The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

But 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.

But it is nonetheless quite easy to hold the unity of the ideal object with the subject—which truly exists while you are thinking—as a real unity that is also necessary outside the form of thinking. Furthermore, it is easy for those who are primarily engaged in thinking, namely, philosophers, to apply that reduction of diverse things to unity (which is necessary in the act of thinking or enthymēsei reflection/internal thought) 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 something is attributed to them by thought itself, by which they are posited as existing outside of thought. If anyone performs this application fully and purely, he will reduce the to pan the all in existing to to hen the one. Indeed, one has become accustomed in thinking to always consider two different things as one with a certain intuition; and thus, while thinking, one proceeds to infinity. Now, therefore, one transfers the formal method of thinking (just as even very sagacious people may confuse closely related things for some time) beyond its own boundaries—that is, to the connection of existing things. One takes the law of thinking for the law of existing. Once this is obtained or conceded, no other system could ever be devised that is truer than that of Spinoza and more consistent with itself.