Spinoza’s Tractatus de intellectus emendatione: A Commentary

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SPINOZA’S TRACTATUS DE INTELLECTUS EMENDATIONE A COMMENTARY BY THE LATE

HAROLD H. JOACHIM M.A., Hon. LL.D. (St. Andrews), F.B.A. HONORARY FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE AND OF NEW COLLEGE FORMERLY WYKEHAM PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

B

■jO> Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4 GLASGOW

NEW YORK

BOMBAY

TORONTO

CALCUTTA CAPE TOWN

MELBOURNE

WELLINGTON

MADRAS

KARACHI

KUALA LUMPUR

IBADAN

NAIROBI

ACCRA

FIRST EDITION I94O REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD FROM SHEETS OF THE FIRST EDITION 1958

ONilP

PRELIMINARY NOTE the Provost of Oriel College, Sir David Ross, advised that this work of my husband’s, although unfinished, should be published I had no doubt that he was right. I am myself not able to judge, but I readily believe that it contains too much of value to withhold it from publication. It is not the fact that it is unfinished which might have made me doubtful; but I know—and I should like all who wiU read the book to know— that my husband himself would not have agreed to publish it as it now appears: he intended to work over the whole again, and I know that he had in mind far more than just a final polish. He occasionally spoke of rewriting and I think it possible that he would have radically altered the whole work, or large parts of it It is of course an entirely different thing for his Executors to publish it after his death; but I would like to make it quite clear that the work as he left it did not yet attain a standard that satisfied him. I am most grateful to the Provost for undertaking the work of editing and getting it ready for print so quickly. I also want to thank Dr. L. J. Beck, who has seen it through the press, checked the numerous references, and made the Index. It gives me deep satisfaction that this book at which my husband worked for years with such patience and devotion is now to be published; I only wish he could have known of its publication.

When

ELISABETH JOACHIM

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PREFACE Professor Joachim left behind him a large number of valuable

lecture-courses and other writings on philosophical subjects; but the work to which he had devoted himself for the last few years of his life and which he most definitely meant to publish was his commentary on Spinoza’s Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione. His manuscript was found to cover the first 33 of the 36 pages (in the standard edition) of Spinoza’s work; and of a great part of what he had written he had carried out a careful revision—though, as Mrs. Joachim says in her preliminary note, not one careful enough to satisfy his own very high standards. From conversation with him I had gathered that one crux was holding him up. Spinoza’s work is itself unfinished, and the problem which puzzled Joachim was the problem of how Spinoza had meant to complete the treatise. The lack of an answer to this difficult question, and of a commentary on the last three pages of the text, did not seem reason enough for withholding from publication a work on which Joachim had bestowed so much of his careful thought and delicate scholar¬ ship—a work, too, on a subject so congenial to his philosophical views and interests. A short draft printed on p. 227 shows to some extent how he meant to continue his exposition. W. D. ROSS.

CONTENTS Chapter § I.

I. INTRODUCTORY

Object of this book. Preliminary questions

§ 2. Two authorities for text—the O.P. and the N.S.. § 3- DS'te of composition: and Spinoza’s design in writing the Tdle (cf. Ep. 6) . . . . . .4 § 4. Ep. 6 refers to the K.V. (and not to the Ethics) .

.

7

§ 5. Spinoza ‘always intended to complete the Tdle’i but in what sense} Evidence of the Letters and E. ii. 40 S. i .

ii

§ 6. That the Tdle was designed as the Introductory Section of a larger work is confirmed by internal evidence (refer¬ ences in text and notes, and the scale of the Prooemium)

14

II. THE TRUE END OF HUMAN ENDEAVOUR: AND THE BEST KIND OF KNOWLEDGE Chapter

§ 7. (i) The Prooemium (the true end of human endeavour). Outline of Spinoza’s argument on the Prooemium . (ii) The modi percipiendi (the best kind of knowledge)

.

§ 8. Spinoza’s description of the four Varieties of Knowledge

16 24 24

§ 9. His review of them; and conclusion that Intuitive Know¬ ledge is ‘ the best ’ . . . . -33 § 10. Doubts and difficulties arising from Spinoza’s account of ‘ Intuitive Knowledge of An Essence ’ . . -35 Chapter § II.

HI. KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

Spinoza shows that his project (viz. the search for the right method) does not entail an infinite regress, first, by the help of an analogy (borrowed from Bacon) between man’s progress in craftsmanship and his advance in know¬ ledge ; and . . . . . .52

§ 12. secondly, by explaining the nature (i) of knowledge, (ii) of advance in knowledge, and (iii) of method, (i) In his account of knowledge, Spinoza is partly following, but partly correcting, the views of Descartes. To know any¬ thing is to form (or have) a true idea of it. But (a) a ‘ true idea ’ is concretely identical with its object (not in correlation or correspondence with it), so that ‘ to have a true idea ’ is to know, and ex ipso to be certain that one knows, the ideatum as it really is [idea vera — essentia obiectiva rei = certitudo). Moreover {b) Intellect (or Intellection) and Will (or Volition) are one and the same, so that every ‘idea’ is 4518

b

X

CONTENTS a living act of thought, a judgement {volitio, sive affirmatio et negatio, et conceptus, sive idea, unum et idem sunt: cf. E. ii. 49, dem. and C.). Finally (c) the human mind is ‘ only a part of a thinking thing ’—i.e. not a substantia cogitans creata, but a ‘ mode ’ of the Absolute Substance under its Attribute of Thought . . . ■ -53 Excursus, in order to bring out more fully the modal character of the human mind. Spinoza’s theory of Sub¬ stance, Attributes, and Modes is outlined and contrasted with the doctrine of Descartes: and an attempt is made to summarize his conception of the ‘finite individuality’ of m.an’s body and mind in their ‘essential’ (real or intelligible) being . . . ■ .60 § 13. (ii) Advance in knowledge is the self-generating develop¬ ment of the Intellect . . . . .88 {a) ‘ Empirical ’ and popular character of his treatment in the Tdle . . . . .89 {b) Why every human mind must have at least one true idea. The views of Descartes and Spinoza in regard to ‘Adequacy’ and ‘Truth’ of Ideas . . 90 (c) Our ‘advance in knowledge’ is a ‘stretch’ of the self-explication of the potentia infinita cogitandi; but we ourselves co-operate, for our mind is a ‘ spiri¬ tual’, i.e. self-conscious, ‘automaton’ . . 100 § 14. (iii) The Method of Knowledge . . . .102 1. Spinoza’s own account (a) in Tdle, §§ 36-40, and {b) in Ep. 37, confirms the summary description already given—viz. Method is ‘ the knowledge of knowledge, knowledge reflecting lapon and controlling itself ’ . 102 2. But (i) ‘knowledge of knowledge’ seems impossible, if Spinoza’s analysis of ‘ knowledge ’ or the ‘ true idea ’ is sound, and (ii) ‘ reflective knowledge ’, as he appears to conceive it, could not control the knowledge on which it reflects . . . . .104 3. These difficulties are fatal to any attempt to weave the Tdle, without radical reconstruction of its contents, into a complete and coherent theory of Method . 107 4. Rough sketch of the ‘ reconstruction ’ required . 108

Chapter IV. THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNI¬ ZANCE: SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT § 15. The two remaining Chapters will examine the principal topics of the systematic doctrine of method (set forth in the second half of the treatise) on their merits—i.e. as though the value of Spinoza’s treatment of them were not seriously prejudiced by the failure of his account of the general character of ‘ the true method ’ . . .112

CONTENTS

xi

§ i6. The principal subject of study in the present Chapter will be Spinoza’s Analysis of the pseudo-cognizant experiences, viz. Supposal, Error, and Doubt. . . .

113

(1) Supposal .......

114

Supposals {ideae fictae, fictiones) are divided into (a) those which concern a thing’s existence only and (b) those which concern its essence also, or its essence alone . 114 {a) Supposals of Existence . . . .114 §17. (6) Supposals of Essence: Doubts and Difficulties sug¬ gested by Spinoza’s description and examples . .

122

§18. Re-interpretation of Supposal, based upon the further course of Spinoza’s exposition. All supposals are imaginational experiences, generically the same—i.e. the same in respect to the genesis and composition of the representa¬ tions which constitute them. And in all supposals the supposing mind is passive . . . .126 § 19. Final attempt to interpret Spinoza’s analysis of supposals in the light of his treatment of the Imagination and of ‘ mnemic association ’ (memoria) in the Ethics. In the end his analysis of supposals must be pronounced a failure .

134

(2)

151

Error

.......

§ 20. The second type of pseudo-cognizance is Error {idea falsa). It differs from Supposal not in content but because it implies ‘assent’. Assent, however, is not an act of the erring mind, but a sort of obsession it undergoes. Since errors are identical in content with supposals, they are grouped under the same three heads, and can be avoided or eradicated by the same precautions.—Falsity is the absence in an ideal content of the integrity (or coherence) which characterizes every genuine idea and constitutes its truth.—-‘Simple’ ideas are the ultimate constituents of error, as well as of knowledge.—An extreme type of error: how it arises, and why we need have no fear of it in our own attempt to advance in knowledge . . •

15^

§21. Review of Spinoza’s account of Error . . .161 1. Summary criticism . . . . .161 2. Matters of interest connected with his account: (i) He has clearly reached a critical stage in his own philosophical development . . .165 (ii) in the Treatise he tends to sunder the Intellect and its ideas from the Imagination and its pseudocognizant experiences. But in the Ethics he tries to maintain that all ideas are in principle acts of knowledge, and that knowledge is articulated and graded, but not divided. In order to establish this

CONTENTS

Xll

doctrine, it would be necessary for him to explain [a) in what sense God’s ideas ‘ constitute ’ this or that human mind not only quatenus intelligit, but also in so far as it is subject to (or a subject of) imaginational experience; and (6) in what varying degrees God’s ideas are our ideas, i.e. components of all three kinds of human knowledge. But the treatment of both these topics in the Ethics is far from satisfactory .... (iii) The ‘ negativity ’ of falsity and error, in the sense Spinoza gives to it, is untenable

166 175

(3) Doubt

181

§ 22. The third type of pseudo-cognizance is doubt, i.e. un¬ certainty or perplexity of mind {idea dubia, dubitatio). Paraphrase of Spinoza’s exposition in the Treatise

181

§ 23. Criticism of Spinoza’s theory of doubt (i) Preliminary difficulty, due to ‘ the tripartite classifica¬ tion of the pseudo-cognizant experiences’. Doubt is not ‘liable to be confused with the true idea’; indeed, no experiences are ‘ pseudo-cognizant ’ in that sense of the term. But supposal, error, and doubt may be grouped together under the head of ‘ pseudo-cognizant ’ or ‘ quasi-cognizant ’ experiences, in order to stress their common imperfection and thus to mark them sharply off from most cognizant experiences or states of know¬ ledge. They are imaginational ideas so wanting in coherence, clarity, and integrity, that the ‘ cognizance ’ they embody is spurious rather than real, illusory rather than genuine ..... (ii) Attempt to re-state and criticize the theory by examin¬ ing Spinoza’s ‘ principal contentions ’. First Contention: doubt can only be felt ‘ about ’ a perceived or imag¬ ined object (189). Second Contention: every doubt is generated by, and itself contains, a confused (but genuine) idea (192) ..... (iii) Admission of failure. Spinoza’s exposition proves, on examination, to embody no single, coherent, theory of doubt at all .

184

184

188

195

Chapter V. THE SECOND PART OF THE DOCTRINE OF METHOD; THE FRAMING AND DISCOVERY OF DEFINI¬ TIONS

§ 24. Spinoza’s programme for the second part of his doctrine of method is to establish rules for the framing and dis¬ covery of definitions. Note on the significance of the terminological change—viz. the substitution of ‘ definition ’ for‘true idea’or‘objective essence’

198

CONTENTS

xiii

§25. (I) Spinoza’s attempt to establish rules for the framing of definitions ......

200

§ 26. Criticism, (i) What is the value of Spinoza’s rules (204)? And (ii) has he established them? Underlying his sketch of the second part of the doctrine of method there seems to be a serious confusion of thought (205)

203

§ 27. (II) It remains to review Spinoza’s attempt, in the last four pages of the text, to explain the right way of discover¬ ing definitions. After reproducing the substance of his exposition, I propose to examine his teaching on the principal subjects with which he is here concerned, and to discuss those problems connected more or less directly with it. The objection that his whole project of discover¬ ing definitions is begotten of a confusion of thought (cf. § 26) can, for the present purpose, be disregarded Spinoza’s doctrine of the right or logical linkage of ideas with its corollaries and implications § 28. Paraphrase of his exposition in the first five sections of the text (T. 36-7, §§ 99-103) . . . . § 29. Re-statement of the gist of the procedure enjoined by the doctrine of method . . . . . (I) Our first step must be to prove a good definition of the First Cause. Two possible objections considered and dismissed ...... (II) For the rest, our reflective thought co-operates in the self-development of this basal definition, guiding itself on the general principle that the order of our know¬ ledge is perfect in so far as it ‘ reflects ’ the eternal order of Reality ...... § 30. Summary criticism. The procedure set forth in the doc¬ trine of method is inapplicable tmless, and superfluous if, Spinoza’s philosophical theory of Reality in its eternal order is already known to us, and known to be true beyond peradventure, before or independently of our knowledge of the method. This part of the doctrine of method, therefore, is practically worthless. Yet, incidentally, perhaps, it may contain some elements of theoretical or speculative value . §31. (a) The knowledge which is our aim is not abstract and of universals ..... {b) It is a knowledge of singulars linked together by singular linkages . . . . • INDEX

212 214 214 218

218

222

223 225 226 229

Iptw-';; FigiSk''

\

.J

ABBREVIATIONS I. GENERAL WORKS

Pollock = Sir F. Pollock, Spinoza, His Life and Philosophy (2nd. ed., London, 1899). Study — H. H. Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza (Oxford, 1901). Roth = L. Roth, Spinoza (London, 1929). Hallett = H. F. Hallett, Aeternitas, A Spinozistic Study (Oxford, 1930). Gilson, Ptudes — E. Gilson, Ptudes sur le r6le de la pensee mediivale dans la formation du systeme cartdsien (Paris, 1930). II. BOOKS ON SPINOZA’S LIFE

F.Q. = J. Freudenthal, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinoza’s in Quellenschriften, Urkunden und nichtamtlichen Nachrichten (Leipzig, 1899). F. L. = J. Freudenthal, Das Leben Spinoza’s (first volume of Spinoza, sein Leben und seine Lehre) (Stuttgart, 1904). Meinsma = K. O. Meinsma, Spinoza und sein Kreis (Berlin, 1909) (trans. of Spinoza en zijn Kring) (The Hague, 1896). III. PRIMARY AUTHORITIES FOR THE TEXT

O.P. = Benedicti de Spinoza Opera Posthuma (1677). N.S. — De Nagelate Schriften van B. de Spinoza (1677). IV. MONOGRAPHS ON THE TREATISE

Elbogen = I. Elbogen, Der Tractat de Intellectus Emendatione und seine Stellung in der Philosophie Spinozas (Breslau, 1898). G. A. = C. Gebhardt, Spinozas Verhandlung iiber die Verbesserung des Verstandes (Heidelberg, 1905). V. THE KORTE VERHANDELING

K.V. = Korte Verhandeling van God, de Mensch, en deszelfs Welstand. Sigwart, Tr. = C. Sigwart, Spinoza’s neuentdeckter Tractat, &c. (Gotha, 1866). Sigwart — C. Sigwart, Benedikt de Spinoza’s Kurzer Tractat (2nd ed., Freiburg, 1869). Wolf = A. Wolf, Spinoza’s Short Treatise on God, Man, and his WellBeing (London, 1910). VI. OTHER WORKS

Leopold = J. H. Leopold, Ad Spinozae Opera Posthuma (The Hague, 1902). Meijer = W. Meijer, Collection of Facsimiles of Spinoza’s Letters, with transcriptions, translations, and notes (The Hague, 1903)-

xvi

ABBREVIATIONS

Spinoza’s works are quoted as they stand in G. = C. Gebhardt, Spinoza, Opera: im Auftrag der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Heidelberg, 1925). For the Tractatus references are given to the pages in the second volume of Gebhardt’s standard edition (named above), and to the sections in C. H. Bruder’s edition (Leipzig, 1844). VV1L.=J. van Vloten and J. P. N. Land, Benedicti de Spinoza Opera (The Hague, 1882-3). Tdle. or T. — Tractatus de Intellectus emendatione. E. = Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

.

§ 1 The object of this book is to study some of the leading philosophical ideas in Spinoza’s unfinished ‘ Essay on the purifi¬ cation of the intellect’d It will be concerned in the main with Spinoza’s teaching in regard to knowledge and its method; in regard to truth, supposal, doubt, and error; and in regard to the nature, powers, and limitations of the knowing mind. First, however, it is necessary to dispose of certain preliminary questions. What, e.g., is the authority—or what are the authori¬ ties—for the text of the Tdle ? Again, when was it composed? Why was it never finished ? What is the significance of the foot¬ notes added to it by the author ? How is it related to the Korte Verhandeling and the Ethics ? Though the interest of these ques¬ tions is primarily historical the answers we make to them will have a bearing—indirect, but none the less important—upon our interpretation of the philosophical contents of the Tdle. Fortu¬ nately, definite and (on the whole) conclusive answers can be given, thanks to the patient researches of many scholars during the last thirty or forty years.^ ‘ The full title is: Tractatus de Intellectus emendatione, et de vid, qua optime in veram rerum Cognitionem dirigitur {O.P.), or Handeling van de Verheiering van’t Verstant, en te gelijk van de Middel om het zelfde volmaakt te maken {N.S.). It seems impossible to find a satisfactory English equivalent for the Latin (i.e. the original) title: its exact implications are not reproduced by ‘the amend¬ ment of the understanding’ (the rendering used, e.g. by Pollock), and still less by ‘the improvement of the understanding’ (the version preferred, e.g. by Elwes and Roth). Spinoza’s meaning depends upon his conception of the Intellect as, in its own proper nature, productive of adequate ideas. This conception obviously gives rise to difficulties, which will be considered later (cf. below, pp. 91-102). It is summarized in the phrase {Tdlezd, § 68) verum, sive intellectus. The Essay (so Spinoza’s title is meant to suggest) will treat of the ‘purification’ or ‘purgation’ of the Intellect—of the method by which it is to be restored to its natural perfection, by eliminating from it certain accretions, ideas of imagination, ideas which are not its own but have come to it from an external source (cf. e.g. Tdle 9, § 16: ‘. . . modus medendi intellectus, ipsumque . . . expurgandi, ut feliciter res absque errore, et quam optime intelligat ’). ^ Notably Meinsma, Freudenthal, Leopold, and Gebhardt. The results of the researches of these and other scholars have been well summarized and used by Wolf in his edition of the K. V. and by Roth in his recent book on Spinoza. 4518

B

2

INTRODUCTORY

§2. To begin with the history of the text: Spinoza died at The Hague on 21 February 1677. The day before his death he entrusted his manuscripts to his landlord, Henderyk van der Spyck,' with instructions to send them to Jan Rieuwertsz. Rieuwertsz was a bookseller, bookbinder, printer, and publisher at Amsterdam, fifteen years older than Spinoza and one of his most faithful friends.^ He set to work at once, with the help of Jarigh Jelles^ (another of Spinoza’s oldest and most devoted friends), to arrange the manuscripts for pubhcation. By the end of December the volume was ready, and copies were being distributed early in January.+ The book has on its title-page simply B. d. S. Opera postuma, quorum series post Praefationem exhihetur and the date, 1677. Neither the name of the publisher nor the place of printing are mentioned. It contains—after 35 pages of Preface—the Ethics, the unfinished Tractatus Politicus and Tdle, a number of Letters to and from Spinoza, a full Index Rerum, the fragmentary Hebrew Grammar (added as a supplement, with separate paging and Indices) and, finally, a hst of Errata. At the same time there was published De Nagelate Schriften van B. d. S.s It contains Jarigh Jelles’ Preface (originally writ¬ ten in Dutch), and Dutch translations of the Ethics, Tr. Pol., * On H. V. d. Spyck see F.L., p. i8i. He was by profession a house-painter (Zimmermaler—decorator), but he also ‘practised the art of painting, especially portraits, and is said to have made a portrait of Spinoza’. Spinoza lodged in his house for the last six years of his life, and was on friendly terms both with V. d. Spyck and with his wife. ^ On Rieuwertsz see F.L., p. 95 (Colerus calls him ‘ Stadsboekdrukker F.Q., no. 98; and Kortholt ‘Librarius’ (F.Q., no. 28). ^ On Jarigh Jelles see F.L., pp. 90-4. He began life as a spice-merchant at Amsterdam, but retired early and devoted himself to the pursuit of knowledge. Probably the chief burden of preparing and editing Spinoza’s MSS. fell upon him; and the Preface to the O.P., to judge both by its style and contents, is almost certainly his work (cf. F.L., pp. 93-4, and G. ii. 314-15)-

Gebhardt (ii. 312-13) is probably right in rejecting Freudenthal’s view that Dr. G. H. Schuller (see F.L., p. 268) took an active part in editing the O.P., though Schuller evidently wishes to create that impression in his letters to Leibniz (see Schuller to Leibniz in F.Q., nos. 27, 28, 30, and 32). Probably Gebhardt is also right (G. ii. 312, note 6) in thinking that Dr. Lodewijk Meyer (at one time an intimate friend of Spinoza, and author of the Preface to his P.Ph.D.: see F.L., pp. 95-6) had nothing to do with the editing of the O.P. * See Schuller’s letters to Leibniz, F.Q., nos. 28 and 30. 5 On the N.S. generally, see G. ii. 315-17.

INTRODUCTORY

3

Tdle, and Letters.^ In an article published in i88i Land^ pointed out that these Dutch translations had evidently been made from Spinoza’s manuscripts, and not from the proofs of the O.P. Unfortunately it does not seem to have occurred to him to make a systematic cohation of the N.S. with the O.P.; and accordingly the text of the Ethics, Tr. Pol., and Tdle, which is given in Van Vloten and Land’s edition (1882-3: reprinted 1895 and 1914), is reproduced from the O.P. without reference to the variants in the N.S. except in a few passages in which the editor seems to have chosen, more or less at random, to consult the Dutch version. 3 Twenty-one years later, i.e. in 1902, Dr. J. H. Leopold showed that the manuscripts used by the Dutch translator were different from those employed by the editors of the O.P. He urged the importance of a systematic cohation, in order to correct the defects in the generally accepted texts of Spinoza’s works; but contented himself with citing in illustration, and emending by the help of the Dutch variants, a number of isolated passages.^ The first editor to make a systematic collation of the N.S. with the O.P., to use the results in the constitution of his text, and to quote the Dutch variants in a regular Apparatus Criticus, is Pro¬ fessor Carl Gebhardt. The special conclusions, in regard to the relation of the N.S. to the O.P., which he himself has reached, need not, for our present purpose, be examined. He contends, e.g., that all the Dutch translations must have been completed long before Spinoza’s death (G. ii. 315). He contends, further, that the translator of the Tdle had before him Spinoza’s own manuscript; and that this identical manuscript, greatly altered * According to Gottlieb Stolle (see Meinsma, 526) Jelles’ preface was origi¬ nally written in Dutch, and translated into Latin by Jan Hendriks Glazemaker, Gebhardt (l.c. 315) asserts that all the Dutch translations were made by Glazemaker, quoting in support a passage from the second part of The Life of Philopater and a statement in the ‘ Catalogue of Spinoza’s Works’ appended to Lucas’s Life of Spinoza. Neither of these ‘authorities’ is very reliable. 2 Land’s paper, ‘ Over de uitgaven en den text der Ethica van Spinoza ’, is cited by Leopold (l.c. i) and Gebhardt (G. ii. 316 and 344: the date is given in V. VI. and Land as 1881. G. first assigns it to 1882, and then to 1880). 3 See G. ii. 316. On the nineteenth-century editions of Spinoza (Paulus, 1802-3; Gfroerer, i83o;Bruder, 1843-6, and often reprinted; Ginsberg, 187582) and on the new edition (1925—2 volumes still to come) of Gebhardt, see the excellent summary in Roth, pp. 19-20. ♦ On Leopold’s scholarly essay. Ad Spinozae Opera Posthuma (The Hague, 1902), see G. ii. 316-17. Cf. also my review in Mind, n.s., vol. x, p. 579.

INTRODUCTORY

4

and improved by Spinoza’s work of revision, was used, fifteen years later, by the editors of the O.P. (G. ii. 319-21; and cf. 341-2).

However that may be, it is clear that the Dutch translator had before him an earlier and different, but authentic version of the Tdle. There are, in fact, many passages in which the true reading can be restored by the help of the Dutch translation. The answer, therefore, to the first of our ‘ preliminary questions ’ (above, p. i) is that, while the text of the Tdle rests primarily upon the Latin original of the O.P., the Dutch version in the N.S. is to be regarded as an independent and valuable, though subsidiary, authority. And since copies of the N.S. are extremely rare, and Gebhardt gives (or professes to give) all the Dutch variants, I shall, in quoting passages of the Tdle, give a reference to the relevant page in vol. ii of Gebhardt’s edition, as well as to the numbered section in Bruder’s text.^ § 3. The remaining ‘ preliminary’ questions—when the Tdle was composed, why it was left unfinished, what is its significance in Spinoza’s philosophical development, &c.—are fully discussed in Professor Gebhardt’s interesting monograph {Spinoza’s Abhandlung uber die Verbesserung des Verstandes, Heidelberg, 1905). In the following account I shall be drawing freely upon his discus¬ sion, and reproducing the substance of his conclusions.^ That the Tdle was composed at an early date is evident (as the editors of the O.P. remark) both from its style ahd from its contents.3 But from Spinoza’s own statements in the concluding paragraph of one of his letters {Ep. 6) to Oldenburg^ it seems possible {a) to fix the actual date of composition of the Tdle within a few months, and {b) to trace, with reasonable certainty, the author’s original design in writing it. The paragraph, which ’ Bruder’s sections, though not in the O.P. or N.S., are so convenient that most writers on the Tdle make use of them. ^ I differ from him in one or two minor points, as will be seen. 3 Praefatio (in O.P.): ‘Ex prioribus nostri Philosophi operibus, testibus et stylo, et conceptibus.’ Admonitio ad lectovem (G. ii. 4): ‘iam multos ante annos ab Auctore fuit conscriptus’. ■» On Heinrich Oldenburg see F.L., pp. 125-8. He was born at Bremen about 1620; sent to England on a diplomatic mission in 1653: and appointed Secre¬ tary to the Royal Society in 1660—or rather to the ‘Collegium Philosophantium ’ which became the Royal Society on its incorporation by Royal Charter on 15 July 1662.

INTRODUCTORY

5

was either absent from the copy supplied to the editors of the O.P. or suppressed by them, was reproduced by Van Vloten and Land from the autograph in the possession of the Royal Society, and is so important that I quote it in full. Spinoza is answering Oldenburg’s letter of 2i October i66i {Ep. 5). He says: ‘As to your new question—^viz. how things first came into exis¬ tence, and what is the connecting link which binds them to the First Cause—I have composed a whole small treatise on this subject and also on the purification of the intellect; and I am engaged in making a fair copy of it.^ But for some time I have put the work aside,2 as I have not yet come to any definite decision about its publication. The fact is, I arn afraid of scandahzing any modem theologians and provoking them to attack me with their usual ran¬ cour; I shrink above all things from quarrels n. 3). His words are: ‘ Observe that we are not here asking how the “first” objective essence is innate in us. For that is a problem wEich belongs to the Investigation of Nature. There [i.e. in the second or ‘metaphysical’ part of his projected Opusculuni\ these matters are more fully explained; and it is shown at the same time that, apart from the “idea”, there is neither affirma¬ tion nor negation, nor any Will.’ ^ See—besides the famous exposition in E. ii. 48 and S., 49 with the C. and S. •—the summary of Spinoza’s doctrine, and his disagreement with Descartes, in the Preface to Princ. Phil. Cartes. (G. i. 132), which was published in 1663. This Preface, though written by L. Meijer, was throughout inspired and revised by Spinoza himself (G. i. 610). Though, in the K. V., Spinoza still adopts on the whole the Cartesian position —he assumes, e.g., that Will is a faculty of affirmation and negation [K.V. ii, ch. 16), and insists (ibid., ch. 15) that Intellect or Intellection is sheerly passive —the revolution in his thought must have been substantially completed when (or soon after) he began to write the Tdle. No doubt the footnote to § 34 (see above, n. i) may have been added at a later date—perhaps early in 1663. But, even if we disregard this footnote, it is evident that the whole treatment of the Intellect and of Idea in the Tdle presupposes as its background'the position which is concisely stated in Meijer’s Preface, and fully and authorita¬ tively expounded in the Ethics. ^ E. ii, def. 3. Spinoza adds, in the Explicatio, that he has avoided the term perception ’, because it might suggest that an idea is passively received from

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

59

Against this interpretation of idea, the statement (already noticed above, p. 57, n. i) that the certainty, which is true thinking, is ‘the way in which we feel the formal essence’, must not be pressed. To some extent, perhaps, there is here a survival of the doctrine, which Spinoza advocated in the K.V. while he was still inclined to accept the Cartesian distinction between Intellect and Will.^ But the statement is not irreconcilable with the insistence that a true idea is essentially an act or activity of mind. For it harmonizes with a view which, as we have already noticed,^ is characteristic of Spinoza’s teaching—viz. that know¬ ledge is, in principle, both immediate and discursive, both selfevident and demonstrated, both a ‘seeing’ and a ‘reasoning’. The true idea (so we may fairly express Spinoza’s meaning) is the characteristic intellectual activity, the analytic synthesis or synthetic analysis, which is a ‘judgement’: for that is the only way in which the Intellect ‘feels’, is consciously one with, the real. It is true that in some passages of the treatise a distinction is expressly drawn or implied between an idea and the mind’s ‘assenting’ to it.3 But the explanation of this apparent incon¬ sistency is not any wavering or forgetfulness on Spinoza’s part —not any lingering in, or reversion to, the Cartesian position— so far at least as true or genuine ‘ideas’ are concerned. The explanation must be sought in his conception of the Imagination both in its contrast to, and in its relationship with, the Intellect. For the ‘ ideas ’ of which he is speaking in the passages in ques¬ tion are none of them, so far as the finite mind which has them is concerned, ‘ ideas ’ in the full and genuine sense at all. They the object, and chosen the term ‘ conception ’ which ‘ seems to express an action of the mind’. I Above, p. 58, n. 2. Cf. e.g. K.V. 2, ch. 16 (Wolf’s translation): ‘For we have said that the understanding is purely passive; it is an awareness, in the soul, of the essence and existence of things; so that it is never we who affirm or deny something of a thing, but it is the thing itself that affirms or denies, in us, something of itself.’ Sigwart (Spinoza’s Kurzer Tractat, pp. 204 ff.) gives a full and admirable note on the whole subject. ^ Cf. above, p. 43, n. 3, p. 45, n. 3. 3 Tdle, e.g. 22, § 57. § 58; 24, § 62 ; 25, § 66; 27-8, §§ 72-3 ; 30. § 80. In T. 23, §§ 59-60, Spinoza criticizes a view which is stated in terms of this Cartesian distinction between ‘ideal content’ and ‘assent’, but does not discuss the distinction itself.

6o

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

are those experiences in which we suppose or fancy, doubt or question, are deceived or err—those ideae fictae, duhiae, and falsae, which Spinoza sometimes groups together as ‘Ideas of the Imagination’. Our mind ‘receives’ them, and does not ‘ form ’ them. They are produced in it mechanically by causes alien to it. They are not freely generated by its own activity as a ‘ thinking thing ’; or rather, they are not acts in which the ‘thinking thing’ expresses itself in, and as, the ‘intellect’ (i.e. the ‘clear and distinct ideas’, or true judgements) of some finite mind. The only justification, indeed, for applying the term ‘idea’ to experiences so sharply contrasted with the true judgements, which alone it properly denotes, is that, on Spinoza’s view, the ‘ ideas of imagination ’ are (in ultimate analysis) ‘ mutilations ’ of a genuine act or acts of thought—dissected, and arbitrarily colli¬ gated, fragments of an adequate conception or conceptions formed by ‘the thinking thing’.^ (c) Already, in the preceding paragraph, I have been using lan¬ guage drawn from, and characteristic of, the second of the ‘ two leading doctrines’ (cf. above, p. 58) which underhe Spinoza’s account of the true idea and our possession of it-—the doctrine that ‘ we are parts of a thinking thing, so that its thoughts (some in their entirety, but others in fragments only) constitute our minds Excursus In order to bring out more fuUy the significance of this doc¬ trine, it is necessary to enter upon a considerable, but not irrele¬ vant, Excursus—-viz. to trace the metaphysical background which forms its setting and, in particular, to draw attention to the contrasted Cartesian theory. For Spinoza’s own view of the ‘modal’ character of the finite minds seems first to have been suggested to him^ by reflection upon, and criticism of, the anoma¬ lous position assigned by Descartes to the ‘ human soul or mind ’.^ ’ Cf., in the meantime, Tdle 28, § 73 (and above, p. 56, n. i). The whole subject is more fully explained below, pp. 113 ff., and pp. 166 ff. ^ Tdle 28, § 73: '. . . certum est, ideas inadaequatas ex eo tantum in nobis oriri, quod pars sumus alicuius entis cogitantis, cuius quaedam cogitationes ex toto, quaedam ex parte tantum nostram mentem constituunt.’ 3 Cf. Meijer’s Pref. to Princ. Phil. Cartes. (G. i. 132), the substance of which is confirmed by Spinoza’s own statements, e.g. in Ep. 2 (1661) and Ep. 32 (Nov. 1665). As Descartes explains {Medit., Quintae Resp. vii. 355-6), the human ‘soul’

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

6i

It will be remembered that Descartes, while insisting that the term ‘ substance ’ applies sensu strictissimo to God alone, recog¬ nizes nevertheless that, in a different and looser sense, it may legitimately be applied both to body and to finite (or ‘ created') mind. Taken in the strictest sense, the term can only mean that which depends for its existence upon nothing whatever except itself—i.e. the absolutely self-existent. And clearly, in this sense of the word, God is the only ‘ substance ’; for God, and God alone, is such that his existence (or his ‘that’) follows necessarily and solely from his essence (or his ‘what’).^ The term, however, is commonly used in another sense, which Descartes not only ex¬ plains and justifies, but himself adopts. For though the created things are none of them ‘substances’ in the strict sense (since they all depend, for their existence and endurance, upon the perpetually repeated creative acts of God), yet some of them have in common a characteristic which distinguishes them from the rest, and entitles them to be re¬ garded, relatively and by contrast, as self-existent or as ‘sub¬ stances ’. Thus, it is usual and legitimate to apply the term both to Body [substantia corporea) and to Finite Mind [substantia cogitans creata)^ by contrast with the Attributes and Modes, which presuppose them. Extension, e.g. Figure, Motion, and Rest, presuppose a something which is extended and, qua extended, divisible into parts infinitely varied in shape and susceptible of different degrees of motion, and of rest. Similarly, Perception and Volition presuppose Consciousness [cogitatio) which itself presupposes a something which is conscious (a spiritual some¬ thing, a substantia cogitans or ‘mind’). But that which is ex¬ tended (i.e. Body) and that which is conscious (i.e. Mind) pre¬ suppose, for their existence and endurance, no other created thing, but God’s creative activity alone.^ It is evident, as Descartes (cf. e.g. Med. Synopsis, vii. 13-14) —i.e. the anima, which is praecipua hominis forma—is neither more nor less than principium quo cogitamus, i.e. a ‘mind’ {mens). ‘ Cf. Princ. Phil, i, § 51 (viii. 24): ‘Per substantiam nihil aliud intelligere possumus, quam rem quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum. Et quidem substantia quae nulla plane re indigeat, unica tantum potest intelligi, nempe Deus.’ ^ The quaUfication creata is necessary, for there is a substantia cogitans increata et independens—viz. God (cf. Princ. Phil, i, § 54; viii. 26). 3 Cf. Princ. Phil, i, §§ 51, 52 (viii. 24-5).

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points out, that all substances are intrinsically imperishable. Even the ‘created’ substances—i.e. the things which depend for their existence solely upon the creative acts of God—are, qua substances, immortal. Neither Body nor Finite Mind can ever cease to be, unless God annihilates them by withdrawing his support—by discontinuing his creative (or re-creative) acts. But the Body, which is a ‘substance’, is body ‘taken in general’ or ‘as such’—not the singular bodies we perceive, not, e.g., this or that human body. The singular bodies differ from one another not in substance, but only in the ‘accidents’ (the variable and changing properties) of substance. They differ from one another in the modes of the Attribute (viz. Extension) which characterizes Body as such. Each of them is this body and no other in virtue, e.g., of the uniquely-peculiar shape, proportions, and adjustment of its limbs, and so forth. They are, therefore, not so many distinct substantiae corporeae, but so many transient and ‘ accidental ’ modifications of a single underlying substantia corporea—modifications which leave the substance itself, qua substance, undivided and untouched. Hence, though Body {cor¬

pus in genere sumptum, substantia corporea) is intrinsically im¬ mortal, bodies—this and that singular body—are by their very nature perishable and evanescent. Body—i.e. the bare and ab¬ stract ‘something’ (the ‘x’) of which Extension in three dimen¬ sions, conceived in general, is an attribute—is indestructible save by the act of God (or rather, the withdrawal of his active support). But the slightest change in some of the ‘ accidents ’ of Body (e.g. a change of shape, proportion, or adjustment of the limbs) would suffice to constitute the death of what we call this human body, and the emergence in its place of another body or bodies, differing from it both numerically and in type or species. ^ ’ Cf. Med. Syn., l.c.: ‘. . . deinde ut advertatur corpus quidem in genere sumptum esse substantiam, ideoque nunquam etiam perire. Sed corpus humanum, quatenus a reliquis differt corporibus, non nisi ex certa membrorum configuratione aliisque eiusmodi accidentibus esse conflatum . . .’. By corpus humanum Descartes (it seems clear from the context of the whole passage) means this or that singular human body, not the human body as a type or species. His statements could be applied, no doubt, to the species of Body, as well as to the singular bodies; but, in view of his general attitude to the traditional notions of genera and species (cf. Princ. Phil, i, §§ 55—9: viii. 26-8), Descartes himself would presumably have denied both the necessity and the value of taking the so-called types or species of Body into account at all.

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On the other hand, Descartes insists that each and every singular human soul (or mind) is itself a distinct 'substance’. The Mind, i.e., which is a substance [substantia cogitans creata), is not Mind ‘in general’ or ‘as such’ (not the abstract ‘something , of which finite consciousness, conceived in general, is an attribute) but this mind and that mind—i.e. any one and every one of the many ‘human souls’. Hence every human mind is intrinsically immortal. The changes in its experiences, or in the modes of the consciousness which is its attribute—in its feelings, e.g. volitions, and thoughts—do not constitute a change of it, do not touch or affect its indestructible self-identity. For it is pre¬ cisely and purely a substance ’—a substantia cogitans—indepen¬ dent, in its what and that, of everything except God. Changes, therefore, in its accidents’—in the modes of its consciousness—■ can no more destroy or modify its being (i.e. the ‘substance’, which it is) than the substantia corporea can be, as such, destroyed or altered by the changes in its ‘ accidents ’ (by those variations in the modes of its Extension which constitute, e.g., the comingto-be and passing-away of this or that singular body).i Now Spinoza’s doctrine of the human mind involves a twofold correction of the Cartesian position. For he maintains,/zsC that there are no ‘created substances’, though both Thought and Extension, as attributes’ of the one and only Substance (viz. God or Nature) are self-contained, i.e. each infinite (or complete) within its own kind; and, secondly, that the singular minds are nothing but ‘modes’ of Substance conceived under its attribute of Thought [Cogitatio), just as the singular bodies are ‘modes’ of Substance qua Extended. Agreeing with Descartes as to the only possible meaning of the term ‘Substance’, when strictly used,^ Spinoza rejects the com¬ promise which had enabled Descartes to employ the term in a looser sense and thus to speak of created substances. He defines ‘Substance’ as that which is self-subsistent and self-intelligible. ’ Cf. Med. Syn., l.c.: ‘... mentem vero humanam non ita ex ullis accidentibus constare, sed puram esse substantiam: etsi enim omnia eius accidentia mutentur, ut quod alias res intelligat, alias velit, alias sentiat, &c., non idcirco ipsa mens alia evadit; humanum autem corpus aliud fit ex hoc solo quod figura quarumdam eius partium mutetur: ex quibus sequitur corpus quidem perfacile perire, mentem autem ex natura sua esse immortalem.’ ^ Cf. above, p. 6i, n. i.

