motive, the attempt to derive
the universe from the isolation and analysis of its most universal
character. As in the case of every well-defined philosophy, this motive
is always attended by a "besetting" problem. Here it is the accounting
for what, empirically at least, is alien to that universal character.
And this difficulty is emphasized rather than resolved by Parmenides in
his designation of a limbo of opinion, "in which is no true belief at
all," to which the manifold of common experience with all its
irrelevancies can be relegated.

[Sidenote: Spinoza's Conception of Substance.]

Sect. 150. The Eleatic philosophy, enriched and supplemented, appears
many centuries later in the rigorous rationalism of Spinoza.[311:4] With
Spinoza philosophy is a demonstration of necessities after the manner of
geometry. Reality is to be set forth in theorems derived from
fundamental axioms and definitions. As in the case of Parmenides, these
necessities are the implications of the very problem of being. The
philosopher's problem is made to solve itself. But for Spinoza that
problem is more definite and more pregnant. The problematic being must
not only be, but must be _sufficient to itself_. What the philosopher
seeks to know is primarily an intrinsic entity. Its nature must be
independent of other natures, and my knowledge of it independent of my
knowledge of anything else. Reality is something which need not be
sought further. So construed, being is in Spinoza's philosophy termed
_substance_. It will be seen that to define substance is to affirm the
existence of it, for substance is so defined as to embody the very
qualification for existence. Whatever exists exists under the form of
substance, as that "which is in itself, and is conceived through itself:
in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently
of any other conception."[312:5]

[Sidenote: Spinoza's Proof of God, the Infinite Substance. The Modes and
the Attributes.]

Sect. 151. There remains but one further fundamental thesis for the
establishment of the Spinozistic philosophy, the thesis which maintains
the exclusive existence of the one "absolutely infinite being," or God.
The exclusive existence of God follows from his existence, because of
the exhaustiveness of his nature. His is the nature "consisting in
infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite
essentiality." He will contain all meaning, and all possible meaning,