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these propositions "blessed." Let a man once believe in that God of infinite attributes of which thought and extension are those by which He manifests Himself to us; let him see that the opposition between thought and matter is fictitious; that his mind "is a part of the infinite intellect of God"; that he is not a mere transient, outside interpreter of the universe, but himself the soul or law, which is the universe, and he will feel a relationship with infinity which will emancipate him.
It is not true that in Spinoza's God there is so little that is positive that it is not worth preserving. All Nature is in Him, and if the objector is sincere he will confess that it is not the lack of contents in the idea which is disappointing, but a lack of contents particularly interesting to himself.
The opposition between the mind and body of man as two diverse entities ceases with that between thought and extension. It would be impossible briefly to explain in all its fulness what Spinoza means by the proposition: "The object of the idea constituting the human mind is a body" {39}; it is sufficient here to say that, just as extension and thought are one, considered in different aspects, so body and mind are one. We shall find in the fifth part of the Ethic that Spinoza affirms the eternity of the mind, though not perhaps in the way in which it is usually believed.
Following the order of the Ethic we now come to its more directly ethical maxims. Spinoza denies the freedom commonly assigned to the will, or perhaps it is more correct to say he denies that it is intelligible. The will is determined by the intellect. The idea of the triangle involves the affirmation or volition that its three angles are equal to two right angles. If we understand what a triangle is we are not "free" to believe that it contains more or less than two right angles, nor to act as if it contained more or less than two. The only real freedom of the mind is obedience to the reason, and the mind is enslaved when it is under the dominion of the passions. "God does not act from freedom of the will," {40a} and consequently "things could have been produced by God in no other manner and in no other order than that in which they have been produced." {40b}
"If you will but reflect," Spinoza tells Boxel, "that indifference is nothing but ignorance or doubt, and that a will always constant and in all things determinate is a virtue and a necessary property of the intellect, you will see that my words are entirely in accord with the truth." {40c} To the same effect is a passage in a letter to Blyenbergh, "Our liberty does not consist in a certain contingency nor in a certain indifference, but in the manner of affirming or denying, so that in proportion as we affirm or deny anything with less indifference, are we the more free." {41a} So also to Schuller, "I call that thing free which exists and acts solely from the necessity of its own nature: I call that thing coerced which is determined to exist and to act in a certain and determinate manner by another." {41b} With regard to this definition it might be objected that the necessity does not lie solely in the person who wills but is also in the object. The triangle as well as the nature of man contains the necessity. What Spinoza means is that the free man by the necessity of his nature is bound to assert the truth of what follows from the definition of a triangle and that the stronger he feels the necessity the more free he is. Hence it follows that the wider the range of the intellect and the more imperative the necessity which binds it, the larger is its freedom.
In genuine freedom Spinoza rejoices. "The doctrine is of service in so far as it teaches us that we do everything by the will of God alone, and that we are partakers of the divine nature in proportion as our actions become more and more perfect and we more and more understand God. This doctrine, therefore, besides giving repose in every way to the soul, has also this advantage, that it teaches us in what our highest happiness or blessedness consists, namely, in the knowledge of God alone, by which we are drawn to do those things only which love and piety persuade." {42a} In other words, being part of the whole, the grandeur and office of the whole are ours. We are anxious about what we call "personality," but in truth there is nothing in it of any worth, and