a being, with a contradiction contained in its definition and therefore destroying that definition. His need of confounding cause with reason here becomes so urgent, that he can never say causa or ratio alone, but always finds it necessary to put ratio sen causa. Accordingly, this occurs as many as eight times in the same page, in order to conceal the subterfuge. Descartes had done the same in the above-mentioned axiom.
Thus, properly speaking, Spinoza's Pantheism is merely the realisation of Descartes Ontological Proof. First, he adopts Descartes ontotheological proposition, to which we have alluded above, ipsa naturæ Dei immensitas est causa sive ratio, propter quam nulla causa indiget ad existendum, always saying substantia instead of Deus (in the beginning) ; and then he finishes by substantice essentia, necessario involvit existentiam, ergo erit substantia causa sui. [1] Therefore the very same argument which Descartes had used to prove the existence of God, is used by Spinoza to prove the existence of the world,—which consequently needs no God. He does this still more distinctly in the 2nd Scholium to the 8th Proposition : Quoniam ad naturam substantia pertinet existere, debet ejus definitio necessariam existentiam involvere, et consequenter ex sola ejus definitione debet ipsius existentia concludi. But this substance is, as we know, the world. The demonstration to Proposition 24 says in the same sense : Id, cujus natura in se considerata (i.e., in its definition) involvit existentiam, est causa sui.
For what Descartes had stated in an exclusively ideal and subjective sense, i.e., only for us, for cognitive purposes—in this instance for the sake of proving the existence of God—Spinoza took in a real and objective sense, as the actual relation of God to the world. According to Descartes, the existence of God is contained in the conception
- ↑ "Eth." P. i. prop. 7.
