Pages from a Journal with Other Papers | Page 9

exist hereafter which
does not exist now, but that in God everything that has been, and will
be, eternally IS.
The reader will perhaps ask, What has this theology to do with the "joy
continuous and supreme"? We shall presently meet with some
deductions which contribute to it, but it is not difficult to understand
that Spinoza, to use his own word, might call the truths set forth in
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