THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SPINOZA
are the two processes independent and parallel. For there are not two
processes, and there are not two entities; there is but one process, seen
now inwardly as thought, and now outwardly as motion; there is but one
entity, seen now inwardly as mind, now outwardly as matter, but in reality
an inextricable mixture and unity of both. Mind and body do not act
upon each other, because they are not other, they are one. "The body
cannot determine the mind to think; nor the mind determine the body to
remain in motion or at rest, or in any other state," for the simple reason
that "the decision of the mind, and the desire and determination of the
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body ... are 55 one and the same thing. And all the world is
unifiedly
double in this way; wherever there is an external "material" process, it is
but one side or aspect of the real process, which to a fuller view would be
seen to include as well an internal process correlative, in however different
a degree, with the mental process which we see within ourselves. The
inward and "mental" process corresponds at every stage with the external
and "material" process; "the order and connection of ideas is the same as
the order and connection of things." 56
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"Thinking substance and extended
substance are one and the same thing, comprehended now through this,
now through that, attribute" or aspect. "Certain of the Jews seem to have
perceived this, though confusedly, for they said that God and his intellect,
and the things conceived by his intellect, were one and the same thing." 67
If "mind" be taken in a large sense to correspond with the nervous
system in all its ramifications, then every change in the "body" will be accompanied
by or, better, form a whole with a correlative change in the
"mind." "Just as thoughts and mental processes are connected and ar-
ranged in the mind, so in the body its modifications, and the modifications
of things" affecting the body through sensations, "are arranged according
58
to their order"; and "nothing can happen to the body which is not perceived
by the mind," and consciously or unconsciously felt. 59
Just as the
emotion as felt is part of a whole, of which changes in the circulatory
and respiratory and digestive systems are the basis; so an idea is a part,
along with "bodily" changes, of one complex organic process; even the
infinitesimal subtleties of mathematical reflection have their correlate in
the body. (Have not the "behaviorists" proposed to detect a man's
thoughts by recording those involuntary vibrations of the vocal cords that
seem to accompany all thinking?)
After so trying to melt away the distinction between body and mind,
Spinoza goes on to reduce to a question of degree the difference between
intellect and will. There are no "faculties" in the mind, no separate
entities called intellect or will, much less imagination or memory; the
mind is not an agency that deals with ideas, but it is the ideas themselves
in their process and concatenation. 60 Intellect is merely an abstract and
"Ethics, III, a. "II, 17. "Ibid., note. "V, i. "II, 12, 13.
Spinoza's anticipation of the association theory cf. II % 18, note.