64

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It is what it is in its own right, depending, for its what and that, upon nothing other than itself; and to conceive it adequately is to conceive it 'through itself’—not to infer its nature or its exis¬ tence from the conception of anything else.i Agreeing further with Descartes that there can be, must be, and is one 'Substance’ (in the strict sense) and only one, viz. God, Spinoza differs from him in his conception of this unicum —this one and only self-subsistent and self-intelligible Being. Already in the K.V., as we have seen (above, pp. 8-io), he distinguishes sharply between mere propria and attributes of God; bases upon this distinction a criticism of the definition of God ' which the philosophers have given ’; and puts forward a very different definition of his own, substantially identical with the famous sixth definition of Part I of the Ethics.^ Understand¬ ing by 'Attribute ’ whatever must be recognized by clear thought as a 'proper part’ of the 'essence’ of Substance (i.e. whatever is an inseparable, but necessarily distinguishable, 'moment’ constituting its 'intelligible what’),3 he insists that no limit can be set, and no number can be assigned, to the Attributes of God. 'God’ or 'Nature’ is a Being unique and infinite, is all that is, including whatever has positive beingand God’s 'essence’, therefore, is constituted by an inexhaustible variety of ‘mo¬ ments’, by an infinity of Attributes. Each of these Attributes is ‘infinite in its own kind’—i.e. each ‘moment’ is complete and total, self-contained in its complete totality, excluding (and excluded by) every other. And since God or Nature qua selfcreating (Natura Naturans) may thus in principle be conceived under any single one out of an infinity of Attributes, God or Nature qua self-created {Natura Naturata) may correspondingly Cf. E. i, def. 3. In principle and in its main features, Spinoza’s general theory of the fundamental concepts and the key-relations of his System (viz. of Substance and its Attributes, and of Substance and its Modes) is already set out or implied in Epp. 2 and 4, which were written in the autumn of 1661. (Cf. Study, p. 18.) * Compare E. i, def. 6 and Expl. with K.V. i, ch. 2 (G. i, p. 19, 11. 3-7: translated above, p. 9). 3 Cf. K.V., I.C., and E. i, def. 4: ‘Per attributum intelligo id quod intellectus de substantia percipit [concipit, N.S.] tanquam eiusdem essentiam constituens.’ It is clear from E. ii. 7 S. that 'id quod intellectus percipit’ is to be interpreted as ‘quidquid ab infinito intellectu percipi potest’ (cf. also above, p. 39, n. i). * Cf., e.g., Tdle 29, § 76: '. . . est nimirum hoc ens, unicum, infinitum, hoc est, est omne esse, et praeter quod nullum datur esse’.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

65

be conceived in principle as any single one out of an infinity of self-closed Modal Systems or Created Worlds. i Actually, how¬ ever, and in fact, out of the infinity of Attributes and Created Worlds, two (and two only) fall within the limited range of human experience and knowledge. What are these two Attributes, under which alone Substance is known or knowable by us ? As a rule, Spinoza calls them simply ‘Extension’ and ‘Thought’ {Extensio and Cogitatio), thus following the usage of Descartes. In many passages, however, he speaks of Cogitatio,^ and in at least one passage of Extension as a ‘ power ’; and it is clear from the whole tenor of his philosophy that he conceives the Attri¬ butes as fundamental powers, rather than as fundamental char¬ acters, of ‘God or Nature’. That God’s essentia is one and the same as his potentia was a well-known thesis of orthodox Theology, which Descartes was ready enough to endorse and use.-* But Spinoza gives to it a special interpretation and emphasis. In his conception of Substance, the notion of Power absorbs, and virtually supersedes, the notion of Essence. The Attributes are ‘moments’ of God’s ‘Essence’; but God’s ‘Essence’ is • On Natma Naturans and Natuvata, cf. above, pp. lo-ii, 40-1. Within the limits of the present Excursus, no adequate discussion can be attempted of the notorious difficulties in Spinoza’s theory of the infinity of Attributes, of the ‘ relation ’ of the Attributes to Substance, and of their commensurateness or so-called ‘parallelism’ with one another. I shall, however, bring out the nature of the difficulties more clearly in a later connexion (cf. below, pp. 72 ff.); and in the meantime those interested may be referred to Hallett, ch. ii; and to my own Study, pp. 103-7, i34-8. To speak of ‘modal systems’ and ‘created worlds ’ is not strictly correct. For by a ‘ mode ’ Spinoza means a ‘ modification ’, ‘accident’, or ‘affection’ of Substance, which can only ‘be in’, and can only ‘be conceived through’, the latter (cf. Ep. 4, written in 1661; and e.g. E. i, def. 5). Hence, strictly speaking, there is only one ‘created world’ or ‘modal system’—viz. Natura Naturata, the necessarily articulated system of eternal modes, which Substance eternally creates within itself (see below, p. 72). But the use of the plural is, in some contexts, legitimate in order to avoid intolerable periphrasis. Spinoza himself does not hesitate to speak of ‘Modes of Extension’ or ‘Modes of Thought’ in many contexts, where the correct description (i.e. ‘Modes of Substance conceived under the Attribute of Exten¬ sion’ or ‘of Thought’) would be clumsy or inconvenient. ^ Cf., e.g. K.V. i. Dial, i (G. i. 30); Meijer’s Pref. to Princ. Phil. Cartes. (G. i. 132—see above, p. 58); Ep. 32 (20 Nov. 1665); E. ii. i S., 7 C., 21 S. ^ In K.V. ii. ig (G. i. go) Extension is called ‘deze kragt van uytwerkinge’, and ‘de Beweginge en Ruste’ are quoted as examples of its effects. Compare also Epp. 81 and 83 (May and July, 1676). * Cf., e.g. Ep. 554 (Desc. v. 343). 4518

K

66

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

nothing else but an infinite self-causing or self-creating Power, and its ‘moments’, therefore, are ‘moments’ (irreducibly dis¬ tinct, but inseparable forms) of God’s omnipotence^ The Attribute of ‘ Extension ’, then, is a uniquely distinct form of Natura Naturans, which expresses or fulfils itself as a uniquely distinct form of Natura Naturata. It is a power or energy of the Universe—unitary, indivisible, and ‘infinite in its own kind’— which is displayed to our experience and knowledge as the modal system of ‘ Extension ’; the created world of motion and matter, the physical or corporeal world. Of this world we have a fragmentary, confused, and in many respects distorted, view in our perceptual experience; but we also have or can obtain of it clear and adequate knowledge. Thus, it is roughly true to say that all the bodies we perceive are modes of Substance under the Attribute of Extension—that they, and their movements, processes, and properties, fall within, or belong to, the corporeal or physical world. But it is only roughly true—true under qualifications which must be borne in mind. For the perceptible bodies and their properties, as we perceive them, are, to a large extent, illusory; i.e. they would be radically altered or transformed by the explanation we should have to give of them in the light of a reasoned theory or know¬ ledge of the physical world. If, e.g., by ‘ one body ’ we mean what a reasoned theory of that world would recognize as one of its ultimate constituents (as a single, uniquely distinct, and irre¬ placeable member of the Modal System of Extension) ,2 then, what appears ‘one body’ to our perception, may prove to our knowledge to be a mutilated fragment of ‘one’ body, or (again) a jumble of fragments of several bodies, or (lastly) a ‘constella¬ tion’ of two or more single bodies. Moreover the perceptible bodies—‘ bodies ’ as they appear in our perceptual experience— are clothed in the so-called ‘ secondary qualities ’; they come-tobe, endure, and pass-away in time; and in their temporal exis¬ tence they seem to be contingent. But in the physical world, as the object or intelligible correlate of knowledge, there is no temporal duration or contingency; the world itself, its ‘order’, and its contents, are necessary and eternal. And as to the ‘secondary qualities’ (colour, sound, scent, flavour, qualities of * Cf. Study, pp. 65-7.

* Cf. above, pp. 41 ff.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

67

temperature and touch) Spinoza entirely agrees with Descartes that, strictly considered, they are not physical properties but physical states. They are not characters of body as such. They belong to the modal system of Thought, not of Extension. They are confused ideas, by which we have a vague and summary consciousness of the suhsensible character of body; of molecular movements, e.g., and configurations, which can be mathemati¬ cally deduced and measured, though they are too minute and intricate to be perceived distinctly and in detail. Spinoza nowhere sets out, systematically and in final form, his own theory of the intelligible structure and constitution of the Physical World, and of its derivation from the Attribute or Power of Extension. Yet the main significance and drift of his teaching can be made sufficiently clear by comparison and contrast with the Cartesian theory. It will be remembered that, according to Descartes, God created Matter, i.e. corporeal Substance, a some¬ thing extended in three dimensions; and at the same time created, and implanted in Matter, a definite quantity of Motion and Rest, which is maintained invariably the same per solum suum concur sum ordinarium.^ Hence the physical world—since it is nothing but three-dimensional Space, substantiated into Matter or Mass, and divided, figured, and articulated by Motion —must be explained in accordance with the principles of Geo¬ metry and Kinetics. In short, a reasoned theory, or knowledge, of the physical world would take the form of a System of Mathematical Physics.^ Now Spinoza convinced himself, at a very early stage of his own philosophical development, that there was, and could be, only one Substance. From his point of view, therefore, it is impossible that the physical world as a whole, or any constituent or component of it, should be substantial or a substance. Qua created, it must be dependent, for its that and what, upon some¬ thing other than itself—i.e. it must be a mode or modal, the very antithesis of the self-subsistent or substantial. It follows at once that the Cartesian conception of Matter must be corrected. There is no physical substratum—no inert or quiescent Mass or Matter. The only substance underlying the extension or mathe' Cf. Desc. Princ. Phil, ii, § 36. * Cf. Study, p. 68, and the references there given to Descartes.

68

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matical solidity of the physical world and its contents is God or Nature—i.e. the Absolute Individual which eternally creates and, in creating, sustains the created as modes or affections of itself. The assumption of a physical substratum compelled Descartes to invoke a separate creative act to introduce Motion into Matter ah extra—to overcome the inherent inertia of the supposed cor¬ poreal substance. Hence Spinoza, having corrected Descartes’s conception of Matter, corrects also his conception of Motion— or, rather, assigns to Motion a different and more fundamental role than Descartes had given to it in the constitution of the physical world and its contents.^ Like Descartes, Spinoza maintains that the total quantity (the sum) of Motion and Rest in the physical world is eternally the same. But this eternal Constant—this ‘infinite and eternal Mode ’, as he calls it—flows inevitably, as its immediate intrinsic effect, from the Attribute or Power, which is Extension. The clear and adequate knowledge, which we have or can ob¬ tain of the Physical World (cf. above, p. 66), would, therefore, in Spinoza’s view, take the form of a systematic philosophical (i.e. ‘mathematical’) ‘deduction’. Starting from the intuitive conception of Natura Naturans qua Extension, the deductive movement would proceed to demonstrate the necessary logical sequence of stage after stage in its eternal self-fulfilment—in its self-explication, or self-evolution, as Natura Naturata qua Ex¬ tended. In the end, therefore, the deductive movement would reach and comprehend the ultimate individuations of Substance under the Attribute of Extension—i.e. the finite eternal Modes, which are the ‘ essences ’ of the perceptible or phenomenal bodies, would be ‘ deduced ’ and known in their mutual relations and in their derivation from, and dependence upon, the First Cause.^ In this ‘deduction’—in the eternal sequence or descent of Modes which it exhibits—the first or ‘most immediate’ Mode * In summarizing Spinoza’s criticism of the Cartesian conceptions of Matter and Motion, I have made use of Epp. 8i and 83 (May and July 1676). Spinoza, however, expressly says that his dissatisfaction with the Cartesian Physics is an old story (cf. Ep. 81 ‘non dubitavi olim affirmare’, &c.), and his own views are already sketched or implied in the K.V. Cf. K.V. i, chs. 2, 8, and 9 (above, pp. 74 ff): ii, Praef. footnote (G. i. 51-2), ch. 19 (G. i. 90), and Appendix (G. i, pp. 117 ff.). ^ Cf. above, pp. 40-4.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

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(the proximate Mode of the Attribute) ^ is Motion-and-Rest. Spinoza conceives it both as the eternally constant Whole, and as the originative source, of all movements and rests in the physical world. It is the Whole, of which they all are Parts; the Universal, of which they are the dependent and derivative Particulars. And, being thus a genuine or concrete Universal (prior to, and the system of, its Particulars), it is—Spinoza maintains—a genuine, eternal. Singular or Individual.^ In short (to borrow the familiar Aristotelian terminology) Motion-and-Rest is ‘first’ in the Modal System of Extension both really (tco elvai) and logically (tw Aoycp). It must be if any¬ thing is to be, and it must be known if anything is to be known, in the physical world. It is unnecessary to stress, and impossible here to discuss, the objections which will probably be urged against Spinoza’s con¬ ception of Motion-and-Rest. How, e.g., can the eternally con¬ stant Whole, the universal or omni-pervasive Individual, of which all movements and rests (and, therefore, in ultimate analysis, all physical changes and properties) are parts or par¬ ticulars—how can it also be a single Mode in the eternal sequence or hierarchy of Modes, the first stage in the self-evolution of the Power which constitutes the Physical World ? And is it really possible to deduce anything whatever from the conception of the Whole—whether from Natura Naturans conceived as the single and indivisible Power or Attribute of Extension, or from Motionand-Rest as the proximate, commensurate, and total ‘expres¬ sion’ of that Power ? Is it not a commonplace of Logic, a fami¬ liar and indisputable doctrine, that our thought, in deducing, never proceeds from the Whole; that it moves always from part to part within the Whole (or within a Whole) and in accordance with its dominant character or the principles of its totality ? The same objections, or rather the fundamental issues which ' Cf., e.g. K.V. ii, Appendix, footnote (G. i. 118), where Spinoza explains that ‘ the most immediate ’ mode in any Attribute is that which, in order to be real (owj wezentlyk te zyn), requires no other mode of the Attribute in question. , ^ It seems clear that Motion-and-Rest is one of the fixed and eternal things , the ‘omnipresent, most widely operative, singulars’, to which Spinoza refers in the Tdle {36, §§ loo-i).

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lie behind them, have already been recorded (above, pp. 36 ff.), and it is no more possible or appropriate to discuss them now than it was before. Adequate discussion of them would involve a full and systematic study of Spinoza's philosophy, since they are aimed at its very heart and vital centre. Whatever their force—and in reality, perhaps, they are less formidable than they seem—they must, for our present purpose, be ignored. We must be content to recognize that Spinoza’s philosophy stands or falls with the notions they attack—the notions, i.e., of a Whole self-fulfilling and yet eternally self-fulfilled; of a Whole, there¬ fore, which is prior, ‘really’ and ‘logically’, to the stages of its own evolution, and yet eternally includes them all within itself; and, lastly, of the best (or philosophical) kind of knowing as a ‘deduction’, which starts ‘from the Whole’, i.e. which is the Whole present, and articulating itself, in and to the philosopher’s mind. I In Spinoza’s theory of the Physical World, then. Motion (i.e. ‘ Motion-and-Rest ’) is fundamental and primary—not, as in the Cartesian doctrine, co-ordinate with, or secondary to. Matter or Mass. He seems in fact to be feeling after—to have projected and in part to have worked out—a Physics, or Philosophy of the Corporeal World, which would reduce everything to, and ex¬ plain everything in terms of, Motion-and-Rest, including Matter or Mass or Mathematical Solidity itself.^ And yet, if this was indeed the main trend of Spinoza’s thought, he never entirely * Clear and adequate knowledge of the Physical World conforms, it will be noticed, to Spinoza’s description of Scientia Intuitiva\ for it would 'proceed from the adequate idea of the formal essence’ of one ‘of God’s Attributes (viz. Extension) to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things’ (viz. of the modes of Natura Naturata qua Extended. Cf. E. ii. 40 S. 2 (quoted above, p, 43). ^ Cf. K.V. ii, Praef. Note, § 7 (G. i. 52): ‘Every particular thing, which comes to actual existence, becomes what it is through Motion and Rest. This applies to all the modes in substantial Extension which we call "bodies”.’ Though it is impossible to determine when this Note was written, the phrase substantial Extension’ (cf., also, in § 15, ‘The Substance of Extension’) suggests an early date. Compare, further, K.V. ii, App. (G. i. 120): ‘We shall assume, as something already proved, that in Extension there is no other mode than Motion-and-Rest, and that every particular corporeal thing is nothing else than a certain proportion of motion and rest. . . .’ As we saw before (above, pp. 11-12) Spinoza’s projected work on the Principles of Physics (Generalia in Physicis) seems in fact to have been a treatise on Motion and Rest (cf. Epp. 59 and 60).

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freed himself from reminiscences of the Cartesian doctrine. Throughout his writings, the conception of Matter or Body or three-dimensional Extension [Quantitas) survives, quite incon¬ sistently, side by side with the conception of Motion-and-Rest. It is not merely that the Modes of Extension are constantly referred to as 'Bodies’, or that Spinoza speaks, e.g. of this or that Body ‘being in’, or ‘having and maintaining’, its propor¬ tion of motion to rest.^ Such language is natural and could be justified on grounds of convenience and clarity of exposition. But Spinoza, in spite of his criticism of Descartes, still thinks of the intelligible structure of the physical world as woven (so to speak) out of two distinct sets of principles—the laws of Extension and the laws of Motion; and even in the Ethics he still appears to postulate certain minimal corpuscles, certain atomic solids, as the bearers of, and not themselves reducible to, motion and rest.^ The second Attribute, under which Substance is known or knowable by us, is ‘ Thought ’,3 or an ‘ infinite power of thinking ’ {cogitatio, potentia infinita cogitandi)A Conceived under this Attribute, ‘God or Nature’ may be described (roughly) as a spiritual power, fulfilling and expressing itself as a modal system ' Cf. K.V. ii, Praef. Note, e.g. §§ 10 and 12. * Cf. Meijer’s Pref. to Princ. Phil. Cartes. (G. i. 132); '. . . quemadmodum corpus humanum non est absolute, sed tantum secundum leges naturae extensae [my italics] per motum et quietem determinata extensio . . .'. Compare also the whole treatment in Ep. 32 (Nov. 1665), and (above all) the provisional and summary sketch de natura corporum which Spinoza has intercalated between Propositions 13 and 14 of E. ii. Notice, finally, Tdle 39, § 108 III, where Spinoza insists that the perception of Motion presupposes the perception of ‘Quantity’. Mr. Hallett’s ‘speculative exposition’ of Spinoza’s theory of Extension (Aeternitas, pp. 78 ff.) has already been mentioned (above, p. 48, n. 2). One of the most serious objections to his interpretation is, I venture to think, the treatment of the corpora simplicissima in the Ethics (l.c.). Mr. Hallett’s attempt to remove the difficulty {Aeternitas, pp. 136-41) is ingenious, but far from convincing. Yet the reader may be advised to consult on this whole subject the interesting Article by Stanislaus von Dunin Borkowski, S.J., on ‘Die Physik Spinoza’s’ in Septimana Spinozana, especially pp. 98-101. 3 On the whole, ‘ Thought ’ is the least misleading term to use, though neither ‘ thought' nor any single English word is an exact equivalent of Cogitatio in the technical sense given to it by Descartes and Spinoza. ‘ Thought ’ does, however, convey an important side of Spinoza’s meaning; and most English students of his philosophy have come to use it, by a tacit convention, as a sort of symbol or token for the untranslatable Latin term. + For potentia infinita cogitandi, cf. the passages cited above, p. 65, n. 2.

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of 'thoughts’ or ‘ideas’—as a created world of sentient, con¬ scious and self-conscious beings, of ‘souls’ or ‘minds'd But this description is not only vague and rough, but also in one fundamental respect inaccurate. For though, as we have seen, it is at times convenient and legitimate, for purposes of exposition, to speak of modal ‘systems’ or of created ‘worlds’, the use of the plural cannot strictly be defended; and in the present context the inaccuracy is dangerous and misleading. Spinoza’s conception of the Attribute of Thought is utterly unintelligible unless the absolute individuality of ‘God or Nature’ is steadily kept in mind. It is fatal for an interpreter to lose sight, for a single instant, of the paramount unity of Substance—a unity concrete (or enriched with an infinity of distinctions and contracts which it reconciles and overrides), but indivisible or indiscerptible. Thus, Substance as self-creating {Natura Naturans) is indivisibly once and the same with itself as self-created {Natura Naturata); and it is so in, and through, and because of, the infinite variety, which each of these contrasted complements of its total being involves. The infinite variety of its Attributes, therefore, must not be so interpreted as to destroy the indivisible unity of its ‘ essence ’ or ‘ omnipo¬ tence ’; and the infinitely various, uniquely distinct, self-ex¬ plications of the Attributes must not be misinterpreted as an infinite multiplicity of created worlds, they must on the contrary be regarded as distinguishable, but not separable, complements in the ‘infinity’, i.e. the inexhaustible com¬ pleteness, of Natura Naturata—i.e. the indiscerptible Modal System of Substance which is the one and only ‘created world’. These considerations are enough to dispose of a common mis¬ interpretation of Spinoza’s doctrine. It is not his teaching that the Attributes are ‘ parallel ’ to one another, or that they express themselves in ‘parallel’ systems or worlds. For ‘parallelism’ is a special form of correspondence or correlation; but the schema of terms and relations is in principle inapplicable—inapplicable in all and every one of its forms—to the diversity of the Absolute Individual. ‘ Parallel ’ in this connexion is no more than a popu¬ lar catchword, a loose and misleading metaphor. The ‘ together’ Cf. above, p. 40, n. i, and p. 44, n. i.

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ness’I of the Attributes in Natura Naturans, or of their uniquely distinct self-implications in Natura Naturata, is not that of terms separated and connected by a relation of any sort or kind what¬ ever. The unity of Substance is supra-relational; and its diver¬ sity (the differences and contrasts, by virtue of which it is concretely one or ‘individual’, not abstractly one or a ‘unit’) is really and logically posterior to, derivative from (though never¬ theless inseparably constitutive of), its unity. The unity Spinoza thus ascribes to Substance has often been criticized. It is impossible, the critics have urged, to conceive or understand it. And undoubtedly a supra-relational unity cannot be ‘ conceived ’ or ‘ understood ’ in the sense they give to these terms. For ex vi terminorum the supra-relational is neither ‘conceivable’ nor ‘intelligible’, if to ‘conceive’ or ‘understand’ is to explain by ‘a relational way of thought—by what, e.g., Hegel calls the abstract understanding {Verstand) and contrasts with the Reason {Vernunft). But to Spinoza, as we have seen (cf. e.g. above, pp. 32-3), the ideally perfect level or form of knowledge is intuitive—an intellectual insight, or act of reason by which we ‘see’, directly comprehend, ‘the essence’ of the thing. Now the ‘essence’ of a thing is concretely one or indivi¬ dual—i.e. it is the supra-relational unity of its diverse moments. Spinoza, therefore, would probably have retorted that what his critics find it impossible to conceive or understand, is on the contrary a typical example of that which alone, in the strict and proper sense, is perfectly ‘conceivable’ or ‘intelligible’. However that may be, he himself employs an antithesis with which we are already familiar (viz. the antithesis of Objective and Formal) to express the unity and contrast of the Attribute of Thought with all the other Attributes in Natura Naturans) or again the unity and contrast of the self-explication of Thought with the self-explications of all the other Attributes in Natura Naturata. Thus, e.g., writing to Oldenburg in Novem¬ ber 1665, he says: ‘This is why I maintain that the human body is a part of the ^ For the expression ‘togetherness’, cf., e.g. E. i. 10 S.: '. . . quandoquidem omnia quae habet [sc. Substantia] attributa simul in ipsa semper fuerunt . . .’. ^ I borrow the phrase from Bradley, App. and R., p. 28: ‘The conclusion to which I am brought is that a relational way of thought—any one that moves by the machinery of terms and relations—must give appearance, and not truth. ’ 4518

L

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universe; and as to the human mind, that too I hold to be a part of the universe. For I maintain that there is given in Nature an infinite power of Thinking which, qua infinite, comprehends in itself ideally [objective] the whole of Nature; and that its thoughts pro¬ ceed in the same manner as Nature itself, its ideatum. Further, I maintain that the human mind is this same power (not qua infinite and perceiving the whole of Nature, but) qua finite, i.e. so far as it perceives the human body; and it is in this sense that I conceive the human mind to be a part of a certain infinite inteUigence.’* The Attribute of Thought, then, is a uniquely distinct, but inseparable, form of God’s Omnipotence, a power in (and of) the Universe, which necessarily fulfils itself, primarily or proximately, as the Absolute Individual’s absolute (infinite, inex¬ haustibly complete) Intelligence. In the eternal self-explication of the Attribute of Thought (of Substance qua res cogitans), the ‘most immediate’ or ‘proximate’ Mode is what Spinoza calls Intellectus absolute infinitus.^ He conceives it as the concrete Universal, or eternal Individual, which is at once the constant Whole, and the originative source, of all the knowledge there is in the Universe—of all the ‘clear and distinct ideas’, or ‘ade¬ quate thoughts’, which together constitute the modal system of Substance, in so far as the ‘ formal essence ’ of each and all of its modes is ‘objectively’ expressed, i.e. is understood or known.3 " Ep. 32. In my translation I have followed the autograph original (now in the possession of the Royal Society), which differs slightly from the version in the O.P. Gebhardt (cf. iv. 405 and 368-g) prints the autograph below the version of the O.P., on the assumption (which may or may not be correct) that the latter reproduces a draft which Spinoza himself had made and polished with a view to publication. Cf. also: Tdle 14-15, §§ 33-5 (above, pp. 54-6): 16-17, §§ 41-2: 26-7. §§ 69-71; 34, § 91; Ethics ii. 7 C. and passim. ^ See Ep. 64, written in July 1675 to Schuller. In K.V. i, ch. 9 (partly quoted above, p. ii), the Immediate Infinite Modes (of Extension and Thought respectively) are called, less precisely, ‘ Motion in Matter and the Intellect in the Thinking Thing’. 3 Cf. K.V. i. 9: ‘As regards the Intellect in the Thinking Thing, this too, like Motion, is a Son, Work, or Immediate Creature, of God, created by him from all eternity, and remaining to all eternity unchangeable. It has one property, and one alone—viz. to understand all things clearly and distinctly at all times.’ Cf. also K.V. ii. 22, footnote (G. i. loi, n. i): ‘Since God has been from all eternity, the Idea of God [i.e. the Infinite Intellect, as the con¬ text shows] must also be from eternity in the Thinking Thing, i.e. in God himself; and this Idea coincides objectively with God himself (welke Idee VQorwerpelyk overeen komt met hem zelfe).’ The same account holds good, mutatis mutandis, of the proximate mode of

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It is impossible to extract, or to construct, out of Spinoza's writings, anything like a detailed and coherent theory of the self-explication of Thought. Any attempt to trace the sequence of stages in the 'deduction' or eternal descent from the Infinite Intellect to the single Ideas, which are the ultimate Individua¬ tions (the finite eternal modes) of Substance qua Res Cogitans, is blocked a limine by a problem arising from the doctrine of the Infinity of Attributes;—a problem commonly regarded as insoluble.’ For on the one hand Spinoza insists that Substance is completely self-articulated under each and all of its Attributes. He says, e.g. {E. ii. 7 S.), that ‘whether we conceive Nature under the Attribute of Extension, or under the Attribute of Thought, or under any other Attribute whatever, we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connexion of causes —i.e. we shall find the same things following one upon another {hoc est, easdem res invicem sequi reperiemus)'. He insists, more¬ over, as we have seen, that Thought ‘comprehends objectively the whole of Nature’; i.e. Substance, under each and all of its Attributes, including the Attribute of Thought itself, is clearly and distinctly perceived by its ‘ infinite power of thinking ’. And yet, on the other hand, Extension and Thought alone fall within our ken; and every particular thing, i.e. every mode of Sub¬ stance, is, for our experience and knowledge, expressed under these two Attributes only. Are we then to suppose that every ‘clear and distinct Idea', which flows from the Infinite Intellect, has, as its ideatum, a Mode of Substance as it ‘really’ is—i.e. in all the infinite variety of its expressions ? Is each of the adequate thoughts, which is formed by the Thinking Thing, the ‘ objective essence ’ of a Mode of Substance in the infinite plenitude of its real (or ‘formal’) being?2 Apart from other difficulties, this Thought (the Infinite Intellect) which we have already seen (above, pp. 68-70) to hold of Motion and Rest; viz. that it is (i) both the first stage, and the inclusive whole of all the stages, in the eternal self-explication of the Attribute, and (ii) that it is a ' concrete universal ’ and therefore an eternal omnipresent Singular or Individual. ' Cf. above, p. 65, n. i. Mr. Hallett (l.c., ch. ii) makes a brave attempt to solve it, but is obliged to admit that ‘the eternal “uniquity” of infinite Substance’ is ‘ineffable’ for our knowledge, though he contends that it is ‘not ineffable’ for Substance itself. ^ Cf., e.g., E. ii. 7 S.: ‘Quare rerum, ut in se sunt, Deus revera est causa, quatenus infinitis constat attributis . . .’.

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seems irreconcilable with Spinoza’s doctrine that the clear and distinct Ideas, which constitute the human minds, have, as their ideata, ‘bodies’ and bodies alone—i.e. ultimate Individuations of Substance qua Extended. Are we then to adopt what seems the only remaining alternative—viz. to suppose that some of the Ideas, which eternally flow from (and constitute) the Infinite Intellect, have, as their ideata, Bodies; while others are the ‘objective essences’ of Modes of Substance under one, or more, or aU of the other Attributes ? But any such interpretation appears to collide hopelessly with Spinoza’s insistence that ‘ the same things foUow one upon another’, whatever the Attribute under which Substance be conceived. ^ Yet, though no full and coherent account can be given of the stages in the eternal ‘ descent ’ from the Infinite Intellect to the single Ideas or Finite Minds, some faint and uncertain light is thrown on the subject by the treatment of Extension in the Ethics, especially by various details, which I have not yet noticed, in the sketch ‘ on the nature of bodies ’.^ It seems legiti¬ mate to set deliberately aside—to ‘ shelve ’—the whole doctrine of the Infinity of Attributes, together with the perplexing (and perhaps insoluble) problem it entails, and to consider the Attri¬ butes of Thought and Extension alone, in the hope that, by this rather hazardous expedient, we may gain a more definite notion of the sense in which the human mind is a part of the Thinking Thing. According to Spinoza’s later teaching,^ then, the ultimate individuations of Substance follow, under any Attribute, not directly from its proximate mode, but through the mediation of a second stage in the eternal sequence. Accordingly, under the Attribute of Extension, between ‘Motion and Rest’ (the ‘ immediate infinite and eternal Mode ’) and the individual bodies (the finite Modes) there intervenes a ‘ mediate infinite and eternal Mode’—viz. ‘the Face of the whole Universe’, as Spinoza calls * Cf. Tschirnhaus’s formulation of this crux in Ep. 65 (Aug. 1675). Nobody has yet succeeded in elucidating Spinoza’s reply (Ep. 66). See, however, an interesting paper on the subject by Professor Julius Ebbinghaus in Septimana Spinozana, pp. 244-60. ^ E. ii, after prop. 13 (cf. above, p. 71, n. 2). ^ Cf. Ep. 64 (above, p. 74, n. 2) and Ethics, e.g. i. 28 S. There is no trace of mediate infinite and eternal Modes in the K.V.

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it in his reply to Schuller; ‘ the Face which, though it varies in an infinity of ways, yet remains always the same’A This is extremely vague, and sounds mysterious; but the vagueness and, along with it, the appearance of mystery, are to a large extent dispelled by the passage in the Ethics, to which Schuller is referred. In that passage, instead of deducing the ‘Face’ from ‘Motion and Rest’, and from ‘the Face’ deriving the finite modes, Spinoza follows the reverse procedure. Start¬ ing from the lowest grade in the self-explication of Extension, he works upwards (or backwards) towards the conception of the mediate infinite Mode. He assumes certain ‘simplest bodies’, the bearers of motion and rest, as the elementary components of all the ultimate individuations of Substance qua Extended—i.e. of all the ‘composite bodies’ or ‘individuals’ in the physical world.2 Proceeding thence to consider these ‘ composite bodies ’, he argues that each of them is ‘ one ’ or ‘ individual ’ because, and in so far as, all changes in the motions and rests (or in the rates of motion) of its components (or ‘ parts ’) are mutually compen¬ sated (are balanced, or cancel out), so that in the composite body as a whole the same proportion of motion to rest persists un¬ changed. The same principle holds, he points out, of Composite Bodies of higher Orders of complexity—e.g. of an Individual of the second Order (i.e. composed of ‘parts’ themselves Compo¬ site), and of an Individual of the third Order (i.e. composed of ‘parts’ themselves Individuals of the second Order). As we ascend the hierarchy of the finite modes of Extension, of the Individuals of the physical world; as we pass to more and more complex kinds of Composite Bodies;—the mutually-compen¬ sating (adjusted and balanced) changes in the motions of the parts increase in number, variety, and intensity. But the prin¬ ciple still holds that the Composite Body is one and individual because, and in so far as, the same uniquely distinct proportion of motion-to-rest persists unaltered in the whole. ‘And if we ' Ep. 64; ‘. . . facies totius Universi, quae quamvis infinitis modis variet, manet tamen semper eadem, de quo vide Schol. 7 Lemmatis ante prop. 14, p. 2. ^ I have already commented on the obscurity, and apparent inconsistency, in Spinoza’s statements about the corpora simplicissima (cf. above, pp. 70-1). In my present summary I am following what seems a possible (and on the whole, perhaps, the most probable) interpretation; but I fully recognize that other views may be, and have been, taken. See, on the whole subject. Study (e.g. pp. 82-93) and Hallett (e.g. pp. 137-41)-

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thus proceed to infinity’, Spinoza concludes, ‘we shall easily conceive that the whole of Nature is a single Individual; and that its parts, i.e. all bodies, vary in an infinity of ways, without any change of the Individual as a whole. Now what in general Spinoza has in mind can be gathered from that passage—in spite of the gaps and obscurities in his exposition, and in spite of much that is obviously difficult, or even impossible, to defend in the doctrine he is expounding. For it is clear (i) that he conceives the proximate mode of Extension^ to be self-articulated, at the second stage of the eternal descent, into a System of proportions of motion to rest. In accordance with the already noticed principle of modal sequence,^ this System is at once the individual, all-inclusive. Whole of all its members and the ground from which they all derive. The ‘ Face of the whole Universe ’, therefore, is the Form or Structural Plan of the Physical World—a Form or Plan eternally the same, though the materials it generates and informs, or the details it originates and orders, are infinitely varied. Moreover (ii) Spinoza identifies this System of all proportions with a single over-riding proportion of motion-to-rest; and thus identifies the Form or Structural Plan of the Physical World with an ‘ infinite Indivi¬ dual’ Body, of which all finite individual bodies are parts.The difficulty of understanding or defending this identification is increased, when another feature of Spinoza’s account is con¬ sidered. For (iii) it is clear that the subordinate proportions of motion to rest—i.e. the finite individuals or ‘essences’ of bodies —emerge, endure, and vanish in time; while the over-riding proportion, the ‘infinite individual’, is changeless and eternal. Thus, the conception we are called upon to form—the concep¬ tion which Spinoza says it is ‘ easy ’ to forms—is probably one E. ii. 13, Lemma 7i S.: ... Quod si praeterea tertium Individuorum genus, ex liis secundiscompositum, concipiamus, idem multisaliis modis affici posse reperiemus, abscjue ulla eius formae mutatione. Et si sic porro in infinitum pergamus, facile concipiemus totam naturam unum esse Individuum, cuius partes, hoc est, omnia corpora infinitis modis variant, absque ulla totius Individui mutatione.’’ * i.e. ‘ Motion-and-Rest’, the eternally constant Whole and Source of all motions and rests in the physical world; cf, above, p. 68. 3 Cf. above, pp. 69-70. As we shall see presently (below, pp. 79-80) there is a radical change in the modal sequence below the Face. It will be remembered that every body is, in essence, a uniquely determi¬ nate proportion of motion to rest; cf. above, p. 68 and p. 70, n. 2. 5 E. ii. 13, Lemma 7, S, quoted above.

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of the most difficult, and certainly one of the most important, in his philosophy. We are to conceive an eternal Order per¬ petually re-articulated, endlessly changing its several articula¬ tions, in time; an eternal System, every member of which begins and lasts and ends in time; a Plan eternally realized in the un¬ ceasing variations of a temporal detail. We are to conceive the Whole both as an eternal changeless Individual and as enduring, perpetually changing, and comprising an infinite variety of parts —i.e. we are to reconcile these Opposites, to hold them intelli¬ gibly together in our thought. Now it may be that Spinoza has shown elsewhere the method by which an intelligent synthesis of these seemingly incompatible characters can be achieved; but most certainly he has failed to do so in the present passage. For it is evident that the difficulty is only concealed by the metaphor of the Face, and could not be overcome by the proposed ascent in infinitum up the hierarchy of complex (but finite) Individuals.^ Assuming, however, as Spinoza himself assumes, that the re¬ quired conception of ‘the Face’ can be (and has been) formed, it is clear (iv) that, if in one sense the ‘ descent ’ continues ‘ within ’ (and eo ipso also ‘ below ’) this ‘ mediate infinite and eternal mode ’, strictly speaking it ‘continues’ only after a gap, and there is henceforward a radical change of principle in the modal sequence. Hitherto, Substance qua Extended has been in self-develop¬ ment as a whole—in its infinitude—at each stage of the ‘descent’. ‘ Motion-and-Rest ’ and ‘ the Face ’ are infinite and eternal modes —modifications of ‘God or Nature’ (under the Attribute of Ex¬ tension) commensurate as effects with the ‘ infinite ’ Power^ which is their Cause. But, within and below ‘the Face’, the stages of the ‘ descent ’ are finite modes—‘ singular ’ or ‘ particular ’ things, ‘ individual ’ bodies limited both in essence and existence. ' Nobody has insisted more emphatically than Spinoza (a) that the true conception of the Infinite has nothing to do with what Hegel calls the ‘bad’ or ‘spurious’ Infinite, i.e. the indefinite extension of the Finite (cf. especially Ep. 6, written in April 1663), and [b) that Eternity is not Sempiternity, i.e. duration without beginning or end (cf. E. i, def. 8 and Expl., and E. v. 23 S.). Yet both these vital distinctions are ignored or blurred by the suggestion that the eternal infinite Individual can ‘easily be conceived’ if we advance in infinitum along the series of more and more complex finite enduring bodies, and by the supposed analogy of ‘a Face, which always remains the same’ throughout the infinitely varied play of its expression. ^ ‘Infinite’ Power, for (cf. above, p. 64) every Attribute, or form of God’s Omnipotence, is ‘infinite in its own kind’.

