th the essence and existence of the thing itself. But individual
things cannot be conceived without God, and since God is their cause in
so far as He is considered under that attribute of which they are modes,
their ideas must necessarily involve the conception of that attribute,
or, in other words, must involve the eternal and infinite essence of
God.

By existence is to be understood here not duration, that is, existence
considered in the abstract, as if it were a certain kind of quantity,
but I speak of the nature itself of the existence which is assigned to
individual things, because from the eternal necessity of the nature of
God infinite numbers of things follow in infinite ways. I repeat, that I
speak of the existence itself of individual things in so far as they are
in God. For although each individual thing is determined by another
individual thing to existence in a certain way, the force nevertheless
by which each thing perseveres in its existence follows from the eternal
necessity of the nature of God.

The demonstration of the preceding proposition is universal, and whether
a thing be considered as a part or as a whole, its idea, whether it be
of a part or whole, will involve the eternal and infinite essence of
God. Therefore that which gives a knowledge of the eternal and infinite
essence of God is common to all, and is equally in the part and in the
whole. This knowledge therefore will be adequate.

The human mind possesses ideas by which it perceives itself and its own
body, together with external bodies, as actually existing. Therefore it
possesses an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of
God.

Hence we see that the infinite essence and the eternity of God are known
to all; and since all things are in God and are conceived through Him,
it follows that we can deduce from this knowledge many things which we
can know adequately, and that we can thus form that third sort of
knowledge. The reason why we do not possess a knowledge of God as
distinct as that which we have of common notions is, that we cannot
imagine God as we can bodies; and because we have attached the name God
to the images of things which we are in the habit of seeing, an error we
can hardly avoid, inasmuch as we are continually affected by external
bodies.

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong
names to things. For if a man says that the lines which are drawn from
the center of the