The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

in the human mind resides the absolute, let it be derived the author refers to starting from internal principles rather than abstract metaphysical ones, and they have taught more correctly and happily. Compare Rehberg, Relationship of Metaphysics to Religion (Berlin 1787). Those who begin to philosophize from the mind itself are permitted to fix their attention upon that which is within us, or rather upon that which we ourselves are, and to observe it, so to speak, from up close and from within. One must then proceed from what is certain to construct firm foundations with cautious reasoning. For nothing can be more certain to us who are thinking than this very Being of our own. Nor can any other measure of certainty be thought of, for us humans, that is tractable, than this: whether something resides within our Being, and whether it could be denied only if this were negated, in such a way that those things are worthy of being called true which stand and fall with our necessary Being, while those things are merely probable which rest only upon accidents within this Being of ours and are equal to these. But if, on the contrary, they institute the journey of philosophizing from the Infinite, they cannot deny that they proceed from a mystery that is, for the most part, inscrutable—just as Spinoza himself understands God as a substance consisting of infinite attributes (Ethics, Definition VII), of which he seemed to himself to have knowledge of only two, namely that it is thinking and extended (Ethics, Part II, propositions 1, 2). And these 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 them as truly known? Unless he had first considered his own mind, he would have had neither the concept of thinking nor