PROP. XVI.————
stance is a totally different question, and one with which, as has been said again and again, we have at present no concern. A very distinct meaning can be attached to the word substance when thus understood; but every attempt to understand it in any other sense, is sure to result in understanding it in no sense at all.
This definition is due to Spinoza.8. Any further notices, critical or historical, respecting substance, will come in more appropriately under the next proposition. Meanwhile, this may be remarked, that the definition of it here laid down is due to Spinoza, who thus defines substance: "Per substantiam intelligo id, quod in se est, et per se concipitur; hoc est, id cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat"[1]—that is, "By substance I understand that which is conceived as standing alone and unattached; in other words, substance is that whose conception does not require to be assisted or supplemented by the conception of anything else." This translation is not strictly literal, but it gives Spinoza's meaning with the utmost exactitude, and more intelligibly than any closer verbal rendering could do. Spinoza's mistake lay in his prematurely giving out this proposition as the definition of existing, and not simply as the definition of known, substance.
- ↑ Ethics, pars prima, Definit. III.