8o

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

In one sense, no doubt, it is true that ‘ the Face ’ is the ground from which each and all of these finite modes—these remaining stages of the ‘descent’—derive. For all of them together consti¬ tute ‘the Face’—or ‘the Face’ is commensurately expressed in the infinitely graded hierarchy which they form. Each of them, from this point of view, is a part of a complete and total modi¬ fication of Extended Substance; but a part inseparably depen¬ dent upon the other parts, which form its context and delimit both its what and its that. The special proportion of motion-torest, which is its what (i.e. in virtue of which it is this body and no other), and the persistence or duration of this special propor¬ tion, which is its that;—these are due, in ultimate analysis, to its uniquely determined position and function in the graded hier¬ archy as a whole. Conceived as thus uniquely contributing to the ‘ Infinite Individual ’—as thus grounded in, and commensu¬ rate with, ‘ the Face ’—the subordinate ‘ Individuals ’ (the actual bodies) which are its ‘ parts ’ share its infinity and eternity. The essence and existence of each imply the essences and existences of all; and in ‘the Face’, as the infinitely graded hierarchy of all bodies, these implications are aU fulfilled. Hence, in and through ‘the Face’, the essences of each and all the contributory bodies are themselves complete or ‘ infinite ’; and the existence of each, interlocked as it is with the existences of all, is a neces¬ sary consequent of ‘ the Face ’ as a whole—i.e. follows necessarily from the ‘essence’ of the ‘Infinite Individual’, or ‘Hierarchy’ in which the ‘ essences ’ of all are complete, and in that necessary dependence is itself eternal.^ But, in the passage we have been considering,^ Spinoza (as we saw) works upwards towards the conception of the Face through the ascending series of more and more complex finite Individuals. The series ascends in infinitum; and we can, or must, form the limiting conception of an Infinite Individual which completes it, and includes all the finite Individuals in¬ separably within itself. Spinoza thus evidently presupposes that the finite Individuals are severally, and in their finitude, objects of our experience and knowledge. His treatment presupposes ' Cf. study, pp. 76-8. i.e. the summary sketch de natuya coypoyum in E, ii, between props. 13 and 14.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

8i

that each of the finite bodies can be considered hy itself, i.e. in abstraction from the total context it implies; and that, so con¬ sidered, or hy itself, it has a certain positive essence and existence of its own. It presupposes, in short, that each of the finite bodies, though it must be conceived as in truth and in reality (i.e. for ideally perfect knowledge) an inseparable part of the Infinite Individual, must also be conceived as, in some measure or degree, a genuine (though limited) ‘individual’;—as, in some measure or degree, a self-adjusting, self-maintaining, balance of motions and rests, which has a limited actuality or duration. There are thus two different ways of conceiving the finite bodies (or, indeed, the finite modes of Substance under each of its Attributes). A ccording to the first, the entire hierarchy of the finite bodies follows as the direct commensurate effect (or expression) of ‘the Face’. It is given, so to speak, at a stroke in the adequate intuitive conception of the mediate infinite and eternal mode. According to the second, each finite body, con¬ sidered severally and in abstraction from ‘the Face’, possesses a certain positive essence and existence. It is thus, qua finite, a singular thing, or ‘individual’, not only for perception (for the more or less confused experience which Spinoza calls ‘ Imaginatio’), but also for clear thought or knowledge. ‘For clear thought or knowledge’—so, at all events,, Spinoza undoubtedly maintains, though he seems, in doing so, to contra¬ dict himself. For (as we saw in discussing his conception of ‘ Essence 'Y this second way of conceiving the finite modes seems not merely different from but incompatible with the first. For according to the first the finite modes qua finite are fragments torn from their context and mutilated in the tearing; and yet, according to the second, these same mutilated fragments possess a real, though limited, ‘ individuality ’ and a measure of genuine, though relative, independence. What we have now to notice, however, is not the real or seeming inconsistency of Spinoza’s doctrine, but the breach of continuity in the ‘ descent ’ and the change of principle in the modal sequence below the ‘Face’ which it involves. The nature and necessity of the ‘breach’ are set out in the clearest and most uncompromising fashion in the first Part of ’ Cf. above, pp. 36-44, and 48, n. 2. 4518

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the Ethics.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

Since God’s Attributes are infinite and eternal,

‘whatever follows from the absolute nature of any Attribute’ must itself be infinite and eternal

and the same is true of all

that follows from any Attribute qua modified by an infinite and eternal modification.^ But ‘whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God ’ {E. i. 15);' God is the imma¬ nent cause of all things ’ {E. i. 18); and ‘ from the necessity of the divine nature there must follow an infinity of things in an infinity of ways, i.e. all things that can fall under an infinite intellect Hence Spinoza concludes that every single thing, which is finite and has a determinate existence, must have followed from God (or one of God’s Attributes) so far as ‘ he ’ (or it) was affected by a modification itself finite and determinate in existence; and that this again must have been determined by another mode similarly finite as its cause, and so on in infinite regress.^ In other words: It is not possible to deduce a finite mode qua finite from anything except another finite mode. Hence, even if, starting from a postulated or given finite individual body,5 ’ £. i. 21: ‘ Omnia, quae ex absoluta natura alimius attributi Dei sequuntur, semper et infinita existere debuerunt, sive per idem attributum aeterna et infinita sunt.’ ‘Absolute’ = unmodified. * E. i. 22; and cf. (for the converse of propositions 21 and 22) E. i. 23. ^ E. i. 16: ‘Ex necessitate divinae naturae infinita infinitis modis (hoc est, omnia quae sub intellectum infinitum cadere possunt) sequi debent.’ It seems clear, e.g. from the use made of this proposition in the demonstration of i. 26, that Spinoza means it to include the finite modes qua finite. Cf. E. i. 28 with the dem. & S.; and the use made of this proposition later, e.g. in ii. 7 S. and in ii. 9 with the dem. and C. 5 e.g. from a ‘perceived’ body, as we may infer it to be by critical reflection upon the data of sense-perception; or from our own body as we ‘ feel ’ it. It is to be noted that, while Spinoza emphasizes the untrustworthiness of senseperception and the illusory (partly unreal) nature of its objects (i.e. of the bodies we perceive and as we perceive them; cf. above, pp. 66-7), he insists, and claims to have demonstrated, that' our body exists, prout ipsum sentimus’ (E. ii. 13 C.). It appears from E. ii. 29 C. & S. that he draws a sharp contrast between two kinds of immediate experience. On the one hand, there arise in our mind more or less illusory sensations, sensuous view's or presentments, of external bodies, in so far as the latter encounter and modify our own body (cf. below, pp. 136-41), or ‘(as he expresses it) ‘whenever the mind is deter¬ mined from without, i.e. by the fortuitous encounters of things, to contemplate this or that’. On the other hand, a genuine feeling or inner consciousness of our own body, a sentience of it which is not deceptive, arises in our mind in so far as it is ‘determined from within’—i.e. in so far as we have attained, by self-controlled reflective thought, a clear and adequate understanding of the mutual relations of many finite modes of the extended world, i.e. of many bodies including our own,

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we can (as Spinoza asserts) ‘ easily ’ form the limiting conception of an Infinite Individual (or ‘the Face’), we cannot reverse the process. We cannot, by a single continuous line of deduction, trace the self-articulation of the Infinite Individual into the several finite individuals which are its ‘parts’. The Infinite Individual is not in truth one member—not even the ‘ limiting ’ member— of the hierarchy of finite Individuals; nor does it include the latter untransmuted within itself. And if, as Spinoza seems to maintain, this or that finite body, qua finite, is (or can become) an object of clear thought or knowledge, the ‘knowledge’ here in question, it must be admitted, is not only incomplete but in principle incompletable. For it can only take the form of tracing link after link in the never-ending chain of finite causes, upon which this or that finite body, precisely qua finite, depends. If we are ever to return to the account of knowledge and its method in the Tdle, it is high time to bring this long Excursus to an end. What led me into it was the hope of elucidating Spinoza’s assertion that ‘we are parts of a thinking thing, whose thoughts (some in their entirety, others in fragments only) con¬ stitute our mind’ (cf. above, p. 60). I will try, therefore, to gather together the results of my survey, so as to summarize Spinoza’s conception of the ‘ formal essence ’ of the human body as a part or limitation of God’s Extension; and thence to throw what light I can upon the sense in which the ‘objective essence’ of the human body—i.e. the human mind—is a part or limita¬ tion of God’s Thought. I. On the general principles which apply to every finite mode of Substance, the human body must be considered from two different points of view, (a) In the light of ideally complete knowledge {Scientia Intuitiva), it is an inseparable constituent, an indispensable contributory, of ‘the Face’—i.e. of Natura Naturata Extensa, the Physical Universe as the eternal, allembracing, individual system of proportions of motion to rest. From this first point of view, the human body, though a finite mode, shares in the infinity and eternity of ‘the Face’—i.e. is itself both infinite and eternal.^ ifi) The second point of view—which, according to Spinoza, ’ Cf. E. p. 80.

V.

29 S. (and ii. 45 and S., to which Spinoza there refers); and above,

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KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

is still that of true thought or knowledge, though the knowledge is abstract, i.e. less complete and of a lower grade than Scientia Intuitiva^—lays the main stress upon the finitude of the finite modes. From the point of view of this level of knowledge, they are not infinite, nor eternal, except in a dubious sense—i.e. by the ideal completion of a regress in infinitum. Considered, then, strictly in its finite individuality, and ab¬ stracted from the Face, a human body possesses a certain posi¬ tive essence and existence—a special ‘what’ and ‘that’ un¬ changed by this abstraction or ‘segregation’ (to use Spinoza’s term).2 It has a definite rank in the hierarchy of finite indivi¬ duals, or belongs to a definite Order of Complexity. It is com¬ posed of very many subordinate individuals of diverse natures —some fluid, some soft, some hard—and each of these compo¬ nents is itself highly composite.^ II. Our body, then, is essentially a finite mode of Substance conceived under the Attribute of Extension. As such, it has a genuine, though relative and dependent, individuality. It is a uniquely singular proportion of motion to rest, including and over-riding many subordinate proportions. It thus makes its special contribution to, and depends for the full determination ' Roughly, this second point of view is that of the abstract knowledge of science {Ratio), cf. above, p. 25, n. 2. Spinoza’s position, if I rightly under¬ stand it, seems impossible to defend. If Scientia Intuitiva is knowledge perfect and absolute. Ratio is at most a provisional way of thinking—true only partially, only under qualifications, and subject to transforming corrections. It cannot be ‘true’, in the same absolute and unqualified sense, both that the human body is, and that it is not, inseparably one with the Infinite Individual. ^ Cf. especially E. ii. 24 dem. What Spinoza there says in regard to the ‘ segregation ’ of the subordinate individuals, of which the human body is com¬ posed, clearly applies in principle to every finite individual, i.e. to every ‘part’ of the Face or Infinite Individual. 3 E. ii, Postul. I, 2, and 3, after prop. 13. The components of the body— its organic and other parts, and their still simpler constituents—can be ‘ con¬ sidered apart from their relation’ to the whole (‘segregated’ from it) on the same principle as it can be ‘segregated’ from the Face. The subordinate individuals, i.e., are genuine ‘parts’ (‘components’ in the strict sense) of the human body only so far as their motions and rests contribute to constitute and maintain the over-riding proportion which is its essence. Hence they are, in various degrees, independent of it, and it of them. They are not, or need not be, completely organic to it; and it is, from this point of view, an imperfect union, or composition, of many singular things or finite individuals. The same holds good, mutatis mutandis, of the relation of the ‘ideas’ of the parts of the body to the ‘ idea ’ of the formal essence of the body as a whole, which is the mind. Cf. E. ii. 24 and dem.; also Lemmata 4-7, after ii. 13.

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of its ‘ what ’ and ‘ that ’ upon, the all-inclusive, eternally constant, proportion of motion to rest—i.e. the infinite Individual System of proportions of motion to rest, which, unchanging as a whole, contains and compensates all changes in itself, and is the com¬ mensurate expression of one form of God’s self-creative energy. Now, as we have seen, God or Nature—whether as selfcreating or as self-created, whether as N. Naturans or as N. Naturata—is knowable to us under two Attributes only, but always (in principle, at least) under both. Hence, in so far as any mode of Substance (whether infinite or finite) is known to us under Extension, it is known (or knowable) to us also under the Attribute of Thought. And Spinoza maintains that our mind is essentially (i.e. in so far as it is intelligible or real, an object of clear thought or knowledge) the same finite mode of Substance which, expressed under Extension as this uniquely limited proportion of motion to rest, is our real or essential body;—the same finite mode, but in its contrasted and comple¬ mentary expression under the Attribute of Thought, or as an idea. It seems to follow that the same twofold account, which has just been given of the individuality of a man’s body, holds good also [mutatis mutandis) of the individuality of his mind. His mind, i.e., as a finite idea formed by ‘the thinking thing’, must be conceived from two different points of view, (a) In the light of ideally perfect knowledge (Scientia Intuitiva), or in the fullness of its being, it is an inseparable constituent of the mediate infinite and eternal mode of Thought—i.e. of God’s ‘Infinite Idea’ or Omniscience, his unique and total knowledge of himself.* From this point of view, the finite idea, which is the essence of a human mind, transcends its finitude, and is completed (so to speak) into a spiritual being that is infinite and eternal. On the other hand (b) in the light of a lower and less perfect grade of knowledge {Ratio), or conceived in the abstracted finitude of its being, a human mind possesses a certain positive essence and existence. It has its own uniquely graded ‘ what ’ or content; its own uniquely limited ‘that’ or duration. It has a ' For this identification of the infinita Dei idea with the mediate infinite and eternal mode of Thought, corresponding to (i.e. the ' objective ’ or ‘ ideal ’ essence of) the ‘Face’, see below, p. 88, n. 2.

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certain rank in the hierarchy of ‘ finite ideas

of finite individuals

of the spiritual or psychical Universe—for it is the ideal expres¬ sion (the ‘objective essence’) of a human body, i.e. of a finite individual of the physical Universe which itself is characterized by a definite grade of complexity. And it is, from this point of view, a single or whole idea, inasmuch as (or in the sense in which) its ideatum is a single or whole body—a single proportion of motion to rest, over-riding many subordinate proportions, and maintaining itself in and through their changes, and the changes of the motions and rests, of which they in their turn express the relatively more lasting adjustment. Finally, from this point of view, it too, like its ideatum, is infinite and eternal only in a dubious sense—i.e. only by the ideal completion of an actually incompletable regress. But though such an account appears to follow logically from the general principles of Spinoza’s philosophy and from the special treatment of the modal system of Extension in Part 2 of the Ethics, I hasten to add two warnings. In the first place, I have deliberately omitted all reference to Spinoza’s teaching in regard to the ‘phenomenal’ body and mind. Throughout, I have been concerned solely with his theory of them as ‘ essences ’ —as objects of clear thought or knowledge—not with his account of them as semi-illusory objects of Imaginational Experience, as members of the communis ordo naturae! It will be necessary to make good this omission later, in connexion with the treatment in the Tdle of the ideas of Imagination; and the result may throw a somewhat different light upon Spinoza’s conception of the finite individuality of the mind.^ In the second place, it must be confessed that the actual state¬ ments in the Ethics about the modal system of Thought lend at most a vague and general support to the account I have given, while some of them appear to be inconsistent with it. My account was mainly based upon the sketch de natura corporum—a sketch, as we have seen, avowedly provisional and in certain respects unsatisfactory.3 It is doubtful, perhaps, whether so much stress ought to have been laid upon its details—upon ' Cf., e.g. E. ii. 29 C. * Cf. below, Chap. IV, ‘Supposal, Doubt, and Error’. 3 Cf. above, p. 71, n. 2, 77, n. 2.

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the rather shadowy description of the ascending hierarchy of finite bodies' and the Infinite Corporeal Individual (the Face) of which they all are ‘parts’. There is no corresponding sketch of a hierarchy of ideas—of an ascending scale of finite indivi¬ duals under the Attribute of Thought, or individuations of Nature as the Infinite Spiritual Individual. We are told, inci¬ dentally, that ‘not only men, but all “individuals”, are “besouled” though in different degrees’ F and it is abundantly clear (and a fundamental feature of Spinoza’s teaching) that the human individuals possess, or may achieve, different degrees of mental or spiritual development ideally expressing the different degrees of their corporeal or physical organization.^ But there is no evidence, so far as I know, that Spinoza conceived the finite ‘idea’, which is a human mind, as a component of any finite ‘ idea ’ of a higher Order—no evidence of any grades intervening between the human mind and the ‘Infinite Idea of God’. The Absolute Individual, qua infinite or universal Spirit, does not individuate itself into the singular human spirits through diverse modalities of its spiritual energy; nor is there any trace of a graded ‘descent’ through subordinate universals, i.e. through generic and specific differentiations of itself. To Spinoza the primary form of spiritual energy—clear thinking or intelligence —is the sole and total ‘ modality ’ of Spirit. Hence God’s ‘ infinite intelligence’ includes and absorbs, transmuted into itself, not only what is commonly (but, as Spinoza maintains, erroneously) regarded as a distinct modality of God’s spiritual energy, and called his ‘infinite will’, but also all that is real in feeling or emotion—viz. ‘the infinite intellectual love wherewith God loves himself’.'' And since, as we have seen,5 Spinoza from the first rejected generic and specific universals as figments and abstractions, there is clearly no reason to suppose that he would have attached any serious meaning or value to the notion of a ' Shadowy, since (e.g.) there is nothing whatever to show how Spinoza con¬ ceived the upper stages of the hierarchy—the bodies more complex than the human. ^ E. ii. 13 S.: ‘Nam ea. quae hucusque ostendimus, admodum commuma sunt, nec magis ad homines, quam ad reliqua Individua pertinent, quae omnia, quamvis diversis gradibus, animata tamen sunt. 3 Cf., e.g., E. V. 39 and S. '* Cf. E. V. 35 and 36. 5 Cf. above, p. 37.

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KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

spirit or mind that is concretely universal, though not infinite —that affirms and maintains itself in, and through, a plurality of human selvesd The seeming inconsistency of some of Spinoza’s statements, to which I referred (above, p. 86), is an inevitable consequence of the absorption of all modalities of Spirit in clear thinking or intelligence. The terms, in which ‘ God’s Infinite Idea ’ is charac¬ terized, show that Spinoza conceived it as the mediate infinite and eternal mode of Thought—-the ideal expression of the Face.^ One would expect, therefore, to find that, just as a man’s body in its essential, as well as in its ‘phenomenal’, being is a part of the ‘Face’, so also his mind is a part of ‘God’s Infinite Idea’ both as a ‘phenomenal’ consciousness (feeling, deriving, sense¬ perceiving, &c.), and in its essential and eternal being as an ‘intelligence’. But what in fact Spinoza says is that the human mind, in its essential being or quatenus intelligit, is a part of the ‘infinite intelligence of God ’ p or again that ‘ our mind, quatenus intelligit, is an eternal mode of thinking [aeternus cogitandi modus), which is determined by a second eternal mode of thinking, and that in turn by a third, and so on ad infinitum—in such a way that all of them together constitute the eternal and infinite Intelligence of God’.'^

.

§ 13

Let us now return to the Tdle, and pick up the thread of

Spinoza’s argument. He was to show, it will be remembered, by a direct analysis of knowledge, and advance in knowledge, that his search for the right method does not entail an infinite regress (cf. above, p. 53). ’ Spinoza’s position, I am suggesting, is in this respect far nearer to that of Signor Croce than to any form of Hegelian Idealism.

‘The soul of a people’,

the spirit of a nation’; the ‘social’, ‘corporate’, or ‘family’, spirit or mind; such phrases, it seems clear, would have seemed to him mere rhetoric or misleading metaphor. On the other hand, he would have endorsed the assertion of Signor Croce (cf. Logica, ed. 1928, p. 27) that ‘Tra I’individuale e I’universale non h ammissibile nulla d’intermedio o di misto: o il singolo o iltutto, in cui quel singolo rientra con tutti i singoli’. There is necessarily given in God an Idea both of his essence and of all things that necessarily follow from his essence’ (ii. 3); ‘God’s Idea, from which there follow infinitely—many things in infinitely—diverse ways,

must be

unique (ii. 4); and cf. ii. 7 C and ii. 8 and C. [See also Study, pp. 94 ff.] ^ E. ii. II C. Cf. also Ep. 32 (quoted above, p. 74). ^ E. V. 40 S.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

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What knowledge is has been explained in general terms by the account of the ‘true idea’ and its ideatum {Tdle 14-15, §§ 33-5 ; above, pp. 54-7). Spinoza proceeds at once to infer the charac¬ ter of its method, and to assign to the latter two main functions (ibid. 15-16, §§ 36-40). The second of these functions is closely connected with Advance in Knowledge, of which, accordingly, a brief account is added (ibid. 16-17, §§ 41-2). It will, I think, be more convenient to reverse this order of exposition, and to begin by considering (ii) Spinoza’s view of Advance in Knowledge. (a) It will be remembered that Spinoza planned the Tdle as the introductory section of a systematic exposition of his Philo¬ sophy as a whole (cf. above, p. 7). Naturally, therefore, and rightly, the manner of his treatment is throughout adapted to this design. Consequently, important doctrines, which in the K. V. or the Ethics are elaborately discussed and firmly grounded, may be enunciated dogmatically in the Tdle without explana¬ tion or defenceor may there be put forward in a rather loose and popular form,2 or as a tentative hypothesis which the reader is at liberty to reject.^ Moreover (and with this at present I am specially concerned) the treatment of the human mind in the Tdle is conducted, for the most part, on an empirical and popu¬ lar level—deliberately so conducted, as Spinoza himself explains. For, in the letter which summarizes the contents of the Tdle,^ he expressly says that

‘one need not know the nature of the mind through its first cause in order to understand (sufficiently at least for the purposes of Method) the distinction between the Intellect and the Imagination —i.e. between true ideas and all others, viz. supposals, errors, doubts and, in general, all “ideas” that depend on the memory alone. It is enough to construct a short descriptive account of the mind—i.e. of our “perceptions”—in the manner taught by Bacon.’s " Contrast, e.g., the treatment in the Ethics, and even in the K.Vof (a) God’s necessary existence, and (6) the necessary adequacy and truth of all God’s ideas, with {a) Tdle 29, § 76, footnote 2, and [b) Tdle 28, § 73 and 38, § 106.

2 Contrast, e.g., E. ii. 7 and S. with the formulations of the same principle in Tdle 16-17, §§ 41, 42 (the passage reproduced below, p. 100). 3 Cf. Tdle 32, § 84: ‘. . . Vel si placet, hie per imaginationem quidquid vehs cape’, &c., &c.; and contrast the careful treatment of ‘Imagination’ in E. ii. 4

Ep, 37, written in June 1666; cf. above, p. ii, n. 2, and below, pp. 104 ff.

5

l.c.: ‘Ad haec intelligendum, saltern quoad Methodus exigit, non est opus

4518

N

90

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

In the Tdle, then, the treatment of the human mind—i.e. of man's ‘ideas’ or cognitive experience—does not profess to be complete or final. It is deliberately kept on an empirical and popular level—a level below that of philosophy. And this in all probability explains why the doctrine that the mind is the essentia ohiectiva (the ‘ idea ’) of the body is virtually ignored in the Tdle^—why, e.g., there is nothing to foreshadow the elabo¬ rate attempt in the Ethics^ to show that, and how, a man’s ‘ideas’, whether adequate or inadequate, are all in the end derived from, or linked up with, that ‘idea or knowledgeof his own body which his mind has or, rather, essentially is. In considering Spinoza’s account of the Advance in Know¬ ledge, therefore, I feel entitled to follow the author’s own example. It seems legitimate to disregard the doctrine that a man’s mind is the ‘ idea or knowledge ’ of his body, and thus to avoid the necessity of discussing two notoriously difficult ques¬ tions—viz. (i) in what precise sense, according to Spinoza, we know our body, and (2) how, on the other hand, a mind, which is the essentia ohiectiva of our body, can be (or have) knowledge of anything besides. (&) Advance in knowledge presupposes a basis, or germ, of knowledge, from which the advance is made; and Spinoza, it naturam mentis per primam eius causam cognoscere. sed sufficit mentis sive perceptionum historiolam concinnare modo illo, quo Verulamius docet.* The references to this doctrine in Tdls ii, § 21 and § 22 (cf. above, p. 29, n. 2, and p. 32). though incidental and slight, seem unmistakable. On the other hand, as we have already seen (above, p. 54, n. 2), the 'idea Petri’ in Tdle 14, § 34 not I eter s soul or mind (not the essentia obtectiva of Peter’s body), but the idea which somebody else forms, or ‘has’, of Peter. When, in Tdl'e 34, § 91 and footnote, Spinoza says of our ‘clear and distinct ideas’ that they are formed by the ‘pure intellect’ and not, like ‘ideas of Imagination’ or Images, the results of chance movements of the body’ {non ex fortuitis motibus corporis factae . . .), the inconsistency should probably be ascribed to a momen¬ tary lapse on his part into Cartesian doctrine or terminology (cf. Gibson, Index Scolashco-Cartesien, s.v. Imagination, pp. 138-9). For Spinoza’s own doctrine of the mind must have been firmly establi.shed, at least in essentials, before he wrote the Tdle. The evidence furnished by the K.V. on this point seems on the whole conclusive—even if we set aside, as later additions of uncertain date, the remarkable and detailed expositions of the doctrine in the Note to the Preface of Part II and in the Appendix ‘on the human soul’ (G i si fl 117 ff.). ■ o •> Cf. E. ii. 19-31 ; 37-40; 44-7; V. 22, 29 and dem. ^ Cf., e.g., E. ii. 19 dem.: ‘Mens . . . humana est ipsa idea sive cognitio corporis humani . . ., quae ... in Deo quidem est, quatenus alia rei singularis idea affectus consideratur’, &c.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

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will be remembered, assumes that ‘ we have a true idea We all know something, so to speak ah origine; know it beyond peradventure, without doubt or hesitation, as it really is; possess, and are certain that we possess, its very essence in our thoughts Further light is thrown upon this assumption in a later passage (part of which I have already noticed in another connexion) ,2 where Spinoza is treating of the false idea or error. ‘Since’, he there says, ‘it belongs to the very nature of a thinking thing to form true or adequate thoughts (as indeed is apparent at the first glance), it is certain that inadequate ideas arise in us solely because we are parts of a thinking thing, whose thoughts (some in their entirety, others in fragments only) constitute our mind.’^ The real ground of Spinoza’s assertion that ‘we have a true idea’ is, therefore, plain. To have, or to be, a human mind at all, is to contain (or to be) at least one entire and integral idea of a thinking thing. And every such idea—every integral con¬ ception formed by a thinking thing, every genuine act of thought —is eo ipso adequate and true. What Spinoza means by the ‘ adequacy ’ of an idea, and why, or in what sense, he identifies its adequacy with its truth, can best be understood, if one approaches the explanation he gives in the Tdle^ with the closely related teaching of Descartes fresh in mind. According to the commonly accepted scholastic definition of truth (veritas est conformitas seu adaequatio rei et intellectus)^ an idea is true if, or so far as, it is ‘ made equal ’ to, commensu’ Tdle 14, § 33: cf. above, p. 57, n. 4. Cf. also 15, § 34, footnote (above, p. 57, n. i). 2 Cf. above, p. 60, n. 2. 5 Tdle 28, § 73: ‘Quod si de natura entis cogitantis sit, uti prima fronte videtur, cogitationes veras sive adaequatas formare, certum est . . .’ (for the rest of the sentence, see above, p. 60, n. 2). Bosanquet’s rendering (‘ It is, prima facie, of the nature of a thinking being', &c.: see Meeting of Extremes, &■€., p. 82) is misleading, or at least ambiguous. Spinoza is not putting forward a plausible hypothesis, but enunciating what he takes to be a self-evident principle. This is made certain by his language in a later passage {Tdle 38, § 106): ‘Quod si vero ad naturam cogitationis’ (notice the reference to the Attribute) ‘pertineat veras formare ideas, ut in prima parte ostensum’, &c. * Tdle 26-7, §§ 69-72 (in the course of his analysis of the false idea, and leading up to the conclusion that we are parts of a thinking thing). 5 Cf., e.g., Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Sum. Phil. iv. 64 (quoted by Gilson, Index Scol.-Cart., s.v. Verite).

92

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

rate with, the real thing or fact which is its object; if it conforms to, or agrees with, its ideatum. Descartes accepts some such formula as the nominal definition of truth p but his interpreta¬ tion of it leaves little or nothing of the suggestion it seems to convey that truth is the correspondence between a mental copy and an extra-mental original. ‘If a knowledge {cognitio) is to be adequate’, he explains,^ ‘it must contain absolutely aU the properties which there are in the res cognita.' But then the res cognita need not exist ‘without’ the mind. In the most perfect type of knowledge—in mathematical knowledge—the res cognita is obviously not an extra-mental thing. ‘I find in myself’, he says,^ ‘innumerable ideas of things which exist, perhaps, nowhere outside myself, and yet cannot be said to be nonentities; things which, though in a sense the thought of them depends upon my will, are nevertheless not fictions of mine, but possess their own true and immutable natures.When e.g. I imagine a triangle—even if, perhaps, no such figure exists, or ever has existed, anywhere in the world outside my thought—what I am thus imagin¬ ing has a definite nature. It has an essence or form, immutable and eternal, not invented by me, nor dependent upon my mind. This is evident from the fact that various properties can be demonstrated by the triangle . . . which I now recognize clearly to belong to it. I recognize them whether I wish to do so or not, and even though, when I first imagined the triangle, I in no way thought of them. . . . It is irrelevant to object that perhaps my idea of the triangle came to me from external things through my organs of sense—that it was suggested to me, perhaps, because I had occasionally seen bodies with triangular shape. For I can form ideas of innumerable other figures, ideas which cannot possibly be suspected of having slipped into my mind through the senses; and yet I can demonstrate various properties of these figures too, just as I can of the triangle. . . .’ What constitutes, therefore, in ultimate analysis, the ‘ade¬ quacy ’ or ‘ truth ’ of mathematical knowledge is its inner cohe¬ rence—the clarity and distinctness of the elements of its content, and the logical necessity of their connexions—which the mathe¬ matician’s reasoning brings out. The geometer’s ‘idea’ (i.e. his reasoned knowledge) is true, because adequate to its ideatum— ' Desc. Ep. 174 (Oct. 1639); ii. 597. ^ Id. Medit., ^tae Resp. vii. 220. 3 Medit. v; vii. 64. * ‘Suas habent veras et immutabiles naturas’: Tears natures vrayes et immuables', ix. 51.

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the triangle, e.g., or other type of figure, which is the object of his study. But this is a ‘nature’ or ‘form’ or ‘essence’—an intelligible what, a something ‘ imagined ’ or ‘ conceived ’; and his reasoning makes explicit a detail already given, or necessarily implied, in the content of this initial imaginative or conceptual ‘ idea ’. In the end, therefore, the geometer’s reasoned or mediate knowledge is true, in so far as it is adequate to (commensurate with) his immediate or germinal knowledge—in so far as it is the clear and distinct expression, the coherent explication, of the same ‘ essence ’ or ‘ form ’ which, as immediately known to him, or as the content of his initial imagination or conception, is called his ideatum. Now, according to the Tdle, as we have already seen (12-13, §§ 26-7 ; cf. above, p. 34), all knowledge (or every true idea), in the strict and proper sense, is of the essence. The ideatum, the res cognita, is always, like the geometrical figures to which Descartes refers, an ‘immutable and eternal nature’, a ‘form’ or ‘ essence ’—i.e. a reality or fact intrinsically intelligible, having its proper being (so to speak) ab origine within the grasp of mind. And indeed, as we have also seen, according to the Tdle (14-15, §§ 53~5‘> cf. above, pp. 55-6), the so-called ‘correlation’ of the true idea and its ideatum shows itself, on a strict consideration, to be the concrete identity of the essence—i.e. its sameness with itself in the two contrasted ‘moments’ of its being, viz. (i) qua all that is real, and (2) qua all that is intelligible, in the ‘thing’, of which it is the essence. The same position underlies the more detailed explanation of the nature of truth (the forma veri) in the later passage of the Tdle, to which I referred (above, p. 91, n. 4). What Spinoza there says^ may be reproduced, sufficiently for my present pur¬ pose, as follows; The truth of an idea consists, primarily and chiefly, in the character of its content—in what it is as such, considered as an idea or act of thought—not in any correspondence with, or con¬ formity to, an external counterpart (an object other than, but related to the true idea). An idea, possessing a content of a * Tdle 26-7, §§ 69-72. It will be seen that, in this passage, Spinoza’s explana¬ tion is largely couched in technical Cartesian terminology; uses examples drawn from, or clearly suggested by, Descartes’s works; and in general endorses and accentuates the latter’s teaching.

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certain character, is true, even if no external counterpart of it exists; while, on the other hand, if such a counterpart exists, the fact that the idea will then correspond, or conform, to something other than itself neither constitutes nor increases its truth, nor alters its character as this and no other idea (its distinctive what or content). Suppose, e.g., an artificer invents an ingepious machine—i.e. thinks out coherently and in detail its structural design. His thought—the design he has thought out—will be ‘true’ in virtue of its internal coherence, even if no actual machine is ever made embodying it. No doubt, if such a machine be made, there will then exist an external counterpart of his idea. And, when that is so, his true idea will conform, or corre¬ spond, to something other than itself. But since neither the making nor the existence of the machine have altered the arti¬ ficer’s thought, its truth cannot be constituted or increased by the correspondence which has now been brought about. If, now that the machine exists, his thought is true, it must have been true from the first—since it is, qua thought, the same.^ Something ‘real’, therefore, some positive character, in the idea itself, constitutes its truth, and distinguishes it from those other ideas which, because they lack this positive character, are merely imaginative or doubtful or false.^ And since, as we have seen, this ‘ real something ’ has not been added to the content of the idea, or introduced into it, from any external object or counterpart, with which it may have been brought into corre¬ spondence; since it is inherent in the idea itself as an act of thought;—it must be due simply to ‘ the power and nature of the intellect ’ which forms the idea or expresses itself in it.^ What this positive character is, can best be seen by taking, * Tdle 26, § 69. Spinoza’s illustration (‘Nam si quis faber ordine concepit fabricam aliquam’, &c.) suggests, and probably was intended to suggest, a well-known passage in Descartes (Medit., Primae Resp., vii. 103, 1. 19 fi., ‘Ita si quis habeat in intellectu ideam alicuius machinae summo artificio excogitatae’, &c.). ^ Strictly speaking, as we have seen (cf. above, pp. 59—60), the ideae fictae, dubiae, falsae are not ideas, i.e. not integral acts of thought. 3 Tdle 26-7, §§ 70-1. As Descartes puts it, in the parallel passage already cited (vii. 103-4), the artificium (the special ingenuity and the wealth of cohe¬ rent detail) in the inventor’s idea of a new machine must be the effect either of magna Mechanicae scientia quae est in illo intellectu ’ or (sometimes perhaps) of ‘magna ingenii subtilitas’; i.e. the inventor must either be a master of Mechanics or a universal genius (like, e.g., Leonardo da Vinci).

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as an example, a mathematical idea, which we know that we have constructed by our own power of thinking, and know to have no counterpart in the physical world. Let us think of a semicircle being rotated about the centre of its circle,^ and thus generating a sphere. This whole idea—this entire or integral act of thought—is true; it is the easiest way of forming the concep¬ tion of a sphere, and gives us clear insight into its nature. That is so, even if we know that no actual sphere ever has, or ever will, thus come into being in fact. Now, in this example, the content of the idea is ‘complex’, i.e. it can be analysed into a plurality of simple constituents logically connected to form an integral act of thought. In the Cartesian terminology, which Spinoza adopts, the whole idea is ‘ compounded of ’ several ‘ very simple ’ constituent ideas; and the manner of the composition is ‘deductive’ or ‘implicatory’, simple being linked to simple as ground to consequent or implicans to implicatum^ Thus, one of the constituents of the whole idea, or integral act of thought, which Spinoza is here considering, is the simple idea of a semicircle. A semicircle is one of those extremely simple objects of thought which, if conceived at ail, can only be conceived precisely and completely as it is. To conceive it, is to conceive it entire; for it has no parts, but is, if not without all inner variety, at least ' Spinoza says (T. 27, § 72): ‘ Semicirculum circa centrum rotari’; but he apparently means ‘ circa diametrum rotari

which is Euclid’s construction.

^ Cf. T. 26, § 68: ‘ Nam ideae rerum, quae dare et distincte concipiuntur, sunt vel simplicissimae, vel compositae ex ideis simplicissimis, id est, a simplicissimis ideis deductae.’ Spinoza’s doctrine and language seem to be based directly upon Descartes’s treatment of deductio in the Regulae.

Now, of course, the Regulae were not

published in Spinoza’s lifetime: Glazemaker’s Dutch translation appeared in 1684, and the Latin text was not printed till 1701, when it was included in the first edition of the Opuscula Posthuma.

Yet at least two copies of the

manuscript are known to have existed in Holland from 1650 onwards (see Charles Adam’s admirable history of the text in Descartes, x. 351-7). Further, according to Professor Albert Rivaud’s article in Septimana Spinozana (p. 209), there is evidence that ‘ the text of the Regulae was known in Cartesian circles in Holland as early as the year 1655 ’. It is therefore possible that Spinoza had studied the Regulae before he wrote the Treatise—indeed probable, in view of his connexion with Glazemaker (cf. above, p. 3, n. i).

Probable, but not

certain ; for no conclusive inference can be drawn either from Spinoza’s doctrine and language in the present passage, or from the fact (cf. below, p. 198) that he intended his doctrine of method to include the prescription of Rules.

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indiscerptibly single. And though, like every idea,^ the idea of a semicircle involves an affirmation of the ‘ being ’ of that which we conceive, the simplicity of the content makes it certain that what, in having this idea, we affirm will be commensurate, or coextensive, with what in it we conceive. So long, therefore, as we think of a semicircle, and affirm of it no more than what our con¬ ception of it includes, our thought is what Spinoza calls a ‘ simple idea’, i.e. an idea involving an affirmation adequate to its content and therefore excluding the possibility of confusion or error.^ But, in the example before us, the simple idea of semicircle is combined with the simple idea of motion. We think not of the semicircle as such or alone, but of the semicircle rotating; and if we did so categorically, or unconditionally, our thought would be false. For motion is neither contained nor implied in the conception (the ‘ intelligible what ’ or essence) of the semicircle; and 'to have the idea’ of semicircle, therefore, neither is, nor guarantees, the affitmation that it rotates. The only way to combine the simple ideas of semicircle and motion (rotation), so that, remaining clear and distinct, they yet contribute to form an integral act of thought (i.e. a complex idea, which is coherent or true), is to predicate the second of the first hypothetically, or under a condition. We must think of the semicircle’s rotation either as the necessary effect of such and such a supposed or postulated cause; oz as a supposed or postulated cause which, if it were given, would necessitate such and such an effect. We must affirm not that the semicircle rotates, but either that 'if such and such a force be brought to bear upon the semicircle, it must rotate ’; or, as in fact we are affirming in the supposed * Cf. above, pp. 58-9. ^ Cf. Tdle 24, § 63: ‘. . . Si idea sit alicuius rei simplicissimae, ea non nisi clara et distincta poterit esse. Nam res ilia non ex parte, sed tota aut nihil eius innotescere debebit.’ Ibid. 26, § 68, and 27, § 72: ‘ Unde sequitur simplices cogitationes non posse non esse veras, ut simplex semicirculi, motus, quantitatis, &c., idea. Quicquid hae affirmationis continent, earum adaequat conceptum, nec ultra se extendit . . Descartes (Med. Sec. Resp. vii. 145) had pointed out that ‘amongst the things that are clearly perceived by the intellect, some are so perspicuous, and at the same time so simple, that we can never think of them without eo ipso being certain that they are true—as e.g. “that while I am thinking I exist” or “that what has once been done, can never not have been done”’. Cf. also ib., pp. 150 and 152, where the same doctrine is expressed in language that to some extent foreshadows Spinoza’s formulation in Tdle § 72.

