The Remaining Works of Benedict de Spinoza

nor the notion of pure extension had he attained anywhere. Truly, having forgotten the origin from which he had drawn it, he persuaded himself that he beheld those two attributes clearly in God, or the Infinite. Furthermore, had he set before himself, with deliberate study, that same contemplation of the mind or of himself as that primary thing from which the work must proceed, he would undoubtedly have been compelled to discern τὸ Velle the Will or the spontaneity of willing as a faculty quite singular and, in a being that is something to itself, just as primitive as τὸ Cogitare Thinking. Had this been done, his entire Ethics, which now refers everything to thinking and therefore necessarily excludes moral freedom, could not but have been formed in a far different way regarding what pertains to humans. Indeed, in the theological principles he set forth, if he had felt compelled to consider τὸ perfecte perfectly (i.e., holily) willing—no less than τὸ cogitare thinking or knowing—as a primitive πνευματικὴν spiritual faculty, and thus to count it among the attributes of God of which we can have a clear idea, he would not have thought that the notion of infinite spontaneity or pure volition was excluded from the clear idea of the most perfect one.

But there is also another factor that seems to touch the head of the Spinozistic system that must be indicated. Namely, that doctrine commends itself marvelously through its ἓν καὶ πᾶν one and all, embracing absolutely everything. Everything seems to be reduced to its one source, from which they do not even emanate, but in which they truly remain, so that this Pantheism may be called a system of immanent emanations.