a totality. Spinoza, like Descartes, accepts only two attributes,
thought and extension. The understanding grasps them as the reality of
substance, but the reality is not higher than the substance, for it
is only reality in the view of the understanding, which falls outside
substance. Each of the two ways of regarding substance—extension and
thought—contains no doubt the whole content of substance, but only in one
form, which the understanding brings with it; and for this very reason
both sides are in themselves identical and infinite. This is the true
completion; but where substance passes over into attribute is not stated.

e. The fifth definition has to do with what comes third in relation to
substance, the mode. “By mode I understand the affections of substance,
or that which is in something else, through the aid of which also it
is conceived.” Thus substance is conceived through itself; attribute
is not conceived through itself, but has a relation to the conceiving
understanding, in so far as this last conceives reality; mode, finally,
is what is not conceived as reality, but through and in something else.

These last three moments Spinoza ought not merely to have established
in this way as conceptions, he ought to have deduced them; they are
especially important, and correspond with what we more definitely
distinguish as universal, particular and individual. They must not,
however, be taken as formal, but in their true concrete sense; the
concrete universal is substance, the concrete particular is the concrete
species; the Father and Son in the Christian dogma are similarly
particular, but each of them contains the whole nature of God, only under
a different form. The mode is the individual, the finite as such, which
enters into external connection with what is “other.” In this Spinoza
only descends to a lower stage, the mode is only the foregoing warped
and stunted. Spinoza’s defect is therefore this, that he takes the
third moment as mode alone, as a false individuality. True individuality
and subjectivity is not a mere retreat from the universal, not merely
something clearly determinate; for, as clearly determinate, it is at the
same time Being-for-itself, determined by itself alone. The individual,
the subjective, is even in being so the return to the universal; and
in that it is at home with itself, it is itself the universal. The
return consists simply and solely in the fact of the particular being
in itself the universal; to this return Spinoza did not attain. Rigid
substantiality is the last point he reached, not infinite form; this he
knew not, and thus determinateness continually vanishes from his thought.

f. In the sixth place, the definition of the infinite is also of
importance, for in the infinite Spinoza defines more strictly than
anywhere else the Notion of the Notion. The infinite has a double
significance, according as it is taken as the infinitely many or as
the absolutely infinite (_infra_, p. 263). “The infinite in its kind
is not such in respect of all possible attributes; but the absolutely
infinite is that to whose essence all belongs that expresses an essence
and contains no negation.” In the same sense Spinoza distinguishes in
the nine-and-twentieth Letter (Oper. T. I. pp. 526-532) the infinite of
imagination from the infinite of thought (_intellectus_), the actual
(_actu_) infinite. Most men, when they wish to strive after the sublime,
get no farther than the first of these; this is the false infinite, just
as when one says “and so on into infinity,” meaning perhaps the infinity
of space from star to star, or else the infinity of time. An infinite
numerical series in mathematics is exactly the same thing. If a certain
fraction is represented as a decimal fraction, it is incomplete; ⅐
is, on the contrary, the true infinite, and therefore not an incomplete
expression, although the content here is of course limited. It is
infinity in the incorrect sense that one usually has in view when
infinity is spoken of; and even if it is looked on as sublime, it yet is
nothing present, and only goes ever out into the negative, without being
actual (_actu_). But for Spinoza the infinite is not the fixing of a
limit and then passing beyond the limit fixed—the sensuous infinity—but
absolute infinity, the positive, which has complete and present in itself
an absolute multiplicity which has no Beyond. Philosophic infinity,
that which is infinite _actu_, Spinoza therefore calls the absolute
affirmation of itself. This is quite correct, only it might have been
better expressed as: “It is the negation of negation.” Spinoza here also
employs geometrical figures as illustrations of the Notion of infinity.
In his _Opera postuma_, preceding his Ethics, and also in the letter
quoted above, he has two circles, one of which lies within the other,
which have not, however, a common centre.

