The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

the notion of pure extension, having attained them nowhere else. Yet, having forgotten the origin from which he drew it, he was persuaded that he beheld those two attributes in God, or the Infinite, by a clear idea. Furthermore, if he had set before himself this same contemplation of the mind, or of himself, with deliberate study as that first thing from which the work must proceed, he would have undoubtedly been compelled to discern also tò Velle the Will, or the spontaneity of willing, as a faculty clearly singular and equally primitive in the being that is something unto itself, as tò Cogitare the Thinking. With this done, his entire Ethics, which now refers all things to thought and therefore necessarily excludes moral liberty, could not but have been formed in a far different manner in that which pertains to humans. Indeed, in the theological principles which he prefixed, if he had felt compelled to consider tò perfecte to will perfectly (that is, holily) no less than tò cogitare to think or know as a primitive pneumatiken 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, should be exiled from the clear idea of the most perfect being.

But another element also, which seems to touch the head of the Spinozistic system, must be indicated. Namely, that doctrine commends itself marvelously by its simplest unity, embracing all things whatsoever through its hèn kaì pân one and all. All things seem to be reduced to their one source, whence they do not even emanate, but in which they truly remain, so that this Pantheism can be called a System