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example, ‘if a semicircle were to rotate about the centre, it would inevitably generate a sphere’d While, in this account, Spinoza (as I have already pointed out) is reproducing and accentuating the teaching of Descartes, he has given to it, in one respect, a different formulation. With Descartes, he insists that truth is primarily a real or positive quality of the content, an intrinsic character of the idea (the thought, reasoning, knowledge) which is true—not its conformity to a counterpart beyond, and other than, itself.^ Though the formula, verum sive intellectus, in which he crystal¬ lizes this doctrine {Tdle 26, § 68), is nowhere (so far as I know) actually used by Descartes, it well summarizes the latter’s views both of the intellect and of truth. For to Descartes, no less than to Spinoza, the Intellect is at once the power of clear and distinct thinking, of forming adequate or true ideas; and also, and eo ipso, the inclusive whole or sum-total of all the acts, in which this power is realized. With Descartes, again, he finds this positive quality of the true idea in its clarity and distinctness, which depend upon the simplicity or logical coherence of its content—i.e. upon the fact that every true idea is either simple or, if complex, a deductive or implicatory linkage of simples, by which they cohere to form a genuine unity or whole. With Descartes, finally, he tries to exhibit, within the thought itself, and as in principle identical with the simplicity or coherent unity of its content, that commensurateness with its proper object, that convenientia ideae cum suo ideato, which (both thinkers agree) is, if properly inter¬ preted, the indispensable condition of truth. It is at this point that Spinoza’s exposition diverges slightly, and (if I am not mistaken) intentionally, from that of Descartes —the aim of the modification being to adjust the Cartesian doc¬ trine so as to bring it into harmony with Spinoza’s different conception of idea. ' Tdle 27, §§ 72-3. Cf. also below, pp. 154-8. ^ Compare and contrast with what is here [Tdle 26, § 69) said as to the meaning of the terms ‘adequate’ and ‘true’, the fuller statements in E. ii, def. 4 and Expl. and in Ep. 60 (answering Tschirnhaus’s letter of Jan. 1675). In these later statements the true idea is regarded as ‘adequate’ so far as its intrinsic character is considered: i.e. its adequacy has nothing to do with its convenientia cum suo ideato. 4518

O

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KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

According to Descartes, as we saw, the geometer’s reasoned knowledge is the coherent explication of an essence or form which he at first ‘ imagines ’—of which he has at first an imagina¬ tive or conceptual idea. There is, i.e., at first an idea which the geometer ‘ finds ’ in his mind; and later, when he begins to judge and reason, he makes explicit elements and connexions that were latent or implied in its content, i.e. in the essence qua ideatum of this first idea. But according to Spinoza, it will be remembered,! every idea is, always and essentially, an act of mind. An idea, as such, ‘ involves ’ an affirmation; it is, in one ineliminable moment of its being, a judgement. Hence, in his exposition, the adequacy, which constitutes truth, is the commensurateness of two inseparable moments in the true idea, the single integral act of thought, itself. The idea qua affirmation is adequate to the idea qua conception. For the idea is both a judgement affirming that S is really P—S and P being differ¬ ences in the ideatum which the judgement itself distinguishes and, in distinguishing, relates; and a unitary conceptual appre¬ hension, an immediate consciousness, of the ideatum as a whole. And the idea is commensurate with itself (so to say) in both these contrasted moments of its being. There is no idea which the thinker merely ‘ finds ’ in his mind (as Descartes had said); none in which he merely ‘pictures’, or quiescently conceives, an idea¬ tum. Nor, on the other hand, is there an idea which is nothing but a process—a mere discursive activity or movement. To think is to distinguish and, in distinguishing, to connect; but, in and throughout this discursive activity, this movement at once of analysis and of synthesis, the thinker must form and hold a conception—i.e. a unitary concentrated consciousness of the content, which he is making explicit as a logically coherent detail, as terms distinct and qua distinct implying one another and so constituting a whole. It must, I think, be admitted that Descartes’s attempt to bring his own conception of truth under the popular nominal definition—to show that, in principle or in ultimate analysis, the coherence of the geometer’s reasoning is the correspondence of thought and its proper object—succeeds, if it succeeds at all, only by something very like a tour de force) only by an inter! Cf. above, pp. 57-8.

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pretation so subtle that the maxim he is interpreting seems in the process to have been refined away. And Spinoza’s reformula¬ tion (if I have not misunderstood it) makes it still more difficult to see exactly what he is maintaining to be adequate to, or com¬ mensurate with, what. Since the integral idea is both affirmation and conception, one is tempted to regard the ideatum, which is its proper object or with which, qua true, it corresponds, as an essence or form which constitutes and maintains its own intelli¬ gible unity by differentiating and integrating itself. One is tempted, in short, to find in Spinoza, at least in its rudiments or germ, the view that Reality {Deus sive Natura), whether as idea or as ideatum (whether as the intelligent activity, or as the intelligible object, of thought), is a Dialectic—a seZZ-analysis and s^//-synthesis, a Whole which is in, and by, and as, the develop¬ ment of itself. But Spinoza’s actual words in the present passage {Tdle 26-7, §§ 69-72) lend no support to such an interpretation, though there is much that seems to confirm it in the general trend of his thought. They suggest, on the contrary, that qua conception—and only qua conception—the idea is the obiectiva essentia rei, and so the ideatum (or proper object) of itself qua affirmation. And this is a thesis obscure and unconvincing in it¬ self, and not (so far as I know) maintained in any other passage. What elsewhere Spinoza maintains, we have already seen. That every entire Idea—i.e. every integral act of Thought, integral because of the Simplicity or the Coherence of its content —is adequate to its Ideatum, follows at once from, or is a particular application of, his general conception of the concrete identity which characterizes Substance itself and each and all of its Modes. For it is an identity or self-sameness ‘concrete’ in the sense that it is constituted by, and displayed in, an infinity of mutually exclusive differences.^ The self-sameness of a single Mode so far as it is constituted by, or displayed in, two such mutually exclusive differences or expressions, of which one is an Idea or Act of Thought, is truth (or rather a truth). And the two expressions are commensurate, or Idea is adequate to Ideatum, because each in its own disparate medium^ reflects the same ’ Cf. above, pp. 63-4, pp. 75-6. ^ When knowledge is reflected upon itself, or when one Idea is the Ideatum of another, the media are not disparate, but the same. Hence Spinoza’s treat-

lOO

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

unique individuation of Substance which is reflected in the other. (c) Every human mind contains, or is, at least one true idea, one integral act of the thinking thing (cf. above, p. 91). Start¬ ing, then, from this germ of knowledge, what is the manner of its advance ? ‘An Idea’, Spinoza says,' ‘is "objectively” in the same condition as its Ideatum is "really”. Hence, if there were given in Nature an utterly isolated fact—a thing having no " dealings ” with other things, i.e. neither produced by, nor productive of, anything else—its Idea also would have no "dealings” with other Ideas; i.e. assuming it to be given,^ we could draw no conclusions about it.^ But actually all things in Nature have dealings with one another, i.e. are inter¬ connected. Their objective essences, therefore, or Ideas will be interconnected too, and in the same manner. Hence, given any Idea, other Ideas will be deduced from it; and since these in turn will be connected with (and thus enable us to deduce) yet others, we shall continually gain fresh instruments for our intellectual advance. Moreover, since an Idea must agree in all respects with the formal essence which is its Ideatum, it is evident"^ that our mind must pro¬ duce all its Ideas from the Idea which reflects the origin and source of all Nature. This one Idea must be the source, from which all our other Ideas are derived, in order that our mind may reflect ideally in all respects its real Original—i.e. may reflect the formal essence of Nature in its totality and in all its parts. After what has already been said, little further comment is needed. Spinoza’s teaching in regard to man’s knowledge, and advance in knowledge, presupposes his twofold conception of ment of Self-Consciousness in general, and of Method in particular, as idea ideae or cognitio reflexiva raises a difficulty, in that it appears to be inconsistent with his main teaching in regard to knowledge and truth. ' Tdle 16-17, §§ 41-2, rather freely translated. * Reading (with O.P.) ‘eius etiam si datur essentia obiectiva’. Gebhardt corrects the ungrammatical indicative into daretur. But perhaps, as Leopold (l.c. 56) suggests, it would be better to follow N.S. and omit si datur altogether. 3 ‘nihil de ipsa poterimus concludere’ (O.P.). Gebhardt inserts (verstaan nochy after poterimus from N.S. But it is the Ideata (not the ' Ideas ’) of which it is said, in the next clause, that ‘ since they are interconnected, they will be understood ’. The addition of verstaan noch in N.S. seems therefore to be a mere mistake. -* Omitting with N.S. (and Gebhardt) the unintelligible words ex eo, which follow patet iterum in O.P. 5 I have expanded ‘ut mens nostra omnino referat Naturae exemplar’ in conformity with Tdle 34, § 91, ‘ut mens nostra . . . referat obiective formalitatem naturae, quoad totam, et quoad eius partes’.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

lOI

the finite modes—a conception difficult, as we have seen, and perhaps impossible, to defends In ultimate analysis, the only ‘ thinking thing ’—the only originator and begetter of Ideas—is the Absolute Individual, God or Nature. And every integral act of God’s thinking—every entire Idea—must be ‘ adequate to its object ’, since thought and object. Idea and Ideatum, are comple¬ mentary (though mutually exclusive) expressions of the same. Our knowledge is a stage, our advance in knowledge is a stretch, of the spontaneous (yet necessary) self-explication, self-generative fulfilment, of the potentia infinita cogitandi—i.e. of one of the ultimate forms of that self-creative Omnipotence which is Natura Naturans. Thus, the human soul or mind—Spinoza says in one passage^—‘ acts in accordance with definite laws and is, as it were, a spiritual automaton’. The Ideas, which we seem to ourselves to initiate and to develop, in fact are originated by ‘the thinking thing’. They affirm and expand themselves ‘in us’—or rather they constitute the ‘minds’ we have or are. But there is another side of Spinoza’s teaching, which must now be stressed. We do not originate the true idea—the germ of knowledge—with which we start; but neither do we merely ‘find’ it in our minds. We co-operate in its self-affirmation, consciously adopt it as our own; for to have (or to be) a true idea, is to know that one has it, and to be certain of its truth. And though, in drawing conclusions from our true idea (in ‘ deducing ’ from it new ideas, the ‘ instruments ’ of further intel¬ lectual advance), we are following (not originating) its own growth, yet in the whole process our mind is ‘acting’. It is a ‘spiritual’—i.e. a self-conscious—‘automatonThe laws that ' Cf. above, pp. 8o-i, p. 84, n. i. 2 Tdle 32, § 85; '. . . id quod idem est, ac veteres dixerunt, nempe veram scientiam procedere a causa ad effectus; nisi quod nunquam, quod sciam, conceperunt, uti nos hie, animam secundum certas leges agentem et quasi aliquod automatum spirituale.’ O.P. read automa, which Gebhardt retains on the ground that the solecism must have existed in Spinoza’s MS., since Automa spifituale is printed by N.S. in the margin. But if Spinoza wrote automa, the blunder was probably a mere slip of the pen. 3 The force of the epithet 'spiritual’ can best be seen by contrast with Tdle 18, § 48. There the Sceptics—those who are certain of nothing, not even of their own ignorance—are compared to automata, quae mente omnino carent. They are ‘mindless automata’, having no ‘sense’ or ‘feeling’ of themselves [neque se ipsos sentiunt).

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govern it are laws it freely recognizes and obeys, because, in submitting itself to them, it is fulfilling its own nature as a mode of ‘ the thinking thing They are logical laws; laws of the logical sequence, the implicatory linkage, of clear and distinct Ideas; laws, therefore, of Intellect, or Clear Thinking, as such—whether that which thinks clearly be Substance as a whole (as the Absolute Spirit), or Substance self-modified, i.e. immanent and (so to speak) concentrated in one of its modal parts (Substance as this or that finite Spirit or human mind)d §

14.

(II) The Method of Knowledge.

I. What Spinoza means by Method has already been stated.

Method is ‘the knowledge of knowledge—knowledge reflecting upon and controlling itself’ (cf. above, p. 57). It may be as well, however, to confirm this summary description by quoting {a) the detailed account of Method which is given in the Tdle (15-16, §§ 36-40), and {h) Spinoza’s own restatement of his theory in Ep. 37. {a) The passage in the Tdle runs thus:^ ‘Truth needs no sign, no external criterion, but guarantees itself. For to have a true idea—i.e. to have the “objective essence’’ of a thing—is eo ipso to be certain of its truth so that aU doubt is excluded. In searching, therefore, for the “true method” of knowledge, we are not looking for a sign to guarantee the truth of our ideas after we have acquired them, but for the most methodical (i.e. the shortest and safest) way of acquiring them. The “true method” is the path the mind must keep, if it is to follow the right Order in its search for Truth itself—in its search for “the objective essences of things” or true ideas.^ ‘Again, in expounding the true Method, we must treat of reasoning, or the clear thinking which is knowledge.In other words, the Method is not the reasoning by which we get to know the causes of things; and still less is it that knowledge itself. But it is a knowledge whereby we know what knowledge is. For the Method explains what a true idea ” is, by distinguishing it from aU our other “ perceptions ” * As we have already seen (above, pp. 86-7), it is doubtful whether Spinoza recognizes any finite Spirits other than human minds. ^ In what follows I shall paraphrase freely, omitting or expanding wherever either of these courses helps to elucidate Spinoza’s thought. 3 Tdle 15, § 36. ‘Methodus necessario debet loqui de Ratiocinatione, aut de intellectione ’: is aut a slip or a misprint for et ?

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and investigating its nature. By studpng the Method, therefore, we may get to know our own power of clear thinking, and may learn to discipline our mind so that it will make a "true idea” the ideal or norm for all its thoughts. We shall thus be enabled [a) to lay down definite rules to aid ourselves in the pursuit of knowledge and {b) to save our mind from wasting its strength, from tiring itself by useless investigations.* ‘From these considerations it follows that Method is simply know¬ ledge reflecting upon itself, or the idea of an Idea; and since an Idea must first be given before there can be an Idea of it, there will be no Method unless there is first an Idea—i.e. Knowledge—on which to reflect. A good Method, therefore, will be one which shows how the mind is to be guided so that its thinking may conform to a given true Idea, as to its standard or norm. And since one Idea is to another as the formal essence of the first is to the formal essence of the second,^ the Knowledge which reflects upon the Idea of the most perfect Being will be superior to that which reflects upon any other Idea. In other words, the most perfect Method will be that which shows how the mind must be guided so that its thinking shall con¬ form to the standard of the given true Idea of the most perfect Being. ^ ‘The preceding account"* makes it easy to understand how the mind, by acquiring an ever increasing stock of clear Ideas or Know¬ ledge, eo ipso acquires fresh "instruments” to facilitate its further progress. For it results from what has been said that there must exist in us, first of all and before everything else, a true idea—the “innate instrument”, as it were, of our intellectual advance; and that the first part of the Method consists in reflecting upon this initial true Idea, in forming a true Idea of it, so that we understand its nature and therefore also its difference from all our other "per¬ ceptions”.® ‘Now, it is self-evident that, the more the mind knows of Nature, the better it knows itself. Hence the more the mind knows, the more perfect will be this part of the Method—i.e. this part of the mind’s “reflective knowledge” or knowledge of itself. And this part of the Method will be most perfect of all, when the mind is attending to, i.e. reflecting upon, its knowledge of the most perfect Being.^ • Tdle 15, § 37: cf. 18-19, § 49. 2 By ‘ the formal essence of an Idea ’ Spinoza seems here to mean ‘ the formal essence, of which it is the idea’—not the Idea’s own formal essence, i.e. its ‘form’ as an act of thought. ® Tdle 15-16, § 38. In §§ 39 and 40 Spinoza summarizes and restates §§ 37 and 38; and in doing so, he emphasizes the control, which (on his theory) reflection gives. s Viz. the so-called ‘Ideas of Imagination’ (Ideae fictae, falsae, dubiae). 6 Tdle 16, § 39.

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‘In the second placed the more the mind knows, the better it understands its own powers and the Order of Nature. The better it understands its own powers, the more easily it can direct itself and lay down rules for its own guidance; and the better it understands the Order of Nature, the more easily it can restrain itself from useless investigations. And thus, as we have already explained,^ the whole task of Method is completed.’ {b) In Ep. 37 Spinoza restates his theory of Method, sum¬ marizing and rearranging the account given in the Tdle so as to answer a question put to him by Dr. Jan Bouwmeester.3 ‘You ask me ’, Spinoza says, ‘ whether there is, or can be, a Method such that, by following it, we can advance in our understanding of the most important subjects without stumbling and without fatigue p or whether, on the contrary, our minds, hke our bodies, are at the mercy of chance, and our thoughts are governed by fortune rather than by art. It will satisfy you, I think, if I show that there must be a Method, by which we are enabled to direct and link together our clear and distinct perceptions; and that our intellect is not, like our body, at the mercy of chance. In order to establish this conclusion, it is enough to point out that one clear and distinct perception (or several taken together) can be the sole and sufficient cause of another; —or, rather, that all the clear and distinct perceptions which we form arise (and can only arise) from other clear and distinct percep¬ tions which are in us, and that they do not depend upon any other cause external to us. Whence it follows that the clear and distinct perceptions which we form depend upon our own nature and its certain and fixed laws alone. They depend, in other words, upon our absolute power, and not upon fortune—i.e. not upon causes which, though they too act by certain and fixed laws, are yet unknown to us and foreign to our nature and power. ... It is clear, then, that the true Method . . . must consist in the main of nothing else than the knowledge of the nature and laws of the pure Intellect. And in order to acquire such knowledge, it is necessary, before all else, to distinguish between the Intellect and the Imagination—i.e. between true ideas and all others. . . .’® 2. Method, then, as Spinoza conceives it, is knowledge refiect* Tdle i6, § 40. Deinde is intended to mark what follows as a description of the second part of the Method. * Cf. § 37 (above, p. 102). ^ Cf. above, p. ii, n. 2. l.c. ‘. . . an aliqua detur, aut dari possit Methodus tails, qua inoffenso pede in praestantissimarum rerum cogitatione sine taedio pergere possimus ? ’ 5 The rest of the sentence has already been translated; see above, p. 90.

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ing upon and controlling itself; and two difficulties at once arise. For (i) does not Spinoza's own analysis of knowledge (of the ‘ adequate ’ or ‘ true ’ idea) rule out the possibility of ‘ knowledge of knowledge of a true idea with itself as its ideatum Accord¬ ing to that analysis, as we saw, certain conditions must be satis¬ fied if there is to be ‘truth’ (veritas) or ‘what is true’ {verum). A mode of Substance—an ‘ essential nature ’ or a ‘ form ’—must affirm and maintain its self-sameness in two mutually exclusive, but complementary, ‘expressions’ of itself. It must be ‘ex¬ pressed’ under the Attribute of Thought, i.e. as an ‘idea’; and it must be ‘ expressed ’ also in a disparate medium, i.e. as a mode of Extension or some other Attribute. But these conditions, it seems clear, are not fulfilled in the ‘ knowledge of knowledge ’—■ the cognitio reflexiva or ideaddeae—which is Method. The know¬ ledge which reflects, and the knowledge on which it reflects, are both alike ‘ideas’ or modes of Thought. Whatever their relation to, and difference from, one another, they plainly are not ‘ mutually exclusive, but complementary, expressions of the same ’ in the sense required. They are not a single mode of Sub¬ stance considered under two different Attributes, i.e. expressed in disparate, but complementary, media. They are (so Spinoza says) a single mode of Substance conceived under one and the same Attribute, i.e. expressed in one and the same medium—■ viz. that of Thought. The idea which reflects upon an idea (the idea ideae) is the ‘form’ of the idea, on which it reflects—i.e. it is a mode of Thought, but ‘considered without reference to the object’, or considered as the pure form or act of thinking.^ (ii) Upon the heels of this first difficulty there treads a second. It seems impossible, as we have seen, to reconcile Spinoza’s description of Method as ‘ the knowledge of knowledge ’ (or as ‘ the true idea of a true idea ’) with his own analysis of knowledge or truth. And, as we have now to see, his own account of ‘reflection’ or ‘reflective knowledge’ seems incompatible with the function of guidance and control which he ascribes to Method. For he insists upon the secondary and derivative ‘ Cf. above, p. 99, n. 2. ^ E. ii. 21 S.: ‘Quare Mentis idea et ipsa Mens una eademque est res, quae sub uno eodemque attribute, nempe Cogitationis, concipitur. . . . Nam revera idea Mentis, hoc est, idea ideae, nihil aliud est quam forma ideae, quatenus haec ut modus cogitandi absque relatione ad obiectum consideratur. . . 4518

P

io6

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

character of reflective knowledge. There can be no cognitio reflexiva, no knowledge of knowledge, no Method, unless there is actually given knowledge itself—direct or primary knowledge —on which to reflect. If I know, I also know that I know—if I have a true idea, I reflect (or may reflect) upon it, and thus make it the ideaUim of a second. But I cannot know that I know, unless I first know something; nor can I reflect upon a true idea, unless I have it to reflect upon.^ It seems to follow that Method can neither guide nor control the knowledge of which it is the Method. For the reflective knowledge, which is Method, presupposes—as its logical pre¬ condition, if not also as its temporal antecedent—that true ideas have formed and linked themselves together within the reflect¬ ing mind. And if, in reflecting, the knower were to remodel or rearrange the true ideas on which he reflects, he would be tampering with his knowledge—perverting it into error. Nor is there anything to modify this conclusion in Spinoza’s somewhat meagre statements on the subject of ‘reflection’. In the main he seems to agree with Descartes^ that ‘reflection’, or the ‘reflective act’, in no way modifies—neither enriches nor impoverishes—the content of the primary experience. To ‘re¬ flect’ is to repeat the first (or unreflective) idea within (so to speak) an algebraical bracket—to enclose it unaltered within a secondary apprehension, which itself is nothing but an empty form. The mind’s reflecting upon is expressly identified with its attending to its knowledge ;3 and though Spinoza never discusses the nature or implications of ‘attention’, the treatment of ‘ desire ’ {cupiditas) and ‘ appetite ’ {appetitus) in the Ethics sug¬ gests that, on his view, the act of attending leaves the content or the object unaffected. Since ‘a man’s appetite remains one and the same whether he is conscious of it or not’,‘» presumably a man’s knowledge also remains one and the same whether he attends to it (i.e. is reflectively conscious of it) or not. The only passage in which Spinoza explains how the ‘reflec¬ tive idea ’ (the Idea Ideae), though identical with, yet differs from the ‘ idea ’ on which it reflects—or how the mind’s ‘ knowledge ' Cf. Tdle 14-15, § 34 (above, pp. 57-8). ^ Cf. Descartes, Medit., VII Resp. (vii. 559). ^ Tdle 16, § 39 (above, p. 103). ^ E. iii, Aff. deff. i, Expl.; cf. ibid. 9 S.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

I07

of itself ’ differs from the knowledge which the mind ‘ itself ’ is— has already been noticed.^ The explanation is brief and obscure; but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the difference is an impoverishment. The ‘ reflective idea ’ appears to differ from the ‘ primary idea' by abstracting from, by omitting, an essential moment of the latter—viz. its ‘reference to an object’, i.e. to a determinate mode of Extension or at least of some Attribute other than Thought. If that be so, the mind’s self-consciousness would shrink to a mere awareness that it knows; since what it knows (i.e. the distinctive content of its primary knowledge, or its consciousness of objects) would fall beyond the grasp of its reflective knowing, beyond its miscalled ‘knowledge of itself’. And the Method would be the form not of knowledge but of an empty and impossible abstraction—viz. of a knowing so in¬ determinate and general that by it nothing in particular is known.2 3.

Unless these difficulties can be dispelled or overcome,

Spinoza’s whole project in the Tdle must be condemned as iUusory; for we shall have to admit that there neither is, nor can be, a method such as he there describes and sets himself to expound. On the other hand, since, as we have seen, they are based upon Spinoza’s own analysis of the true idea, and his own emphatic assertion that reflection presupposes actual know¬ ledge, no attempt to dispel or overcome them is likely to succeed without playing equal havoc with the teaching of the Tdle— without a radical reconstruction of the account there given both of knowledge and of reflection. In short, if this diagnosis is correct, the position of an interpreter of the Tdle may well seem desperate. The Treatise professes to expound the method of knowledge. But the interpreter, it appears, is compelled to admit either that the ‘ method ’ it describes is inconceivable, or that the ‘knowledge’ for which it seeks a method, and the ‘reflection’ in which it asserts that method to consist, are mis' E. ii. 21 S.: cf. above, pp. 104-5. ^ Of course I do not suggest that Spinoza intended to maintain, or would himself have accepted, so absurd a doctrine either of self-consciousness or of method. But I am urging that these absurdities follow from what seems the only possible interpretation of his statement in E. ii. 21 S. concerning the difference between the idea mentis (or idea ideae) and ipsa mens (or the primary idea).

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KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

conceived; and on either admission the Treatise as a whole is wrecked. ' Wrecked as a whole ’—but then it must be remembered that the Treatise is not, and does not profess to be, ‘a whole’. On the contrary, it is a mere fragment, obviously imperfect and avowedly incomplete. The interpreter has no right to be dis¬ concerted at a failure he ought to have foreseen as possible, if not probable, from the first. The fragment has shown itself to be such that, without radical alteration, it could not be rounded into a whole. It is not only incomplete in fact, but inherently incapable of completion. And this result, though most unwel¬ come, is not in the least surprising. 4. No more than a rough sketch can here be offered of the ‘ reconstruction ’ which Spinoza’s Treatise would have to under¬ go in any attempt to weave its component doctrines—its views of ‘ reflection ’, ‘ knowledge ’, and ‘ method ’ itself—into a coherent theory. {a) It would be necessary, in the first place, to emend and supplement the description of ‘method’ as ‘reflective know¬ ledge’ or ‘knowledge of knowledge’ {cognitio reflexiva or idea ideae), so as to make it clear that what is thus described is not one body of knowledge reflecting upon another, but knowledge itself reflecting upon itself, i.e. raised to the highest level of its own development—a level at which it is conscious and critical of itself. For method is neither before nor after knowledge, but inseparable from it. Method is neither the temporal antece¬ dent or sequel, nor the logical pre-condition or consequent, of knowledge, but a moment indispensable to its constitution, a ‘complement’ essential to its full actuality or perfection as knowledge. The description actually given in the Treatise, far from making it clear that method is thus inseparably constitutive of know¬ ledge, points to a quite different view. For that description, considered in its context and interpreted in the light of the statements which lead up to it, can only mean that the ‘reflec¬ tive knowledge’, which is ‘method’, is subsequent in time, and posterior in logic, to knowledge proper. Method, as the Treatise describes it, is not that which distinctively constitutes the most perfect grade of knowledge—not the consummating ‘moment’

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

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in its development. It is, on the contrary, a new kind, a deriva¬ tive but separate body, of knowledge, which reflects upon the primitive, unreflecting, kind—upon a body of knowledge already given, and already, as it is given, fully actual and complete. It is true that, in leading up to his description in the Treatise, Spinoza rightly insists that there neither is, nor can be, a method before there is actual knowledge. His project, he rightly empha¬ sizes, does not entail an infinite regress. He is not looking for a method which must be learnt before anything is known, and as the pre-condition of acquiring knowledge. But so far he is only removing what is, after all, an obvious and elementary miscon¬ ception. For what else is there but confusion of the crudest kind in the notion of a ‘ method ’ that is to be learnt and known before one can learn or know; an ‘ art of thinking ’ that must be mastered if one is to think at all; or a ‘ theory of knowledge ’ when as yet nothing is actually known ? And when Spinoza proceeds to urge that ‘ method ’ presupposes a ‘ given true idea', his language seems to admit of only one interpretation—viz. that the ‘given true idea’ is already, as it is given, knowledge complete and perfect, before and apart from the ‘idea’ which reflects upon it, i.e. before and apart from the cognitio refiexiva which is ‘method’. (&) Hence, in the second place, it would be necessary to reconstruct the teaching of the Treatise in regard to knowledge or the true idea. Stress would have to be laid upon certain views which are only implied, hinted at, or noted incidentally in the Treatise, but which become more prominent in the account Spinoza gives of knowledge in the Ethics. The views in question (to summarize them roughly) are (i) that Idea is Judgement, (2) that there are degrees of knowledge, and (3) that Thought by its very nature ‘reflects’, or returns upon itself. Idea is Judgement—and therefore knowledge is, in essence and in principle, a movement or discursus of Thought. There are Degrees of knowledge—i.e. the discursus is, in essence, a self¬ development or a self-fulfilment. And Thought by its very nature returns upon itself—and therefore the highest or culmi¬ nating degree of Thought’s self-fulfilment is a knowledge con¬ scious of, and criticizing, itself. (c) Hence, finally, it would be necessary to sweep aside, as

no

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

erroneous or at the best inadequate, Spinoza’s account of ‘re¬ flection’ in the Treatise; and to substitute for it a new treat¬ ment in harmony with the reconstructed doctrines of ‘ method ’ and of ‘knowledge’. The new treatment would be based upon the distinctive characteristic of the Attribute of Thought, to which I have just referred—a characteristic of which little or nothing is said in the Treatise, though in the Ethics Spinoza always keeps it in mind and sometimes bases his arguments expressly upon it. Every Attribute is a power fulfiUing itself in modes of Substance, which reproduce, as modes, the character of the power from which they are derived. Now the Attribute of Thought—the potentia infinita cogitandi—is, by its very nature, a movement turning ‘outward’ upon an Other and returning from that Other reflected ‘ inward ’ to itself. Hence the finite ideas or minds—the modes of Substance, in so far as in them the ‘ infinite power of thinking ’ fulfils itself—reproduce, as modes, both phases of its characteristic discursus—i.e. not only its ‘outward turn’, in which, transcending itself. Thought grasps an Other, but also its ‘ reflection ’ or ‘ return ’ upon itself. In so far, therefore, as a man has (or rather, is) a mind—an integral idea or mode of Thought—he is not only conscious of (or ‘knows’) an object other than the idea he has (or rather, is), but is also, and eo ipso, conscious of (or ‘knows’) his thinking self. The integral idea, which is his mind, concentrates, and focuses in itself, the two contrasted phases of Thought’s dis¬ cursus, so that he is the self-conscious owner and afiirmer of knowledge, not its mere receiver or receptacle. Basing itself upon this foundation, the new treatment of reflection would make it clear that knowledge, in the full and proper sense, must be ‘reflective’—must be ‘methodical’, i.e. self-critical, self-conscious, self-controlled. Even in the Treatise, as we saw, Spinoza insists that ‘ to have a true idea is to know —and, in knowing, to be certain that one knows—the ideatum as it really is’.^ But the full significance of this doctrine is obscured by the suggestions that the Idea Ideae is a secondary and a paler awareness of a ‘simple’ idea—of an idea turned outward upon an Other, but not turned back upon itself; and that ‘reflective knowledge’ supervenes upon, and presupposes, ' Cf. above, p. 56; and Tdle 15, §§ 34-6.

KNOWLEDGE AND ITS METHOD

m

an unreflecting, but already complete and perfect knowledge. Against these misleading suggestions, the new treatment must make it clear that nothing less than the Idea Ideae is an integral act of thought—i.e. a genuine or true idea. Thought transcend¬ ing itself and conscious of an Other, and in that transcendence reflected upon and conscious of itself, is the full and concrete experience, of which the supposed ‘simple’ idea is a mere abstracted phase, a truncated and mutilated fragment. And far from its being true that we first have knowledge and then reflect upon it, it is only in and by reflection that we for the first time ‘ know ’ in any genuine sense at all.

CHAPTER IV

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE: SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT §15. As I believe, and have tried to show, no clear and con¬ sistent theory of the general character of ‘ the true method ’ is offered in, or could be developed out of, the Treatise as it stands. Spinoza has failed to explain in what sense the method can—or rather, must—be conceived as ‘ Knowledge of knowledge ’ (idea ideae) or' reflective knowledge ’ (cognitio reflexiva). He has failed to show that, and how, the mind by reflecting controls the true ideas on which it reflects.* Nevertheless this failure, though no doubt it seriously impairs, does not obliterate the interest and value of his treatment of a number of particular topics in the second half of the Treatise. For he there makes a resolute attempt to set out his method in full—in the form of a systematic doctrine, designed to consist of two (or, possibly, three) parts. His exposition covers, in rough draft, the whole of the first part. It includes a detailed treatment of the principal subjects which, in sketching the general plan, he had assigned to the first part of ‘ the true method and adds, by way of appendix, a summary account of Memory and Forgetfulness, and a few remarks on the nature, use, and chief abuses of Language.^ The exposition of the second part^ of the projected doctrine is broken off in the middle by the abrupt termination of the Treatise itself. In the two remaining chapters, then, I propose to select the principal topics of interest in each part of this systematic doctrine, and to examine Spinoza’s treatment of them on its merits—i.e. as though its value were self-contained and in no ' Cf. above, pp. 104-11. ^ T. 19-33, §§ 50-90. The plan of ' the true method ’ as a whole is outlined in T. 15-17. §§ 36-42 (cf. above, pp. 102-4 and loo-i) and restated summarily in T. 18—49, § 49. The plan of the first part of the doctrine is expressly identified with that of the first part of the true method in T. 19, § 50. It is probable, I think, that the doctrine was designed to be complete in two parts (cf. especially, T. 33— 4. §§ 91-4. and the manner in which Spinoza there reaches and formulates his general scheme for the exposition of the second part). Probable, not certain: for there are some statements in a later passage {T. 37, §§ 102-3 ^ see below, p. 199), which may be taken to refer to a projected third part. 3 T. 33-40, §§ 91-110.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

113

way prejudiced by the inconsistency and obscurity of his general view. § 16. In conformity with the general plan of ‘the true method’, most of the first part of the systematic doctrine consists (i) of an explanation of ‘the nature of the true idea’ and (ii) of an analysis of the three chief types of pseudo-cognizant experience, or perceptions other than true ideas.' Spinoza’s explanation of the/oma veri has already been set out in another connexion and discussed at length. No further consideration of it is now needed, but its substance must be borne in mind—viz. that every genuine idea, i.e. every integral act of thought, is eo ifiso adequate to its ideatum and therefore true.^ On the other hand, little or nothing has hitherto been said of the pseudo-cognizant experiences f and Spinoza s analysis of them will form the principal subject of study in the present chapter. Spinoza prefaces his analysis with a brief reminder of its practical aim and empirical character. His aim is not to provide an ultimate or philosophical explanation of the three types of pseudo-copizance (Supposal, Error, and Doubt), but to delimit and describe them only so far as the purpose of a doctrine of method requires, viz. sufficiently to keep the mind from confus¬ ing them with knowledge.^ It is important to notice that the range of his analysis is thus limited ab initio. The experiences he is going to investigate must be such that they are, or tend to be, mistaken for knowledge—for true ‘perceptions’ or genuine ' According to the general plan of the method, its first pari has ‘to explain what "the true idea” is, by distinguishing it from all our other “perceptions”, and investigating its nature’—in order that our mind, having thus gained a full understanding of its own power of clear thinking, may free itself from all those ‘other perceptions’, or at least may no longer mistake any of them for a ‘true idea’ or knowledge. Cf. Tdle 15, § 37 (above, p. 102); 16, § 39; 18-19, §§ 49-50; and above, p. 112, n. 2. ^ Cf. Tdle 26—27 (above, pp. 91—9). See also below, pp. 154—5. 3 In pointing out (cf. above, p. 56, n. i, pp. 59-60) that the pseudocognkant experiences or ‘ideas of the imagination’ are not ‘ideas’ in the genuine sense—not acts of our thought, nor integral acts of God’s Thought—I was anticipating the general result of their detailed Analysis in the second half of the Treatise. / Ttf/e 19, §§ 50-1: cf. above, pp. 89-90. There is, however, a serious difficulty in reconciling Spinoza’s account of the true idea or genuine act of knowledge with the assertion that, e.g., a Supposal, an error, or a doubt could be ‘confused’ with it or ‘mistaken’ for it: see below, pp. 184-8.

114

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

‘ideas’. They must, therefore, at least seem to the experiencing subject to be apprehensions of objects—indeed, as we shall see, they really are so in part or by implication. They are, in prin¬ ciple, cognizant or theoretical—not e.g. conative or emotional experiences of the mind; ‘perceptions’,^ however imperfect and confused; or ‘ideas’, though ‘ideas’ which are derived from the Imagination and not formed by the Intellect. I.

Supposal {idea ficta, fictio)

The first type of pseudo-cognizance which is examined in the Treatise is the idea ficta or fictiod- A fictio is a theoretical ex¬ perience, in which there is an element of mere supposition. Such ‘supposals’, as we may call them, present at first sight an in¬ exhaustible and chaotic variety, but Spinoza proceeds at once to arrange them in two distinct groups. In every perception, as he points out, the object (the perceived) is either a thing con¬ sidered as existing, or an essence considered alone (i.e. in abstrac¬ tion from the thing’s existence, if it exists). Supposals, therefore, must similarly be distinguished according to that in them which is supposed. Thus (a) in a Supposal of Existence, we know (or take ourselves to know) a thing’s what but make a supposition in regard solely to its that; while [h) in a Supposal of Essence, the supposing affects the what, either solely (without the that) or primarily (the that being to some extent also ‘supposed’).^ {a) Supposals of Existence. Let us begin with Supposals of Existence, since they occur more frequently than Supposals of. Essence,'* and try to delimit their range. What is their ‘ sphere of being ’—what are the kinds of fact, or quasi-fact, with which such pseudo-cognizant experi’ Throughout the Treatise Spitioza uses the term ‘perception’ in the broad Cartesian sense. Every theoretical experience—i.e. every experience in which the subject is, wholly or primarily, conscious of an object—is a ‘perception’. ^ Tdle 19-25, §§ 51-65’ Cf. in the meantime, Tdle 22, § 58: ‘Transeamus iam ad fictiones, quae versantur circa essentias solas, vel cum aliqua actualitate, sive existentia simul.’ * So Spinoza asserts [Tdle 19, § 52), presumably because the attributes con¬ stituting a thing’s ‘essence’ (tA iv tco tI {art KorriyopoOiaEva) are few, whereas its ‘ existence ’ is unrolled in innumerable acts and passions or transactions with its environment,

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

115

ences are concerned? When, e.g., I suppose that Peter, whom 1 know, is doing this or that (is going home, coming to visit me, or the like), what kind of thing is my supposal about ?" Supposals of Existence, Spinoza maintains, are confined to the sphere of possible being—to what is ‘possible’ in contrast both to ‘the self-contradictory’ and to ‘the necessary’. It is only with facts or quasi-facts of this kind that such experiences are concerned; only about ‘possible things’ that suppositions of existence can be made. And by ‘possible’, as the context shows, he means that which, in the more careful terminology of the Cogitata Metaphysica and the Ethics, is called ‘contingent’.^ For, as he here goes on to explain, a thing is impossible, if it is self-contradictory, to conceive it as existing. A Chimaera, e.g., is an impossible thing, since existence is incompatible with its essence, with its nature as defined. On the other hand, a thing is necessary, if it is self-contradictory to conceive it as non¬ existent. God, e.g., is a necessary thing, since non-existence is incompatible with His essence, i.e. by His very nature He must exist.^ Midway, as it were, between these two extremes,'^ there come the things which are ‘ possible ’ (i.e. ‘ contingent ’). A thing is possible, if its essence, considered alone and as such, neither necessarily involves, nor necessarily excludes, its existence. A possible thing, therefore, is such, that, so far as its own essential nature is alone considered, each and all of the incidents, in which the thing’s existence is (or appears to be) unrolled, are purely contingent—i.e. accidental happenings, which may or may not occur. Now, in reality or for ideally perfect knowledge, nothing is merely possible or contingent. Every thing, every finite mode, is necessarily determined, both in essence and existence, by its dependence on the Whole. Peter, e.g., in reality or for an omniscient mind, is this indispensable and irreplaceable mode of Substance, this unique individuation of the absolute Individual'. * Cf. Tdle 19, § 52: ‘ Hie quaero, circa quae talis idea versetur ?’ ^ Cog. Met. i. 3, § 8 (G. i. 242); E. iv. def. 3 and 4 (where Spinoza expressly corrects the less accurate terminology of E. i. 33, S. i). 3

Cf. above, e.g. pp. 39-40. Cf. Cog. Met. l.c.: ‘Si autem ad fei [sc. possibilis] essentiam simpliciter, non

vero ad eius causam attendamus, illam contingentem dicemus, hoc est, illam ut medium inter Deum, et chimaeram, ut sic loquar, considerabimus,’ &c. (Italics in the original).

