necessarily flowed, and will
and must flow on for ever, in the same manner as from
the nature of a triangle it follows, and has followed, and
will follow from eternity to eternity, that the angles of it
are equal to two right angles. It would seem as if the
analogy were but an artificial play upon words, and that
it was only metaphorically that in mathematical demonstration
we speak of one thing as following from another.
The properties of a curve or a triangle are what they are
at all times, and the sequence is merely in the order in
which they are successively known to ourselves. But
according to Spinoza, this is the only true sequence;
and what we call the universe, and all the series of
incidents upon it, are involved formally and mathematically
in the definition of God.

Each attribute is infinite suo genere; and it is time
that we should know distinctly the meaning which
Spinoza attaches to that important word. Out of the
infinite number of the attributes of God two only are
known to us--"extension," and "thought," or "mind."
Duration, even though it be without beginning or end,
is not an attribute; it is not even a real thing. It has
no relation to being conceived mathematically, in the
same way as it would be absurd to speak of circles or
triangles as any older to-day than they were at the
beginning of the world. These and everything of the
same kind are conceived, as Spinoza rightly says, sub
quadam specie aeternitatis. But extension, or substance
extended, and thought, or substance perceiving, are real,
absolute, and objective. We must not confound extension
with body, for though body be a mode of extension,
there is extension which is not body, and it is infinite
because we cannot conceive it to be limited except
by itself---or, in other words, to be limited at all. And
as it is with extension, so it is with mind, which is also
infinite with the infinity of its object. Thus there is no
such thing as creation, and no beginning or end. All
things of which our faculties are cognizant under one or
other of these attributes are produced from God, and in
Him they have their being, and without Him they would
cease to be.

Proceeding by steps of rigid demonstration in this
strange logic, (and most admirably indeed is the form of
the philosophy adapted to the spirit of it,) we learn that
God is the only causa libera; that no other thing or
being has any power of self-determination: all move by
fixed laws o