The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

Cf. Rehberg, The Relation of Metaphysics to Religion (Berlin 1787). For those who begin to philosophize from the mind itself, it is permitted to fix one's attention on what is within us, or rather what we ourselves are, and to behold it from nearby, so to speak, from the inside. Then, proceeding from what is certain, one must attempt to construct firm foundations with cautious reasoning. For nothing at all can be more certain to us thinking beings 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 whether it could be negated in any other way than by denying this—so that those things which stand and fall with our necessary Being merit being called true, while those things are merely "likely" which rely only on accidents in this Being of ours and are equal to them. If, however, they institute the journey of philosophizing from the Infinite in the contrary manner, they cannot deny that they are proceeding from a mystery that is for the greatest part impenetrable, just as Spinoza himself understands God as a substance consisting of infinite attributes (Eth. Defin. 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, he would have had neither the knowledge of thinking nor...