f causation, motive upon motive, act upon
act; there is no free will, and no contingency; and
however necessary it may be for our incapacity to consider
future things as in a sense contingent (see Tractat.
Theol. Polit. cap. iv. sec. 4), this is but one of the
thousand convenient deceptions which we are obliged
to employ with ourselves. God is the causa immanens
omnium; He is not a personal being existing apart from
the universe; but Himself in His own reality, He is
expressed in the universe, which is His living garment.
Keeping to the philosophical language of the term,
Spinoza preserves the distinction between natura
nalurans and natura naturala. The first is being in
itself, the attributes of substance as they are conceived
simply and alone; the second is the infinite series of
modifications which follow out of the properties of these
attributes. And thus all which is, is what it is by an
absolute necessity, and could not have been other than
it is. God is free, because no causes external to
Himself have power over Him; and as good men are
most free when most a law to themselves, so it is no
infringement on God's freedom to say that He must have
acted as He has acted, but rather He is absolutely free
because absolutely a law Himself to Himself.

Here ends the first book of the Ethics, the book
which contains, as we said, the nolianes simplicissimas,
and the primary and rudimental deductions from them.
his Dei naturam, Spinoza says in his lofty confidence,
ejusque proprietates explicui. But as if conscious that
his method will never convince, he concludes this portion
of his subject with an analytical appendix; not to explain
or apologize, but to show us clearly, in practical detail,
the position into which he has led us. The root, we are
told, of all philosophical errors, lies in our notion of final
causes; we invert the order of nature, and interpret
God's action through our own; we speak of His intentions,
as if he were a man; we assume that we are
capable of measuring them, and finally erect ourselves,
and our own interests, into the centre and criterion of
all things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If the
universe be what this philosophy has described it, the
perfection which it assigns to God is extended to
everything, and evil is of course impossible; there is no
shortcoming either in nature or in man; each person
and each thing is exactly what it has the power to be,
and nothing more. But men imagi