SPINOZA 273 jects. In a letter dated July 15, 1676, he promises further explanations "if my life be continued." After his death his manuscripts were, in accordance with his order, sent to his publisher at Amsterdam, and within a year appeared Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demon- strata, containing his philosophical doctrine, which had been written between 1663 and 1666; Tractatus de Intellectus Emendations, and Tractatus Politicus, both of them frag- ments; a collection of letters to Oldenburg, Simon de Vries, Ludwig Meyer, and Bleyen- bergh ; and a fragmentary sketch of Hebrew grammar, aiming to give it a logical devel- opment. The whole system of Spinoza is a demonstration from the eight definitions and seven axioms of the first book of the Ethica. According to him, it follows from the defini- tion of substance that it is necessary and infi- nite, that it is one and indivisible, and that it is therefore God, the only self-existent, all- perfect, and absolutely infinite Being. Noth- ing exists except substance and the modes of its attributes. Substance cannot produce sub- stance, and therefore there is no such thing as creation, no beginning or end, but all things have necessarily flowed from the Infinite Be- ing, and will continue to flow on for ever, in the same manner as from the nature of a tri- angle it follows, and will follow from eter- nity to eternity, that the angles of it are equal to two right angles. Of the infinite number of infinite attributes of Deity, only two are known to us, extension and thought, objective and subjective of which he is the identity. Body is a mode of extension, which being illimitable cannot be divided ; thought is also infinite, and mental acts are modes of it. It follows also that God is the only free cause (causa liberd) ; all other things and beings move by fixed laws of causation, without free will or contingency. He is the causa immanens omnium, not existing apart from the universe, but expressed in it, as in a living garment. As conceived in his attributes simply and alone, he is natura naturans ; as conceived in the infinite series of modifica- tions which follow from the properties of these attributes, he is natura naturata. Between bodies, the modes of extension, and ideas, the modes of thought, there is a constant parallel- ism. The duality everywhere appears, and a soul belongs alike to animals, vegetables, and minerals. Man is a complex example of this compound. There is no reciprocal influence between the bodily and the ideal world, but a perfect harmony, since it is the same substance, affected in the same manner, but expressed under each of the two attributes. Individual beings, whether ideas or bodies, are modes., the changing forms of substance, to which they are related as wavelets to the ocean. The finite has no existence as such ; substance is not made up of modes, but is prior to them ; and Hegel therefore remarks that Spinoza rather denies the existence of the material universe than identifies God with it. The human mind has two chief ways of knowledge, the intuitive through the reason, and the imaginative. The imagination, which deals with the objects of experience, represents the world as a multi- plicity of individuals. It obtains a partial and inadequate view of the images which appear before it, considers modes as things, and names them man, horse, tree, &c. The reason sees together in their unity what the imagination isolates and individualizes, and attains to ade- quate or exhaustive knowledge, to universal or divine ideas, which are pure thoughts, not in- volving the conception of extension, and not consisting in images or words. The mind is passive and in bondage in so far as it is influ- enced by inadequate ideas, and is active and free in so far as its ideas are adequate. If all objects of knowledge be regarded in their re- lations to the one absolute Being, the knowl- edge of particular outward things, nature, life, or history, becomes in fact a knowledge of God; and the more complete such knowl- edge, the more the mind is raised above what is perishable in the phenomena to the idea which lies beyond them. It dwells exclusively upon the eternal, is occupied with everlasting laws, emancipates itself from the conditions of duration, and secures its immortality, by be- coming " of such a nature that the portion of it which will perish with the body, in com- parison with that of it which shall endure, shall be insignificant. 1 ' The law of passion is that all things desire life, seek for energy, for fuller and ampler being. Every single being pursues that which will give it increased vital- ity. Man gathers life and self-mastery only from the absolute Being ; the love of God is the extinction of all other desires ; and virtue is the knowledge and power of God in the humam soul, the exhaustive end of human aspi- ration. The ethical principles in which the philosophy of Spinoza results were proposed by him as identical with those of the Christian religion. The best complete editions of his works in the original Latin are by Paulus (2 vols., Jena, 1802-'3), Gfrorer (Stuttgart, 1830), and Bruder (3 vols., Leipsic, 1843-'6). There are German translations by Berthold Auerbach, with a biographical notice (5 vols., Stuttgart, 1841 ; new ed., enlarged, 1874), and by J. H. von Kirchmann and Schaarschmidt (1871 et seq.) ; French translations by Emile Saisset (2 vols., Paris, 1843; enlarged ed., 3 vols., 1861), and by J. G. Prat (1863 et seq.). Spinoza's newly discovered Tractatus de Deo et Homine has been edited by Van Vloten (Am- sterdam, 1862; German and Dutch transla- tions, 1870), and commented upon by Sigwart (Gotha, 1866) and Trendelenburg (Berlin, 1867). Among his biographers are Colerus (Dutch, 1698; French, 1706; German, 1733), Lucas (Amsterdam, 1719), Dietz (Dessau, 1783), Phi. lippson (Brunswick, 1790), A. Saintes (Paris, 1842), Van Vloten (Amsterdam, 1862), and K. Willis (London, 1870). See also F. H. Jacobi,
