The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

of immanent emanations. And indeed, there is a reason why such a reduction of all finite things to an infinite unity is most pleasing to the intellect, or the logical faculty. For the act of thinking consists solely in the fact that the thinker perceives the unity of those things which, in another respect, are diverse, or indeed can be most diverse. a is predicated of b, insofar as a is understood to be within b in that sense concerning which the question is raised. Whence it is evident, and has long since been shown, that the formal or logical investigation of truth is to be compared with arithmetical permutation, by which two numbers appearing under a different guise remain nonetheless the same, such as 2 x 3 = 6. It follows spontaneously that in this formal investigation of truth, there can be no higher canon than this: that multiple things must always be reduced to one. From this, thinkers not only do not cease, but cannot cease, to elevate individuals to species and species to general classes, but also to refer all derived principles or applied laws to one principle in thought, and to deduce them thence. Nor is it difficult to understand that everything about which thought is occupied, and which they call an object, not insofar as it exists outside of thought, but insofar as it is present to the mind (whether as an existing thing or as a mere thinkable)—and indeed is now an innate part of the mind—can be reached and treated by thinking and willing. Whence, if the thinker is called the subject, it becomes clear that he himself, while he thinks, must be and be called entirely a subject-object, or that one source of the subjective and objective.