e that he
appears under different forms or expressions; in himself he is pure
being, without form or expression at all. But, on the other hand, it
is to be observed, that while Spinoza really proceeds by abstraction
and negation, he does not _mean_ to do so. The abstract is to him the
unreal and imaginary, and what he means by substance is not simply
Being in general, the conception that remains when we omit all that
distinguishes the particulars, but the absolute totality of things
conceived as a unity in which all particular existence is included and
subordinated. Hence at a single stroke the indeterminate passes into
the most determinate Being, the Being with no attributes at all into
the Being constituted by an infinite number of attributes. And while,
under the former conception, the defect of our intelligence seemed to
be that it divided the substance, or saw a difference of attributes in
its absolute unity, under the second conception its defect lies in its
apprehending only two out of the infinite multitude of these
attributes.

To do justice to Spinoza, therefore, we must distinguish between the
actual effect of his logic and its effect as he conceived it. The
actual effect of his logic is to dissolve all in the ultimate
abstraction of Being, from which we can find no way back to the
concrete. But his intent was simply to relate all the parts to that
absolute unity which is the presupposition of all thought and being,
and so to arrive at the most concrete and complete idea of the reality
of things. He failed to see what is involved in his own principle that
determination is negation; for if affirmation is impossible without
negation, then the attempt to divorce the two from each other, the
attempt to find a purely affirmative being, must necessarily end in
the barest of all abstractions being confused with the unity of all
things. But even when the infinite substance is defined as the
negative of the finite, the idea of the finite becomes an essential
element in the conception of the infinite. Even the Pantheist, who
says that God is what finite things are not, in spite of himself
recognizes that God has a relation to finite things. Finite things may
in his eyes have no positive relation to God, yet they have a negative
relation; it is through their evanescence and transitoriness, through
their nothingness, that the eternal, the infinite re