ch Spinoza attaches to that important
word. Out of the infinite number of the attributes of God, two only, he
says, are known to us--'extension,' and 'thought,' or 'mind.' Duration,
even though it be without beginning or end, is not an attribute; it is
not even a real thing. Time has no relation to Being, conceived
mathematically; it would be absurd to speak of circles or triangles as
any older to-day than they were at the beginning of the world. These and
everything of the same kind are conceived, as Spinoza rightly says, _sub
quadam specie aeternitatis_. But extension, or substance extended, and
thought, or substance perceiving, are real, absolute, and objective. We
must not confound extension with body; for though body be a mode of
extension, there is extension which is not body, and it is infinite
because we cannot conceive it to be limited except by itself--or, in
other words, to be limited at all. And as it is with extension, so it is
with mind, which is also infinite with the infinity of its object. Thus
there is no such thing as creation, and no beginning or end. All things
of which our faculties are cognizant under one or other of these
attributes are produced from God, and in him they have their being, and
without him they would cease to be.

Proceeding by steps of rigid demonstration (and most admirably indeed is
the form of the philosophy adapted to the spirit of it), we learn that
God is the only _causa libera_; that no other thing or being has any
power of self-determination; all moves by fixed laws of causation,
motive upon motive, act upon act; there is no free will, and no
contingency; and however necessary it may be for our incapacity to
consider future things as in a sense contingent (see _Tractat. Theol.
Polit._ cap. iv., sec. 4), this is but one of the thousand convenient
deceptions which we are obliged to employ with ourselves. God is the
_causa immanens omnium_; he is not a personal being existing apart from
the universe; but himself in his own reality, he is expressed in the
universe, which is his living garment. Keeping to the philosophical
language of the time, Spinoza preserves the distinction between _natura
naturans_ and _natura naturata_. The first is being in itself, the
attributes of substance as they are conceived simply and alone; the
second is the infinite series of modifications which follow out of the
properties of these attributes. And thus all which _is_, is what it is
by an absolu