THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SPINOZA 139
things which I have been able to know by this knowledge so far have
been very few." 33
In the Ethics Spinoza reduces the first two forms of knowledge to one;
and calls intuitive knowledge a perception of things sub specie eternitatis
which gives in a phrase a defini-
in their eternal aspects and relations,
tion of philosophy. Scientia intuitiva, therefore, tries to find behind things
and events their laws and eternal relations. Hence Spinoza's very fundamental
distinction (the basis of his entire system) between the "temporal
order" the "world" of things and incidents and the "eternal order"
the world of laws and structure. Let us study this distinction carefully :
It must be noted that I do not understand here by the series of causes and
real entities a series of individual mutable things, but rather the series of
fixed and eternal things. For it would be impossible for human weakness to
follow up the series of individual mutable things, not only because their
number surpasses all count, but because of the many circumstances, in one
and the same thing, each of which may be the cause of the thing's existence.
For indeed, the existence of particular things has no connection with their
essence, and is not an eternal truth. However, there is no need that we should
understand the series of individual mutable things, for their essence ... is
only to be found in fixed and eternal things, and from the laws inscribed
in those things as their true codes, according to which all individual things
are made and arranged; nay, these individual and mutable things depend so
intimately and essentially on these fixed ones that without them they can
neither exist nor be conceived. 34
If we will keep this passage in mind as we study Spinoza's masterpiece,
it will itself be clarified, and much in the Ethics that is discouragingly
complex will unravel itself into simplicity and understanding.
IV. THE ETHICS
The most precious production in modern philosophy is cast into
geometrical form, to make the thought Euclideanly clear; but the result
is a laconic obscurity in which every line requires a Talmud of com-
mentary. The Scholastics had formulated their thought so, but never so
pithily; and they had been helped to clarity by their fore-ordained conclusions.
Descartes had suggested that philosophy could not be exact
until it expressed itself in the forms of mathematics; but he had never
grappled with his own ideal. Spinoza came to the suggestion with a mind
trained in mathematics as the very basis of all rigorous scientific pro-
**Ibid., P. 233-
WP. 259. Cf. Bacon, Novum Organum, II, 2: "For although nothing exists in
nature except individual bodies, exhibiting clear individual effects according to
particular laws; yet, in each branch of learning, those very laws their investigation,
discovery and development are the foundation both of theory and of practice*"
Fundamentally, all philosophers agree.