cients that true science proceeds from cause to effect.”[1] In this connection Spinoza understands the “true idea" to be an idea of infinite intellect and that “true science” is true knowledge or the knowledge of this intellect. It seems certain that by “ancients” he means the Neoplatonists, who are described accurately by his language.
Proclus says: “The knowledge of causes is the work of Science (real knowledge), and we are then said to know scientifically when we know the causes of things;”[2] “It is evident that this which knows according to the one, knows so far as the similar is known by the similar, I mean so far as that which proceeds from a cause is known by its cause.”[3] He explains that “to know according to the one” is “one knowledge both of universals and individuals,” “the power of knowing all things,” a knowledge in which there is “no greater knowledge of wholes than of parts.” “Knowing according to the one” means simply understanding all things to be in one principle or cause. This is knowing the effect by the cause when the element of time is eliminated. This kind of knowledge then is the same as Spinoza's “simple idea” which always affirms something of a thing which is “contained in the concept we have formed of that thing.”[4] Spinoza says expressly that “the knowledge of an effect through its cause is the same thing as the knowledge of a particular prop-
