The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

the notion of pure extension, nor would he have attained it anywhere. Forgetful, however, of the origin from which he drew it, he was persuaded that he beheld those two attributes clearly in God, or the Infinite. Furthermore, if he had set before himself this same contemplation of the mind, or of his own self, with deliberate study as that first thing from which the work must proceed, he would have undoubtedly been forced to discern to Velle the Will or the spontaneity of willing as a faculty uniquely singular and, in a being that is something to itself, as primitive as to Cogitare Thinking. Had this been done, his entire Ethics, which now refers everything to thought and therefore necessarily excludes moral liberty, could not have been formed otherwise in everything that pertains to humans. In the theological principles, however, which he set forth, if he had felt compelled to consider to perfecte (h. e. sancte) velle perfectly (i.e., holily) willing no less than to cogitare seu scire thinking or knowing as a primitive pneumatikēn 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 being.

But another element, which seems to touch the head of the Spinozistic system, must be pointed out. Specifically, that doctrine commends itself marvelously by its simplest unity, comprehending absolutely everything through its en kai pan all is one. 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 can be called a system of immanent emanations. And there is indeed a reason why such a reduction of all finite things to an infinite unity should greatly appeal to the intellect or logical faculty. The act of thinking consists uniquely in the thinker perceiving the unity of those things which, in another respect, are diverse, or indeed can be most diverse. a is predicated of b, insofar as it is understood that to a a inheres in to b b in the very sense being discussed. Whence it is clear, and has long since been shown, that the formal or logical investigation of truth is to be compared to arithmetical permutation, by which two numbers, although appearing under different species, remain and are the same, just as 2 x 3 = 6. It follows spontaneously that in this very formal investigation of truth there cannot be a higher canon than this: that many things must always be reduced to one, from which thinkers neither cease, nor can they cease, to elevate not only individuals to species and species to general classes, but also to refer all derived principles or applied laws to one principle in thinking and to deduce them therefrom. Nor is it difficult to understand that everything with which thought is occupied, and which they call an object, can be reached and treated by thinking and willing, not insofar as it exists outside of thought, but insofar as it is present to the mind (whether as an existing thing or as something merely thinkable), or rather, is now an inherent part of the mind. Whence, if the thinker is called the subject, it becomes clear that he himself, while thinking, ought to be called and is the subject-object, or that one common source of the subjective and the objective.