The Collected Works of Benedict de Spinoza

through the reality of its own nature. Whether this is so or not is the very knot, the very cliff, which cannot be removed or moved by a conceived formal unity or by that ideal identity of subject and object.

However, it is very easy to consider the unity of the ideal object with the subject (which truly exists while you think) as a necessary unity that is real and exists outside the form of thinking. Furthermore, it is easy for those who are occupied primarily in thinking—namely, philosophers—to apply that necessary reduction of diverse things to unity in the act of thinking (or ενθυμησει contemplation/reflection) and the elevation of special reasons and laws to one principal reason (which they call the highest principle) also to things insofar as they are forced to conceive of them as existing, that is, insofar as they attribute something to them through thought by which they are posited as existing outside of thought. If anyone performs this application fully and purely, he will reduce the τὸ πᾶν the all in existence to τὸ ἕν the one. For he has become accustomed in thinking to always consider two different things as one with a certain intuition, and thus, while he thinks, he proceeds to infinity. Now, therefore, he transfers the formal method of thinking (as indeed very similar things can be confused for some time even by the most sagacious) outside its own boundaries—that is, to the connection of existing things. He takes the law of thinking for the law of existing. Once this is achieved or granted, no system more true to itself or more consistent could ever be devised than that of Spinoza.