another attribute (existence, in this case). The objection to this is that the implied additional attribute may be true of the Idea, but not of the Idcatum. And this is met by the argument that the new attribute is inferred from the other (essential) attributes, and if it is to be predicated at all can only be predicated of that which has those other (essential) attributes. Now the Idea is not actually com posed (materialiter) of those attributes or qualities; these really pertain to the Idcatum. If, therefore, the new attribute (existence) follows at all from the others it must be pre dicated of the Ideatum, not of the Idea, which is materialiter so unlike the Ideatum that the same attributes cannot be affirmed of both. This argument does not prove the accuracy of the ontological proof; but it seems to have been directed only against the half-hearted acceptance of it as valid in so far as the Idea of God was concerned.
17, 33 /. In opposition to Descartes, Spinoza maintains that man could not of himself produce any idea whatever. The elementary constituent ideas even of fictions must have been called forth in man by external causes. Descartes only insisted that man could not produce the idea of God; Spinoza extends the denial to all ideas. Compare 16, 18 ff.
18,5. Essentia objcctiva or "objective" essence = the essence of a thing as represented in thought. The corre spondence between an idea and its ideatum, or object, is described in the language of scholastic philosophy as a kind of two-fold existence of the "essence" of that object. The essence exists formalitcr (actually) in the individual concrete thing; it exists objective, or has "objective" essence, in thought (as an idea).
18, 8. Formaliter — cminenter. This scholastic antithesis has reference to the relation of a cause to its effect. If the cause contained more reality or greater perfection than its effect, then it was said to be an eminent cause, or to pro duce its effect eminenter or modo erninentiori. In this way, COMMENTARY 171 COMMENTARY 171 e.g., God (according to Descartes) is the ''eminent" cause of the human mind. But if, on the other hand, the cause contained only as much (it cannot, of course, contain less) perfection as its cause, it was said to have produced it formaliter or secundum eandern for mam. Thus, e.g., the pressure of a foot was said to cause a footprint formaliter. This use of formaliter is different from that explained in the preceding note.
The words "though not eminentcr...outside him" seem to be both irrelevant and inaccurate. Possibly they are only a reader's comment. It is not clear why God's supreme excellence should prevent His being the eminent cause of our idea of Him. The opposite view would seem more reasonable. Probably it is implied that the idea of God contains as much perfection objective as God has formaliter; its cause, therefore, can only be formal, not eminent, because nothing (not even God Himself) is more perfect formaliter than it (the idea of God) is objective.
18, 13. Pegasus, for instance. Cf. Descartes, Med. V.
19, 3. Attributes. The expression is here used in its more usual meaning, not in the stricter sense in which it is generally employed in Spinoza's writings. Hence note f. In the stricter sense of the term "attribute" only two attributes of God or Nature are known to us, namely, Extension and Thought. Each of these is a summum genus, and is not derived from anything else. " Properties " (propria or proprietaries) are derivative, they follow from the attributes. The " attributes " referred to in the text are, as note t explains, only " properties," because they are not summa genera, they are not " substantial " or self-dependent, but imply the "attributes" which constitute "substance" or the self-dependent reality (God or Nature).
20, 15. Causa sui = the self-existent. The expression is awkward and misleading. Spinoza did not invent it; it was 172 GOD, MAN, AND HIS WELL-BEING part of the philosophical vocabulary of his time, and had been in use for many centuries before that. It was probably suggested originally by the Platonic expression iavTo KIVOVV. Strictly speaking, that which is causa sui, or "its own cause," really has no cause at all. Spinoza himself has pointed out the absurd implication of the phrase causa sui. It seems to imply that something which did not exist could yet operate in such a way as to bring itself into existence (see 114, 6 ff., and 146, 18 ff.).
20, 17. Thomas Aquinas (? 1225-1274), called Doctor angelicus, brought about the most intimate fusion between Aristotelianism and Catholicism. His favourite argument for the existence of God was the Aristotelian a posteriori argu ment that the existence of Motion implied the existence of an original unmoved Mover. The passage referred to is probably Summa Theologize, I. ii. 2.
20, 24 ff. The rest of this note seems to be quite irrelevant here. A gives it in its proper context, 22, 12 ff.
CHAPTER II 21, 4 ff. This chapter begins immediately with a definition of God, but without any indication as to the way in which the definition has been arrived at. Note f, however, makes it clear that Spinoza really started with the traditional con ception of God as Ens perfectissimum, or " the most perfect Being " (see lines 18 /.), and developed his conception from it.
