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which we start. Undeniably it has some reality, even if its reality is imperfect and incomplete. And a unity which explains it must include in itself at least all the truth that the finite world possesses, even while it goes beyond and supplements this truth; it must not simply ignore finite things. Now Spinoza might have retained the reality of the finite by making God, the ultimate substance, simply the aggregate of finite facts; but he saw clearly that this would not serve his purpose. Such a unity would be only a fictitious one, and would leave reality after all a mere heap of particulars. But how to get any other unity, that should be at once concrete, doing justice to the facts of experience, and yet a real universal, a real bond of union, was a problem which Spinoza never completely

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Accordingly, while the true aim and presupposition of his philosophy is to find reality in the unchanging rational laws of which changing events in the natural world are the expression, and through which they are to be understood, the constant tendency in Spinoza's thinking — a tendency increased by his Scholastic terminology get away from the concrete altogether, and to arrive at his more general and ultimate being by the process of abstraction. That the process of abstraction does not lead us to concrete reality, he was well aware. He recognizes that the abstract man is not more, but less, real than particular men, and only represents the fact that these have certain elements in common; the ideal of the universal which he has before him is rather that of a comprehensive law. But, for all that, the eternal facts which he identifies with reality tend to be, in so far as he can make them clear at all, just such abstractions. Substance, or God, is reached by precisely that same process of dropping all limitations in the way of determinate qualities, which gives us the abstract man. The consequence is, that the logical derivation of less ultimate from more ultimate reality is beyond his reach. To use Hegel's figure, Spinoza's Absolute is

the lion's den to which all tracks lead, and from which none return.

And even if Spinoza had been always true to his ideal of reality as law, rather than mere substance, he still had an unsolved problem in the fact of imperfection and contingency, for which his rationalism left no place. By the geometrical method, we can at best only get truths which, though derived, are as absolute and as eternal as the God on the definition of whom they depend. The theorem of geometry is as true and adequate as the axioms on which it is based. But what, then, of the inadequate and false ideas which are represented in what Spinoza calls modes? Whence comes our phenomenal knowledge of ourselves and of the world? Clearly such false ideas can never be derived by a method which gives only truth. Or, to put it in another way, our inadequate notions of the world, and the modes of extension, or particular changing things, which these represent, either have an existence or they have not. If they have an existence, they are a part of God, since nothing exists outside of him; and then how can they be otherwise than as they are for God — eternal and adequate? Or, if they have no existence at all, how do we come to talk about them as if they did exist? The fact is, that by no possibility can Spinoza connect the world of appearance, of finite modes, of existence in time, with the true and eternal (timeless) reality of God, and of those derivative truths, equally eternal, that can be logically deduced from Him. And, consequently, he leaves the finite world without explanation; it is a mere impertinence in his system. Yet it is precisely to explain this that philosophy originates; and, apart from it, reality is left a mere blank.

It will not be necessary to dwell upon the statements by which Spinoza attempts, verbally at least, to bridge over the gap between this world of appearance, and the world of reality. From the nature of the case, the task is a hopeless one. Logically, Spinoza should have denied the

former world altogether; but the facts are too evident to permit of this. Indeed, the whole purpose of his philosophy is just to show how man, from being a mere part of the phenomenal world, can escape from its finiteness and attain true felicity. It only remains, then, to consider how this practical redemption is to be brought about, and what, more precisely, is the bondage from which we are to be set free.

2. The Doctrine of Salvation

1. Human Bondage. It has been seen that, according to Spinoza, the unsatisfactoriness of life is due to the fact that our affections are set, not upon an object that is eternal and unchanging, but upon transitory and imperfect things. If the object of our love were without variableness, it would lay to rest our passions, and impart to life something of its own calm and steadfastness. But because we love that which has no constancy and no true reality, we are in a continual turmoil of emotions; we hate, and envy, and fear, are exalted and depressed, take even our pleasures feverishly, and never know what peace is. Subjection to the emotions, then, and ignorance of our true end — the former growing out of the latter are the elements which constitute human bondage.

Now the further justification of this is found in Spinoza's psychology of the human life. The essence of life is selfpreservation the tendency of each individual thing to persevere in its own existence, to welcome all that tends to increase this, and oppose and reject whatever tends to limit it. Here again Spinoza accepts a fact of experience for which logically his system has no place; for if individual things have no reality in themselves, any such self-assertive activity would seem to be excluded. When this act of self-assertion depends wholly on ourselves, we have what Spinoza calls an action; when it depends in part upon what lies beyond ourselves, it is a passion. What, then, is the basis of this distinction between actions and

passions? What actions depend wholly on ourselves, and what on other beings?

The answer goes back to the two ways of regarding the human mind, implied in Spinoza's whole doctrine. If we take, that is, our phenomenal knowledge about the world, the particular states of our empirical consciousness, we have what Spinoza calls modes. Now these facts of the finite world are not complete in themselves, or capable of an absolute explanation. Each is causally dependent on another finite fact, and this, again, on another, and so on, in an infinite series. Thus, in the physical realm, any bodily change depends, not on the nature of the body alone, but on the body as affected by another mode, that is, upon the interaction between the body and the outside world; and the antecedents of this interaction can never be completely traced out. The same thing is true of the modes of thought, or ideas, which correspond to the bodily modes. Accordingly, our supposed adequate knowledge of objects is nothing of the sort. When we think we perceive an external object, what we really have is a sensation representing a state of our own body a state which is caused by the interaction between the real object and our sense organs, and which, consequently, by reason of its being a product of two factors, is a true representative of neither of them. This is the old doctrine of the relativity of sense perception, which goes back to Protagoras. All our sense knowledge is, therefore, inadequate and confused.

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But now there is another way of regarding the human mind. Besides being a collection of finite modes, our minds are also a constituent part of God's nature, since everything whatever that exists, exists in God. In their essence, therefore, their inmost truth and reality, our ideas may be viewed 'under a certain form of eternity'; and when thus viewed, they of course are adequate. The distinction, then, between actions and passions, goes back to the distinction between adequate thought, which has its full explanation in the mind itself, as identical in its essence with

God; and inadequate thought, which depends on the mind as a collection of finite modes, each getting what explana tion it can by reference to an infinite series of other finite facts. We are never fully active, except as we think truly, and see things as they are in God; for thought is the very essence of our nature. "The desires which follow from our nature in such a way that they can be comprehended through it alone, are such as are referred to the mind in so far as it is conceived as consisting of adequate ideas. The other desires, however, are not referred to the mind, except in so far as it conceives things inadequately, and their strength and growth must be defined, not as human power, but as that of the things that are outside us. Hence, the former are properly called actions, the latter passions; for the former always indicate our power; the latter, on the contrary, our impotence and fragmentary knowledge.'

But now the mind strives to persevere in its being, and is conscious of this its endeavor, not only in so far as it has clear and distinct ideas, but also in so far as it has confused ideas. And here comes in Spinoza's doctrine of the emotions. For an emotion is nothing but a confused idea, or a passion. The body can be affected in many ways by which its power of acting is increased or diminished; modifications of the body, and their corresponding ideas, through which either of these results are brought about, are what we call emotions. A passion in which the mind passes to a greater degree of perfection is pleasure; one in which it passes to a lesser degree of perfection is pain. By reference to the three elements-desire, pain, pleasureall the varied emotions are to be defined. Thus, love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause; hate is pain accompanied by a similar idea. Derision is pleasure which has its source in the fact that we conceive something we despise to be in the thing we hate. Hope is inconstant pleasure arising from the idea of something future or past, 1 Pt. IV, Appendix II.

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