ations of ideas
were not absolutely clear and distinct. Spinoza points out that there
is no ground for such a distinction, that the acts of apprehension and
judgment cannot be separated from each other. "In the mind there is no
volition, i.e. no affirmation or negation which is not immediately
involved in the idea it apprehends," and therefore "intellect and will
are one and the same thing."[52] If, then, there is no freedom except
the liberty of indifference, freedom is impossible. Man, like all
other beings and things, is under an absolute law of necessity. All
the actions of his will, as well as of his intelligence, are but
different forms of the self-assertive tendency to which he cannot but
yield, because it is one with his very being, or only ideally
distinguishable therefrom. There is, however, another idea of liberty.
Liberty as the opposite of necessity is an absurdity--it is impossible
for either God or man; but liberty as the opposite of slavery is
possible, and it is actually possessed by God. The divine liberty
consists in this, that God acts from the necessity of his own nature
alone, and is not in any way determined from without. And the great
question of ethics is, How far can man partake in this liberty? At
first it would seem impossible that he should partake in it. He is a
finite being, whose power is infinitely surpassed by the power of
other beings to which he is related. His body acts only as it is acted
on, and his mind cannot therefore apprehend his body, except as
affected by other things. His self-assertion and self-seeking are
therefore confused with the asserting and seeking of other things, and
are never pure. His thought and activity cannot be understood except
through the influence of other things which lie outside of his
consciousness, and upon which his will has no influence. He cannot
know clearly and distinctly either himself or anything else; how then
can he know his own good or determine himself by the idea of it?

The answer is the answer of Descartes, that the apprehension of any
finite thing involves the adequate idea of the infinite and eternal
nature of God.[53] This is the primary object of intelligence, in
which alone is grounded the possibility of knowing either ourselves or
anything else. In so far as our knowledge is determined by this idea,
or by the ideas of other things, which are referred to this idea