he does nothing except that toward which his own nature impels him,
that he acts in accordance with the laws of his being (_def. septima: ea
res libera dicitur, quae ex sola suae naturae necessitate existit et a se
sola ad agendum determinatur; Epist_. 26). This inner necessitation is
so little a defect that its direct opposite, undetermined choice and
inconstancy, must rather be excluded from God as an imperfection. Freedom
and (inner) necessity are identical; and antithetical, on the one side, to
undetermined choice and, on the other, to (external) compulsion. Action in
view of ends must also be denied of the infinite; to think of God as acting
in order to the good is to make him dependent on something external to him
(an aim) and lacking in that which is to be attained by the action. With
God the ground of his action is the same as the ground of his existence;
God's power and his essence coincide (I. _prop_. 34: _Dei potentia est ipsa
ipsius essentia_). He is the cause of himself (_def. prima: per causam sui
intelligo id, cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id, cujus natura
non potest concipi nisi existens_); it would be a contradiction to hold
that being was not, that God, or substance, did not exist; he cannot be
thought otherwise than as existing; his concept includes his existence. To
be self-caused means to exist necessarily (I. _prop_. 7). The same thing
is denoted by the predicate eternal, which, according to the eighth
definition, denotes "existence itself, in so far as it is conceived to
follow necessarily from the mere definition of the eternal thing."

The infinite substance stands related to finite, individual things, not
only as the independent to the dependent, as the cause to the caused, as
the one to the many, and the whole to the parts, but also as the universal
to the particular, the indeterminate to the determinate. From infinite
being as pure affirmation (I. _prop_. 8, _schol_. I: _absoluta affirmatio_)
everything which contains a limitation or negation, and this includes every
particular determination, must be kept at a distance: _determinatio negatio
est (Epist_. 50 and 41: a determination denotes nothing positive, but a
deprivation, a lack of existence; relates not to the being but to the
non-being of the thing). A determination states that which distinguishes
one thing from another, hence what it is _not_, expresses a limitation of
it. Consequently God, who is free from every negation and l