“The inequalities of the space between A B and C D exceed every number;
and yet the space which lies between is not so very great.” That is to
say, if I wish to determine them all, I must enter upon an infinite
series. This “beyond” always, however, remains defective, is always
affected with negation; and yet this false infinite is there to hand,
circumscribed, affirmative, actual and present in that plane as a
complete space between the two circles. Or a finite line consists of
an infinite number of points; and yet the line is present here and
determined; the “beyond” of the infinite number of points, which are not
complete, is in it complete and called back into unity. The infinite
should be represented as actually present, and this comes to pass in the
Notion of the cause of itself, which is therefore the true infinity. As
soon as the cause has something else opposed to it—the effect—finitude
is present; but here this something else is at the same time abrogated
and it becomes once more the cause itself. The affirmative is thus
negation of negation, since, according to the well-known grammatical
rule, _duplex negatio affirmat_. In the same way Spinoza’s earlier
definitions have also the infinite already implied in them, for instance
in the case of the just mentioned cause of itself, inasmuch as he defines
it as that whose essence involves existence (_supra_, p. 258). Notion
and existence are each the Beyond of the other; but cause of itself, as
thus including them, is really the carrying back of this “beyond” into
unity. Or (_supra_, p. 259) “Substance is that which is in itself and is
conceived from itself;” that is the same unity of Notion and existence.
The infinite is in the same way in itself and has also its Notion in
itself; its Notion is its Being, and its Being its Notion; true infinity
is therefore to be found in Spinoza. But he has no consciousness of this;
he has not recognized this Notion as absolute Notion, and therefore has
not expressed it as a moment of true existence; for with him the Notion
falls outside of existence, into the thought of existence.

g. Finally Spinoza says in the seventh place: “God is a Being absolutely
infinite, _i.e._ a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of
which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” Does substance, one
might here ask, possess an infinite number of attributes? But as with
Spinoza there are only two attributes, thought and extension, with which
he invests God, “infinite” is not to be taken here in the sense of the
indeterminate many, but positively, as a circle is perfect infinity in
itself.

The whole of Spinoza’s philosophy is contained in these definitions,
which, however, taken as a whole are formal; it is really a weak point
in Spinoza that he begins thus with definitions. In mathematics this
method is permitted, because at the outset we there make assumptions,
such as that of the point and line; but in Philosophy the content
should be known as the absolutely true. It is all very well to grant
the correctness of the name-definition, and acknowledge that the word
“substance” corresponds with the conception which the definition
indicates, but it is quite another question to determine whether this
content is absolutely true. Such a question is not asked in the case of
geometrical propositions, but in philosophic investigation it is the very
thing to be first considered, and this Spinoza has not done. Instead of
only explaining these simple thoughts and representing them as concrete
in the definitions which he makes, what he ought to have done was to
examine whether this content is true. To all appearance it is only the
explanation of the words that is given; but the content of the words is
held to be established. All further content is merely derived from that,
and proved thereby; for on the first content all the rest depends, and
if it is established as a basis, the other necessarily follows. “The
attribute is that which the understanding thinks of God.” But here the
question is: How does it come that besides the Deity there now appears
the understanding, which applies to absolute substance the two forms
of thought and extension? and whence come these two forms themselves?
Thus everything proceeds inwards, and not outwards; the determinations
are not developed from substance, it does not resolve itself into these
attributes.

2. These definitions are followed by axioms and propositions in which
Spinoza proves a great variety of points. He descends from the universal
of substance through the particular, thought and extension, to the
individual. He has thus all three moments of the Notion, or they are
essential to him. But the mode, under which head falls individuality,
he does not recognize as essential, or as constituting a moment of true
existence in that existence; for it disappears in existence, or it is not
raised into the Notion.

a. The main point then is that Spinoza proves from these Notions that
there is only One Substance, God. It is a simple chain of reasoning,
a very formal proof. “Fifth Proposition: There cannot be two or more
substances of the same nature or of the same attribute.” This is implied
already in the definitions; the proof is therefore a useless and
wearisome toil, which only serves to render Spinoza more difficult to
understand. “If there were several” (substances of the same attribute)
“they must be distinguished from one another either by the diversity of
their attributes or by the diversity of their affections” (modes). “If
they are distinguished by their attributes, it would be directly conceded
that there is only one substance having the same attribute.” For the
attributes are simply what the understanding grasps as the essence of the
one substance, which is determined in itself, and not through anything
else. “But if these substances were distinguished by their affections,
since substance is by nature prior to its affections it would follow that
if from substance its affections were abstracted and it were regarded
in itself, _i.e._ in its truth, it could henceforth not be regarded as
distinct from other substances.” “Eighth Proposition: All substance is
necessarily infinite. Proof: For otherwise it must be limited by another
substance of the same nature, in which case there would be two substances
of the same attribute, which is contrary to the fifth proposition.”
“Every attribute must be conceived for itself,” as determination
reflected on itself. “For attribute is what the mind conceives of
substance as constituting its essence, from which it follows that it
must be conceived through itself,” _i.e._ substance is what is conceived
through itself (see the fourth and third definitions). “Therefore we may
not argue from the plurality of attributes to a plurality of substances,
for each is conceived by itself, and they have all been, always and at
the same time, in substance, without the possibility of the one being
produced by the other.” “Substance is indivisible. For if the parts
retained the nature of the substance, there would be several substances
of the same nature, which is contrary to the fifth proposition. If not,
infinite substance would cease to exist, which is absurd.”[195]

