bute being, as it were, conscious only of itself.
And therefore, although to those modifications of mind
and extension which we call ourselves there are
corresponding modifications under C and D, and generally
under each of the Infinite attributes of God; each of
ourselves being in a sense Infinite, nevertheless we
neither have nor can have any knowledge of ourselves
in this Infinite aspect; our actual consciousness
being limited to the phenomena of sensible experience.

English readers, however, are likely to care little for
all this; they will look to the general theory, and judge
of it as its aspect affects them. And first, perhaps,
they will be tempted to throw aside as absurd the
notion that their bodies go through the many operations
which they experience them to do, undirected by
their minds; it is a thing they may say at once
preposterous and incredible. And no doubt on the first
blush it sounds absurd, and yet, on second thoughts,
it is less so than it seems; and though we could not
persuade ourselves to believe it, absurd in the sense
of having nothing to be said for it, it certainly is not.
It is far easier, for instance, to imagine the human
body capable by its own virtue, and by the laws of
material organisation, of building a house, than of
thinking; and yet men are allowed to say that the
body thinks, without being regarded as candidates for
a lunatic asylum. We see the seed shoot up into
stem and leaf and throw out flowers; we observe it
fulfilling processes of chemistry more subtle than were
ever executed in Liebig's laboratory, and producing
structures more cunning than man can imitate. The
bird builds her nest, the spider shapes out its delicate
web and stretches it in the path of his prey; directed
not by calculating thought, as we conceive ourselves
to be, but by some motive influence, our ignorance of
the nature of which we disguise from ourselves, and
call it instinct, but which we believe at least to be
some property residing in the organisation; and we
are not to suppose that the human body, the most
complex of all material structures, has slighter powers
in it than the bodies of a seed, a bird, or an insect.
Let us listen to Spinoza himself:--

"There can be no doubt," he says, "that this hypothesis
is true, but unless I can prove it from experience, men
will not, I fear, be induced even to reflect upon it calmly,
so persuaded are they that it is by the mind only that their
bodies ar