It is noteworthy that the definition of God given here does not describe Him as " Substance," as does the later defini tion in the Ethics. Here the definition of God is followed up by an independent treatment of the notion " Substance " (lines 9ff.), and it is then made apparent that the two notions " God " and " Substance " converge.
21, 9. Spinoza begins his account of " substance;; with out defining what he means by that term. He evidently COMMENTARY COMMENTARY starts from the Cartesian doctrine of two ultimate kinds of substances, namely, Extension and Thought, and then suddenly shows that there can only be one Substance. To begin with he tacitly assumes the possibility of the existence of a multiplicity of substances all grounded in the perfection of God. When he has shown that there is only one Substance he identifies it with God by identifying both with Nature. Descartes had defined " substance " as " a thing which exists in such a way as to stand in need of nothing beyond itself in order to its existence." " In truth " (he added) " there can be conceived but one Substance which is absolutely independent, and that is God." He applied, however, the term " substance " (or " created substance ") to minds and bodies, because, except God, nothing else is required for their existence; and, pointing out that Thought and Extension were the " principal attributes " constituting the essence of minds and bodies respectively, he spoke of Extension and Thought as the ultimate and distinct kinds of substances. These substances acquired such a measure of independence that it was beyond Descartes to reunite them again, except in an external kind of way.
Spinoza approached the subject with the conviction that Nature was One and perfect, in the fullest sense of these expressions. He consequently took "Substance" quite seriously. The only really independent or self-dependent being was the complete system of Reality, or Nature. Hence, beginning with a somewhat looser (Cartesian) conception of " Substance," he gradually led up to the conclusion that there was only one substance, of which all other so-called substances were either attributes or modifications.
21, 21 ff. Note ft presents in a different form the argu ment of the text as far as 25, 13.
23, 23 ff. This distinction between "creating " and "gene rating " occurs also in the Cogitata Metaphysica, II. x., where, however, he seems to vindicate the possibility of creation, M 174 GOD, MAN, AND HIS WELL-BEING only confining it to substances (in the Cartesian sense) or attributes. " A created object " (he says there) " is one which presupposes for its existence nothing except God." Modes and accidents presuppose also the attributes or substances Extension and Thought. They are consequently not "created," but "generated." Only that has been created " whose essence is clearly conceived even without existence, and is conceived, moreover, per se " — Extension is given as an instance. As soon as Spinoza identified Extension, Thought, and all other (unknown) attributes with God, there was no room for this notion of " creation," except, perhaps, in that inane sense in which it is still implied in the expression causa sui. Hence the denial of " creation " in the present treatise. And the " essences " of things, though described in the Cogitata Metaphysica as having been " created," must here be regarded simply as eternal. Traces of the earlier belief in "creation " are, however, still observ able in the Treatise, pp. 24, 57.
24, 24^. Cf. Maimonides' Guide (II. xx. p. 190): "The series of causes ends with the First Cause, from which everything derives its existence, since it is impossible that the series should continue in infinitum." Here, then, Spinoza agrees with Maimonides, and with the Aristotelians generally, that the causal series cannot continue in infinitum. But his views changed subsequently, and in his i2th Letter we find Spinoza praising Rabbi Hasdai Crescas for furnish ing an argument for the existence of God, independently of the supposed impossibility of such an infinite causal regression.
24, 30. " This only substance." Spinoza does not say what substance he means, but he evidently identifies it with God.
24, 31. "Substance or attribute." The expression is note worthy. When writing the Short Treatise Spinoza was still very much under the influence of Cartesian nomenclature.
COMMENTARY 175 He was still inclined to speak of Extension and Thought as substances. It seemed to him a matter of indifference whether these were described as "substances " or as " attri butes"; he used either term, and sometimes both in con junction, as here (see, e.g., 28, 13; 29, 5; 34, 2 ff.; 154, 18). At this stage, in fact, he defined " attribute " in the same terms as he subsequently denned "substance." In his 2nd Letter (1661) he denned " attribute " as " whatever is con ceived through itself and in itself, so that the conception there of does not involve the conception of anything else." He illustrated his meaning by comparing Extension with motion. Extension can be conceived through itself and in itself, and is therefore an attribute; motion, on the other hand, cannot be conceived without Extension; it is therefore not an attribute, but only a mode (or modification) of an attribute (Extension). In his Qth Letter (1663) Spinoza defined "substance" in the same terms as the preceding definition of "attribute," and explicitly identified the two. " By sub stance I mean that which exists in itself, and is conceived through itself; that is, the conception whereof does not involve the conception of anything else. I mean the same by attribute, except that it is called attribute with respect to the intellect which ascribes a certain character to sub stance." This, Spinoza added, will explain what he meant by using the expression, " substance or attribute." Briefly, "substance" simply consists of its "attributes," but of all of them; while each "attribute" is only one (ultimate and real) aspect or feature of "substance." The totality of attributes is therefore identical with substance, and Spinoza accordingly felt at liberty to speak sometimes as though he ignored the difference between " substance " and " attri bute." This, however, occasioned some difficulty among his disciples and friends. He therefore eventually adopted the stricter distinction found in the Ethics. But even the Ethics still retains traces of the earlier and laxer usage; in 176 GOD, MAN, AND HIS WELL-BEING Ethics, I. xv. Schol., he speaks of " extended substance" as " one of the infinite attributes of God."
