The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

But this whole unity of the subject with the object is not necessarily such, except when the subject is thinking. Furthermore, every deduction of derived things, or special reasons, from one principle or absolute and true reason, does not occur except in the realm, so to speak, of reason or formal truth. Finally, that necessary identification of diverse things, without which there would be neither affirmation nor negation, likewise pertains to the form of thinking. But whether two objects, which are present in the mind and are taken by a given thinker at this moment as one in a certain respect—that is, are conceived under the form of unity—are truly one by their very nature (which we are compelled to attribute to those things that we cannot but think of in conjunction with the notion of existence), or whether they merely seem to the thinker at this moment to be one, the thinker himself, however much he may be a subject-object (that is, thinking from his own subjective unity with the object), cannot thus judge and decide formally. This, of course, depends upon the matter, as everyone either proclaims or feels. But the matter (I am referring to the internal matter of thinking) does not depend upon that mode by which it is now thought by this one or that one—that is, reduced from diversity to unity. Rather, the ideal object—that is, that which is in the mind, and because of which the mind can rightly be called a subject-object—whenever it confronts the mind with existence, is subject to necessity or the reality of its own nature, in such a way that the ideal object cannot be formally identified with another in vain and erroneously, unless it must necessarily and