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THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

And Peter’s existence, in reality or in truth, is a series of neces¬ sary transactions with his environment, a series of necessary events in the ‘Common Order of Nature’. Every one of these transactions is a uniquely determined link in an endless chain of causality, in an infinite sequence of necessitating and necessi¬ tated temporal changes.’ But, to the limited knowledge of a finite mind, the essence and existence of every mode—of Peter, e.g., and of any singular thing—appear, and must appear, to be, wholly or to a large extent, possible or contingent. Thus Peter’s essential nature, so far as I know it, neither necessitates nor excludes his going home, his coming to visit me, or his taking part in any one of a host of mutually conflicting alternative acts or incidents. Hence, I am able to suppose that Peter may now be doing this or that, provided always that the incidents I thus suppose neither follow necessarily from, nor conflict necessarily with, my limited and partial knowledge of his ‘essence’. For though in reality Peter’s now going home is not possible or contingent, but either necessary or impossible, the ground of the necessity or the impossibility lies beyond my knowledge. What, at every moment of his life, he must (or cannot) do and suffer depends (wholly, or in the main) upon causes external to his ‘essence’ as I know it—i.e. external to his ‘ essence ’ considered in abstraction from the modal system, to which it inseparably belongs.^ “ Cf. above, e.g. § lo (especially pp. 40-8), and Excursus (especially pp. 80 £f.). ^ Tdle 19-20, §§ 52-3. In paraphrasing this passage, I have followed Gebhardt’s text. Spinoza’s meaning is clear, but three small points of reading call for notice, (i) In § 52 Gebhardt rightly follows the punctuation oiO.P. and reads: ‘fingo Petrum, quern novi, ire domum, &c.’ Bruder, whether intentionally or by a misprint, omits the comma after ‘novi’, and thus perverts Spinoza’s meaning; for, as we shall see, if ' I know that Peter is going home’, I cannot ‘suppose’ that he is doing anything else—e.g. ‘coming to visit me’. (ii) III § 53 Gebhardt, following N.S., reads: ‘Rem impossibilem voco, cuius natura (in existendo) implicat contradictionem, ut ea existat.’ This insertion of ‘in existendo’ seems to me unnecessary, and perhaps wrong. For Spinoza proceeds (Tdle 20, § 53) to illustrate the res impossibilis by the Chimaera; and a comparison of his account of the Chimaera in Cog. Met. i. 3, §§ 3-4 (G. i. 240-1) with his statements in the present passage makes on the whole against the insertion. A Chimaera (cf. Cog. Met., l.c., § 4) may be called an ‘ens verbale’; for though it can be expressed in words, it is ‘ neither in the intellect nor in the imagination ’, i.e. can neither be clearly conceived nor pictured. A square circle, e.g., is a Chimaera; and it is impossible to visuahze what these words express or to conceive it without self-contradiction. And because a Chimaera is thus in-

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It follows that Supposals of Existence can only occur as experiences of a human mind, or at all events a finite mind like ours with limited, and therefore defective, knowledge. A God, e.g. (if God exists), or any omniscient being would be unable to make suppositions of any sort; knowing everything. He (or it) could suppose nothing.' It follows, further, that the range of the finite mind’s Supposals of Existence is strictly limited by what it knows. When once I know, e.g., the nature of God, or what a Chimaera is, I cannot suppose that either of them exists. For since with that knowledge I also know that God must, and that a Chimaera cannot, exist, it is no longer within my power to regard the existence of either as merely possible or contingent. ‘That God exists’ and ‘that a Chimaera does not exist’—these are ‘eternal truths’. They are, i.e., true propositions such that their logical quality is unalterable—i.e. such that, if affirmative, they can never become negative, or vice versa.^ Hence my power of making suppositions of existence cannot touch the necessary connexions and severances, which are the content of the ‘eternal truths’ within my knowledge. Finally, even in herently self-contradictory—because it is not a genuine or conceivable object at all—it cannot exist. Its ‘essence’ is as such self-contradictory; the contradiction does not arise only if, or when, this inconceivable entity is taken to exist. Thus, Spinoza says (l.c., § 3), 'chimaera vero respectu implicantiae suae essentiae non potis est, ut existat.’ This seems to be the doctrine underlying the present passage; and, if so, the insertion of in existendo is inadvisable, since it suggests that a Chimaera is only self-contradictory if taken to exist. Both here, however, and a little later, Spinoza is primarily concerned to em¬ phasize the further point that ‘the nature of the Chimaera, or of any res impossibilis, is incompatible with its existence’. Hence he says {Tdle 20, § 54) of the Chimaera, ‘cuius natura existere implicat’; and of the res impossibilis (ibid., § 53), in a fuller and clearer formula, ‘cuius natura implicat contradictionem, ut ea existat.’ (iii) Finally, in § 53, all the editors (so far as I know) reproduce without comment the reading of O.P. and N.S., viz. ‘possibilem (sc. rem voco) cuius quidem existentia, ipsa sua natura, non imphcat contradictionem, ut existat aut non existat. .. .’ But it is difficult to believe that existentia is anything else than a mistake (due perhaps to a slip in Spinoza’s manuscript draft) for essentia. ‘ Tdle 20, § 54: ‘Unde sequitur, si detur aliquis Deus, aut omniscium quid, nihil prorsus eum posse fingere.’ On the reading, see Gebhardt (ii. 328-30), whose arguments against the text of the O.P. (‘nihil prorsus nos posse fingere’) and in favour of ‘eum’ (which is confirmed by N.S.) seem to me overwhelming. ^ Tdle 20, § 54, Spinoza’s footnote. According to O.P., this footnote begins with the sentence ‘ Statim etiam ostendam, quod nulla fictio versetur circa aeternas veritates ’; and Gebhardt has certainly not improved matters by transferring this statement to the Text.

ii8

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

respect to those possible or contingent conjunctions of subject and accident (i.e. of a thing’s ‘essence’ and one of its acts or passions) which are or may be matters-of-fact, my power of supposing is limited by what I already know actually or by im¬ plication. Thus, I cannot suppose an elephant small enough to pass, or actually passing, through the eye of a needlenor is it open to me, if and while I know that I exist, to suppose that I am not, or even that I am, in fact existing. The range, within which Supposals of Existence can actually occur, is thus a very narrow one. At first sight, indeed, it may appear too narrow—for it excludes two kinds of experiences, in which it would commonly be said that, knowing what something is, we are ‘making a supposition’ about its that. Accordingly, Spinoza proceeds to defend his account, by showing that the exclusion of the experiences in question is justified.^ Thus (i) ^ Cf. Cog. Met. i. 3, § 6 (G. i. 241); ‘. . . cognoscimus impossibile esse, ut magnus elephantus in acus foramine recipi possit. .. .' Presumably, ‘ great size’, is either a constitutive moment in, or a necessary consequent of, the elephant’s essential nature. ^ Tdle 21-2, §§ 56-7. In the preceding paragraph (20, § 55) Spinoza em¬ phasizes the importance of a concrete conception of the existence of the finite modes (the particular things). His exposition is compressed and rather neghgently worded, but the point he wishes to make is clear. In reahty or for actually perfect knowledge, as we have already seen (above, p. 115), the exis¬ tence or actuality, as well as the essence, of every finite mode is unique. Adam’s essence, e.g., is this indispensable and irrepentable individuation of the Absolute Individual; and Adam’s existence is this uniquely distinct suc¬ cession of uniquely singular transactions with his environment, each an inevit¬ able and uniquely determined event in the Order of Nature. And in reality, therefore, or for omniscience, there is nothing possible or contingent in, and no scope for supposal about, the essence or existence of any of the particular things. It is only because of our limited power of knowing, that to us there is much that is possible or contingent, and therefore matter of supposal, in, e.g., Adam’s essence and existence. For we are obliged to conceive Man more or less abstractly—to consider his essence without taking full account of the modal System of Substance, and his existence without paying due attention to the Order of Nature. But the limitations and defects of our knowledge, though inevitable, are after all a matter of degree. It is obvious that Adam’s essence, as we conceive it, is far more than mere abstraction of ‘ being ’ indeterminate or in general. We do not define him merely as ‘a being’, but as such and such a particular type of being—even if we may fail to grasp his uniquely singular ‘ being ’ in all its concrete fullness. Similarly, we must not be content to attribute to the particular things the mere abstraction of ‘existence’ indeterminate or in general. So long as we consider Adam’s existence, without paying due attention to the Order of Nature, we cannot grasp it in its full concreteness—as a sequence of incidents each necessary and unique. Some at least of these incidents will seem to us merely possible or contingent; and in attributing them to Adam, we shall not be knowing, but supposing. But the less general and

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it is not a Supposal of Existence if, in arguing with a friend, I assert or imply that the earth is flat, or that the sun goes round it, although I know the earth is spherical and goes round the sund In cases of this kind, no doubt, it would commonly be said that I am ‘supposing’ or ‘assuming’ what I know to be im¬ possible or false. But in fact I am making no Supposal of Existence whatever in respect to the earth or to the solar system; though I may be making a Supposal of Existence in respect of my friend. For I may be supposing (i.e. assuming at least, in thought, even if I do not put my assumption into words) that he is, actually or potentially, the victim of errors I used to make and now recall. At one time, perhaps, I myself believed the earth was flat and that it was the centre of the system; and per¬ haps, for all I know, my friend now holds, or may be induced to hold, the same erroneous beliefs. Hence I may be supposing not what I know to be false or impossible, but something which, to my limited knowledge, is a possible contingency—viz. my friend’s actual or possible entanglement in errors, from which I have now got free. If, on the other hand, I know that my friend neither is, nor can be made, the victim of these erroneous beliefs, my assertions that the earth is flat, and that the sun goes round it, are not Supposals of Existence in any sense or at all. What are they ? abstract (the more concrete and detailed) our conception of the ‘ existences ’ of the particular things, the less likely we shall be to fall into error in our Sup¬ posals of Existence. For, if we conceive Adam’s existence concretely enough to distinguish it, at least in its main character, from, e.g., the existence of Peter, we shall run less risk of supposing an incident to belong to the former, which in reality does and must occur in Peter’s life, and does not, and cannot occur in Adam’s. * Spinoza’s words are (Tdle 21, § 56): 'Ex. gr. quamvis sciam terram esse rotundam, nihil tamen vetat, quominus alicui dicam terram medium globum esse, et tanquam medium pomum auriacum in scutella, aut solem circum terram moveri, et similia.’ The first illustration is very obscure. If Spinoza merely meant that though we know the earth to be spherical we often think, say, or imply, that it is flat, why didn’t he say simply as, e.g., Descartes says (Princ. Phil, in § 29), ‘omnes ab ineunte aetate putavimus Terram non esse globosam, sed planam’ ? Rotiindus seems to be used (e.g. in Cicero) for ‘spherical’. Pomum auriacum apparently means ‘ orange ’. Does he mean, ‘ I may know the earth is round, and yet tell somebody it is a hemisphere like half an orange resting on a plate (i.e. flat, with a dome over it) ?’ Or, ‘tell somebody it is a hemisphere like an orange halved [medium = dimidiaturri\ and resting on a plate ’—e.g. as it is projected on the title-page of most modern atlases.

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They are not expressions of what I know, or erroneously believe, to be the truth; and, as we have just seen, they are not lies, since I cannot hope to deceive my friend by making them. All that can be said about them is that they are changes I have effected in the environment—e.g. sounds, by which I have broken the silence.’ Nor (ii) is there, strictly speaking, any Supposal of Existence involved in the explanatory procedure which is commonly adopted in science. A physicist, e.g., is said to ‘suppose’ the premisses which he lays down, or provisionally assumes, in order to deduce from them, or to construct out of them, the solution of this or that particular Problem and what he thus supposes, it may be objected, is often known to be false or even impossible. Thus, e.g., in order to explain the nature of flame and the con¬ ditions of its maintenance,^ a physicist will begin by ‘ supposing ’ (as he would say) that ‘this burning candle’ {A) ‘is not now burning’, or that it is burning in a vacuum—i.e. by supposing, in the first case, what is known to be false and, in the second, what is known to be impossible.'’ But this is a misinterpretation of his procedure. For, in fact, he is not supposing at all—i.e. not making any Supposal of Existence. In the first example, he abstracts, in his thought of A, the candle from its flame. He then asserts of A, considered by this abstraction merely as a candle, what he knows to be true of another candle [B) which he has seen unlighted and now remem¬ bers. And, in the second example, he is abstracting his thoughts from the surrounding bodies, i.e. concentrating his attention upon A (this burning candle) alone—in order that he mav go on to draw the conclusion that A contains in itself no cause of its own destruction, so that, if there were no surrounding bodies, ’ T. 21, § 56: 'nihil prorsus fingere potuissem, et tantum dicendum fuisset, me aliquid operatum esse’. The last four words are rendered in N.S. by ‘dat ik iets gewrocht had and I believe my paraphrase reproduces Spinoza’s meaning. ^ 21, § 57: 'ea . . . quae in Quaestionibus supponuntur’. A ‘Quaestio’ is a special problem in any branch of knowledge, e.g. in arithmetic, geometry, or physics: cf. Descartes, Regulae, xii (vol. x, pp. 428-30). ^ I have added this description of the "Quaestio’ which Spinoza appears to have in mind, from Descartes, Princ. Phil, iv, §§ 95-ior. p To Spinoza, as well as to Descartes, a vacuum—i.e. extension in three dimensions and yet not a body—is a self-contradictory entity, strictly incon¬ ceivable.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR. AND DOUBT

I2I

this candle and this flame would persist without possibility of change. The physicist, therefore, is not making a Supposal of Existence which he knows to be false in fact or even impossible. He is not asserting or assuming that this burning candle is, or may be, now in fact not burning; nor that in fact a vacuum surrounds it.' But he is attending only to the candle, abstracted from its flame; or only to the burning candle, abstracted from its environment. And all that he does with these abstracted objects of his atten¬ tion is to make true assertions about them.^ The same account (Spinoza adds in a footnote) must be given of the ‘hypotheses’ which the astronomers frame in order to deduce from them (i.e. to explain) certain motions ‘agreeing with’ the celestial phenomena—e.g. motions precisely corres¬ ponding to the observed (the ‘apparent’) movements of the planets. Here again there is no Supposal of Existence. The astronomer, in formulating his hypothesis, is merely making certain very abstract and very simple assertions. And these assertions are true—provided that, and in so far as, they are neither inconsistent with one another, nor incompatible with the known general nature and laws of Extension and Motion. But the astronomer’s explanatory hypothesis is at once trans¬ formed into a Supposal of Existence if he takes a further step. For, finding that it can be applied to explain the celestial mo¬ tions, he may be tempted to draw conclusions from it in regard to the nature of the heavens. He may take his hypothesis as an accurate description (so to say) of a concrete efficient cause, actually existing and operating in the heavens, and actually producing the movements there observed. His explanatory hypothesis will then have become a Supposal of Existence— a Supposal, moreover, that is likely to be erroneous. For though the assertions constituting his hypothesis set forth a conceivable cause that is sufficient to explain the celestial motions, it does ' It will be noticed that the so-called suppositio irrealis, taken strictly and as such (i.e. apart from all reference to reality or fact which it may imply), is not regarded by Spinoza as a supposal—as an idea feta or a fictio—at all. ^ T. 22, § 57; ‘Nulla igitur datur hie fictio, sed verae, ac merae, assertiones. The physicist is merely making judgements about, e.g., the candle conceived abstractly—not making any supposition in regard to its existence. And his judgements are ‘true’, because (or in so far as) they satisfy the essential con¬ ditions of truth, as Spinoza conceives it; cf. above, pp. 93-9. 4518

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not follow that a concrete counterpart of this explanatory cause actually exists in the heavens. Indeed, the existence of such a counterpart is most improbable. For it must be remembered that many alternative hypotheses can be framed; i.e. that many alternative explanatory causes can be clearly conceived, any one of which will serve equally well to explain the motions in question.^ (b) Supposals of Essence. § 17. Spinoza’s treatment of Supposals of Essence is far from clear or convincing. It seems impossible to determine with certainty what experiences he has in mind. It is even doubtful whether any human experiences conform, or could conform, to the terms of his analysis. And we cannot help suspecting that he has grouped together under the head of Supposal, i.e. as ideae fictae ov fictiones, disparate or heterogeneous experiences. Supposals of Essence and Supposals of Existence seem, in fact, to differ from one another generically, or in their fundamental character—not merely specifically, or as typical variations of a single form of pseudo-cognizance. If both are to be called ‘supposals’ {fictiones), there is at least grave reason to doubt whether the common term will express any real identity or affinity of nature. Two groups of Supposals of Essence are distinguished in the Treatise, viz. (i) Supposals ‘in respect to the essence alone’, and (ii) Supposals ‘which concern the essence together with some ' T. 22, § 57, note y: cf. ig, § 52, note r. In my paraphrase I have expanded Spinoza’s compressed exposition in accordance with a passage in Descartes’s Princ. Phil. (iii. §§ 15-45 : cf- also iv, §§ 199-207) which he clearly has in mind. Spinoza’s statements, so far as they go, reproduce and endorse the substance of Descartes’s doctrine of the nature of explanatory hypotheses and their use in Astronomy and Physics. (The reader will find an admirable exposition and criticism of this Cartesian doctrine in Gilson, £tudes, pp. 128-37). If will be noticed, however, that whereas Descartes (l.c., § 15) describes the alternative hypotheses of the astronomers as ‘positiones, quae non ut verae, sed tantum ut phaenomenis explicandis idoneae, considerantur’, Spinoza (consistently with his account of the forma vert, cf. above, pp. 93-9) here says, or at least implies, that the assertions, constituting an explanatory hypothesis, are true, in so far as the cause they set forth is clearly conceivable. But if the whole trend of Descartes’s teaching, in regard both to explanatory hypothesis and to truth, is borne in mind, it will become clear that the difference between the two philo¬ sophers is apparent rather than real—a verbal difference rather than a dis¬ agreement in doctrine.

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123

sort of actuality or existence’, or the essence along with ‘an action’ of the thing.' (i) What actual experiences fail within the first group ? The essence of a thing, as we have seen,^ reciprocates strictly with the thing, of which it is the essence; and no room seems to be left for supposing, in respect either to the essence as a whole, or to the moments which constitute the essence, or to the reci¬ procal implication of essence and thing. Our knowledge of a thing’s essence may be less or more complete; but in so far as it is incomplete, must not every attempt to supplement it by sup¬ posing be indistinguishable from error ? Must not every Supposal, in so far as what we suppose is essential to the thing, or constitutes its essence, be false eo ipso and of necessity, since contingency and possibility are in this context inapplicable ? No direct examples are offered; but Spinoza says that ‘when we know the nature of body we cannot suppose an infinite fly ; and when we know the nature of soul, we cannot suppose it to be square ’. And he clearly implies that, so long as our know¬ ledge of body or of soul is imperfect, we can suppose an infinite fly or a square soul; and that such supposals concern the essence alone. But in what sense would either of these examples be a supposal ? The supposals hitherto considered, viz. ‘ supposals of existence’, seem all to carry with them an indirect or condi¬ tional reference to the actual world or world of fact.^ What we suppose, we believe to be possible; and what we know to be impossible, we cannot suppose. To suppose, e.g., that Peter is going home implies the belief, the problematic judgement, that he may be doing so in fact. But nobody can conceive (i.e. think out without self-contradiction) an infinite fly or a square soul; ' r. 19, § 52; 22, § 58 (cf. above, p. 114, n. 3). Cf. also T. 24, § 64, 25, §65, 26, § 68, where ‘action’ is substituted for ‘actuality or existence”. ^ Cf. above, e.g. p. 38. ^ We learn from T. 25, § 66, that the only difference between supposal and error (between the idea ficta and falsa) is that the latter necessarily implies ‘ assent ’ {nisi quod haec supponat assensum). But it seems clear, both from the whole treatment of Supposals of Existence and from the explanation of ‘ assent ’ (given here and in T. 24, § 6^ footnote b), that to ‘assent to an ideal content’ means to refer it directly and unconditionally to the world of fact—i.e. to judge, at least tacitly, that it qualifies a really existent body or thing (cf. below, pp. 133-4, PP- 151-2, and pp. 162-4).

124

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and nobody, however ignorant, can suppose, i.e. can believe it possible, that a fly may be infinite or a soul square, without eo ipso making a false judgement. No doubt we often talk loosely of the soul as though it were corporeal—as though, e.g., it had a ‘seat’ or were ‘petty’ or ‘misshapen’. But Spinoza expressly distinguishes Supposal from a mere form of words or thoughtless statement. ‘We cannot suppose ’, he says, ‘ that the soul is square—-though there is nothing that cannot be put into words. No doubt also we may imagine a fly indefinitely large or a soul with bodily shape—when, e.g., we are under the spell of a fairy-tale or of a great painter’s portrayal of the Last Judge¬ ment. But if ‘ Supposals concerning the essence alone ’ are to be identified with aesthetic experiences, have they anything in common with Supposals of Existence ? We seem to have passed over into a different realm—the realm of literary fiction and artistic fancy. We seem to be deahng now with experiences of a different order—experiences not conditioned or limited by knowledge, neither professing to be true nor liable to be false.^ Nor is it true that, when we know the nature of body or of soul, we cannot in this sense suppose—i.e. cannot imagine and enjoy to the full—the bloated fly of the fairy-tale or the souls roasting on the gridiron in the picture. (ii) Spinoza’s treatment of the second group of Supposals of Essence is no less perplexing. He points out that, the more imperfect our knowledge of the real constitution and order of the things we confusedly perceive, the greater will be our credulity. We shall find it ‘more easy to suppose’ {fingere) ‘ trees speaking, men and maidens transformed instantaneously into stones and fountains, phantoms appearing in mirrors,^ something created out of nothing, deities taking bestial or human form, and so forth and so on’."* Here there is no lack of direct examples; but how are they to ‘ * ^ 53.

T. 22, § 58, and cf./oo T. 25, § 66 (cf. above, p. 123, n. 3). . • ^ T 26 § 68: (Errors, corresponding to Supposals of Essence, arise in the same way by the addition of ‘assent') ‘as e.g. when men persuade themselves that Divine Beings are present in woods, statues, beasts, &c.; that there are bodies which have only to be compounded, in order to become an intellect; that corpses reason, walk, and speak; that God is deceived; and so on .

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ignorant or superstitious in order to have and enjoy an aesthetic experience—in order, e.g., to imagine the transformation as the poet imagined it. And every imaginative or aesthetic experience, precisely so far as it is genuine and pure, seems utterly disparate from the experiences in which I know or try to know the world of fact. § 18. Yet to raise these doubts and difficulties at the present stage, if not irrelevant, is at least premature. For the further course of Spinoza’s exposition' has still to be examined; and a careful study of it will convince us that supposal, as he conceives it, keeps in all its forms a certain generic unity or sameness of kind. For, as we shall see, all supposals agree in nature and origin. They all are complex or composite; and each of the ideal elements, of which they are composed, ‘ represents ’ a constituent of the external world. And in all supposals, the experiencing mind is ‘ passive ’. They owe their origin not to the Intellect but to the Imagination—not to the mind’s own power and acts of thought, but to its awareness of certain changes caused in the body by the action of external bodies. If, as I hope to show, this interpretation is correct, there is nothing ambiguous or obscure in Spinoza’s treatment of sup¬ posal, though much perhaps that is unconvincing or indefen¬ sible. Supposal, as he conceives it, is one of the forms of ‘ imaginational ’ experience. Hence, on his view, it is sharply distinguished from cognizant or theoretical experience proper_ i.e. from true judgement or knowledge. But, qua imaginational, it is certainly not devoid of reference to, and bearing upon, reality and fact. It must not be identified with the imaginative experiences of the poet or the painter, if these are purely aesthetic as (perhaps erroneously) I assumed them to be. On the contrary, a supposal, precisely qua imaginational, is com¬ posed of ‘ representations ’ of actual things and events or actions; and it is closely akin to, though plainly different from, another form of imaginational experience, viz. false judgement or error. Let us turn, then, once more to Spinoza’s own exposition in

1

§ 57. footnote y.) 22, § 58, footnote 2; and 24 ^ footnote b). The account of the Imagination, which is given in T ^2-^’ §§ 84-90, will be considered below: see pp. 134 If.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

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the Treatise. Having described and illustrated the two groups of Supposals of Essence, his next step is to anticipate a probable objection. He has insisted hitherto that supposal—whether of essence or of existence—is rooted in, and limited by, know¬ ledge. In order to suppose anything, I must first know some¬ thing; and, further, I can only suppose what I do not know. Thus every supposal must fall within a gap of ignorance cir¬ cumscribed by knowledge. But against this view it may be objected that what limits supposal is not knowledge, but merely a prior supposal.^ What I know or do not know has nothing to do with what I can or cannot suppose. I am free to miake any supposal I please, so long as I do not contradict myself. Thus, if, and when, I have chosen to make a certain supposal in regard to the nature of body, or of soul, thereafter I shall find it im¬ possible to suppose a fly to be infinite, or a soul square— impossible because inconsistent with my initial supposal. And in that initial supposal—so at least it would be said by those who urge this objection—knowledge played no part at all. In making it, they would contend, I freely constructed a complex idea, or ideal content, and freely assented to it—i.e. by the free exercise of my will (or faulty judgement) imputed it to all the actually existing bodies (or souls) as their 'essential what’ or ‘nature’.^ But this objection collapses on examination. Does the objector admit that we know or can know something? If so, he must agree that what limits us in our supposing is, in the end, not what we have already supposed, but what we already know. For, since we are not at liberty to frame supposals inconsistent with our initial supposal, neither—on the same principle or, rather, a fortiori—are we at liberty to frame supposals, initial or subsequent, such as to conflict with any knowledge we have already won. Or does the objector deny that we know or can ' T. 23, § 59: ‘Aliquis forte putabit, quod fictio fictionem terminat, sed non intellectio. . . .’ ^ The objection is set out, for the sake of argument, as the objector would himself express it (cf. T. ibid., ‘ut cum iis loquar’). For Spinoza himself rejects the Cartesian analysis of the judgement, in so far as it attributes assent and dissent to a faculty of free choice or indifferent will (cf. above, pp. 58-9), though he distinguishes the ideal content {repraesentamen) of a supposal, error, or doubt, from the assent which may or may not be given to it (cf. above, pp. 56, n. I, 123, n. 3, and 125).

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know anything at all ?

If so, then ‘ we who know that we do

know something’ can show that his account of supposal is doubly absurd. For, in the first place, he postulates in the human soul or mind a spontaneous power of generating, by its own unaided energy, a variety of sensations, perceptions, or ideas. He assumes that, in its supposals, the supposing mind has certain sensations, perceptions, or ideas, yet in these ex¬ periences is not aware of any actual or existing object—appre¬ hends neither itself (or what exists within itself) nor things (or what exists in the physical or extended world). This, then, is the first absurdity in the objector’s account. It implies that what the supposing mind sensates, perceives, or thinks is freely generated in, and by, these physical changes themselves. It thus attributes to the human mind a creative power—as though, at least in some of its experiences, it were the infinite mind of God. And, in the second place, the objector postulates a liberty that annuls itself. For, according to his account, the initial supposal, in which we freely con¬ structed and freely assented to a certain ideal content, determines us in all our subsequent supposing. Henceforward we are no longer free to construct or assent to anything incon¬ sistent with the content which, of our own free choice, we initially supposed. By our own liberty of supposing we have annulled our future liberty of supposing. The objector’s own predica¬ ment is a case in point. For, having freely made his initial supposal (viz. that supposal is limited not by knowledge, but by supposal), he has thereby compelled himself to make the two paradoxical postulates it implies. He cannot repudiate them without contradicting his initial supposal—i.e. without abandoning his thesis. Yet their absurdity is so manifest that we need not labour to demonstrate it by any formal arguments. Having thus sufficiently refuted the objection (since the postu¬ lates it implies are so absurd, that nobody in his senses could defend it),^ Spinoza proceeds to draw an important corollary. He claims that the line of argument, by which he has refuted the objector, exemplifies and confirms the principle underlying his own conception of method—viz. that by ‘attention’ (i.e. reflection) the mind can control and guide its own advance in ’ Cf. T. 23, § 61: ‘ Sed eos in suis deliriis linquendo. ...’

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knowledge.* The objector put forward his thesis not as know¬ ledge, but as a supposal—not as an idea vera, but as an idea ficta. By reflecting upon the content of this supposal, we were able to make its falsity evident. We were able to 'deduce’, in proper logical order, first the absurd postulates it presupposes and next its own absurdity qua presupposing them. Hence we may formulate the following rule: ‘ Given a Supposal, which in fact is false, the mind, by reflecting upon it so as to understand its meaning and to deduce its implica¬ tions in due logical order, will easily make the falsity manifest; and given a Supposal, which in fact is true, the mind, by adopting the same procedure, will draw from it truth after truth, i.e. make uninterrupted and triumphant progress in knowledge.’^ It will be noticed that, in this discussion and refutation of the objector’s thesis, Spinoza has not offered any positive account of the manner in which a supposal {fictio, idea ficta) is ‘made’, or of the part played in supposing by the human mind. Basing himself upon the ultimate subordination of all finite things and events to the inexorable necessity of the Eternal Order and its laws,^ upon the ‘ modal ’ character of the human mind,"* he has denied emphatically (i) that we create the content of a supposal, and i.e. invent the ideal elements which compose it, and (ii) that, by the arbitrary decisions of one and the same faculty of free-will, we initiate, and also control, the course of our supposing. But so far, though he has not expressly asserted, he has certainly not denied^ that our mind is the ‘maker’ of its supposals, in the sense that it fashions or com¬ poses them out of a given material, viz. out of representations derived in the end from its past sensations. And though our mind is not, so to speak, the ‘only begetter’ and the spon¬ taneous source of its experiences, he has not so far denied that, throughout the necessarily determined series of its supposals, the supposing is, in part at least, its act. ' Cf. above, pp. 102-11. ^ r. 23-4, §§ 59-61. I have endeavoured to bring out the main argument by a free and slightly expanded paraphrase. Spinoza’s exposition (particularly at the beginning of § 60 and in the last clause of § 61) is compressed to the point of obscur¬ ity. ^ T. 23, § 61, footnote a. Cf. above, e.g. pp. 22-3, and Excursus. Cf. above. Excursus. 5 Except, as we shall see, in a. footnote (T. 21, § footnote x) which he pre¬ sumably added at some later date, when revising his first draft of the Treatise. 4518

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Now, however, he argues that, owing to the power our mind possesses to control by reflection the self-development of its true ideas, we need never lapse from the certitude of self-conscious knowing. We need have no fear of mistaking the pseudocognizant attitude of supposing for an act of knowledge—still less of plunging headlong into error by ‘ assenting ’ to the con¬ tent of a supposal which in fact is false. And in the course of this argument he gives a more detailed analysis of Supposals of Essence, from which it seems clear that the supposing mind takes no active part whatever either in the fashioning or com¬ position of these experiences, or in determining their occurrence and sequence. According to this more detailed analysis,^ the content of a Supposal of Essence—i.e. what in it is supposed—is never simple and never clear and distinct. It is always complex, con¬ sisting of two or more constituent ideas; and always confused, both in matter and in form. For its constituent ideas are, in fact, sensuous images and memories, survivals and revivals of past sensations or sense-impressions. They bring, or seem to bring, before the supposing mind the perceptible ‘things’ and ‘actions’, which exist and occur in the temporal process. They are more or less vague, schematic, and generalized images, re¬ presenting what at one time the supposer perceived.^ Such ‘ imaginational ’ experiences or pseudo-ideas rank far below genuine ideas in ‘clarity’ and precision. i\. genuine idea, whether simple or complex, is an integral act of thought, adequate to its ideatum, and therefore true. It is, by its very nature, perfectly clear and distinct. It is simple if its ideatum is simple; for then it is the commensurate apprehension of a reality indiscerptibly single, i.e. such that it must be conceived entire or not at all. And it is complex if (and in the same sense as) its ideatum is complex; for then it is an individual, distinctly articulated, act of thought, the commensurate expression, in the form of reasoned truth, of a reality which, though not incomposite, is individual as the concrete unity of its components. Thus, the complexity of a genuine idea does not render it confused. Though complex, it is clear and distinct; for it is the ‘impli• Cf. T. 24-5, §§ 62-4. ^ Cf. T. 21, § footnote x; 22, §

footnote z; 24, § 64; 25, § 65.

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cated ’ unity of two or more simple ideas. It is an integral act of thought, articulated but logically coherent; a mediate judgement or inference, concretely one by virtue of the logical implications of the contributory acts of thought which consti¬ tute its terms or premisses.^ But the pseudo-ideas or representations, which are the con¬ stituents in a Supposal of Essence, are neither simple, nor analysed or analysable by the supposing mind into simples cohering to form an implicated unity. They are complex as a togetherness, more or less jumbled, of imaginational—i.e. chiefly sensuous—detail. And the total content of the supposal ■—the pseudo-judgement or pseudo-inference composed of these representations—is complex in much the same sense, though on a larger scale. It owes such unity or wholeness as it has, or seems to have, not to the logical coherence but to the psycho¬ logical association of its constituents. For the sensuous images and memories, which compose it, pass simultaneously or in close succession before the supposer’s mind. They are co-existent or contiguous items of an experience he undergoes, entertains, or inactively accepts; and their ‘ composition ’ is an alogical, or at most a quasi-logical, conjunction. They are not united by an integral act of the supposer’s thought. He is not thinking— not judging or reasoning—in any strict or vital sense at all, though he may state his supposal in words arranged as though it were an inference or a judgement. Thus if—but only if—his intellect is no longer active and attending to its own activity, he may say, e.g., that ‘human beings are instantaneously trans¬ formed into bestial shape’, thus putting into words a Supposal of Essence he is experiencing. But neither the elements of such an experience nor their connexion are clearly and distinctly perceived; and the supposer’s statement only simulates by its grammatical form the verbal expression of a genuine judgement. The phrases which, in his statement, play the parts of gram¬ matical subject and predicate—‘human beings’ and ‘trans¬ formation into bestial shape'—convey to him the haziest and most general meaning; and their linkage in the sentence does not express or imply a genuine predication. There is no logical coherence, no union in the supposer’s thought, between the ' Cf. above, pp. 59-60 and pp. 95-9.

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THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

supposed subject and the supposed predicate. If there were, he could not suppose the transformation without eo ipso under¬ standing exactly how, and why, and through what mediating cause or causes, it was inevitably brought about. For if his statement were in fact the utterance not of a mere supposal but of a living intellectual act or judgement, it would be the expres¬ sion in words of a clearly-conceived subject linked deductively, i.e. by transparent logical implication, with a clearly conceived predicate.J In a Supposal of Essence, then, the supposer passively enter¬ tains two or more confused representations of the things and actions which belong to the external, temporally actual, world —i.e. to Nature as it shows itself to sense-perception. He is confusedly aware of two or more of the pseudo-ideas together— attends to them without clearly discriminating them, and with¬ out affirming or denying that what they represent is actual fact.2 He attends to them, in short, merely in the sense that he contemplates them—much as he attends to the images which rise and pass before him in his dreams. There is, indeed, a close analogy between supposing and dreaming. In both experiences, the constituent pseudo-ideas or representations owe their origin to former impressions of sense and the traces left by them in the experiencing subject’s brain—the central organ both of the socalled ‘common sense’ or ‘imagination’, and of the ‘memory’.3 In both experiences, the subject’s mind is passive. No thought ‘ T. 24, § 62:'... si forte dicamus homines in momento mutari in bestias, id valde generaliter dicitur; adeo ut nullus detur conceptus, id est, idea, sive cohaerentia subiecti et praedicati in mente: si enim daretur, simul videret medium, et causas, quo, et cur tale quid factum sit. Deinde nec ad naturam subiecti, et praedicati attenditur.’ Cf. above, p. 95, n. i. * T. 21, § footnote x: '. . . dare apparebit, quod fictio nunquam aliquid novi facit, aut menti praebet; sed quod tantum ea, quae sunt in cerebro, aut in imaginatione, revocantur in memoriam, et quod confuse ad omnia simul mens attendit.’ T. 24, § 64: ‘ Sequitur quod fictio . . . fiat ex compositione diversarum idearum confusarum, quae sunt diversarum rerum, atque actionum, in Natura existentium; vel melius ex attentione simul sine assensu ad tales diversas ideas. . . .' Cf. also T. 25, § 65. Spinoza’s use of the term ‘attention’ in this connexion is particularly un¬ fortunate, since his main argument (cf. above, p. 130) is directed to show that, by attending’ to (i.e. reflecting upon) our ideas, we eliminate all risk of lapsing into mere supposal. ^ Cf. r. 21, § footnote x (quoted in the preceding note), and 31, §§ 82, 83. Spinoza, like Descartes, bases his own account of the Imagination of the Memory upon the regular or conventional Scholastic (Aristotelian) doctrine.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

133

or activity of his mind, no intellectual act, contributes either to the genesis, or to the composition, of the pseudo-ideas which constitute his supposals or his dreams. The principal difference between supposal and dream is due to the fact that the supposer’s senses are alert, whereas the dreamer is cut off by sleep from the receipt and awareness of sense-impressions. Hence the supposer, even while he is sup¬ posing, may attain perceptual knowledge of the external bodies, which are the ‘ causes ’ of sense-impressions and, through them, of pseudo-ideas or representations; and by reflecting upon these ‘causes’, he may be able to infer that the things and actions represented in his supposal are not in fact now present in the external world. But the dreamer, deprived by sleep of all fresh impressions and all perceptual knowledge, takes the appearance of his dream as actually existent and presented facts—as things and actions now before him in the outer world. Not, of course, that the dreamer ‘assents’ to the images of his dream—i.e. affirms by a tacit judgement the actuality and externality of the things and actions which they represent. He accepts his images, so to say, at their face value, immediately and instinc¬ tively. And this acceptance must not be confused with a false judgement or error. The sleeper’s mind has sunk below the level of doubt and question—below the level, therefore, of judgement, whether true or false. It has become incapable even of suspecting that what appears to it may be other than it appears to be.^ All supposals, then, are to be conceived as imaginational experiences of the same kind—for Spinoza clearly intends his analysis of Supposals of Essence to apply in principle to Sup¬ posals of Existence as well.^ All supposals, as I ventured to suggest, agree in the mode of genesis and composition of their constituents; and all of them are passively accepted by (or in) the supposing mind.3 " T. 24, § 64, footnote b: N.B. ‘Quod fictio in se spectata non multum differat a somnio, nisi quod in somniis non offerantur causae, quae vigilantibus ope sensuum offeruntur: ex quibus colligunt ilia repraesentamina illo tempore non repraesentari a rebus extra se constitutis.’ It seems clear from T. 25, § 66, that the imphed subject of colligunt is fingentes. ^ Cf. T. 25, § 65, and 32-3, §§ 84-90. 3 Cf. above, p. 126.

134

§

the three types OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

19. But in what sense can the mind be passive in supposing or,

indeed, in any of its experiences ? And what does Spinoza mean by the ‘ imagination ’ ? He seems, in some of his statements, to conceive it as an inactive or receptive faculty, by which the mind views no longer presented things and actions as though they now existed and occurred, and experiences the supposals, doubts, and errors composed of these representations or images. But is it credible that he should be postulating, in effect, the actual existence of a faculty—thus himself committing what elsewhere he denounces as an elementary blunder And, finally, how is it possible to reconcile the fortuitous and random character of imaginational experience with the doctrine of the Absolute individual and the eternal, necessary order of its selfcreated individuations ? We must not expect to find, in the Treatise itself, a reasoned solution of these and similar problems. Much that now seems obscure, perplexing, and perhaps indefensible, would no doubt have been explained in the systematic exposition of his Philo¬ sophy with which Spinoza intended to conclude his 'Opusculum.'2 But in the Treatise his primary purpose is guidance, not philosophical speculation; and therefore, as we have already seen,3 the treatment of the mind and its experiences is deliber¬ ately kept, so far as possible, on an empirical and popular level. It is only in the second part of the doctrine of method that he recognizes the need, even within the Treatise, of a speculative or philosophical treatment of the intellect; and one effect of this recognition is to bring the Treatise itself to a premature end.'^ Hence, in the account of the imagination, which he gives in the concluding review of the first part of the doctrine of method,5 his chief concern is to insist upon the fundamental opposition between the imagination and the intellect. To know this much about the imagination, he maintains, is both sufficient and in¬ dispensable for the purification and guidance of the intellect. So he reiterates that the imagination, whatever its precise nature, is at any rate something distinct from and contrasted " Cf. above, pp. 58-9. * Cf. above, pp. 5-7, 13-15. ^ Above, pp. 89-90, p. 113. ■* Cf. above, p. 25, n. i; and below, 199. ^ T. 30-3, §§ 81-90. The first three paragraphs (§§ 81-3) give a summaryaccount of memory and forgetfulness, but incidentally throw some light upon Spinoza’s view of the imagination as well.

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with the intellect; that the mind is active in intellection, but passive in its imaginational experiences; and that ‘ the opera¬ tions, from which our imaginational experiences result, conform to laws that are entirely different from the laws of the intellect’.^ It is true, indeed, that Spinoza’s account in the Treatise con¬ tains at least one important indication of the theory he intended to develop in his ‘Philosophy’, For he begins by summarizing what, in his view, the imagination really is, packing into a single difficult, but carefully worded, sentence the vital nucleus (so to say) of the doctrine which he ultimately expounded in the Ethics. ‘ We have thus distinguished,’ he says, ‘ the true idea from all our other perceptions. And we have traced the origin of the latter ... to the imagination—i.e. to certain sensations, which may be called “ for¬ tuitous” and “disconnected”, since they are the effects, not of the mind’s own power, but of external causes, and arise according as the body receives various motions alike in the dreaming and in the waking state. But having thus obscurely prefigured his own philosophical theory of the imagination, Spinoza makes no attempt to explain or commend it. On the contrary: he forthwith authorizes the reader to ignore it. ‘Take any view of the imagination you please,’ he says, ‘so long as you agree that it is distinct from the intellect, and that the soul plays the part of a patient under it. It does not matter how in detail you conceive it—provided only that we know it to be a vague some¬ thing, to which the soul is subjected,^ and know also, and at the same time, how to liberate ourselves by the help of our intellect.’ ’ T. 32, § 84 and § 86. ^ T. 32, § 84; ‘Sic itaque distinximus inter ideam veram et caeteras perceptiones, ostendimusque quod ideae fictae, falsae, et caeterae habeant suam originem ab imaginatione, hoc est, a quibusdam sensationibus fortuitis (ut sic loquar) atque solutis, quae non oriuntur ab ipsa mentis potentia. sed a causis extemis, prout corpus, sive somniando sive vigilando, varios accipit motus. Strictly speaking, of course, all events in Nature are necessarily determined and essentially connected. Spinoza’s qualification, therefore, applies do both epithets—i.e. no sensation is, literally or really, either ‘fortuitous’ or ‘dis¬ connected’ (i.e. detached, isolated, sporadic). It is unfortunate that Gebhardt (ii. 334) has substituted for the correct text of O.P. the inferior reading ‘ fortuitis atque (ut sic loquar) solutis’, which the Dutch translation implies. 3 T. 32, § 84: ‘perinde enim est quicquid capias, postquam novimus eandem quid vagum esse, et a quo anima patitur . . .’. It seems just possible that by quid vagum Spinoza means ‘a something in¬ determinate or random in its nature’; for the imagination is the source of experientia vaga (cf. T, 10, § 19; and above, pp. 26-8).