25, 2 /. What Spinoza meant by the argument " from the simplicity of God's will " may be explained by the following passage in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed (II. xiv.): " An agent is active at one time and inactive at another, according as the circumstances are favourable or unfavour able...As, however, God is not subject to accidents which could bring about a change in His will, and is not affected by obstacles and hindrances that might appear or disappear, it is impossible, they [i.e., those who maintain the eternity of the world] argue, to imagine that God is active at one time and inactive at another. He is, on the contrary, always active in the same manner as He is always in actual existence" (p. 175).
25, 7/. This is a difficult sentence. " En dat meer is, zo doende zouden er oneyndelijke zelfstandigheeden meer niet zijn als er zijn, het welke ongerijmt is." Quite literally it means, u...there would be no more infinite substances than there are..." By taking " meer " as though it pre ceded " oneyndelijke," we get "...there would be more infinite substances not in existence than there are in exist ence." This seems less unintelligible, but its relevancy is not obvious. Perhaps it was only some reader's marginal comment. B omits it.
25, 9-13. The identification of Nature with God does not appear to be a plausible conclusion from what precedes. Freudenthal has suggested that this sentence is in the wrong place, and should follow immediately after line 12 25, 14^. The consideration of objections which begins here is regarded by Avenarius and Sigwart as a later inter polation. The main argument, they say, is continued on the following page, line 20, the intervening paragraphs being obviously a digression. But whether it is a later COMMENTARY 177 COMMENTARY 177 insertion or not; the passage does not seem to me to be really a digression. Its purpose is to confirm by a different line of argument the identification of God with Nature, which is the burden of the preceding paragraph. The usual conception of Nature as created by, and different from, God, tacitly assumes that there is a difference between the ideas or plans of God, and His realisation or actualisation of these ideal possibilities. By attacking this distinction between the ideal and the real, between the possible and the actual, Spinoza evidently helps to confirm his identifica tion of God and Nature, both of which are real, and the totality of all that is real. Viewed in this way, the passage forms an important part of Spinoza's argument, and we find it repeated in the Ethics, I. xvii. Schol.
25, 24 /. Spinoza's view that God " cannot create what is self-contradictory " is also found in Maimonides, and is opposed to the view of Descartes. Descartes put no limita tions whatever to God's omnipotence (except apparently in Med. VI.); even contradictory propositions might be true together if God willed it so. Maimonides, on the other hand, maintained that even God could not endow a thing with contradictory qualities (Guide, III. xv. p. 279).
25, 25. " As it is..." = for it is self-contradictory, or it is like expecting God to do what is self-contradictory, when we say, &c.
25, 31. Merely verbal alternatives. See note to 15, 21.
26, i ff. The subtle conundrum, whether God can know more than He does know, was actually discussed by Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris (died 1134).
26, 22 /. " Although..." Spinoza is here alluding to Descartes' assumption (Princ. Phil. I. Ix.) that " it is suffi cient to assure us that two substances are really mutually distinct if only we are able clearly and distinctly to conceive the one of them without the other."
26, 32. " Infinite," that is, in number as well as in extent.
178 GOD, MAN, AND HIS WELL-BEING 27, 3 ff. It has not yet been shown that it is impossible for substances to begin to exist; nor is it shown in this Treatise as we now have it. Something seems, therefore, to be missing.
27, 6 ff. " Substance " is not used here in the stricter sense, but instead of "attribute." The "essence" of the one " substance " (in the stricter meaning) does involve " existence," but when either Thought or Extension is " considered separately," then we can conceive it clearly without assuming its existence (cf. Cog. Metaph. I. ii.). Note ff corrects the loose employment of the word " sub stance " in the text.
