The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

is absolute in the human mind. cf. Rehberg, The Relation of Metaphysics to Religion (Berlin 1787, 8vo). Those who begin to philosophize from the mind itself are permitted to fix their attention on what is in us, or rather on what we ourselves are, and to contemplate it from nearby, so to speak, from within. From what is certain, one must then progress further by 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 as manageable for us humans than this: whether something is inherent in our Being, and cannot be denied unless this is denied, in such a way that those things deserve to be called true which stand and fall with our necessary Being, but are only like the truth if they rely on nothing but accidents in this our Being and are equal to these. On the contrary, if they institute their path of philosophizing from the Infinite, they cannot deny that they are proceeding 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 thought he had 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 he did of a triangle (Epist. LX, p. 659, Vol. I)—whence, finally, could he have had truly known ideas? If he had not considered his own mind before all else, he could have had neither