It is not true that in Spinoza's God there is so little that is positive
that it is not worth preserving. All Nature is in Him, and if the
objector is sincere he will confess that it is not the lack of contents
in the idea which is disappointing, but a lack of contents particularly
interesting to himself.
The opposition between the mind and body of man as two diverse entities
ceases with that between thought and extension. It would be impossible
briefly to explain in all its fulness what Spinoza means by the
proposition: "The object of the idea constituting the human mind is a
body" {39}; it is sufficient here to say that, just as extension and
thought are one, considered in different aspects, so body and mind are
one. We shall find in the fifth part of the Ethic that Spinoza affirms
the eternity of the mind, though not perhaps in the way in which it is
usually believed.
Following the order of the Ethic we now come to its more directly
ethical maxims. Spinoza denies the freedom commonly assigned to the
will, or perhaps it is more correct to say he denies that it is
intelligible.
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