The chances may be millions to one against his being
right; yet the real truth, if we knew it, would be probably at least as
strange as his conception of it. But we are firmly convinced that of
these questions, and of all like them, practical answers only lie
within the reach of human faculties; and that in 'researches into the
absolute' we are on the road which ends nowhere.

Among the difficulties, however, most properly akin to this philosophy
itself, there is one most obvious, viz., that if the attributes of God
be infinite, and each particular thing is expressed under them all, then
mind and body express but an infinitesimal portion of the nature of each
of ourselves; and this human nature exists (_i.e._, there exists
corresponding modes of substance) in the whole infinity of the divine
nature under attributes differing each from each, and all from mind and
all from body. That this must be so follows from the definition of the
Infinite Being, and the nature of the distinction between the two
attributes which are known to us; and if this be so, why does not the
mind perceive something of all these other attributes? The objection is
well expressed by a correspondent (Letter 67):--'It follows from what
you say,' a friend writes to Spinoza, 'that the modification which
constitutes my mind, and that which constitutes my body, although it be
one and the same modification, yet must be expressed in an infinity of
ways: one way by thought, a second way by extension, a third by some
attribute unknown to me, and so on to infinity; the attributes being
infinite in number, and the order and connexion of modes being the same
in them all. Why, then, does the mind perceive the modes of but one
attribute only?'

Spinoza's answer is curious: unhappily, a fragment of his letter only is
extant, so that it is too brief to be satisfactory:--

In reply to your difficulty (he says), although each particular
thing be truly in the Infinite mind, conceived in Infinite modes,
the Infinite idea answering to all these cannot constitute one and
the same mind of any single being, but must constitute Infinite
minds. No one of all these Infinite ideas has any connexion with
another.

He means, we suppose, that God's mind only perceives, or can perceive,
things under their Infinite expression, and that the idea of each
several mode, under whatever attribute, constitutes a separate mind.

We do not know that we can add an