before writing the former work, and it is certain
that the effects of it on his own philosophical scheme are already
discernible in it. We shall therefore commence with the latter, and
attempt to understand his philosophy, and its application to religion,
before studying his special criticism of Revelation.

Descartes had aimed, like the great thinkers of earlier times, to gain a
general view of the universe of being; but had sought it by a different
mode. Caring rather for certitude of method, reality in the highest
principles, than for results attained, he had seen that a knowledge of
being must rest on a knowledge of the consciousness which tells us of
being. His principle, "Cogito, ergo sum," is the expression of this
conviction. Therefore, carrying analysis into the human mind, he had
grasped those ideas which appeal to us with irresistible clearness, and
commend themselves as axioms requiring no proof; and from these ideas, or
rather from the idea of cause, the primitive of them, regarded by him as
innate, he had demonstrated _a priori_ the being and attributes of God,
and the principles which dominate in the great fields of knowledge.(336)

Spinoza's object was similar; but he sought to attain it in a different
manner: rejecting, on the one hand, the dualism by which Descartes had
opposed mind and matter, he regarded each as a different mode of the same
primitive substance, and, on the other, the limited idea of the divine
Being, he conceived that the mind of man realizes the notion of Him as
unlimited. There are three different opinions in reference to our capacity
of knowing the infinity of God. Either our knowledge of Him is only
negative and relative; we know only what He is not, and our positive
notions of His nature are drawn from the analogy of human personality; or,
secondly, we have an intuition of His infinity, but so bare of attributes,
that while it guarantees the reality of our apprehensions of Him, we are
dependent on experience for its development into a conception; or,
thirdly, the human mind can apprehend His infinity positively, antecedent
to the application of limitations to it.(337) The last of these three
views belonged to Spinoza, along with the ancient Eleatics, the
Neo-Platonists of the early ages, and the principal schools of modern
German philosophy. Accordingly he tried to work out with mathematical
rigour in geometrical form a philosophy of existence, conceiving that the
mind grasps t