136

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

In the end, perhaps, it may prove impossible to defend Spinoza’s analysis of supposals and, in general, the theory of the imagination which it involves. The problems I have sketched point, it may be, to an irremediable flaw in his philosophical position. But before we presume to criticize, we must first understand; and in order to understand, it is necessary to adven¬ ture beyond the fragmentary indications in the Treatise, and seek enlightenment from the Ethics. In the following pages, therefore, I will sketch Spinoza’s doctrine of the imagination and imaginational experience, so far as seems necessary for the understanding of the Treatise, drawing freely for this purpose upon his teaching in the Ethics, and linking up my account with the outline I have already given of his metaphysical system.i It will be best to approach the study of the imagination from the corporeal side, i.e. by considering first the nature and origin of the changes that occur in a man’s body when he undergoes an imaginational experience—perceives by sense, e.g., remembers, or pictures as present, an external body or one of its qualities or acts.2 ‘A man’s body’ must here be understood to mean the body, e.g., of Peter as he actually exists and appears in ‘the common order of Nature.’ We are to think of Peter’s ‘pheno¬ menal ’ or perceptible body—a body which is born, grows, de¬ cays, and dies, possessing throughout its owner’s life an imper¬ fect (more or less illusory) individuality in so far as it is, or keeps, a relatively stable equilibrium of many contributory motions and rests. Peter’s body, then, is in constant interaction with the bodies in its environment. And, in these perpetual encounters with bodies external to itself, it undergoes perpetual changes in its physical state. At every encounter there is an exchange and transference of motion, and a consequent ‘ affection ’ or modifica¬ tion of Peter s body. Changes of motion and configuration (fresh ‘impressions’) are produced in Peter’s peripheral organs See Excursus, pp. 60-87, above. I have attempted to give a full account of Spinoza’s doctrine of the imagination in my Study (pp. 152-70). ^ It may be worth noting that in his summary account of Memory in the Treatise (T. 31, § 82) Spinoza incidentally lays it down that the imagination is affected only by singulars and only by bodies, what we remember, as well as what we sensate, is (primarily at all events) always corporeal, and always a ‘this’.

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of sense and (mediately or indirectly) in his brain; but, over and above these local effects, the encounter involves to some extent a readjustment of the ultimate component motions, and the subordinate proportions of motion to rest, which constitute his body as a whole. Now Spinoza holds, it will be remembered, that there is nothing, in this whole region of the perceptible bodies and events, which cannot be brought in principle within the sweep of clear thought or knowledge—of ‘mathematical’ or philoso¬ phical deduction. The temporal existence and vicissitudes, as well as the eternal essence and actuality, of Peter’s body, and of every finite body, can in principle be explained philosophically —i.e. in terms of the actualization of God’s self-creative Power of Extension in the free, but inevitable, sequence of its modes. In principle, therefore, we know that there can be no real con¬ tingency or chance in the encounter, e.g., between Peter’s body and a given external body, or in the consequent alteration of motion in either of them. Moreover, in principle we know to what extent, and in what sense, both Peter’s body and the body it encounters are genuinely singular or individual. For we know, in principle, that each of them has its definite rank in the infinitely graded hierarchy of finite bodies, and makes within ‘the Face’ its uniquely distinct and indispensable contribution to the corporeal universe as a whole. But what we thus know in principle, we cannot apply con¬ cretely or in detail. Every phenomenal body and all its vicissi¬ tudes follow, no doubt, as necessarily determined effects of the self-creative activity of God; but the detailed deduction from the First Cause of any given body, or any given encounter and its effects, is beyond the power of any finite knower. Thus, e.g., in order to deduce Peter’s body from the First Cause, so as to exhibit it as this unique and necessary individuation of the Absolute Individual considered under the Attribute of Exten¬ sion, it would be necessary to trace its ‘descent’ through, and step by step below, 'the Face’, and thus to define its position or function in the total system of finite bodies. But that system is an infinite whole or an infinitely graded hierarchy; and to know it thus exhaustively and in detail is clearly impossible for a finite mind. Similarly, the necessity of any given encounter, 4518

X

138

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

and the modification produced by it in Peter's body, could only be demonstrated, concretely and in detail, by completing an incompletable regress. For the modification itself and the en¬ counter, which is its proximate cause, would have to be traced ad infinitum backwards—i.e. through the endless series of ante¬ cedent operative causes which they imply. ^ Considered, then, on its corporeal side, every imaginational experience which Peter has is a modification of his body both ‘disconnected’ and ‘fortuitous’. It is disconnected; for in reality it is only a fragmentary part or resultant of a larger event (viz. the encounter or interaction with an external body) which is itself inseparably bound up with the infinite causal antecedence, and the infinite contemporary interplay, of changes of motion within ‘ the Face ’ as a whole. And it is fortuitous; for (so far at least as human knowledge goes) the encounters of Peter’s body with external bodies and its consequent modifications conform to no necessary laws in respect either to their several occur¬ rence or to their succession. To us, therefore, and to Peter him¬ self, they are inexplicable and unpredictable, without assignable cause, mere matters of chance. Turning now to the study of the imagination from the psychical side, we must remember that a man’s mind is primarily nothing else than the ideal expression (the idea sive cognitio) of his body.2 Peter’s actual or temporal being, therefore, con¬ sidered under the Attribute of Thought, is primarily the conscious counterpart of his phenomenal body. It is a ‘ pheno¬ menal’ mind or selP—a multiplicity of ‘ideas’, awarenesses, and conscious states, loosely compacted so as to form a rela¬ tively stable, imperfectly individual, system. And since, not¬ withstanding certain obscurities and inconsistencies in Spinoza’s statements in regard to the mediate, infinite, and eternal mode of Thought,-^ there is no doubt that, according to his theory, Peter’s phenomenal mind is the same finite mode of Substance as his phenomenal body, what has just been said in regard to the inevitable defects and limitations in our knowledge of the latter, holds also, and equally, of our knowledge of the former. We * Cf. above, pp. 40-8, 115-16; and (in the Excursus) 66-7, 76-84. ^ Cf. E. ii. II, 12, 13, 19 dem.: above. Excursus, pp. 73-4. 5 Cf. above, pp. 47-8. * Cf. above. Excursus, pp. 84-8.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

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must be content, therefore, to assume, as Spinoza himself appears to do, that, in some not precisely definable sense or in some not precisely determinable degree, Peter’s phenomenal mind is one and the same throughout the variety and flux of its psychical components; i.e. that Peter is, for himself and for his fellow-men, a single self-identical subject of experiences through¬ out his temporal existence, however fluctuating, imperfect, and even illusory his individuality and self-sameness may be. When Peter’s body is modified by an encounter with an external body, a corresponding modification—a new ‘idea’ or experience—occurs in his ‘phenomenal’ mind. According to the Treatise, it will be remembered, there occurs in Peter’s mind one of those ‘ confused perceptions of actually existent things and actions ’, or one of those ‘ fortuitous and disconnected sensa¬ tions’, which are the simplest imaginational ideas and the ultimate imaginational components of every supposal—‘ulti¬ mate’, i.e. so far as the supposer’s own consciousness in sup¬ posing is concerned.I But Peter’s new idea or state of mind is neither strictly, nor only, a perception or sensation of an external body; and in the Ethics Spinoza substitutes a more careful description for these rather inaccurate designations. The modification of Peter’s body, he points out, derives its character from both parties to the encounter, i.e. from both the interacting bodies. It depends for what it is even more upon the nature of Peter’s own body than upon the nature of the external body. And the ‘idea’ of it, therefore, i.e. the corresponding modification of Peter’s mind, must ‘involve’ the ‘natures of both interacting bodies; i.e. it must, indirectly or by implica¬ tion, ‘ indicate ’ both the actual constitution of Peter’s own body and also, to a less extent, that of the external body.=^ So far Spinoza is stating conclusions which must be drawn in accor¬ dance with his own philosophical theory of the nature of things in general and of the finite modes of Extension and Thought in particular. He is explaining what the changes in Peter s pnenomenal being are in reality and in truth—i.e. what account must be given of them at the level of the reflective knowledge of the ' In the end, i.e. to the philosopher's analysis, the ‘ultimate components’ even of a supposal or an error are not imaginational ideas, but genuine simple ideas;cf.below, e.g.,pp. I53andi57. * Cf. £. ii. 16, with the dem. and C. 2.

140

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

philosopher or man of science. But he now proceeds to describe the new ‘ idea ’ or modification of Peter’s mind as it is for Peter himself—as the actual experience, unreflecting and uncriticized, which Peter undergoes concurrently with the change of motion or modification in his body. Peter, we learn from the next pro¬ position,i will ‘view’ [contemplabitur) the external body, which a given modification of his own body involves, ‘as though it were actually existing or present to himself ’; and this ‘ view ’ or presentment—this ‘imaging,’ or ‘imaginational idea’2—will persist ‘ until there occurs in his body a new modification, which excludes the existence or presence of the external body in question’. Thus, so far and so long as Peter accepts, without reflection or criticism, the series of fresh ‘ideas’, as they arise in his mind concurrently with the modifications that happen to be produced in his body, his experiences wiU appear to him (primarily at least, or predominantly) ^ as so many sensations or sense-per¬ ceptions—so many direct sensuous apprehensions of actually existing bodies confronting him in his external world. He will ' E. ii. 17. * Spinoza explains {E. ii. 17 S.) that, in order to retain the commonly accepted terms, he will give the name of ‘images’ {imagines rerum) to those bodily modifications which (though not literally ‘images’ of things, since they do not ‘ reproduce their figures ’) are such that ‘ our ideas of them bring external bodies before us as though they were present’ (corpora externa velut nobis praesentia repraesentant). Similarly, he will speak of the mind as ‘imaging’ (imaginari), when it ‘contemplates bodies in this fashion’; and will call its state an ‘imagination’ or imaginational idea (mentis imagi'natio). It should be noticed that, in thus characterizing imaginari and imaginatio, Spinoza is reproducing with one important difference the Cartesian doctrine. Descartes, when in the 6th Meditation (vii, pp. 72—3) he distinguishes ‘imagina¬ tion’ and ‘pure intellection’, explains that to imagine, e.g., a triangle is ‘not only to conceive or understand it as a figure contained by three lines, but also, and simultaneously, to intuit those three lines (to gaze intently upon them with the eye of the mind) as present’. Thus, according to Descartes, to imagine (picture or visualize) anything requires a pecuhar effort of the mind over and above the act of intellection. To Spinoza, on the other hand, the mind is active only in so far as it thinks, and passively undergoes its imaginational experience. He even speaks of the mind, in our ordinary perceptual experience, as ‘ being determined from without, i.e. by the fortuitous encounters of things, to con¬ template this or that’ (E. ii. 29. S.; see above, p. 82, n. 5). ^ For the modifications in Peter’s mind, which are the ideal counterparts of the changes of motion produced in his body by its encounters with external bodies, are in the end the only source of all the knowledge he can obtain not only of external bodies but also of his own phenomenal body and mind; cf. E. ii. 19, 22, 23, 29 C, and S.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

141

fail to notice the major part of what is actually given and im¬ plied in his own state of mind and, so to say, misinterpret by inadvertence the purport of the remainder. For, as we have seen, there is actually given, in Peter’s changed state of mind, an awareness of the modification, and (by implication) of the constitution, of his own body; and though there is also given or immediately implied an awareness of the presence and nature of an external body, this part of the content of Peter’s ‘idea’ is subordinate, and inseparably dependent upon, and entangled with, the rest. Peter seems to himself to be ‘ viewing ’ an external body—to be gazing at it, apprehending it immediately by sense. In reality, he is immediately apprehending a change in his own corporeal existence, which implies the interaction of an external body with his own; and yet he is misreading, as it were, in¬ stinctively the whole or greater part of this ideatum so that it seems to him a body clothed in sensible qualities and now con¬ fronting him in the external world. From these views or presentments, which arise in Peter’s mind concurrently with the actual encounters and consequent modifications of his body, all his other elementary (or incom¬ posite) imaginational ideas are derived. A given viewer present¬ ment of an external body, as we have seen, persists or is retained in Peter’s mind, so long as no fresh bodily modification occurs to exclude the existence of the external body in question. ^ Hence Peter will continue to view an external body as present, even when in fact it no longer exists or is no longer acting upon his own body, provided the effects of its action survive in the form, e.g., of physical ‘impressions’ or ‘traces’ in his organs of sense or brain.2 Again, even when the original ‘presentment’ has lapsed, or been suppressed by a conflicting imaginational idea, it will nevertheless be revived or repeated in Peter’s mind, when¬ ever the corresponding modification is revived or repeated in his body, or in those parts of his body which are primarily concerned (i.e. the peripheral organs of sense and brain). Now the same or similar motions, Spinoza holds, will often be excited in Peter’s ^ Above, p. 139. Strictly speaking, it is the idea of the fresh bodily modifica¬ tion which secludes the existence of the external body: cf. the more accurate phrasing in the demonstration of E. ii. 17. ^ Cf. E. ii. Post. 5 ; 17 C. dem. and S.; 18 dem.; T. 21, § S7, footnote x (quoted above, p. 132, n. 2); 31, § 83; and Study, pp. 157-8.

142

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

organs of sense, or at all events in his brain, without any fresh encounter with the external body in question and, in the cor¬ responding presentments or imaginational ideas, Peter will thus be visualizing, or viewing as though they were present, external bodies, no longer actual or existent, which he formerly per¬ ceived. Under the head of these revived or repeated present¬ ments, according to the varying conditions (physical and psychical) of their occurrence, there would therefore fall a great variety of experiences—the constituent elements, e.g., of sheer hallucinations or waking visions, and of the visions of dream, as well as memory-images or memories of aU degrees of vagueness and precision.2 Enough has already been said to elucidate and confirm Spinoza’s statements in the Treatise concerning the elementary imaginational ideas; and, so far at least, there is no difficulty in defending his analysis of Supposals, or in disposing of the awkward problems it seemed to raise.^ For (i) it is clear that, in his usage, ‘the imagination’ is merely a convenient general name for the singular imaginational ideas—just as ‘ the intellect ’ and ‘the will’ are convenient general names for the singular true ideas and the singular affirmations they severally involve. There is no ground whatever for accusing him of postulating a faculty of imagination—a really existent universal power other than, and the generative source of, a multiplicity of singulars. His nominalistic logic is open, no doubt, to serious criticisms p but at least he is consistent in maintaining it throughout. And (2) Peter’s sensations and memories (and similarly, the consti¬ tuent images of his dreams or waking visions) are, in a plain and obvious sense, experiences he passively undergoes. In contrast to his genuine ideas (i.e. his conceptions or intellectual acts), these pseudo-ideas or representations are fortuitous and ran’ Spinoza explains one way in which this may be brought about, but he is careful to add that he makes no claim to have embodied in his explanation the true or the only cause: cf. E. ii. 17, C. dem. and S. ^ Cf. T. 31, § 83 and footnote d, where a ‘memory’ or a ‘reminiscence’ (of the most precise and perfect kind) is said to be ‘nihil aliud, quam sensatio impressionum cerebri, simul cum cogitatione ad determinatam durationem sensationis’—i.e. a revived or repeated presentment together with the thought of a definite date at which the original experience occurred. See also below, p. 147, n. I. 3 above, p. 134. ^ Cf. above, e.g., p. 26, n. i, pp. 37 and 57,

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

143

dom modifications or passing states of his phenomenal mind. They are alogical happenings, which he as a thinking being con¬ tributes in no way to initiate or to control. Nor is the passivity of Peter’s phenomenal self, or the alogical character of its experi¬ ences, inconsistent with the fundamental principles of Spinoza’s metaphysical system. There is an acknowledged breach, as we saw, in the philosophical deduction of the finite modes; and there is grave reason to suspect that the conception of the mediate infinite and eternal mode of Substance (alike under Extension and under Thought) demands, for its formation, a synthesis of opposites, which it is beyond the power of any finite thinker to achieve.^ But, on the precarious assumption that the synthesis in question is possible,^ there is nothing in¬ consistent in Spinoza’s treatment of the elementary imaginational experiences. For, with the achievement of that synthesis behind him as the background and basis of all his teaching in regard to the finite modes, he is not only entitled but bound to accentuate both the conflicting moments, of which the syn¬ thesis itself constitutes the intelligent and intelligible reconcilia¬ tion. He must, therefore, and does insist both, that Peter, as a finite mode or individuation of Substance, is ‘a part of Nature’, this part and no other, uniquely singular in body and in mind; and yet also that he is inseparably interlocked with many other 'parts’ and (in ultimate analysis) with all the indenumerable members of the infinitely graded hierarchy which, conceived in its integral unity, is a mediate infinite and eternal mode of the Whole. Hence, as we learn from the Ethics, it is inevitable that Peter, throughout his actual existence, should suffer many changes, both in body and in soul, which are the effects of ‘external’ causes, i.e. which spring in the main from his corporeal and physical environment. He is, therefore, passive, or a patient, in regard to many or most of the incidents that constitute his life.3 And, on the one hand, it is clear that all such incidents, precisely in so far as they are referred to Peter alone (i.e. attri¬ buted to his ‘ singular ’ being conceived abstractly or in isolation ' Cf. above. Excursus, pp. 78-9. ^ As the reader will remember, Spinoza himself asserts that the conception of the Face is ‘easy’ to form: see E. ii. 13. Lemna 7. S. (above, p. 78, n. i). ^ Cf. e.g. E. iv. 4 and C.

144

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

from its environment), are fortuitous and disconnected happen¬ ings. For within his singular mind and body (if ‘singular’ means merely singular or isolated) there are no causes necessi¬ tating the occurrence, and there is no logical ground or reason for the sequence, either of his sense-perceptions, images, and memories or of the bodily modifications they ideally express.^ But, on the other hand, it is no less clear that to refer the inci¬ dents of Peter’s life, or the changes he undergoes, to Peter alone, or to his merely singular mind and body, is never strictly legiti¬ mate according to Spinoza’s own teaching, since it is to exag¬ gerate into falsity one side of the truth by suppressing or ignoring the other. For we must not forget that, on his view, the adequate conception of a finite mode is of necessity concrete—implies and is the intelligent and intelligible harmony, or S5mthetic unity, of two complementary moments each fully accentuated in its opposition to the other. Peter is uniquely singular. not in isolation from his environment, but by continuity and inter¬ action with it. He is this finite mode and no other (this uniquely singular body and mind) precisely because {a) he is linked to all others, interlocked with them in essence and existence, by an endless causal chain; and because {b) he is indispensable to them, as well as necessitated by them, within (and by virtue of) the integral unity, ^ of which the chain with all its indenumerable links constitutes the ‘analysis’, i.e. which it imperfectly exhibits in the form of an uncompletable series of differential components. Thus—to repeat and summarize Spinoza's view—no finite mode is ‘merely singular', i.e. possessed of any positive what or that in isolation. It has neither essence nor existence in detach¬ ment from its environment, i.e. apart from the other finite modes, with which it is linked by the endless causal chain. Yet it is this link and no other—not only determined by, but itself determining others and (in the end) all others. For it has its indispensable place and function in the infinitely graded hierarchy of finite modes (whether of Extension, e.g., or of Thought).

And, making this its special contribution to the

' Cf. e.g. E. ii. 24 dem., 28 dem., and 36 dem. * i.e. within, and by virtue of, a mediate Infinite and eternal mode, viz. ' the Face’ under the Attribute of Extension and 'God’s infinite idea’ under the Attribute of Thought.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR. AND DOUBT

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differential analysis of an integral (an infinite and eternal) mode of the Absolute Individual, it achieves and maintains for itself a genuine measure, however infinitesimal, of ‘singularity’—of positive individuality both of essence and existence. Now all or most of the physical and psychical events, that are reckoned as ‘ incidents of Peter’s life ’, are the effects not of one but of a plurality (and in the end an infinity) of finite modes of Exten¬ sion and Thought. When treated as incidents of Peter’s life— when referred to his phenomenal body or mind considered each in respect to the singularity of its place and function in the hierarchy of all—they must appear to us to be (what, indeed, when thus considered, they are) a bundle of fortuitous happen¬ ings. For though every one of these incidents is necessarily determined to occur, and though all in the end are rationally connected within and under the Order of the Whole, the causes that determine their occurrence and sequence faU beyond and transcend Peter or any single finite mode. The most that can be said of Peter’s phenomenal body and mind, is that they contri¬ bute infinitesimally to the totality of conditions which necessi¬ tate the occurrence, and determine the sequence, of the incidents of his life. But the chief difficulty in Spinoza’s analysis of supposals has still to be faced. For let us accept his treatment of the elementary imaginational ideas as satisfactory. Let us admit that, on the whole, it does justice to the apparent facts; and let us assume that it follows inevitably from, and is entirely consistent with, the synthetic or concrete conception of the finite modes. Still, a supposal (we must remember) is complex—a single imagina¬ tional experience, composed of several elementary ideas or representations. What, then, according to the treatise, is the manner of their composition ? How, and by what power, is it effected ? What brings and holds together precisely these percep¬ tions, images, or memories, so that they constitute a single or unitary experience of a mind ? I have already noticed the only passages of the Treatise which bear directly upon these questions, and tried to set out Spinoza’s explanation (such as it is) of the composition involved in a supposal.* The insufficiency of that explanation (even if its * Cf. above, pp. 131-3. 4518

U

146

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

ambiguous use of the term ‘attention’ be disregarded^) stares us in the face, as soon as we try to apply it to a determinate example—e.g. to this actual supposal that ‘ Peter is going home As regards the constituents of this complex imaginational ex¬ perience, the doctrine of the Treatise seems clear; and we have agreed (provisionally and for the sake of argument) to accept it. Three imaginational ideas (perceptions, images, or memories) rise severally and spontaneously before, or in, the supposer’s mind—representations respectively of Peter, the act of going, and home. No act of the supposer’s intellect has helped to call them up. They thrust themselves uninvited upon his passively accepting mind—being produced in it, or presented to it, by the operation of ‘ external ’ causes. And if at the time he happens to be thinking, they occur not because of his intellectual activity but in despite of it—as alien intruders, obstructing or breaking the logical sequence of his thoughts. But as to the composition of the constituents, the Treatise leaves us in the lurch. It does not explain why precisely these three imaginational ideas stand out from the rest of the shifting details in (or before) the sup¬ poser’s mind, nor why they are compounded in the form of a supposal—i.e. so that the complex imaginational experience simulates a judgement. It forbids us to impute to the supposer himself any act of selection or predicational arrangement; for ex hypothesi his mind is passive, since its power of acting (the intellect) is in abeyance. It seems, therefore, to attribute the selection and composition of the constituents to causes operating without any special reference to the supposer’s mind. Any representations, it seems to suggest, which happen to arise, survive, or be revived, within (or before) a more or less unitary, though complex, conscious state (or ‘awareness’) of a mind, may eo ipso combine, or be composed, in such a way as to form the pseudo-judgement which is a supposal. The supposer in our example—so far as the ‘explanation’ in the Treatise goes— might equally well have found himself ‘supposing’, e.g., that Arethusa was going home or changing into Peter, or again that Peter was going to a fountain or being transformed into his home. And yet to some extent, perhaps, what is wanting in Spinoza’s ^ Cf. above, p. 132, n. i,

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

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exposition in the Treatise can be supplied from his later teach¬ ing. For his treatment of memory {memoria) in the Ethics leaves little room for doubt as to the character of that ‘ composition of ideas’, which the Treatise assumes but fails to explain. In the passage to which I refer,1 memoria is identified with ‘a certain linkage of ideas ’—a linkage distinguished by two charac¬ teristics. In the first place, the ideas that are linked are, always and only, presentments or representations of external things, which occur in the soul concurrently with, and as psychical expressions of, the ‘ affections ’ or modifications of the body pro¬ duced by its encounters with the bodies of its environment. In other words, the ‘links’ are, always and only, some of those ele¬ mentary imaginational ideas, which figure in the Treatise as the ultimate constituents of every supposal and every other pseudocognizant experience.2 And, in the second place, their linkage occurs not ‘in accordance with the order of the intellect’, but ‘in accordance with the order and linkage of the affections of the human body’. Now ‘the order of the intellect’ is objective and universal—one, and one only, identical in all men. For it is the order of philosophical deduction; the order the mind must follow if it is to ‘ perceive things through their first causes ’; the order at once of reality and of truth. But the order in which ‘ the affections of the human body ’ are linked is not one and the same in all men, but different in each—a ‘subjective’ and singular or ‘personal’ order. For it depends in the main upon the special constitution of each man’s body—upon its uniquely singular nature, as it has been developed in, and moulded by, the whole course of his past life. According to each man’s race, ^ E. ii. 18 and S. Spinoza’s examples in this passage are drawn from the field of subconscious retention, reproduction, and association; and memoria, as he here uses the term, corresponds to what some psychologists call ' mnemic association ’ (memory taken at a very low level and in a very loose sense) rather than to memory proper. For, strictly speaking (cf. F. H. Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 353), to remember is to be conscious of a past event as having been experienced at a more or less definite time in one’s own past; and in substance this is recognized in the definition of memoria in the treatise (cf. above, p. 142, n. 2). But, in the present passage of the Ethics, no mention is made of these ‘ conscious ’ and ‘ dated ’ memories; and it is difficult to see how the explanation Spinoza here offers of memoria could be applied (if, indeed, he meant it to apply) beyond the subconscious phenomena. ^ ‘Ultimate constituents’ in the sense already explained (above, p. 139)See below, pp. 153 and 157.

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THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

nationality, and language, to his parentage and upbringing, to his professional or other training, &c., he will have acquired a certain bodily ‘habit’, or ‘disposition of brain’—i.e. certain more or less established tendencies to link this or that impres¬ sion of sense with such and such cerebral ‘images’, or to pass from ‘image’ to ‘image’ in such and such a special orderd Thus (to adapt and expand Spinoza’s own illustrations) there is no resemblance or affinity between a word and the thing it names, or between the perception or thought of the one and the presentment or representation of the other. Yet an Englishman, whenever he hears, or even thinks of, the word ‘apple’, will at once recall the fruit itself. His present perception (or even his present thought) of this particular articulate sound will repro¬ duce ideal elements which have been constantly conjoined with a similar perception or thought in earlier unitary (but complex) states of his mind. It will reproduce, by the subconscious func¬ tion of synthesis which is memoria or ‘mnemic association’, imaginational ideas of, e.g., the shape, flavour, and other charac¬ teristic qualities of an apple. It will reproduce them, moreover, in a grouping which reflects a more or less established order of coexistence of the ‘affections’ of the Englishman’s body;—i.e. of the impressions set up from time to time in his organs of sense and (in particular) of the resulting modifications in his brain. Similarly, the same imaginational idea will call up different trains of thought in men of different professions. Suppose that, on seeing hoof-prints in the sand, a soldier and a peasant both think of, or visualize, a horse. The soldier will fall to thinking of the horse’s rider, and thence of cavalry and war, and the peasant’s mind will pass from horse to plough, from plough to field, and so to harvest. For each, in consequence of his professional activities and training, ‘has grown accustomed to link the “images of things’’ in his body in a special order’.^ And every sequence of these modifications in the body (i.e. every conjunction of these physical ‘images’ in the brain) is ' The ‘ images of which Spinoza here speaks, are changes of motion in the brain—rerum imagines, not mentis imaginationes; cf. E. ii. 17 S. and 49 S. (above, p. 140, n. 2). And the order of their linkage, he insists, is singular, differing in each individual body; though his examples show only that it is specific, varying according to the language and professional training of the person in question. 2 £ jj jg 5

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

149

eo ipso a concurrent and counterpart sequence of changing states of the mind—i.e. of imaginational ideas. Hence in the soldier’s mind a special set and sequence of ideas will tend to recur, to be revived regularly by ‘ mnemic association ’; while a totally different set and sequence will tend to be repeated by the operation of the same function of subconscious synthesis in the mind of the peasant. Accordingly I venture to suggest that when, in the Treatise,^ a supposal is said ‘ to result from the composition of two or more confused ideas, or rather from the mind’s attending to several such ideas at once without assenting to them’, there is little doubt as to the character either of this ‘ composition ’ or of this undiscriminating or inactive ‘attention’. For (a) composition seems to be nothing else than ‘mnemic association’. It is, I suggest, the same function of subconscious reproduction and synthesis, which in the Ethics is called memoria and invoked to explain the significance of words and the phenomena of reverie. And the working of this function will tend to vary in each supposer and, indeed, in each supposal. What ideas are reproduced, and how they are grouped and ordered, in the ‘ composition ’ of this or that supposal, will depend in the main upon the total actual being of the supposer himself—upon all that he now is both in body and in mind, including whatever special habits or dispositions (both corporeal or cerebral and psychical) he has acquired in consequence of his past experiences. This interpre¬ tation of composition is confirmed (if confirmation is needed) by the wording of a footnote, to which I have already referred. ‘A supposal’, Spinoza there says, ‘never makes, or brings before the mind, anything new. All that happens, when a man supposes, is this: things already in his brain or imagination are called back to his memory, and his mind attends to them all together and confusedly. Speech, e.g., and a Tree are recalled or revived in his memory; and since his mind attends to them confusedly and without discriminat¬ ing them, he thinks that a tree speaks.’^ ‘ Cf., e.g., T. 24, § 64; 25, § 65. 2 T. 21, § 57, footnote z (see above, p. 129, n. 5, and p. 132, n. 2). Compare also T. 22, § 58, footnote 2, and 33, § 88. In interpreting these passages and the account of ntemoviu in the Ethics^ I have assumed that Spinoza holds fast in principle to his doctrine that the mind is the idea of the body—i.e. that mind and body are one and the same mode of Substance expressed respectively under the two Attributes of Thought and Extension. In other words, I have assumed

150

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

And {b) attention, as we have already seen/ means in this con¬ text nothing more than a receptive awareness of the supposer’s mind. His mind idly entertains and contemplates a group or sequence of imaginational ideas, as they rise in it, and pass before it, in consequence of its own subconscious working. It only remains to draw the inevitable conclusion. Spinoza’s analysis of supposal must, in the end, be pronounced a failure. For supposals, as they are described and exemplified in the Treatise, are pseudo-cognizances—experiences specially liable to be mistaken for knowledge. The supposer does not judge— and yet, in supposing, he simulates a judgement. His experience is a pseudo-judgement, involving at least the semblance of predication—the semblance of a genuine assertion that S is P. He is said, e.g., to suppose or to think that Peter is going home, that Arethusa is being transformed, or that trees speak. This paradoxical semblance or simulation of judgement is common and peculiar to all the examples of supposal quoted in the Treatise. It is their differentia, their sole outstanding character¬ istic. And yet this paradoxical characteristic is utterly ignored in Spinoza’s analysis. No account whatever is taken of it, and supposal in consequence has ceased to be distinguishable from reverie. For, if we adopt the suggested interpretation of com¬ position and attention (and the only alternative, I submit, is to confess that the analysis conveys to us no definite meaning at all), what is there to distinguish a supposal from the day-dreams of the peasant or the soldier ? All trace of pseudo-judgement has evaporated under the analysis. The supposer slips, in his supposing, from the perception or mental image of Peter to the idea of going and thence to the idea of ‘home’, just as the peasant slips, in his reverie, from ‘ horse ’ to ‘ plough ’ and so to harvest . The supposer thinks that Peter is going home, neither more nor less than the peasant thinks that the horse is drawing the plough and so preparing the soil for harvest. Neither experience is in any special sense or degree pseudo-cognizant, that, if at times the author’s statements suggest that the subconscious workings of a man’s mind (the reproduction and synthesis of its imaginational ideas) are determined by his special ‘disposition’ of body or brain, the apparent inconsis¬ tency must be ascribed to negligent drafting or (at most) to a momentary lapse and confusion of thought (cf. Study, pp. 153-4). ‘ Above, pp. 132-4.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

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i.e. liable to be mistaken for knowledge. Both in the day-dream and in the supposal there is a procession of imaginational ideas (‘representations of things and actions’) defiling through the mind, which has itself subconsciously reproduced and linked them. And in both experiences the attitude of the mind, qua conscious, is the same. It is, qua conscious, idly looking on— or rather, qua conscious, it takes itself to be viewing, without effort or interference, a scene or sequence enacted in the outer world. Against this criticism it seems impossible to defend Spinoza’s analysis. Indeed, we have already seen that he himself insists upon the close analogy between supposals and the dreams of sleep. And though, in comparing the two experiences, he also emphasizes their difference, the distinction he draws between them is not based upon the intrinsic character of supposal, considered strictly as such, or ‘in itself’. On the contrary: so considered, supposing (it appears) is indistinguishable from dreaming. For both in supposing, qua supposing, and in dream¬ ing, we are merely viewing or beholding; and, in either case, the spectacle we behold is to us precisely what it appears and as it appears to be. There is no suggestion that supposal differs from dream because supposal is, while dream is not, intrinsically and as such a simulated judgement. What distinguishes a supposal from a dream is the genuine perceptual knowledge which, since the supposer’s senses are alert, may accompany and contradict the supposal.I . Error {idea falsa, falsitas).

2

§ 20.

The second type of pseudo-cognizance examined in the

Treatise is the idea falsa, false judgement or error F and Spinoza asserts, as we have already seen, that it differs from supposal only because it necessarily implies ‘ assent ’.^ It has, on his view, I r 24 § 64, footnote b; 25, § 66; above, pp. 132-4- It is rather surprising to find Spinoza asserting, in both these passages, thz.t false judgement or error is ‘ practically nothing else than dreaming with open eyes or while one is awake. But it is clear from the first passage that the experiences he here contrasts with supposals, and identifies with errors, are not (like the innocent day-dreams of the soldier or the peasant) occasional reveries of the normal mind, but obses¬ sions bordering on hallucinations and madness. ^ T. 25-9, §§ 66-76. Spinoza is still carrying out his plan for the first part ot the doctrine of Method: cf. above, p. 113. n. i. 3 Cf. above, pp. 123, n. 3, 125, i33“4>

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THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

the same range as supposal, occurs within the same ‘sphere of being’, or is about the same kinds of fact or quasi-fact. What¬ ever can form the content of a supposal, can also form the con¬ tent of an error; but the erring mind believes, without any qualification whatever, that the content of its experience is actual fact in the extra-mental or physical world. It is obviously difficult—if not impossible—to distinguish this unqualified belief or ‘ assent ’ from a genuine act of the erring mind. What else is it but an affirmation of reality—a judgement proper, even if not expressed in words ? Spinoza, however, represents error as a sort of waking dream or obsession of the mind; and he treats the ‘assent’, which differentiates it from supposal, not as a positive asset but as a defect—as an absence or privation of perceptual knowledge which the supposer derives, or may derive, from his incoming sensations. ‘As I have already noted,’ he saysd ‘the assertion that “error pre¬ supposes assent means that to the mind, while it is in error, no “ causes ’’ are presented from which it is able to infer (as it may, while merely supposing) that its imaginational ideas are not actually being derived from things external to itself.’ No further explanation of ‘assent’ is offered in the Treatise. There is no attempt to show, e.g., how the differentia of error— or indeed of any pseudo-cognizant experience whatever—can be constituted by mere absence or privation of knowledge; or how the erring mind can assent to what it imagines without affirming it to be real, or can affirm without an intellectual act. And when, in a later passage,^ Spinoza ascribes to the erring mind—in lieu, apparently, of an assent or actual affirmation— ‘a tendency to affirm’, he has certainly not diminished the obscurity in his position or removed its real or seeming incon¬ sistency. But assuming, as Spinoza assumes, that our errors are identical in content with our supposals, they will fall, like the latter, into three groups. We may be in error about, or in reference to, (i) a thing’s existence when we know its essence or (ii) a thing’s essence, considered either (a) alone or {h) together with ' T. 25, § 66. Spinoza is referring to 24, § 6^, footnote b (above, p. 151, n. i). ^7> § 72. Spinoza’s account of error in this later passage is further con¬ sidered below: cf. pp. 154-8 and 162-4.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

153

some sort of actuality or action A And, in order to purge our intellect of errors, we have only to adopt the precautions already prescribed for guarding ourselves against mistaking the corre¬ sponding supposals for knowledge. Thus (i) errors of the first group (corresponding to supposals of existence) can only occur with reference to possible (i.e. contingent) facts. If, e.g., I know God’s essence and what a Chimaera is, I know eo ipso that God must and the Chimaera cannot exist; i.e. in both examples my knowledge of the thing’s essence precludes me alike from error and from supposal in regard to its existence. And even when the existence of the known thing is contingent, so that an error of the first group is possible, no actual error need occur. Peter’s existence, e.g., is contingent. It neither flows necessarily from, nor is it neces¬ sarily excluded by, Peter’s essence alone. The necessity—or, again, the impossibility—of Peter’s existence depends upon causes ‘external’ to his essence, i.e. causes belonging to his environment. And I can safeguard myself against falling into error about Peter’s existence by applying the rule already laid down in regard to the analogous supposals. I shall run no risk of being deceived—no risk of error, and no risk of mistaking what I suppose for what I know—provided that I compare Peter’s existence with his essence and, in doing so, attend to the Order of Nature as a whole.^ And (ii) errors of the second and third groups, like the corre¬ sponding supposals of essence, are always due to the complexity and confusion of the imaginational content, and can always be avoided or eliminated by analysis and ‘attention’. We must analyse the complex content into the simple ideas which are, in the strictest sense, its ‘ultimate’ components.^ We must ‘ attend ’ to each and all of these simple constituents, and to the manner of their composition. And we must reject everything in the experience which we do not clearly and distinctly conceive. ‘ For the ideas of the things which are clearly and distinctly con¬ ceived are either very simple or composed of very simple ideas, i.e. * T. 25, § 66 and 26, § 68; cf. above, pp. 114, and 123, n. i. T. 25-6, § 67; cf. 19-20, §§ 52-4 (above, pp. 114 ff.); and, for the ‘rule’, see T. 25, § 65. In the last sentence of § 67 the second ‘sed’ (‘sed quod necessitas’, &c.) ought, I think, to be struck out. 3 See above, p. 1394518

X

154

the three types OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

derived from them by transparent logical deduction or implication. But a very simple idea {idea simplicissima) cannot possibly be false— as will be evident to anyone who knows what truth or the intellect is and, possessing that knowledge, knows also what falsity is.’i Spinoza proceeds to explain the nature of truth (the forma veri), and to bring out by contrast what ‘the false' and ‘falsity’ are.2 The account of truth given in this passage has already been reproduced and considered at length and a recapitulation of the gist of the doctrine must here suffice. An idea is true not because it agrees with an external original or counterpart, but by virtue of its intrinsic reahty. It contains something real or positive which is lacking in the false idea. And this intrinsic reality of a true idea, this positive wealth of its content, can only have been derived from the native power of the intellect itself. If, therefore, we are fully to understand the nature of truth, we must ‘ deduce ’ it from the nature of the intellect—the power of clear thinking which generates, and is, all true ideas. Now it is evident that such a ‘deduction’ cannot yet be attempted. To know the nature of the intellect would mean to possess of it a perfect definition; but, according to Spinoza s plan, the treatment of the conditions of perfection in definitions (in general), and the search for a perfect definition of the intellect (in particular), are postponed to the Second Part of the Doctrine of Method. The proposed ‘deduction’, therefore, presupposes a knowledge which, if attainable at all, can only be attained at a later stage.In the meantime, however, it is possible to anticipate the result which will in the end be ‘de¬ duced’ or demonstrated, and to discern what truth and falsity are by the direct examination of a specially selected true idea. For let us ‘place before our eyes’ an idea, which we know for certain to be true and yet to have no counterpart in the world of " T. 26, § 68, slightly expanded in my paraphrase. Cf. Spinoza’s treatment of the two groups of supposals of essence in T. 22, § 58, and 24-5, §§ 62-5 (above, pp. 122-33). On’simple ideas’ and their'composition’ by ‘deduction’, see above, pp. 95, n. i. 96, n. 2, and 130. * T. 26-7, §§ 69-72. ^ Cf. above, pp. 91-9. The draft of the Treatise, as we shall see, terminates abruptly with an enumeration of the intellect’s 'properties’, which Spinoza has undertaken as a necessary preliminary to the discovery and formulation of its definition. Cf. T. 33-5. §§ 91-8; 38-40, §§ 106-10.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

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physical fact—i.e. to depend for its content solely upon our own power of thinking. By direct inspection of such an idea, by attending to it and reflecting upon it, we shall recognize wherein its truth consists. We shall thus discern the nature of truth— truth universal and as such—transparently embodied in this single example. Truth, we shall clearly see, is nothing but the perfect unity or integrity of an idea. And this integral unity can be expressed in two different ways—both expressions being used indifferently by Spinoza and treated as equivalent. For, first, an idea is true because, and in so far as, its ideatum (its content, which is its object) is genuinely one—viz. either simple, or a union of simples cohering by logical implication.^ And, secondly, an idea is true because, and in so far as, what in it we affirm is neither more nor less than that which, in it, we con¬ ceive. Expressed in the first way, the integrity of an idea, which is its truth, is the integrity of its content, its ideatum, regarded in abstraction from the affirmation which the idea, as act of thought, involves and is. And, so expressed, truth shows itself as clarity, or clarity and distinctness in one. For if the content be simple (i.e. single without internal diversity), it must be ‘clear’, i.e. conceived entire, precisely as it is, or not at all; while if the content be complex (i.e. concretely single, the impli¬ cated unity of two or more simples), it must be both ‘clear’ and ‘distinct’, a whole transparently articulated into self-evident constituents. Expressed in the second way, the integrity of an idea, which is its truth, is its integrity as a full and living act of thought—i.e. an act, in which the mind not only forms a clear and distinctly articulated conception but, in forming it, affirms the being or reality of the intelligible object (or ‘essence’) thus clearly conceived. And, so expressed, truth shows itself as the commensurateness or equivalence of the thought qua judgement or affirmation with itself qua content affirmed or ideatum.^ What ‘the false’ or ‘falsity’ are, can now be stated., Their character emerges by contrast with that of the true idea and truth. Falsity is absence of integral unity, failure of logical coherence, in an ideal content; or again, falsity is incommen¬ surateness of an affirmation with that which it affirms, i.e. failure in a thought (or what professes to be a thought) to ' Cf. above, p. 130.