“Fourteenth Proposition: No other substance than God can either exist or
be conceived. Proof: God is the absolutely infinite substance, to whom
can be denied no attribute which expresses the essence of substance,
and He exists necessarily; therefore if there were a substance other
than God, it must be explained by means of an attribute of God.”
Consequently the substance would not have its own being, but that of
God, and therefore would not be a substance. Or if it were still to be
substance, “then there would necessarily follow the possibility of there
being two substances with the same attribute, which according to the
fifth proposition is absurd. From this it then follows that the thing
extended and the thing that thinks” are not substances, but “are either
attributes of God, or affections of His attributes.” By these proofs and
others like them not much is to be gained. “Fifteenth, proposition: What
is, is in God, and cannot exist or be conceived without God.” “Sixteenth
proposition: By the necessity of the divine nature infinite things must
follow in infinite modes, _i.e._, all that can fall under the infinite
understanding. God is therefore the absolute First Cause.”[196]

Spinoza then ascribes freedom and necessity to God: “God is the absolute
free cause, who is determined by nothing outside of Himself, for He
exists solely by the necessity of His nature. There is no cause which
inwardly or outwardly moves Him to act, except the perfection of His
nature. His activity is by the laws of His Being necessary and eternal;
what therefore follows from His absolute nature, from His attributes,
is eternal, as it follows from the nature of the triangle from eternity
and to eternity that its three angles are equal to two right angles.”
That is to say, His Being is His absolute power; _actus_ and _potentia_,
Thought and Being, are in Him one. God has not therefore any other
thoughts which He could not have actualized. “God is the immanent cause
of all things, not the transient (_transiens_),” _i.e._, external
cause. “His essence and His existence are the same, namely, the truth.
A thing which is determined to perform some action, is, since God is
cause, necessarily determined thereto by God; and a thing which is thus
determined cannot render itself undetermined. In nature nothing is
contingent. Will is not a free cause, but only a necessary cause, only a
mode; it is therefore determined by another. God acts in accordance with
no final causes (_sub ratione boni_). Those who assert that He does so,
appear to establish something apart from God, which does not depend on
God, and which God in His working keeps in view, as though it were an
end. If this view is taken, God is not a free cause, but is subject to
fate. It is equally inadmissible to subject all things to the arbitrary
pleasure of God, _i.e._, to His indifferent will.”[197] He is determined
solely by His own nature; the activity of God is thus His power, and that
is necessity. He is then absolute power in contrast to wisdom, which
sets up definite aims, and consequently limitations; particular aims,
thoughts of what is about to come to pass, and the like are therefore put
out of the question. But beyond this universal, no advance is made; for
it must be noticed as specially singular, that Spinoza in the fiftieth
Letter (Oper. T. I. p. 634) says that every determination is a negation.
Moreover, if God is the cause of the world, it is implied that He is
finite; for the world is here put beside God as something different from
Him.

b. The greatest difficulty in Spinoza is, in the distinctions to which
he comes, to grasp the relation of this determinate to God, at the same
time preserving the determination. “God is a thinking Being, because all
individual thoughts are modes which express God’s nature in a certain
and determinate manner; there pertains therefore to God an attribute the
conception of which all individual thoughts involve, and by means of this
they also are conceived. God is an extended Being for the same reason.”
This means that the same substance, under the attribute of thought, is
the intelligible world, and under the attribute of extension, is nature;
nature and thought thus both express the same Essence of God. Or, as
Spinoza says, “The order and system of natural things is the same as
the order of the thoughts. Thus, for instance, the circle which exists
in nature, and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God,
are one and the same thing” (they are one and the same content), “which
is” merely “expressed by means of different attributes. If we therefore
regard nature either under the attribute of extension or of thought,
or under any other attribute whatever, we shall find one and the same
connection of causes, _i.e._, the same sequence of things. The formal
Being of the idea of the circle can be conceived only by means of the
mode of thought, as its proximate cause, and this mode again by means of
another, and so on infinitely; so that we must explain the order of the
whole of nature, or the connection of causes, by the attribute of thought
alone, and if things are considered by the attribute of extension, they
must be considered only by the attribute of extension,—and the same holds
good of other causes.”[198] It is one and the same system, which at one
time appears as nature, and at another time in the form of thought.

