The Remaining Works of Benedict de Spinoza

They have taught more correctly and happily... (cf. Rehberg, Relation of Metaphysics to Religion, Berlin 1787). For those who begin philosophizing from the mind itself, it is permitted to fix their attention upon what is within us, or rather what we ourselves are, and to observe it from nearby, so to speak, from the inside. From the certain, one must then proceed further, attempting to build firm foundations with cautious reasoning. For nothing at all can be more certain to us who are thinking than this very Being of ours. Nor can any other measure of certainty be thought of, for us humans, that is tractable, than this: whether something exists within our Being, and cannot be denied except by denying this, in such a way that those things are worthy of being called true which stand and fall with our necessary Being, but those are only "true-seeming" which rely on nothing but accidents in this our Being and are equal to them. Conversely, if they institute the path of philosophizing from the Infinite, they cannot deny that they proceed from a mystery that is, for the most part, inscrutable, just as Spinoza himself understands God as a substance consisting of infinite attributes (Eth. Def. VII), of which he seemed to himself to have knowledge of only two, namely that it is thinking and extended (Eth. P. II. prop. 1, 2). And these very two attributes, through which he professed to have as clear an idea of God as of a triangle (Epist. LX, p. 659, Vol. I)—from where could he finally have had true knowledge of them? Had he not considered his own mind before all else, neither the thinking...