^ Cf. above, pp. 98-100.

156

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

include within its grasp neither more nor less than the ‘ essence ’ which is its proper object. And it follows at once that, strictly speaking, there is no ‘ false idea ’—the phrase is a contradiction in terms. For, in order to be false, an ideal content must lack, or must have lost, the integral unity which constitutes every genuine idea or judgement—every living act of thought. Thus, strictly speaking, there are not two kinds of idea or judgement, the true and the false, each in its own positive character the contrary of the other. That which is false, or an error—a socalled ‘false idea’ or ‘false judgement’—is opposed to a true idea or integral act of knowledge, as a mutilated fragment is opposed to the living organism, from which it has been torn. So, in Spinoza’s example,^ the constituents of the ‘false idea’ (viz. semicircle and rotation) are two of the broken ‘pieces’, so to say, of a true or genuine conception. It is true, e.g., that every semicircle, if such and such a force be applied, inevitably rotates about the diameter of its circle—or again that, if it thus rotate, it must generate a sphere. Each of these hypothetical judgements is an integral idea—a single living act of thought or knowledge. In each of them the mind affirms neither more nor less than it conceives; and what it conceives is clear and distinct ■—a content one and whole by the mutual implication of its constituents. But out of semicircle and rotation, bare and un¬ mediated, it is impossible to form a genuine conception—an integral idea or judgement. If these two ‘broken pieces’ of the whole, and these alone, are present to the subject’s mind, he cannot think them together—cannot combine them by any intellectual act. He will tend, no doubt, to view them as logically related—to interpret their imagined togetherness as the conceived or intelligible union of predicate and subject in a categorical judgement. But, in doing so, he becomes the victim of error. He suffers the experience, which is commonly but inaccurately described as ‘having a false idea’ or ‘making a false judgement’. For, in fact, ‘the rotation of the semicircle’ is not an idea at all—not a conception formed by his intellectual act. It is a mere conjunction of items, associated together in his imagination—a complex image, masquerading as a genuine idea or integral act of thought. Its falsity lies not in its ultimate ‘ ^-27, §§ 72-3; cf. above, pp. 94-7.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

157

constituents (not e.g. in the ideas of semicircle and of motion), but in the immediate logical connexion foisted upon them by the erring mind in its ignorance of the ‘missing pieces’, or mediating links, by which alone these fragments can be united to form a logical whole. The ultimate constituents of error, as well as of knowledge, are simple ideas'—true, therefore, beyond peradventure, in¬ fallible affirmations of the conceiving mind. But though we need not hesitate to form as many simple ideas as we please, it is evident that our capacity to form them is not unlimited. For, as we have just seen, every error must in the end be ascribed to a failure, on the part of the erring subject, to conceive all the ultimate constituents of some true idea—to his inability to supply the dropped or missing links which would transform the jumbled fragments of his ‘false idea’ into a logically coherent truth. In regard to these simple ideas, therefore, only two questions remain to be discussed in a Doctrine of Method, viz. by what power we are enabled to form them, and within what limits. And the answers must be sought in the modal character of the human mind. For it is evident, on the one hand, that ‘it belongs to the very nature of a thinking thing to form true or adequate thoughts’. We are enabled, therefore, to form simple ideas because, and in so far as, we are thinking things—i.e. by the power which constitutes, and is, the essential nature of our mind. On the other hand, it is no less evident that this power is neither owned by, nor confined to, any of the finite minds it constitutes. It is the infinite spiritual energy, the infinite in¬ telligence or power of clear thinking, of the Absolute Individual. For the Absolute Individual (God or Nature) is, strictly speaking, the only ‘thinking thing’, i.e. the only creative source of all ideas; and of this ‘ thinking thing ’ the finite minds are modal parts. That our ability to form simple ideas is limited; that we tend in consequence to foist unwarranted logical connexions upon some of the simple ideas we happen to have formed; and I ‘Simple’ in the Cartesian sense already explained (cf. above, e.g., pp. 130, 154, 155). A simple idea is an indivisible intellectual act compre¬ hending an incomposite ideatum and, eo ipso, affirming its reality. But we must remember that, under ‘ incomposite idcutu , Spinoza (like Descartes) includes intelligible objects of many different kinds, and possessing ‘reality’ in different senses or degrees.

158

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

that we thus tend to commit or suffer errors;—all this, Spinoza suggests, presupposes and confirms the truth of his doctrine that ‘ we are parts of a thinking thing, so that its thoughts (some in their entirety, but others in fragments only) constitute our minds’d Before passing on to the consideration of Doubt {idea duhia), Spinoza draws attention to errors of a special kind, which may seem most difficult of all to guard against or to dislodge. It sometimes happens that the confused complex experience, which is an error, includes amongst its jumbled ingredients or contributory factors a genuine act of knowledge—a clear and distinct conception of a plurality of simple ideas in logical union. The intrinsic certainty of this act of knowledge will diffuse itself in the subject’s mind over the rest of his experience so that, while undergoing this error, he will be supremely and utterly deceived. This error will seem to him knowledge of the most perfect kind—self-guaranteed and therefore incontestable. A good example is the theory, advocated by some of the Stoics, that ‘the soul is a body which, owing to its extreme subtlety, is impenetrable, and therefore indivisible and immortal’. The advocates of this erroneous doctrine had heard men talk of ‘ the soul’ and its ‘immortality’. Vague images, excited by these words,2 were vaguely associated in their minds to form a com¬ plex imaginational experience. The ‘soul’, as they imagined it, was of course a body, for it is impossible to imagine anything else;3 and the ‘immortality’, which they imagined and asso¬ ciated with it, was such that it could qualify a corporeal thing. Thus they pictured the soul as a body so subtle that it slips through and penetrates grosser bodies, while remaining itself impenetrable—i.e. indivisible, and so physically indestructible. But ‘ that the subtlest bodies are such as to penetrate all others, while being themselves impenetrable’ is an axiom or selfevident principle of physical science, which was well known to the Stoics in question. And their absolute assurance of its truth communicated itself to their erroneous experience as a whole, since they failed to distinguish the sensible bodies they were T. 28, § 73, freely expanded. 84-8.

Cf. above, pp. 60, 91, n. 3, 73-6, and

* By ‘mnemic association’; cf. above, p. 147, n. i. ^ Cf. r. 31, § 82 (above, p. 136, n. 2).

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

159

imagining from the precisely conceived bodies, to which the principles of physical science apply A \ et no fresh precautions need be prescribed; a strict obser¬ vance of the rules already formulated will set and keep us free even from errors of this most insidious kind. Thus (i) we must test all our cognizant experiences by the ideal of perfect know¬ ledge. We must accept them only so far as they conform to, or can be deduced from, the ‘true idea’ which is ‘given’ to us as the first and inalienable possession of our mind;^ and we must beware of trusting to them if, or so long as, they are mere opinions, derived from ‘hearing knowledge’ or ‘uncritical ex¬ perienceFurther (2) we must be on our guard against the excessive abstraction, to which these errors are largely due. For if, in conceiving a universal character, we conceive it as concretely as possible, keeping firmly in mind the subjects of which it is strictly predicable, we shall not be tempted to attri¬ bute it to things so disparate that they cannot possess it. And similarly if, in conceiving an axiom or universal principle, we keep firmly in mind the sphere in which it strictly applies (i.e. the singulars, in which it is realized or concretely embodied) we shall not be tempted (as e.g. the Stoics were) to apply it to dis¬ parate and therefore unsuitable objects, i.e. in a sphere where it cannot possibly be valid. Finally (3) in linking our ideas together to form our philosophical theories, we must be careful to begin from clear conceptions of ‘the primary elements of Nature’. For errors of this kind menace only those who, like the Stoics, have no knowledge of the reals from which all other reals are derived in necessary and ordered sequence, and are therefore unable to advance in the right order—or, indeed, in any order at all. The reasoning of such thinkers is based, e.g., upon axioms, not upon knowledge of the first cause and its real attributes or powers. And by thus beginning with t’he most ' T. 28, § 74. In the last sentence of this paragraph Gcbhardt retains the reading of O.P. (‘statim certi reddebantur, mentem esse subtilissima ilia corpora, et subtilissima ilia corpora non dividi’, &c.). But, as he rightly points out, the reading implied by the Dutch version in N.S. is ‘ mentem esse corpus tale subtilissimum, et subtilissima ilia corpora non dividi ’, &c.; and I have little doubt that this is what Spinoza wrote. ^ Cf. r. 14, § 33; 15-17, §§ 38-42 (above, pp. 25, 57, 90-1, 100-2, and 102-4). 3 Cf. T. 9-13, §§ 18-29 (above, pp. 26-7 and 33-5).

i6o

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

abstract of universal truths, which are last rather than first in reality and therefore also in knowledge, they ‘ invert the Order of Nature and confuse themselves’. Thus, as regards our own pursuit of knowledge, we need have no anxiety. No error of this kind will obsess and overwhelm us, provided that we employ the minimum of abstraction in de¬ veloping our theories, and ‘ begin from the primary elements of Nature’—i.e. found all our reasoning upon the true idea of ‘the source and origin ’ of the Whole. And in forming this root-conception we need not fear to be deceived—to be confusing some mere product and object of our abstracting thought with the real originative source of things. For it is impossible to conceive ‘ the Origin of Nature ’ abstractly, and no less impossible to confuse it with anything else. The first point is clear. For what we conceive abstractly—any universal character, e.g., or principle—has always a wider ex¬ tension in our thought than it has, or can have, in reality. A universal character, as an object of abstract thought, is such that it cannot be exhausted (so to say) in its particular instances —in the aggregate of the cases (past, present, and future) of its, actual occurrence. Similarly, a universal principle, as an object of abstract thought, extends ‘beyond the range of existence of its particulars ’—i.e. beyond all the singular cases (past, present, and future) in which it can be actual or valid of the real. But ‘the Origin of Nature’ cannot have a wider extension in our thought than it has in reality. For in reality ‘it is, as we shall see later, the unique and infinite Being—that which is all being, and beyond which there is nothing’, i.e. the absolute all-inclu¬ sive Individual or God.^ The second point is also clear. For to confuse one object of thought with another is possible only if both are conceived abstractly—e.g. if our conception of each includes the features common to both, but omits those that distinguish it from the other. Now this may easily happen in the conceptions we form of the finite mutable constituents of the Whole. The perceptible things in the real or external world fall into groups of closely resembling singulars. And the singulars within each group are ‘ Cf. above, p. i8. The Origin of Nature is not called ‘God’ in the present passage; but see Spinoza’s/oo^nofe z, and cf. T. 30, § 79.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

i6i

distinguished from one another by differences so minute and delicate that our intellect is hardly able to discern them—i.e. we tend, in thinking of one singular, to compare it with other members of its group. We tend, e.g., to conceive each and all of the members of such a group as identically repeating the same essential nature, the same ‘species’—so that, while many to our sense-perception and distinct ‘numerically’ or by ‘designation’, they are one and the same to our thought, i.e. indiscernible in their definable or intelligible essence. But since, as we have seen, the Origin of Nature must be conceived concretely, i.e. commensurately, or not at all, it cannot possibly be confused with anything else. There is nothing else, except the things it originates and includes within itself. And since between these objects of thought—between the infinite eternal substance and its finite transitory modes—there is no resemblance, comparison is here impossible.^

§ 21. (i) It needs no elaborate examination to expose the weak¬ ness and shortcomings of Spinoza’s account of the idea falsa in the Treatise. It would be absurd to regard it as a solid and well-reasoned contribution to logical theory, as a satisfactory analysis of error and its typical varieties. His threefold group¬ ing of errors is (to say the least) perfunctory and unconvincing. Moreover, he has failed to make clear how error is distinguished from supposal; while, by identifying error with incomplete or truncated knowledge, he appears to have overlooked the most significant characteristic of the former experience,^ and to have forgotten that the latter, in so far as it is knowledge, is a genuine idea or act of thought, and therefore sharply divided (according to his own teaching) from every imaginational idea and every type of pseudo-cognizance. It is true, no doubt, that Spinoza’s primary aim in the Treatise is not philosophical speculation, but practical guidance.^ His * T. 28-9, §§ 75-6. In my paraphrase I have ventured to draw freely upon other passages in the Treatise—cf. T. 20, § 55 (above, p. 118) and 34, § 93— in order to elucidate Spinoza’s highly compressed and rather obscure state¬ ments concerning abstraction and abstract Universals. ^ Viz. the erring subject’s utter and unquestioning certainty that what he (erroneously) believes, or (falsely) affirms, is wholly and completely true; cf. below, pp. 177-8. ^ Cf. above, pp. 88-9. 4518

Y

162

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

chief concern is to show that, and how, errors can be avoided or eradicated—not to explain the nature of error and to classify its typical varieties in a merely speculative or theoretical interest. It may be said, therefore, that his treatment of the second type of pseudo-cognizance does not profess to be ‘a contribution to logical theory’; and to deny its value, on the ground that it is not ‘a satisfactory analysis of error’, is to condemn it for falling short of a goal it was never intended to reach. But to this line of defence there is an obvious answer.

A

clear demarcation of error and a systematic survey of its chief varieties are indispensable pre-conditions for the achievement of Spinoza’s practical aim. For unless we know what error is, and in what various forms it threatens us, how can we under¬ stand or apply the rules he formulates for our guidance? And how can we be sure they will safeguard us against all or even most of the errors to which we are exposed? Yet it seems im¬ possible to maintain that either of these pre-conditions is ful¬ filled in the Treatise, as the following summary review will show. For (i) there is no clear demarcation of error. In content, it will be remembered, error and supposal are the same; but error differs from supposal by ‘presupposing assent’. Now, on a first hasty reading, this may seem clear enough. ‘Assent ’, the reader tends to assume, is a positive increment—an additional factor or ingfedient present in error, and absent from supposal. On the one hand, in a supposal there is an ideal content floating before the mind—Peter going home, e.g., Arethusa changing into a fountain, a dead man rising from his grave and walk¬ ing. The mind itself does nothing, contributes nothing, in the experience. Its attitude is a mere receiving, indeterminate and non-committal. It simply ‘ entertains ’, or suffers to float before it, a complex or conjunction of imaginational ideas. On the other hand, in an error the mind commits itself, or is committed, to a definite attitude—the attitude of acceptance or ‘ assent ’. It affirms the reality of the ideal content; or at least it finds it no longer floating, but fixed and tied down to the realm of actual fact. It is convinced, it judges or unhesitatingly believes, that Peter is actually going home; that Arethusa was trans¬ formed in fact; and that, once at least in the past history of

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

163

the world, a dead man veritably rose and walked. But, as we have already seen, any such interpretation of ‘assent’ is ex¬ pressly excluded by Spinoza himself. It is, of course, flatly inconsistent with,his doctrine to suggest that an affirmation of reality, an act of thought or judgement, can enter into error— can help to constitute it, or can differentiate it from supposal. For, as forms of pseudo-cognizance, error and supposal alike are ‘ideas of the imagination’—sundered, therefore, from genuine ideas, from acts of thought and knowledge. In both experiences alike the mind ‘suffers’ or ‘is passive’. It contributes nothing to them by its own activity, plays no part whatever in them as an ‘ intellect ’ or power of thinking. Nor is it possible to main¬ tain that the ‘assent’, which distinguishes error from supposal, is an additional factor or ingredient—or, indeed, that it is any¬ thing positive in the experience or in the attitude of the erring mind. For ‘assent’, the Treatise insists, is nothing but the absence of further data of sense, which are (or may be) presented to the supposer and which may enable him to infer that the content of his supposal is not, or does not represent, anything now actual in the world of fact.' ‘Assent ’, then, is neither an act of affirmation nor a positive attitude of the erring mind. What else is it, or can it be? In a later context, as we have seen,^ Spinoza appears to regard it as a ‘tendency to affirm’ either the abstracted antecedent or the abstracted consequent of a true hypothetical judgement— to affirm the one or the other as true categorically in isolation from their nexus. But, so long as I merely tend to affirm, I neither commit nor suffer any actual error. I may be hovering on the brink, but I have neither taken the plunge nor fallen in. And, on the other hand, how can the mere tendency be realized, i.e. become an actual affirmation, unless, even in my errors, I am intellectually active or thinking? Yet if the ‘assent’, which transforms my mere supposal into an error, is an act of my intellect or power of thought, it seems impossible to maintain that error differs in principle from knowledge. The barrier which (according to the Treatise) divided errors, as imagina' T. 25, § 66 (above, pp. 151-2). Cf. also T. 40, § no: ‘Ideae falsae et fictae nihil positivum habent . . . , per quod falsae aut fictae dicuntur; sed ex solo defectu cognitionis ut tales considerantur.’ ^ T. 27, § 72 (above, pp. 155-7)-

i64

the three types OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

tional experiences, from genuine ideas or acts of knowledge has broken down. And if any difference remains between the judge¬ ment which is an error and the judgement which is an act of knowledge, it can only be a difference of degree—a difference of grades and stages within the development of knowledge itself, not between knowledge (i.e. thought absolutely true) and a pseudo-cognizance which is not knowledge at all. Nor (ii) is there in the Treatise a systematic survey of the chief varieties of error. Spinoza’s threefold grouping of errors is based upon the assumptions {a) that an ideal content remains ‘ the same’ whether merely supposed or erroneously believed, and (6) that, since an error is distinguished from a supposal by a mere absence or privation, the differentia of the error is not relevant to the grouping. But both assumptions are untenable or most precarious. For {a) in what sense is the content the same in the error as it was in the supposal? The two experi¬ ences, considered each in its entirety, are specifically distinct, exemplifying two different types of pseudo-cognizance. Is each of them to be split into two externally related factors—a com¬ mon content, the same without difference in both, and a differ¬ entia, peculiar to each, but not affecting the content in either? Or, rejecting such an analysis as absurd, are we to recognize that the content is the same without difference only if considered in abstraction from both experiences and not as an actual component of either? But if the content is itself affected by the other component in each of the total experiences as they actually occur, it is precarious to assume that it can be treated as barely the same by abstraction, and on that precarious as¬ sumption to group errors as though they were, for the purpose of the grouping, identical with supposals. And (6) even if an error is distinguished from a supposal by the absence in the former of something that is present in the latter, it does not follow that this negative differentia is irrelevant to the grouping. On the contrary; the presumption is all the other way. For it is errors that are to be grouped—i.e. not the mere contents of erroneous experiences, but the experiences themselves. And since errors are specifically distinct from supposals, presumably their differentia, even if it be negative, is of vital importance in the grouping.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

165

(2) Nevertheless, there are some matters of interest in, or connected with, the account of error in the Treatise, which call for further comment. (i) It is clear that Spinoza has reached a critical stage in his own philosophical development. For, on the one hand, he has abandoned or radically modified the theory of truth and falsity, and of the passivity of the knowing subject, which he puts forward in the Short Treatise. Thus, he has freed his exposition from almost every trace of the Cartesian distinction between the Intellect (or perceptual faculty) which passively receives ideas, and the Will which, by its acts of affirmation or negation, enables us to judge about them. Again, he does not now en¬ dorse the traditional Scholastic definitions of truth and falsity— viz. that truth is an affirmation or negation which agrees, while falsity is an affirmation or negation which disagrees, with the real thing or matter of fact about which the judgement in each case is being made.^ Nor does he now maintain that knowledge and error alike are modifications wrought in our embodied soul by the action of ‘ external ’ causes; that even when we under¬ stand, when we think clearly or know, our role is purely passive; that it is never we who judge about a thing, but always the thing itself which be-judges itself in us, i.e. affirms or denies its predicates of itself in our passively receiving mind.^ He still holds firmly to the modal dependence of the human mind. He still insists that the Absolute Individual, by its infinite power of Thought, is the immanent creative cause of all ideas, and thus the sole originative source of all our knowledge as weU as of all our pseudo-cognizant experience. But now he draws a sharp distinction—too sharp, indeed, since it amounts to a cleavage—between the clear and distinct ideas of the intellect, in which we understand and know, and the confused imaginational experiences, in which we suppose or doubt or err. And though we are modally dependent always, and never spontane¬ ously originative, in the formation of ideas, yet it is only in supposal, doubt, and error (and, in general, in our imagina' K.V. ii. 15, § I (G. i. 78). On the Scholastic definition of truth, and the interpretations given to it by Descartes and Spinoza respectively, see above, pp. 91-100. ^ K.V. ii. 15, § 5 (G. i. 79: and, for the reading and interpretation of this passage, consult Gebhardt’s notes, l.c., pp. 494“5) > ii§§ 5~7 (^4)-

i66

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

tional experiences) that we are determined also (i.e. in addition to our modal dependence) by ‘external’ causes. It is only in our pseudo-cognizant and other imaginational ideas that we are the sheerly passive recipients of psychical changes and conjunc¬ tions, which must in the end be imputed to the operation of ‘external’ causes—i.e. to the present or past action upon our body of some body or bodies of the environment.

In our

genuine ideas or knowledge we are not thus determined ah extra. For every idea, in which we understand or know, is an integral thought formed by the infinite thinking Being, affirm¬ ing itself in its integral completeness in us, and so far consti¬ tuting our mind. The idea itself, together with the self-affirma¬ tion it involves, is present, whole and complete, in our mind— belongs to it, as an essential constituent of its modal being. And thus, in respect to this essential constituent of itself, our mind is active. It is itself an affirmation; for it is constituted by, and therefore is, a self-affirming idea. Yet, on the other hand, Spinoza’s position in the Treatise resembles that of an architect who, having cleared and de¬ limited a site, has traced the ground-plan of a building, but is still far from having completed its construction. Hence his account of error contains, no doubt, a few significant remarks preshadowing the trend of his developing thought; but, con¬ sidered as a whole, it is a mere rough sketch of the compara¬ tively well-defined theory which he formulates in the Ethics. In this sketch he lays down, in regard to error and its range, certain general considerations which must be borne in mind_ which circumscribe and, to that extent, govern the shaping of an adequate theory. He insists, e.g., that error is not false thinking, but failure to think or absence of thought; not an action, but a passion or obsession of the mind; occurring only in regard to objects of imaginational experience, i.e. objects that are, or have been presented to, sense, or are in ultimate analysis composed of sensible materials. (ii) We have seen that, in the Treatise as a whole, Spinoza tends to maintain a cleavage between the Intellect and the Imagination—between genuine ideas, or acts of thought and knowledge, and the pseudo-ideas, and conjunctions of pseudo¬ ideas, of which our imaginational experience consists. In know-

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

167

ledge, the human mind is active—in spite or, rather, in virtue of its modal dependence. For, in so far as it knows, it is a selfafhrming idea, an integral mode of the Thought of the Absolute Individual. In its imaginational experience, on the contrary, it is sheerly passive. For its perceptions and memories, its supposals and doubts, and even its errors, are psychical events that happen in it, experiences it suffers, obsessions it undergoes. They are imposed upon it by corporeal changes, which it views or contemplates; changes, of which it is inactively aware; changes in the organs of sense and in the brain, which are the effects (direct or derivative) ^ of the action of ‘ external ’ causes. Substantially the same doctrine, it will be remembered, sur¬ vives in a few passages^ of the Ethics. There too the distinction between imaginational experience and knowledge seems to be conceived as a cleavage. It is based on the antithesis of action and passion interpreted as absolute, i.e. on the contrast between the mind’s activity in knowing and its utter passivity in ima¬ gining. For since, in imaginational experience, a man’s body is continually being modified by ‘encounters’ with the bodies in its environment, his mind (or phenomenal self) is nothing more than a shifting togetherness, a stream, of the concurrent psychical changes (or modifications of his awareness) which express ideally (i.e. under the Attribute of Thought) these happenings to and in his body. He is thus utterly passive passive in mind and body together—in his supposals and errors, as well as in their constituent sensations, sense-perceptions, and memories. Yet even in the Treatise there are the germs of a different view. There are indications that Spinoza is moving towards, or perhaps has already reached, the position he attempts to consolidate in the Ethics. At all events, one or two passages in the Treatise can hardly be reconciled with the doctrine that the Imagination and its pseudo-ideas are sundered from the Intellect and its true ideas or acts of knowledge. They point unmistakably to the doctrine which is steadily maintained in the Ethics as a whole. For they imply that, though there is a ' Cf. above, pp. 141-2. ^ Cf. especially E. ii. 29 C. and S. (above, pp. 82, 140). On the whole question of the passivity of the phenomenal self, see above, pp. 47-8, 138, and 142 ff.

168

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

sharp distinction, there is no division or cleavage between our imaginational experience and our knowledge.

If the former

differs from the latter in kind, the difference of kind is also a difference of value. It is founded on, and expresses, differences of degree. For imaginational ideas, being always confused, partial and fragmentary, fall short in varying degrees of the clarity, completeness, and integrity, which characterize every idea as an act of knowledge. ^ This view—that all ideas are, in principle, acts of knowledge, and that knowledge is articulated and goaded, but not divided— is maintained throughout the Ethics, except in the isolated passages already noticed. Idea, it wiU be remembered, is by definition an action of the mind—a conception it forms because it is a thinking thing.^ Every idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves an affirmation or a negation; and since this implication is reciprocal, every idea, as such or in essence, is concretely one with, concretely the same as, a judgement or act of thought.^ Moreover, every idea, as such or in essence, is the commensurate expression under the Attribute of Thought, and eo ipso the adequate knowledge, of a finite mode of Substance—i.e. of an ultimate individuation of the Absolute Individual. Every idea, therefore, which can come within the limited range of our understanding, is, as such or in essence, both the soul or mind and the adequate knowledge of a finite mode of Substance under the Attribution of Extension—i.e. of a uniquely singular member in the infinitely guided hierarchy of finite individual bodies which constitute the created world as a corporeal Whole.^ But how can these uncompromising assertions be reconciled with the account Spinoza gives in the Ethics of imaginational experience {opinio vel imaginatio), which he there ranks as the first kind or lowest grade of knowledge P® If every idea is, in essence, an integral act of thought, how can some of our ideas (viz. those which constitute knowledge of the first kind) be inadequate and confused?^ And if, in essence, every idea is at once the soul or mind and the adequate knowledge of a body, ' Cf., e.g., ^ ^

E. E.

T.

28, § 73; and perhaps 39, § 108 (VI).

ii, del. 3 and Expl.: cf. above, p. 58, n. 3.

ii. 49 dem., C. and S. (cf. above, pp. 58-9). Cf. above, pp. 73-4, 76-83, 138.

5 Cf. above, p. 25, n. 2.

* Cf., e.g.,

E.

ii. 41.

SUPPOSAL, ERROR, AND DOUBT

169

how does it come about that, from the ideas or presentments of our imaginational experience, we can derive 'only an inade¬ quate and mutilated knowledge, alike of our own mind and body, and of external bodies’?i Such questions present themselves in the Ethics in a different and more fundamental form. For since the primary cause of all ideas, the sole originator of acts of thought, is the Absolute Individual; since God or Nature is, strictly speaking, the only Thinking Thing, the only self-subsistent mind—the real ques¬ tions with which Spinoza is confronted are {a) whether (or in what sense) God’s ideas or acts of thought constitute our minds, and (5) how far (or under what qualifications) they enter into our experience, i.e. are our ideas or components of our know¬ ledge. {a) It will be remembered^ that Spinoza maintains that every human being is, in essence, an ultimate individuation of the Absolute Individual. He asserts—not as a mere assumption, but as a proposition ‘ deduced ’ or demonstrated by philosophi¬ cal reasoning—that ‘ there is necessarily given in God an idea which expresses the essence of this and that human body under the form of eternityAnd up to a certain point his answer to the first question is implied in this proposition or follows as a direct corollary from it. Every human body in essence—i.e. as it really is, or as in truth it must be conceived to be—is a single, uniquely determinate proportion of motion to rest; i.e. this ineliminable component of the eternal allinchasive system of such proportions which is the created corpo¬ real world. And every human body, so conceived in its essence, is the ideatum of a single, uniquely determinate idea of the self-subsistant mind; i.e. the ideatum of this ineliminable mem¬ ber in the infinite series of finite, but integral, acts of thought originated by the ‘infinite intellect’, and constituting the ‘infi¬ nite idea’, of God. Thus, e.g., the single idea, by which the self-subsistent mind expresses and knows (precisely and only) the essence of Peter’s body, constitutes eo ipso the essence of Peter’s mind.

It is Peter’s ‘intellect’—his derived or modal

' E. ii. 29 C. ^ For what follows, 84-8. ^ E. 4518

V.

cf. above,

e.g. pp. 66-7, 68, 70, 74-5, 78-9, 80-3,

22 (cf. above, p. 44, and pp. 45-8). Z

170

THE THREE TYPES OF PSEUDO-COGNIZANCE

mind, his subordinate and limited power of thinking. For, like every idea of the self-subsistent mind, it is a self-affirming and self-reflecting act of thought—an infinitesimal concentra¬ tion or self-conscious focus, as well as an effect, of the eternal and infinite intellect. And so far (to anticipate in part Spinoza’s answer to the second question) Peter is, or may become, not indeed an originator, but a co-operant transmitter or ‘execu¬ tant’ of certain further acts of thought—viz. of some at least of the clear ideas which follow logically from the adequate idea of his body in the self-subsistent mind. But beyond this point no clear and consistent answer to the first question can be extracted from the Ethics. On the one hand, the confused and mutilated ideas, which are the compo¬ nents of the lowest grade of knowledge, are assumed throughout to be attributable to some human self or mind—to belong to it as its experiences. It is, e.g., Peter, as he exists and endures in ‘the common order of Nature’, who perceives, imagines, re¬ members, supposes, doubts, and errs. And Peter, throughout his life, not only suffers, or is subject to, these imaginational experiences. He is their victim, and thus to some extent their possessor—i.e. he is, or has, ‘a mind’ which is the subject of them. Yet, on the other hand, it is difficult to see how Peter, viewed thus as a transitory existent, can himself be more or other than a semi-illusory object of imaginational experience; difficult, therefore, to understand how the Peter, who is said to suppose and err can be (or have) ‘a mind’ at all, or be the subject of knowledge of any kind or grade whatever. There is, it is true, a famous Corollary, in which Spinoza tries to justify the attribution of partial or inadequate ideas to a human mind. ‘ To say that " a human mind perceives this or that ” is tantamount to the assertion that “God has this or that idea not qua infinite, but qua . . . constituting the essence of a human mind’’. And to say that “God has this or that idea, not only qua constituting the essence of a human mind, but in so far as, together with puyticulayis means singular . and in fact in the next sentence (which I have omitted in my version) he writes siyigulciyici instead of payticuluyici, which in the context would have been the natural term to use. Ry Icgitifiict dsfiyiitio I take him to mean the definition, to which the thing is (so to say) legally entitled i.e. its rightful or proper definition. ' Cf., e.g., Ep. 4 (written to Oldenburg in i66i), ‘omnis definitio, sive clara et dist’incta idea’: and T. 35, § 96, ‘Talis requiritur conceptus rei sive definitio . . . ’.

212 THE SECOND PART OF THE DOCTRINE OF METHOD:

of its ‘ primary' knowledge by the mind. In order to achieve or possess a definition, the mind must ‘attend’ to the true ideas it has, and must reconstitute and transform them by ‘reflec¬ tion’—by analysis and resynthesis of the ‘objective essences’ they contain.! § 27. (II) In the remainder of his Sketch for the second part of the doctrine of method Spinoza tries to carry out the task he had assigned to the second stage of his exposition—viz. to explain the right way of discovering good definitions.^ Of some passages in these last four pages of the text no inter¬ pretation can be more than conjectural. They bristle with diffi¬ culties and obscurities of detail, which the available evidence cannot enable the interpreter to elucidate completely or to solve. Nevertheless, in the rest of this concluding chapter, I wiU try to reproduce Spinoza’s exposition in substance, if not in all its details; and to restate and examine his teaching on the principal subjects with which he is here concerned. A preliminary objection must first be removed. For it may be objected that, if (as I have contended) the whole project of ‘discovering definitions’ is illusory, is begotten of a confusion of thought in regard to their logical nature and status, any further consideration of these last four pages of the Treatise is waste of time. But [a) the subjects I propose to discuss have an interest extending beyond the ‘illusory’ project with which they are here directly connected. And (&) the confusion of thought which, as I suspect, must be imputed to Spinoza, lies in the main trend of his teaching in regard to ‘ primary ’ know¬ ledge and the reflection upon it, the ‘secondary’ or reflective knowledge, which is method. There are indications, however, that he is sometimes trying (though never with complete sucIt will be noticed that in one phrase in the passage I have translated Spinoza couples the essence of a thing with its ‘definition’ by an ‘or’ (T. 34, § 93; ab essentia . . . sive a . . . definitione’. Cf. also the parallel passages quoted above, p. 211), as though he wished to suggest that there was no difference in the meaning of the two terms. But ‘ sive ’, in his usage, does not necessarily exclude all difference between the alternatives it couples.. And he sharply distinguishes ‘essence’ and ‘definition’ by his subsequent statement (T. 34, § 95) that, in order to be called "perfect”, a definition would have to explain the inmost essence of the thing defined ’. ^ T. 36-40, §§ 99-110; cf. above, pp. 198, 208, and 210-11.

THE FRAMING AND DISCOVERY OF DEFINITIONS

213

cess) to maintain a very different position. True, at times his language suggests that the knowledge which is ‘primary’ (i.e. infallible, self-guaranteeing, and ‘given’ or capable of genera¬ ting itself without reflection in every human mind) is to be conceived as the actual progress of the spirit of speculative inquiry—as its logical life, so to say—which, eo ipso and simul¬ taneously, reflects upon, completes, and theorizes itself in, and as, the method.! From this point of view, the method is not a body of ‘secondary’ knowledge. Still less is it a set of rules formulated by external reflection, and imposed ah extra upon the spontaneous progress of the intellect as it functions freely out of its own incalculable nature. That progress is self-deter¬ mined or logical in its spontaneity; and the intellect functions freely because self-controlled, i.e. controlled by a ‘ nature ’ which, far from being incalculable, is the very principle and source of logical necessity. And the method is thus the intrinsic form, the inherent individual law, of the self-generative intellectual progress—a form or law made explicit by the intellect in its self-consciousness, i.e. in its attention to, and reflexive aware¬ ness of, the course of its own spontaneous advance.^ If this is Spinoza’s position, his project of expounding ‘the right way of discovering definitions’, though formulated ob¬ scurely and in misleading terms, is not to be dismissed as ‘ illu¬ sory’, as ‘begotten of a confusion of thought’. For what in substance he has undertaken is to disentangle the logical struc¬ ture of the living movement of thought, as it advances in science and philosophy, and to exhibit it in the form of an explicit doctrine of method. And this seems to be the central, if not the whole and only, task of Logic—so far, at least, as ‘ Logic ’ is taken to mean neither more nor less than the philo¬ sophical theory of knowledge. The subjects I propose to consider are: (i) Spinoza’s doctrine of the right linkage of the true ideas that constitute knowledge, together with his distinction between ‘the series of fixed and eternal things ’ and the temporal succession of the changeable, singular existents; and (ii) his ‘enumeration of the essential ! Cf. above, e.g. pp. 204-5. * I have been borrowing, and adapting to my own purpose, some of Bosanquet’s statements in The Value and Destiny of the Individual, pp. 8-9 and 194-5-

214

THE SECOND PART OF THE DOCTRINE OF METHOD;

properties of the intellect’ as a preliminary to the ‘discovery’ of its definition. The consideration of these subjects will bring into prominence three problems. Thus, under (i), we shall be led to ask (a) why, and in what precise sense, Spinoza insists that the object of definition is strictly individual or singular, and (b) whether he maintains that the temporally existent singular can be known and, if so, by what means. Finally, under (ii), we shall inquire (c) whether the procedure he adopts would have enabled him to escape the ‘vicious circle’ which, according to his own account, threatens to entangle us in at¬ tempting to define the intellect. (i) Spmoza’s doctrine of the right or logical linkage of ideas with its corollaries and implications. § 28. The relevant paragraphs of Spinoza’s exposition in the Treatise may be paraphrased as follows; ‘For the purpose of ordering and unitingi all our perceptions,^ it is requisite and reasonable to enquire, as soon as possible,^ whether there is given a Being such that it is the cause of all things. We must enquire, in other words, whether a First Cause exists and, at the same time, what is its nature,^ so that our idea of it (i.e.' its objective essence) may serve similarly as the cause of all our other ideas. If all our ideas are thus linked together and united {by being derived from the true idea of the First Cause), then, as we have already said, our mind will achieve its goal. For it will reflect ' T- 36, § 99; ‘ut . . . uniantur’, see above, p. 199. ^ We should have expected Spinoza to say ‘omnes nostrae ideae’. Perhaps his choice of the term perceptiones is due to his preoccupation with Physics and the objects of Physics in the present passage: cf. above, p. 201, and below, p. 215. 3 I read, following Leopold, ‘requiritur et ratio postulat ut, quamprimum fieri possit, inquiramus . . Gebhardt retains the reading of O.P. (confirmed, as he points out, by N.S.) in spite of its harshness and perversity. He inter¬ prets the clause, 'et ratio postulat’, which in O.P. and N.S. follows ‘possit’ as a parenthetical afterthought. ... an detur quoddam ens, et simul quale, quod sit causa . . . ’. According to the orthodox Aristotelian doctrine (cf., e.g., Aristotle, Post. Anal. B. 2), the two questions, ‘el ftrri’ and 'tI fern’, are inseparable. To ask or answer either is, eo ipso and pro tanto, to ask or answer the other. Thouerh Spinoza would not have accepted this doctrine in its application to finUe things, he is here in effect applying it to the Infinite Thing—to the Absolute Individual or God. And in this application the doctrine obviously holds. For since God’s essence necessarily involves his existence, to ask ‘ whether God exists is eo ipso to ask ‘ what God is ’; and to answer either question is pro tanto to answer also the other.

