e doctrine that God is, without priest or authority,
present to man's spirit, to the doctrine that man's spirit is as nothing
before God. The object was too powerful for the subject, who effaced
himself before God that he might be strong towards men. But in this
natural movement of feeling and thought it was forgotten that God who
effaced the world and the finite spirit by his presence could not be a
living God. Spinoza gives the ultimate expression to this tendency, and
at the same time marks its limit, when he says that whatever reality is
in the finite is of the infinite. But he is unsuccessful in showing
that, on the principles on which he starts, there can be any reality in
the finite at all. Yet even if the finite be an illusion, still more if
it be better than an illusion, it requires to be accounted for. Spinoza
accounts for it neither as illusory nor as real. It was reserved for the
following generation of philosophers to assert, in different ways, the
reality of the finite, the value of experience and the futility of
abstractions. Spinoza had declared that true knowledge consists in
seeing things under the form of eternity, but it is impossible that
things can be seen under the form of eternity unless they have been
first seen under the form of time. The one-sided assertion of
individuality and difference in the schools of Locke and Leibnitz was
the natural complement of the one-sided assertion of universality and
unity in the Cartesian school. But when the individualistic tendency of
the 18th century had exhausted itself, and produced its own refutation
in the works of Kant, it was inevitable that the minds of men should
again turn to the great philosopher, who, with almost perfect insight
working through imperfect logic, first formulated the idea of a unity
presupposed in and transcending the difference of matter and mind,
subject and object.

See the Histories of Philosophy, especially those by Hegel, Feuerbach,
Erdmann and Fischer; F. Bouillier, _Histoire de la philosophie
cartesienne_ (1854); Olle-Laprune, _Philosophie de Malebranche_; E.
Saisset, _Precurseurs et disciples de Descartes_ (1862). The German
treatises on Spinoza are too numerous to mention. Jacobi's _Letters on
Spinoza_, which were the beginning of a true interpretation of his
philosophy, are still worth reading. We may also mention C.
Schaarschmidt, _Descartes und Spinoza_ (1850); C. Sigwart, _Spinozas
neuentdeckter Tracta