28, i ff. Descartes, e.g., argued that "God cannot be body," because extension involves divisibility, and this again passivity, which is an imperfection, because it implies dependence on something else (Princ. Phil. I. xxiii.).
28, 5. The account of Nature which follows in the text contains many thoughts which are also found in the writ ings of Giordano Bruno. See the notes to the first 28,6. "Things of reason" — mere modes of thought. In the Cog. Metaph. (I. i. and iii.) Spinoza distinguishes as follows between a real thing (ens reale), a chimera, a thing of reason (ens rationis), and a fiction (ens fictum): A chimera is only a verbal expression denoting something which can neither be, nor be conceived, because it involves a self- contradiction (e.g., a square circle); a thing of reason (or a merely logical entity) is a mode of thought which does not exist outside the thinking mind, though it may be an im portant means of representing extra-mental realities (e.g., genera and species, time, number, and measure); a fiction is " a thing of reason," in so far as it is only a mode of thought (or of imagination) and has no corresponding reality outside the mind; but not all " things of reason " are fictions, only those which involve arbitrary or accidental imaginary COMMENTARY 179 combinations. The Scholastics did not as a rule distinguish between res fictce and entia rationis. Burgersdijck describes both as " entia quorum esse nihil aliud est quam intelligi," that is, as mere modes of thought.
28, 7. " Nature" is here used in the narrower and more usual sense, namely, as equivalent to "the physical world." In the wider sense peculiar to Spinoza and Bruno, " Nature " = Substance = the entire Universe. In " Nature " thus re garded, " things of reason " have reality as modes of thought. Hence the note (line 13), " In Nature, that is, in substantial extension " = in the so-called Substance Extension, or in "Substance" regarded solely under the "attribute" Ex tension.
29, 3. The view that water " consists of straight oblong particles " is Cartesian (Meteor ologia, I. 3).
29, 24. The " substance " referred to is that of Extension ("substance" here = "attribute " — cf. note to 24, 31), of which water is a "mode" or modification. Extension, it is here maintained, is a continuum.
30, i /. What is here said to have been " already stated " is first considered in the Dialogues which follow, and in chapter iii. Apparently something is missing from the preceding part of the Treatise.
30, 3. An " immanent " or " inner " cause is a cause whose effects are confined within itself, as distinguished from a " transeunt " or " transitive " cause which operates on things outside itself. God, according to Spinoza, is an " imma nent" cause for the same reason that he is causa sui, namely, because " outside God there is nothing at all," whether to affect Him or to be affected by Him. This conception involves, of course, the view that God is not outside or above the world, but in it. In other words, Spinoza's God is not a transcendent but an immanent God. And since the time of Spinoza the doctrine of divine imma nence has become a commonplace among theologians of all iSo GOD, MAN, AND HIS WELL-BEING the chief religions, instead of being more or less confined to the more pronounced mystics, as it was till then.
30, loff. This illustration of an immanent cause (which is also repeated on p. 34, line 30) seems unfortunate, be cause Spinoza says distinctly (106, 20 ff.; cf. also p. 37, note) that the " Understanding" is only an abstraction; it cannot, therefore, cause anything. Had Spinoza revised the Treatise for publication this and similar inconsistencies would have been removed.
30, 24. " If body," &c.— that is, if matter were really sub stance, or if substance were merely matter, and had no other attributes, &c.
31, 2 ff. In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (xiii.) there is a similar distinction between God's " absolute attributes," which unfold the "absolute essence of God," and other "attributes" (aspects or properties) which indicate His relation to " created things."
31, 7. " An extraneous denomination " (denominatio extrin- sica or externa) or " external designation " is contrasted with an "intrinsic denomination" (denominatio interna or intrin- sica). The latter unfolds the essential attributes of a thing; the former only the non-essential properties, accidents, &c. The term is used somewhat loosely here. Usually Spinoza means by "denominatio extrinsica " a term that indicates the relation of one thing to another — or what one thing is or does to another, as distinguished from what it is in itself. In this more usual sense self-existence, eternity, unity, and immutability could hardly be described as "extraneous denominations." Possibly there is a slight confusion in the text; or the division which Spinoza intended may have been as follows. Whatever is predicated of God denotes either (a) what is essential in Him, or (b) what is not essential; if non-essential (&), then it indicates either (i) a " pro perty " of God other than, though deducible from, His " essential attributes," but still representing what God COMMENTARY 181 COMMENTARY 181 is in Himself, or (ii) some relationship in which God stands to others. So long as Spinoza did not employ the term " attribute " in the strict sense in which he here distinguishes it from " properties/' anything coming under (a) or (b i) would be designated as denominatio intrinsica, while (b ii) alone would be described as denominatio extrinsica. But owing to his stricter usage he had no suitable name for (b i) as distinguished from both (a) and (b ii). He seems, therefore, to have grouped (b i) and (b ii) together as " extraneous denominations " in a wider sense. If so, the word " either " has got misplaced somehow.
