ts proximate motives), but not of its (remoter)
determining causes. Thus the thirsty child believes it desires its milk of
its own free will, and the timid one, that it freely chooses to run away
(_Ethica, III. prop_. 2, _schol_.; I. _app_.) If the falling stone were
conscious, it would, likewise, consider itself free, and its fall the
result of an undetermined decision.

Two degrees are to be distinguished in the true or adequate knowledge
of the intellect: rational knowledge attained through inference, and
intuitive, self-evident knowledge; the latter has principles for its
object, the former that which follows from them. Instead of operating with
abstract concepts the reason uses common notions, _notiones communes_.
Genera do not exist, but, no doubt, something common to all things. All
bodies agree in being extended; all minds and ideas in being modes of
thought; all beings whatever in the fact that they are modes of the divine
substance and its attributes; "that which is common to all things, and
which is equally in the part and in the whole, cannot but be adequately
conceived." The ideas of extension, of thought, and of the eternal and
infinite essence of God are adequate ideas. The adequate idea of each
individual actual object involves the idea of God, since it can neither
exist nor be conceived apart from God, and "all ideas, in so far as
they are referred to God, are true." The ideas of substance and of the
attributes are conceived through themselves, or immediately (intuitively)
cognized; they are underivative, original, self-evident ideas.

There are thus three kinds, degrees, or faculties of cognition--sensuous or
imaginative representation, reason, and immediate intuition. Knowledge of
the second and third degrees is necessarily true, and our only means
of distinguishing the true from the false. As light reveals itself and
darkness, so the truth is the criterion of itself and of error. Every
truth is accompanied by certainty, and is its own witness (II. _prop_. 43,
_schol_.).--Adequate knowledge does not consider things as individuals,
but in their necessary connection and as eternal sequences from the
world-ground. The reason perceives things under the form of eternity: _sub
specie aeternitatis_ (II. _prop_. 44, _cor_. 2).

In his theory of the _emotions_, Spinoza is more dependent on Descartes
than anywhere else; but even here he is guided by a successful endeavor
after greater rigor and simplicity. He