THE FRAMING AND DISCOVERY OF DEFINITIONS

215

Nature as faithfully as possible, since it will contain objectively the essence, order, and characteristic unity of Nature itself.' And from this we can see that, above all, it is necessary for us always to deduce all our ideas from physical things, i.e. from real constituents of Nature. So far as is possible, we must follow the series of causes step by step, advancing always from one real thing to another real thing.^ And, throughout, we must never cross over to abstractions and uni¬ versal,^ whether to infer something real from them or to infer them from something real; for the transition, in either case, interrupts the true progress of the intellect. ‘It must be noted,'' however, that what is here meant by “the series of causes and real things” is not the series of changeable singu¬ lars, but solely the series of fixed and eternal things. For no human mind could possibly comprehend in its feeble grasp the series of the changeable singular things—not only because of their countless multitude, but also because their existence has no connection with their essence. In other words, as I have said before,^ the existence or non-existence of a changeable singular thing is not an “eternal truth”, but is determined by an “external” cause—i.e. a cause in the thing’s environment. And its environment is an infinite complex of items, any one of which may be the “ external ” cause in question.^ ' ‘ . . . et turn mens nostra, uti diximus, quam maxime referet Naturam: nam et ipsius essentiam, et ordinem, et unionem habebit obiective.’ The reference (uti diximus) is probably to T. 17, § 42: cf. also 34, § 91, and The suggestion, in T. 17, § 42, that Nature is the original or pattern (exemplar), which we must endeavour to copy in our ideas and their arrange¬

35. § 95-

ment, seems incompatible with Spinoza’s own conception of Truth. According to his doctrine, as we have already seen (cf. above, e.g. pp. 54-6), Truth is the concrete identity of idea and ideatum—not their correlation, nor the corre¬ spondence of idea (as copy) to ideatum (as original).

Perhaps, in the sentence

quoted above, the second clause (nam . . . obiective) is intended to guard against a literal interpretation of the metaphor of ‘copying’, which might otherwise be suggested by the phrase quam maxime referet in the first clause. ^ Spinoza’s language, both here and in the corresponding passage (T. 35, § 95 ; cf, above, p. 201), must not be misunderstood.

He is thinking pri¬

marily, but not exclusively, of Physics and the objects of Physics.

In earlier

passages of the Treatise he has made it abundantly clear that the knowledge we are seeking includes far more than Physics; that by Natura he means nothing else, and nothing less, than Reality in its total amplitude—the uni¬ verse conceived in the infinitude of its being, not merely as an extended, corporeal, or ‘physical’ world; and that modes of Thought (ideas, souls, minds) as well as modes of Extension (bodies) are amongst the 'real things’ accessible to human knowledge. 3 The phrase, abstracta et universalia, is intended to cover axiomata univer-

salia, as well as res abstractae and entia rationis'. see below, p. 225, and the passages to which I there refer. ^ T. 36, § 100. 5 Cf.. e.g,, T. 19-21, §§ 52-5 (above, pp. 115-18); 25, § 65 ; and 25, § 67 (above, P- 153)* ‘Seriem enim rerum singularium mutabilium impossibile foret humanae

2I6

THE SECOND PART OF THE DOCTRINE OF METHOD:

‘But* neither is there any need for us to understand the series of changeable singular things. For from their series, or order of existing, it is impossible to elicit their “essences”. By a study of their series we can learn only details far removed from their " inmost essence ”— only their "extrinsic denominations”, their “relations”, or (at most) their “circumstances”.^ Their “inmost essence” must be sought solely in the fixed and eternal things, and simultaneously in the laws, which are inscribed in those things, as in their authentic text, and determine the order as well as the occurrence of all the change¬ able singulars.^ Indeed, the changeable singulars depend so inti¬ mately and “essentially ” (so to express it) upon the fixed and eternal things that, without them, they can neither be nor be conceived. And therefore these fixed and eternal things, though they are singu¬ lars, will nevertheless—owing to their omnipotence and the supreme amplitude of their power'*—play the part of universals in our Philo¬ sophy. We shall treat them {a) as the genera of our definitions of imbecillitati assequi, cum propter earum omnem numerum superantem multitudinem, turn propter infinitas circumstantias in una et eadem re, quarum unaquaeque potest esse causa, ut res existat aut non existat.’ As we learn presently {T. 36, § loi), a thing’s circumstantiae are, or include, its ‘extrinsic denominations’ and ‘relations’. Though, therefore, they are con¬ trasted with the thing itself (with its essence and propria), they constitute its environment, and are here said to be ‘ in ’ it. They belong to it as its ' accidents ’, or as external relations of which it is a term, or in which it stands. called ‘infinite’, knowledge.

presumably

because

they are

inexhaustible

They are

for

human

' T. 36, § loi. ^ If we are to acquire knowledge of the changeable singulars (and of some of them, as we shall see, knowledge is both requisite and attainable), we must grasp them in their definable nature or essence.

But since they are finite

things, their essence has no connexion with their existence and therefore cannot be gathered from their ‘series’—from, e.g., their several dates and positions in the spatio-temporal order, when (and as) they are ‘actual’ or exist (cf.

E.

V.

29 S.).

The same tendency to stress (and perhaps to exaggerate) the

disconnection of ‘ essence ’ and ‘ existence' in finite things survives in Spinoza’s later teaching: cf. E. ii. 8 (with its C. and S.) and, above all, the admirable .summary in Tract. Pol. ii, § 2.—On the meaning of a thing’s ‘circumstances’, see above, p. 216, n. 6. 3

‘ Haec vero [sc. intima essentia rerum] tantum est petenda a fixis atque

acternis rebus, et simul a legibus in iis rebus, tanquam in suis veris codicibus, inscriptis, secundum quod omnia singularia et fiunt et ordinantur.’ Spinoza s general meaning is fairly clear, and will be considered presently; but it is, I think, neither possible, nor of much importance, to determine whether he is comparing ‘the fixed and eternal things’ to an authentic text of the laws, to an authoritative code or codification of them (cf. Elwes, ii. 3 and G.A. log), or to the ‘tables’ on which they were originally eneraved (cf. Pollock, l.c. 141). ■* My translation of the words, ‘ob eorum ubique praesentiam et latissimam potentiam’, is taken from Hallett, Aeternitas, 47. defends

Gebhardt (ii. 336) rightly

against Boehmer’s ill-advised proposal to substitute^a/ewfiaw.

THE FRAMING AND DISCOVERY OF DEFINITIONS

217

the changeable singulars, and (b) as the proximate causes of all things.' ‘But,^ since this is the situation, a question of no slight difficulty suggests itself. For how is it possible to arrive at a knowledge of these changeable singulars ? To grasp them all together and at once in a single conception, a single intellectual act or act of knowledge, is far beyond the strength of a human intellect. If, therefore, we 'are to know them at all, we must conceive them one by one—i.e. one after another, and in a certain order. Now the right order of conceiving them (it has already been stated) cannot be elicited from their "series” or order of existing. But neither can it be gathered from the eternal things. For there—i.e. in their dependence upon the series of fixed and eternal things—these changeable singulars are neither before nor after one another, but simultaneous in their real or essential nature. ‘ Hence, in order to acquire knowledge of the changeable singulars, we shall have to seek other auxiliary measures, in addition to those we employ to help us towards understanding the eternal things and their laws. But this is not the place to give an account of these additional aids; nor is there any need to explain them, until we have gained sufficient knowledge of the eternal things and their infallible laws, and until we have learnt the nature of our senses. ‘ (The^ time to explain these additional aids will come later— before we equip ourselves for the actual work of winning knowledge of the changeable singulars. As we shall then show, these additional aids are designed to teach us (a) how to use our senses aright and (b) how to contrive experiments according to definite rules, and in due order, so that they may suffice to delimit and fix the thing we are investigating. Thus (c) they are all directed to the same end viz. that from our observations and experiments we may be able to infer according to what laws of the eternal things the changeable • I take this to mean that, in Spinoza’s definitions of the changeable singu¬ lars, the fixed and eternal things will take the place, so to say, both of the generic element and of the specific differentia in a definition constructed ac¬ cording to the traditional rules of Scholastic (and Aristotelian) Logic. 2 r. 37, § 102.

I have tried to bring out Spinoza’s meaning, so far as I

understand it, by a greatly expanded paraphrase of this compressed and difficult passage. 3 T. 37, § 103.

Leopold (Ad Spinozae Opera Posthuma, 67-8) points out

that the long first sentence of § 103 (‘Antequam—ostendam ) interrupts the sequence of Spinoza’s thought, was probably added by him as a marginal note to the concluding sentence of § 102, and therefore ought to be relegated^ to a footnote.

Even if Gebhardt is right in retaining 'Antequam—ostendam ’ in

the text (on the authority of N.S. as well as O.P.) the passage is clearly to be regarded as a parenthetical digression. 4518

F f

2i8 the second part OF THE DOCTRINE OF METHOD:

singular in question has been made, i.e. may get to know its inmost essence.)' ‘Here, however, to return to my main undertaking,^ I shall try to set forth only what seems necessary for attaining to knowledge of the eternal things, and for framing their definitions in conformity with the conditions already laid down.’ § 29. Though in some of its details Spinoza’s exposition is notoriously obscure, the main purport of his teaching seems plain: and I will now try to recapitulate the ‘ right ’ procedure for linking together our true ideas—i.e. the procedure he pre¬ scribes or foreshadows in his doctrine of method.^ (I) Since the goal of our endeavour is that our mind shall reflect Reality,4 we must begin by trying to find a true idea of the First Cause—an idea which is the objective essence of the originative source of all things. Our first step, in other words, must be to frame, so far as we can, a good definition of Natura Naturans, i.e. of the ‘uncreated’ or self-creative Being which originates, and sustains in modal dependence upon itself, all ‘things created’—all physical things and (generally) whatever has modal reality as a constituent of Natura Naturata. ' In this hurried sketch of the ‘additional aids’ Gebhardt (G.A. 113-15) sees unmistakable evidence of the influence upon Spinoza’s views of his recent study of Bacon. It may be so, I agree. But, so far as I can see, nothing IS here said about observation and experiment, which Spinoza could only have

derived from Bacon—which he might not equally well have drawn from his knowledge of Descartes, or indeed have originated himself. Nor is it accurate to say {G.A .114) that ‘ whereas hitherto . .. Spinoza has deliberately contrasted his own deductive method with the Baconian method of induction based on experiments, he now, all of a sudden, recognizes the value of the latter as regards knowledge of the singular things'. Hie, ut ad propositum revertar’: Spinoza is obviously referring to ‘non est huius loci ea tradere’ (T. 37, 1. 17, § 102). See above, p. 217. ^ My recapitulation is, of course, to some extent conjectural.

For,

in

default of the ‘philosophical’ part of the ‘Opusculum’ (cf. above, p. 207), I have been obliged to supplement and explain the exposition in the Treatise by drawing freely upon the teaching and terminology of the Korte

Verhandehng and the Ethics. And since it is far from certain what stage in his own philosophical development Spinoza had reached when the Treatise was composed, I may be imputing to him in my recapitulation, some views, per¬ haps, which he had already abandoned or modified, and others which he had not yet formed. i.e. (cf. above, p. 214) ‘that the essence, order, and characteristic unity of Nature itself’ shall, so far as possible, be the content of our knowledge.

I

assume that by ‘Nature’ Spinoza means, in accordance with his regular use of the term, Reality in its total amplitude: cf. above, pp. 201 and 215.

THE FRAMING AND DISCOVERY OF DEFINITIONS

219

Already, at this ‘first step’, two objections will no doubt be raised: and, before going further, I must try to meet them. We are to begin, it seems, by searching for a true idea, by trying to frame a good definition, of the First Cause. But {a) is not Spinoza professing to teach us how to link together ‘our true ideas’—ideas we possess already in the absolute assurance of their truth ? And (b) suppose we search, but fail to find, or are deceived in thinking we have found, a true idea ? What is the use of a doctrine of method, if the first step of the procedure it enjoins may turn out to be a stumble—if it proves impossible to frame a good definition of the First Cause ? {a) After what has been said already, it will be enough to remind the reader that,/or our present purpose, the first of these obj ections has become irrelevant. ^ Certainly, Spinoza insists that method, as cognitio reflexiva or idea ideae, reflects upon a given true idea. It presupposes—so he means or seems to mean—that we possess at least one true idea without reflection: that at least one true idea, one act of knowledge self-evident and infallible, constitutes, and therefore is innate in, and inalienable from, our mind.2 And, certainly, this whole trend of his teaching (dominant, as it seems to be, and central in the Treatise) is not easy to reconcile with the conception of knowledge and its method which underlies his treatment in the present passage. For here there is no true idea, no genuine knowledge, before, and independent of, the self-controlled reflective thought which is the method. And method here is not a reflection supervening upon a knowledge already perfect, already self-evident and in¬ fallible, and already ours, without reflection. Method here is conceived (to adapt Spinoza’s own description in an earlier context) as the way in which true ideas are to be sought and acquired in the right order.3 For our present purpose, then, we are to assume not only that the mind is thinking, from the start and throughout the development of its knowledge, but also * Cf. above, pp. 212-13. 2 Cf., e.g., T. 14, § 33 (above, p. 57, n. 4).

See also above, pp. 25, 90-1, 100,

159-61, 165-6, and 211. 3 T. 15, § 36 (above, p. 102): ‘hinc sequitur, quod vera non est methodus signum veritatis quaerere post acquisitionem idearum, sed quod vera methodus est via, ut ipsa veritas aut essentiae obiectivae rerum aut ideae (omnia ilia idem significant) debito ordine quaerantur.’

220 THE SECOND PART OF THE DOCTRINE OF METHOD:

that its thinking is self-controlled, i.e. guided by its own reflec¬ tion upon itself. To have a true idea is to acquire it: and to acquire it is to find or win it by a reflective search. The search is reflective—i.e. conducted by the mind within itself by probing its own experiences.* We are to begin, Spinoza has said, by trying to find a true idea of the First Cause. The ‘reflective search’, as I have called it, for this primary true idea can hardly be anything else than a questioning, sifting, and refashioning by the mind of the chang¬ ing states of its own conscious being—the sensations, e.g., the memories and feelings, to which it attends as they occur within itself. But the reflective search, by which the mind acquires the remaining true ideas or constituents of its knowledge, is a questioning and a scrutiny of this primary true idea itself, so as to elicit its implications one by one, and in their logical or ‘ deductive ’ order. And thus the very process of acquiring these derivative true ideas is also the right way or method of linking them together, and uniting them to the primary true idea, so that (together with the latter) they will constitute a logically coherent whole or system of knowledge. (ft) According to Spinoza, it will be remembered, to have a true idea is to possess knowledge self-evident and infallible— knowledge that guarantees itself.^ So far, therefore, he seems to be fully armed against the second of the two objections I formu¬ lated above. ‘True ideas’, he would presumably reply, ‘must be acquired, and their acquisition presupposes a reflective search; but when we have acquired them, i.e. if and while we possess them, we can neither doubt nor be deceived.’ But this reply, far from disposing of the objection, ignores the objector’s main point. In the procedure, enjoined by Spinoza’s doctrine of method, we are to begin by inquiring ‘whether a First Cause exists and . . . what is its nature’.3 And the objec¬ tor’s main point is that, if so, the entire procedure is nebulous and futile. Our inquiry, he urges, may prove unsuccessful. By * Cf. r. 15, § ^6, footnote o: ‘quid quaerere in anima sit, explicatur in mea Philosophia’.

Though, unfortunately, the promised explanation is nowhere

given, it seems clear that true ideas can only be acquired by searching ‘in’ the soul or mind itself. ^ Cf., e.g., r. 15, § 35 (above, p. 57). 3

T. 36, § 99 (above, p. 214).

THE FRAMING AND DISCOVERY OF DEFINITIONS

221

our reflective search we may fail to find or acquire, and thus may never in fact possess, a true idea of the First Cause. The procedure, in short, can have no solidity, no practical value, unless our first step is not an ‘inquiring’, but a ‘knowing’— not the search for the basal true idea or definition, but its pos¬ session. The orderly acquisition of true ideas of the ‘created things’ is impossible, unless and until we have not only sought, but found, a true idea of the ‘ uncreated thing ’—not only tried to frame, but succeeded in framing, a good definition of the First Cause. It seems clear that the only way to dispose completely of this second objection is to fall back on the ‘dominant trend’ of Spinoza’s teaching, and to reconcile it, by a more liberal inter¬ pretation of his statements, with his occasional insistence that reflection (i.e. thinking, self-conscious and self-controlled) is inseparably involved in the possession of every true idea, in every act of knowledge.' The objector, we must say, is forcing an open door. He is attacking a position which the Treatise, rightly interpreted, never defends: and supporting his attack by arguments which Spinoza would himself endorse. For, that ‘ knowing ’ is the indispensable basis and growing-point of ‘ in¬ quiring’, while yet (in another, but complementary, sense) its result and outcome; that our knowledge starts from a true idea, within which it develops, and which only in that develop¬ ment we fuUy possess; that the methodical acquisition of know¬ ledge of the ‘ created things ’ presupposes, and carries gradually onward towards maturity, a germinal knowledge of the ‘un¬ created thing’ which is their immanent First Cause; these, we must urge against the objector, are varied expressions of a single doctrine which Spinoza throughout the Treatise, in spite of many verbal inconsistencies, is anxious to maintain. But, in offering this answer to the objection on Spinoza's behalf, I must repeat that, if this is indeed the doctrine he in¬ tends to uphold, his exposition in the Treatise is (to say the least) extremely misleading. For, on the one hand, as we have seen, most of his statements suggest that the primary true idea is given to an unthinking, or at least an unreflecting, mind: and that, simply because so given, it is already an item of absolute ' Cf. above, pp. 219-20.

222 THE SECOND PART OF THE DOCTRINE OF METHOD:

knowledge—neither needing nor admitting development, but inherently self-evident and infallible. Sometimes, on the other hand, as we have also seen, he asserts (or at all events im¬ plies) that all true ideas must be acquired by a reflective search, i.e. that none is simply given—not even the primary true idea or basal definition of the First Cause. And, in general, he no¬ where expressly says that knowledge is a growth, the develop¬ ment of a germ, rather than a sum or accumulation of items; nor does he even hint (but, on the contrary, seems to deny) that true ideas differ from one another in the degree of their truth, in the comparative fullness and perfection of the knowledge they embody. (II) Next, having framed a ‘good’ definitioni of the First Cause, we must derive from it (and, in deriving, link to it) all those true ideas of the ‘ created things ’ which are to constitute, together with it, the ordered whole of our knowledge. We must arrange them as they follow from the primary true idea, or basal definition, by deduction ’—i.e. by the progressive (selfgenerative) development of its implications, step by step, in the hierarchical order in which they emerge when elicited by the reflective scrutiny of our mind. For all things real, but created—e.g. all ‘physical things’—are modes of Natura Naturata. They are effects of the First Cause, but effects which its immanent creative activity produces and sustains in a hierarchi¬ cal order of descent and eo ipso of modal dependence. And therefore their ‘objective essences’ (i.e. our true ideas or defini¬ tions of them) can be, and ought to be, ‘deduced’ in the same hierarchical order from the ‘objective essence’ of the First Cause. Thus our primary true idea, our basal definition, will serve as the immanent First Cause of all our other true ideas or definitions. It will be the logical ground within which, and the logical antecedent from which, they all derive as an eternal hierarchy of logically inevitable consequents. ^ ^

’ i.e. a definition which satisfies the conditions laid down for defining the uncreated thing’: cf. T. 36-7, § 97 (above, p. 203).

Cf e.g., T. 16-17, §§41-2 (above, pp. loo-i). All that Spinoza says in the present passage (T. 36, § 99: above, pp. 214-15) is that ‘we must enquire whether there is given a Being such that it is the cause of all things that

so

. .its " objective essence " may serve similarly as the cause of all our other

Ideas .

But the interpretation I have given in my restatement is confirmed

(If I am not mistaken) both by the context and by his teaching in the Korte

THE FRAMING AND DISCOVERY OF DEFINITIONS

223

On the details of this derivation or deduction of the true ideas or definitions of the created things, little is said in the Treatise. Spinoza’s doctrine of method prescribes, as we have seen, the first step that must be taken by the mind in the reflective or self-conscious acquisition and ordering of its knowledge: but, in regard to the subsequent steps, it lays down nothing more than a general principle of guidance. The first step is to frame a good definition of the First Cause. So much is definitely pre¬ scribed. But, for the rest, we are apparently to trust to the self-generative development of this basal definition, this primary true idea. We are to rely, in short, upon the power in¬ herent in its nature as a true idea (i.e. as an integral act of intellect) to expand and fulfil itself in further true ideas. And in so far as we co-operate self-consciously in its self-development (eliciting from it, and linking to it and to one another, the true ideas of created things hy our reflection), our thought must guide itself by a single principle. It must proceed always in such a manner that the order of our knowledge shall reflect, as faith¬ fully as possible, the order of Reality. And by ‘the order of Reality’, as the further course of Spinoza’s exposition shows, nothing else is meant than the order in which, according to his own metaphysical theory, created things are eternally produced, eternally ranked, and eternally sustained, as modes of Natura Naturata, by the omnipotence of the First Cause. § 30. If, as I believe, the preceding recapitulation is substan¬ tially correct, it is difficult to see any value whatever in this part of the doctrine of method. As a practical aid to the mind in linking together its true ideas, the procedure Spinoza pre¬ scribes is a palpable failure. For assume (a large and most ques¬ tionable assumption) that we have succeeded in forming a good Verhandeling and the Ethics. All created things ‘follow from God’s supreme power, or infinite nature, with the same necessity, with which it follows eternally, from the nature of the triangle, that its angles are equal to two right angles’ (E. i. 17 S.).

Hence the definition or ‘objective essence’ of God is

both the total ground within which there is eternally sustained, and the first term from which there eternally originates, the implicatory or ‘deductive’ hierarchy of the true ideas or definitions (i.e. the ‘objective essences’) of all created things—just as the triangle’s propria are eternally grounded in, and flow eternally from, its definition or essential nature. pp. 69-70.

Cf, above. Excursus,

224

the second part of the doctrine of METHOD:

definition of the First Cause. Thenceforward the only assistance provided by the doctrine of method is what I have called its ‘general principle of guidance ’—viz. the injunction so to control the movement of our thought that the ordered whole of our true ideas shall ‘reflect’ the order of Reality. And it is clear not only that this principle is inapplicable unless, but also that it is superfluous if. Reality and its order are known to us before or at any rate independently of our knowledge of the doctrine of method. Some of Spinoza’s statements, it is true, are carelessly drafted. Taken literally, and in isolation from their context, they suggest that, in his view, there is an order of Reality, a causal series of real things, subsisting in its own right—while nevertheless it is ‘given’ to us solid, as it were, without our intellectual activity, and miraculously attests itself as the Original which we, in our self-conscious thinking, must try to ‘reflect’. But (a) it is incredible that Spinoza should have blun¬ dered into a realistic position so crude and nonsensical: and {b) it is clear from the subsequent course of his exposition that the Original, to which his ‘general principle of guidance’ appeals, is the eternal order of Reality as known and set forth in his own philosophy. Yet, in thus avoiding Scylla, has he steered clear of Charybdis ? For to study the doctrine of method, and to follow its procedure, can neither be necesssary (one would think) nor profitable to those who already possess philosophical knowledge of Reality and its eternal order. Why should they labour to acquire, by reflection and self-consciously, an ordered whole of true ideas which, at the best, will only copy an Original already known to them at first-hand and without the method— already grasped intuitively and infallibly by their philosophical knowledge ? Against this line of criticism, with its plausible dilemma, it still seems possible to revive a previously suggested interpre¬ tation, ^ and to discern some elements of theoretical or specula¬ tive value in this part of the doctrine of method. Certainly, * In discussing (above, pp. 212-13) Spinoza’s project of expounding ‘the right way of discovering definitions

I suggested that ‘ what in substance

he has undertaken is to disentangle the logical structure of the living move¬ ment of thought, as it advances in science and philosophy, and to exhibit it in the form of an explicit doctrine of method ’.

THE FRAMING AND DISCOVERY OF DEFINITIONS

225

here and throughout the Treatise, Spinoza’s primary aim is not logical speculation or theory; and certainly, for all practical purposes, the procedure he here prescribes is worthless. Yet, underlying it, and expressed or clearly implied in his exposition, are certain assumptions in regard to the logical structure of the best attainable or ‘philosophical’ kind of knowledge. It is no part of his plan, nor does he attempt, to justify these assump¬ tions in his Treatise—still less to base a reasoned theory upon them, or to weave it out of them. Nevertheless, it is clearly worth while to ascertain, by a closer examination of his exposi¬ tion, what exactly he has assumed; and how far he has thus contributed, indirectly or incidentally, to the solution of the central problem of ‘Logic’ or the philosophical theory of knowledge. I § 31. Returning, then, to the text of Spinoza’s exposition, let us examine it more closely. {a) ‘So far as is possible', Spinoza says, ‘we must follow the series of causes step by step, advancing always from one real thing to another real thing. And, throughout, we must never cross over to abstractions and universals, whether to infer something real from them or to infer them from something real. . . .’^ These statements add little to what we already know. The knowledge which is our aim—the knowledge of which Spinoza is setting forth the method—is not ratio, but scientia intuitiva. It is, therefore, not abstract and of universals, but concrete and of singulars.3 Hence, though it is an ordered whole or system of true ideas, its logical structure is not the same as, nor even analogous to, that of a science. In the ordered whole of our knowledge there must be no ‘universal axioms’, i.e. no abstract universal propositions'^ or fundamental principles, how¬ ever true or ‘self-evident’; no class-concepts or notions of genera and species] and no ‘ideas of abstract entities’, such as the figures and numbers which are defined and studied by the ' Cf. above, p. 213. ^ T. 36, § 99 (above, pp. 214-15). ^ Cf. above, pp. 202-3. “ Cf., e.g., T. 12, § 23, where the universal proposition that ‘given 4 terms in geometrical proportion the product of the means is equal to the product of the extremes ’ is called an axioma universale. 4518

Gg

226

THE SECOND PART OF THE DOCTRINE OF METHOD:

mathematician.I On the other hand, such ‘abstractions and universals’ are indispensable in the constitution of a science. Each of the sciences—whether demonstrative or empirical, whether ‘mathematical’ or ‘natural’—deserves, no doubt, to be regarded as ‘an ordered whole of knowledge’. It is a system of ideas or ideal elements held together by relations. But, in every science, some or all of the related elements are m ahstractae or entia rationis—e.g. the types of geometrical figures, the kinds and species of animals, the orders and families of plants. And some or aU of the relations are similarly ‘ unreal ’. They are neither facts nor in the facts, but entia rationis— products and contents of thought, superimposed upon the facts, or abstracted from them and generalized by the scientific mind. In some sciences they are ‘self-evident’ principles, hke the universal (but abstract) axioms employed in mathematical demonstration: in others, they are abstract empirical generali¬ zations, masquerading as ‘Laws of nature’. (i) What we are seeking is philosophical knowledge—know¬ ledge of the highest grade {scientia intuitiva), knowledge at once ‘infinitive’ and systematic. Our knowledge is to be an ordered whole of true ideas: but, in its logical structure, as we have seen, it achieves the highest grade of its perfection and is scientia intuitiva. This ‘positive account’ may be summarized and restated as follows: The perfect knowledge, which is our aim, is a series or chain of true ideas, self-generated by logical implication from, and also within, a true idea or definition of the First Cause. And this chain—as a whole, and in each of its Hnks and linkages —reflects ‘the series of causes and real things’, i.e. the eternal order or hierarchy of Reality. For ‘the series’ here in question is the series of ‘ fixed and eternal things ’—i.e. of the modes of Natura Naturata; and must be sharply distinguished from ' the series of changeable singulars ’, i.e. the succession of the transi¬ tory things we observe and encounter in our perceptual ex¬ perience. In the chain which constitutes our knowledge, every true In support of my interpretation of the scope of Spinoza’s warning against

ahstracta et universalia, I may refer the reader to T. 28-9, §§ 74-6; 34, § 93; and 35, § 95 (above, pp. 158-61; 202-3: and 201, n. 2).

THE

FRAMING AND DISCOVERY OF DEFINITIONS

227

idea (or link) will be a definition. It wiU define a singular mem¬ ber of ‘the series of causes and real things’: i.e. it will state the inmost essence of a ‘created thing’—an effect of the First Cause. And every logical implication (or linkage) will reflect the bond really (i.e. essentially) uniting a singular ‘created thing’ to its neighbour in the uniquely graded descent of all ‘created things’ or effects from the First Cause—in the eternal hierarchy or scale of their dependence, as modes of Natura Naturata, upon the Absolute Individual. In short, every nexus in the logical fabric, or in the ordered whole of our knowledge, will reflect an actual strand, as it were, in the real fabric, in the order of Nature. The following alternative draft shows how Professor Joachim meant to continue his exposition. § 31. So far, it must be confessed, there seems to be nothing in Spinoza’s exposition to support the suggestion—^put forward, perhaps too rashly, in an earlier context—that he is ‘ trying to disentangle the logical structure of the living movement of thought, as it advances in science and philosophy, and to ex¬ hibit it in the form of an explicit doctrine of method ’.' Yet from a closer examination of some of his statements it is possible to gather that he assumes and is anxious to emphasize certain theses in regard to the logical character of the philosophical knowledge which is our aim. And before leaving this subject I will try to show what these theses are and discuss their value. (1) No abstractions or universals. (2) Singulars linked together by singular linkages. (3) Science of real singulars—but eternal. (4) What are these fixed and eternal things ? (5) Though singular they are concretely universal (individual) and embody laws. Discuss here [u) Spinoza’s insistence that the object of defini¬ tion (i.e. the essence) is strictly individual or singular: and {b) whether and, if so, by what means the temporally existent singulars (toc qjOapToc) can be known. ' Cf. above, p. 214.

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INDEX Accidents, two Aristotle; 26 69, 214 n. 4. Assent: 155-7, Attributes: cf. Thought.

kinds of, 37. n. i, 37-8, 46 n. 2. ^^3s.v. Extension, God,

Francis; his supposed influ¬ ence on Spinoza, 25 n. 2 ; Spinoza’s use of an anology from, 53; cf. 89, 202 n. 4. Body, the Mode of Extension and the, 30, 47, 61; the universe and human, how related, 74; the ‘Composite’, 77-8; our body is a finite mode of Substance conceived under the Attribute of Extension, 84, 168-72 ; imaginational experience and the, 136-8; the mind is the idea of the, 149 n. 2 ; the union of Soul and, 29, 32. Boehmer: 216 n. 4. Borkonski, S. Von Dunin: 71 n. 2. Bosanquet; 91 n. 3, i86n. i, 213 n. 2. Bouwmeester, Jan; ii n. 2, 104. Boxel; 124 n. 3. Bradley, F. H: 73 n. 2, 147 n. i, 195 n. I. Bruder; 3 n. 3, 4, 28 n. i, 116 n. 2.

Bacon,

Cause, adequate X inadequate, 173-4; the First, 5, 137, 190, 202, 218-23. Cogitatio: 65, 71 n. 3 ; cf. s.v. Thought. Conatus, potentia and, 42 n. i. Croce; 88 n. i. Definitions, the framing and dis¬ covery of, 198-214. Descartes : his theory of the human soul, 60-5 ; his doctrine concerning Truth, 97-9; cf. 49, 51 n. i, 56 n. i, 58, 93 n. I, 94 n. I, 95 n. 2, 96 n. 2, 106, 120 n. 2, 122 n. I, 132 n. 3, 140 n. 2, 157 n. I, 179 n. i, 181 n. 5, 183 n. I. Deus sive Natural 18 n. 4, 22, 39, 41, 64, 72. Dialectic, Reality is a, 99. Doubt (idea, dubia, dubitatio); 181—98. Ebbinghaus, Prof. Julius: 76 n. 2. Elbogen; 6 n. 4, 21, 124 n. 4. Elwes; I n. i, 52 n. i. End, the ‘ supreme good ’ and our, 21; conditions of the attainment of our, 34-

Endeavour, the true end of human, 16—24. Entia rationisi 201 n. 2. Error (idea falsa, falsitas), 151-81. Essence, the Aristotelian X Spinozistic conception of, 37-8; Reality and, 50; potentia and essentia of God are the same, 65; supposals of, 122-6; definition and, 201-3, 212; propria and, 206; the infima species and the, 209. Essential objectiva X formalis, 55-7; the idea is objectiva rei, 99; cf. 70 n. I, 90, 222. Ethics, the, the relation of Tdle to, 8, 13 ; description of Scientia Intuitiva in, 44. Eustachius a Sancto Paulo; 91 n. 5. Existence, supposals of, 114-22. Extension, is an attribute of God, 9; the Body and, 30, 47; the Essence of Reality is constituted by Thought and, 50; a ' something’ presupposed by, 61 ; Thought and, 65; our body is a finite mode of Substance con¬ ceived under the attribute of, 84, 168. 'Face of the Universe’ (Facies totius universi) i 76, 84 n. 3, 143 n. 2, 144 n. 2. Freudenthal; i n. 2. Gebhardt; I n. 2, 2 n. 3, 3, 4, 5 n. i, 6 n. 2, 10 n. I, 12, 13, 14, 20, 34 n. 2, 36 n. I, 53 n. I, 100 n. 3, loi n. 2, 116 n. 2, 117 n. 2, 159 n. i, 165 n. 2, 182 n. I, 183 n. I, 214 n. 3, 216 n. 4, 217 n. 3. Gilson; 56 n. i, 90 n. i, 91 n. 5, 122 n. 2. God, the attributes of, 5; distinction between propria and accidents of, 9; the ‘unique, infinite thing’ is, 39; his existence cannot be con¬ ceived without his essence, 40; qua self-creating and qua self-created, 64; essentia and potentia are the same in, 65 ; the ‘Infinite Idea’ of, 87-8 ; in ultimate analysis, the only ‘thinking thing’ is, loi, 169; Reality is, 160; finite minds and, 169-72; the objective essence of, 69-70, 222 n. 2. Good, the supposed ‘goods’ and the true, 17-20; the supreme, 21-4.

230

INDEX

Hallett, H. F. ; 48 n. 2, 65 n. i, 71 n. 2, 75 n. I, 77 n. 2, 216 n. 4. Hegel; 73, 79 n. i. Idea, the simple, 49; the relation of the ideatum and the true, 54—7, 92, 130. 155; every idea is an act of mind and every act of mind is an, 58, 168, 186; the ideatum and the ‘ clear and distinct ’, 75; Omni¬ science of the ‘Infinite’, 85; the ‘adequacy’ of an, 91-3, 175; every human mind contains at least one true, 100; the reflective (idea ideae), 106, 219; reconstruction of Spin¬ oza’s doctrine of the ‘true’, 109; the ‘integrity’ of an, 155; the ultimate constituents of error are simple ideas, 157; every idea in¬ volves an affirmation and negation, 168; the ‘hierarchy’ of finite ideas, 86-8; a ‘ false ’ idea is a contradic¬ tion in terms, 177. Ideatum, the true idea and its, 54-7, 92, 130,155 ; the ‘clear and distinct’ idea and its, 75 ; every human body is the ideatum of a single idea of a self-subsistent mind, 66-7, 74-8, 168-72. Imagination, confused experience or, 41, 81, 98; ideas of, 60: supposal and, 126; what Spinoza means by, 134; Intellect and, 134, 166; rela¬ tion between genuine idea and ideas of, 166-75, 187; Spinoza’s treat¬ ment of imagination in the Ethics, 193Individuation, Substance, modes and, 41; the ultimate, 75; the First Cause and, 137. Individual, the finite, 41, 80-8; the absolute, 72, 74, 80-8, loi, 137, 145. 157. 160, 165, 214 n. 4. Induction, simple and incomplete, 28. Infinite, the true and ‘spurious’, 79 n. I. Intellect, the Cartesian distinction of Will and, 59; the absolute, infinite, 74; the power of clear and distinct thinking is the, 97; Imagination and, 134, 166; the ‘order’ of the, 147. Intuition (Scientia Intuitiva), the fourth variety of knowledge is, 33; description of, 43 ; is an Ideal, 45 ; the infallible apprehension of simple ideas is, 49; the ‘ Infinite Idea ’ and. 85Jelles, Jarigh: 2, 21 n. i. Judgement, is not a complex ex¬ perience, 58; the idea and the, 98,

109; doubt is a ‘suspense’ of, 184 I, 197.

n.

Knowledge, the best kind of, 16; the supreme good is, 24; the four varieties of, 24-33; the first variety of, 26; the second variety of, 27; the third variety of, 28; the fourth variety of, 32, 210; the ‘ end' is, 35 ; Method and, 52-112; Method is knowlege of, 57; ‘clear’ thought or, 81; advance in knowledge, 90. Korte Verhandeling, relation of the Tdle to the, i, 7—10. Land: 3. Leopold; i n. 2, 3, 100 n. 2, 214 n. 3, 217 n. 3. Locke; 51 n. 2. Love (amor): 18 n. 4, 23 n. 4. Matter, there is no inert, 67; Motion and, 67-71. Meijer: 58 n. 2, 71 n. 2. Meinsma: I n. 2, 21 n. i. Memory (memoria), Spinoza’s account of, 147-51-. Method, the discovery of a, 36; Know¬ ledge and its, 52-112; does not lead to a self-stultifying regress, 57; Knowledge reflecting upon itself is, 104; Definition is the central theme of the doctrine of, 198; twofold aim of, 199; criticism of the rules of, 203-12. Meyer, Dr. Lodewijk; 2 n. 3. Modes, individuation of, 41, 82; Sub¬ stance and, 40; Attributes and, 65 n. I; the existence of finite, 118 n. 2. Motion, Matter and, 67-71. Natje, Hans: 202 n. 4. Natura naturans and Natura naturata: 10, 40, 42, 48 n. 2, 64, 65 n. I, 66, 83, loi, 218, 222, 226. Nature, the whole of, 18 n. 4. Necessary, possible X, 115. Notions (notiones communes, Koiva d^icbnorra), what are ‘common’, 12. Oldenburg; 4 n. 4, 5, 6, 73, 211 n. i. Passivity, of the phenomenal self, 47-8, 138, 142. Perceptio: cf. s.v. Knowledge. Pollock; i n. i. Possible, necessary X. 115. Propria, distinction between Attri¬ butes of God and, 9, 201 n. i; accidents and, 37; essence and, 206.

INDEX Pseudo-cognizance: cf. s.v. Doubt, Error, Supposal. Quaestiones, the meaning of, 120 n. 2. Ratio, knowledge by scientific deduc¬ tion is, 28, 84 n. 2, 85. Real, the Intelligible and the, 39; truth and ‘something’, 94; the ‘order’ of the, 223. Rieuwertsz, Jan: 2. Rivaud: 95 n. 2.

3 n. 3, 5 n. 7, 8. Royal Society, the, 5-6.

Roth: i n. i,

Scholastic Philosophy: 37, 56 n. i, 209, 2170. I; the scholastic defini¬ tion of truth, 91, 165, 132 n. 3. Schuller, Dr. G. H.: 2 n. 3, 77. Scientia Intuitiva, cf. s.v. Intuition. Sense-Perception: cf. 29, 66, 132. Series rerum fixarum aeternarumque, 213-18. Signs: 26. SiGWART, 25 n. 2, 59 n. I.

Soul, the Cartesian theory of the ‘human’, 60. Space, the physical world is nothing but three-dimensional, 67. Spinoza, Opera postuma of, 2; Dutch translations of works of, 3; Francis Bacon and, 25 n. 2; his attitude towards Mathematics, 50. Spyck, H. van der: 2.

231

Stoics, the, 158; their use of A^lcoya and TvpoTaais, 202 n. 4. Substance, the infinite, 22; Modes and, 40: the unique substance is necessarily individual, 41; Des¬ cartes’s theory of, 61; self-creating and self-created, 65, 74; the unity of, 73; the Body and, 84, 168-72. Supposal (idea ficta, fictio), 114-51. Thought, the attribute of; cf. 9, 30, 61, 71, 105, no, 138, 168. Tractatus de Intellectus emendatione, date and composition of, 2-15. Truth, the Scholastic definition of, 91, 165 ; the nature of (forma veri), 93> 99: no external criterion needed for, 102; eternal truths, 117; falsity X, 154-7, 176-81. Tschirnhaus:

ii,

76 n.

i, 96 n. 2,

203.

Universal, knowledge of the, 30, 202 ; the abstract and the, 158-61, 201 n. 2, 202-3, 226 n. 3. Vloten, Van; 8.

Whole, the conception of the, 68. Will, does not affirm or negate in judgement, 58, 184 n. i, 196-7; theCartesian distinction of Intellect and, 59. Wolf; 5 n. 2, 6 n. 2.

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