31, ii. " What he is "—that is, essentially.
31, 12. "Attributes" = properties (not " attributes" in the strict sense).
THE DIALOGUES 32. The Outline of the Short Treatise which was dis covered and published by Boehmer does not mention the Dialogues, although it refers to the Notes and the Appen dices. This seems disquieting at first. Yet no one has seriously questioned the authenticity of the Dialogues. Their contents are as intimately connected with the line of thought expounded in the rest of the Short Treatise as the contents of the Treatise itself are with the trend of thought in Spinoza's Ethics. But although their genuineness cannot be disputed it may be questioned whether they originally formed part of the Treatise, or were only subsequently added either by Spinoza or some one else. The tendency is to regard them as more or less independent essays, which were only inserted afterwards in their present place by a disciple or copyist. If their insertion was an afterthought, then it is quite conceivable that some of the manuscripts of the Short Treatise may not have contained the Dialogues; i82 GOD, MAN, AND HIS WELL-BEING and if Boehmer's Outline was based on such a manuscript the omission of all reference to the Dialogues would thus be accounted for. The fact that they are given in both codices, A and B, of which A may have been copied already during the lifetime of Spinoza, is certainly in their favour.
With remarkable agreement most critics have treated the Dialogues as the oldest of Spinoza's known writings. The arguments for this view mostly turn on their supposed immaturity, fragmentariness, and crudeness. Freudenthal, however, has shown (Spinozastudien, II.) that this view is untenable, because the Dialogues are really unintelligible unless they are read in the light of various ideas explained in different parts of the Short Treatise. He maintains (rightly, we think) that the Dialogues were written after the the bulk of the Short Treatise, as separate and fuller elucida tions of certain problems already briefly dealt with in the Treatise, a familiarity with which they assumed. It is this tacit reliance on the exposition of various views already given in the Treatise that gives to the Dialogues an appear ance of fragmentariness and crudeness. In reality they are no more immature than the rest of the Short Treatise, while their very assumption of the various doctrines ex plained in the Treatise shows that they must have been written later.
To some extent Sigwart anticipated Freudenthal's view by showing that the second Dialogue might very well have been written after the rest of the Treatise. But he insisted that the first Dialogue must have been written some years before the Treatise. The two Dialogues, however, can hardly be separated. The second one really takes up the theme with which the first concludes, and the closing remarks of the second Dialogue seem to revert deliberately to the opening words of the first.
COMMENTARY 183 FIRST DIALOGUE The insertion of this Dialogue here was no doubt suggested by the references to Nature in the preceding (second) chapter (pp. 24-27). For this Dialogue gives a further exposition of Spinoza's conception of Nature. The view of Nature as animated and as coinciding with the Universe in all its entirety and eternity is also found in the writings of Giordano Bruno, especially in the Dialogues De la Causa, &c. Avenarius and Sigwart have cited numerous passages from Bruno which are similar in intent to this and other parts of the Short Treatise. They even regard this Dialogue as representing an early stage in the history of Spinoza when he was under the more or less dominant influence of Bruno. But no conclusive evidence has been adduced so far to show that Spinoza was even acquainted with Bruno's writings. And even Sigwart did not feel sure on this matter. Mar- tineau thought that most of the resemblances between Bruno and Spinoza were superficial and illusory. Neoplatonic views similar to those of Bruno were very much in the intellectual atmosphere of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Spinoza may have become familiar with them through Jewish and other sources. In any case, the resemblance between Spinoza and Bruno is by no means fundamental. Spinoza went far beyond Bruno. Notwithstanding all his rhapsodies on the infinity of Nature Bruno never quite relinquished the idea of a God who was somehow above and beyond Nature — his God was still transcendent; Spinoza, on the Bother hand, never wavered, he took his conception of the infinity of Nature very strictly, and following up its apparently logical implication he boldly identified Nature with God, and conceived God as absolutely immanent in Nature. Avenarius and others, basing their views on the supposed early date of this Dialogue, have distinguished three phases of Spinoza's Pantheism. In all of them 1 84 GOD, MAN, AND HIS WELL-BEING