But Spinoza does not demonstrate how these two are evolved from the
one substance, nor does he prove why there can only be two of them.
Neither are extension and thought anything to him in themselves, or in
truth, but only externally; for their difference is a mere matter of the
understanding, which is ranked by Spinoza only among affections (Eth. P.
I. Prop. XXXI. Demonst. p. 62), and as such has no truth. This has in
recent times been served up again by Schelling in the following form:
In themselves, the intelligent world and the corporeal world are the
same, only under different forms; so that the intelligent universe is in
itself the whole absolute divine totality, and the corporeal universe is
equally this same totality. The differences are not in themselves, but
the different aspects from which the Absolute is regarded are matters
external to it. We take a higher tone in saying that nature and mind
are rational; but reason is for us no empty word, for it means the
totality which develops itself within itself. Again, it is the standpoint
of reflection to regard aspects only, and nothing in itself. This
defect appears in Spinoza and Schelling in the fact that they see no
necessity why the Notion, as the implicit negative of its unity, should
make a separation of itself into different parts; so that out of the
simple universal the real, the opposed, itself becomes known. Absolute
substance, attribute and mode, Spinoza allows to follow one another as
definitions, he adopts them ready-made, without the attributes being
developed from the substance, or the modes from the attributes. And more
especially in regard to the attributes, there is no necessity evident,
why these are thought and extension in particular.

c. When Spinoza passes on to individual things, especially to
self-consciousness, to the freedom of the ‘I,’ he expresses himself in
such a way as rather to lead back all limitations to substance than
to maintain a firm grasp of the individual. Thus we already found the
attributes not to be independent, but only the forms in which the
understanding grasps substance in its differences; what comes third,
the modes, is that under which for Spinoza all difference of things
alone falls. Of the modes he says (Ethic. P. I. Prop. XXXII. Demonst. et
Coroll. II. p. 63): In every attribute there are two modes; in extension,
these are rest and motion, in thought they are understanding and will
(_intellectus et voluntas_). They are mere modifications which only exist
for us apart from God; therefore whatever refers to this difference and
is specially brought about by it, is not absolute, but finite. These
affections Spinoza sums up (Ethices, P. I. Prop. XXIX. Schol. pp. 61, 62)
under the head of _natura naturata_: “_Natura naturans_ is God regarded
as free cause, in so far as He is in Himself and is conceived by Himself:
or such attributes of substance as express the eternal and infinite
essence. By _natura naturata_, I understand all that follows from the
necessity of the divine nature, or from any of the attributes of God,
all modes of the divine attributes, in so far as they are regarded as
things which are in God, and which without God can neither exist nor be
conceived.” From God proceeds nothing, for all things merely return to
the point whence they came, if from themselves the commencement is made.

These then are Spinoza’s general forms, this is his principal idea. Some
further determinations have still to be mentioned. He gives definitions
of the terms modes, understanding, will, and of the affections, such
as joy and sadness.[199] We further find consciousness taken into
consideration. Its development is extremely simple, or rather it is not
developed at all; Spinoza begins directly with mind. “The essence of
man consists of certain modifications of the attributes of God”; these
modifications are only something related to our understanding. “If we,
therefore, say that the human mind perceives this or that, it means
nothing else than that God has this or that idea, not in so far as He
is infinite, but in so far as He is expressed by the idea of the human
mind. And if we say that God has this or that idea, not in so far as
He constitutes the idea of the human mind, but in so far as He has,
along with the human mind, the idea of another thing, then we say that
the human mind perceives the thing partially or inadequately.” Truth
is for Spinoza, on the other hand, the adequate.[200] The idea that
all particular content is only a modification of God is ridiculed by
Bayle,[201] who argues from it that God modified as Turks and Austrians,
is waging war with Himself; but Bayle has not a trace of the speculative
element in him, although he is acute enough as a dialectician, and has
contributed to the intelligent discussion of definite subjects.

The relation of thought and extension in the human consciousness is dealt
with by Spinoza as follows: “What has a place in the object” (or rather
in the objective) “of the idea which constitutes the human mind must be
perceived by the human mind; or there must necessarily be in the mind
an idea of this object. The object of the idea which constitutes the
human mind is body, or a certain mode of extension. If, then, the object
of the idea which constitutes the human mind, is the body, there can
happen nothing in the body which is not perceived by the mind. Otherwise