Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH325one undivided, unchangeable, infinite Being : which for that veryreason we must not change into a single Being, nor endow withfinalities which can onlv belong to finite beings, such as understandingand will. In virtue ofthere are in it infinitely many realities; it exists under innu-merable attributes, of which however we can only know two.Extension and Thought, because these only are given us in ourown nature.The corporeal world is Substance as it presents itself under the>rm, or attribute, of Extension ; the totality of souls or spirits ioubstance as it presents itself under the attribute of Thought.But as it is one and the same Substance which is discerned underboth these forms, both have in the whole and in the particularthe like contents. . . . Man, as much as every other being, is aportion of nature, and nothing can happen in his life which doesnot proceed with strict necessity from natural reasons. Hencethe human will, as our philosopher expressly declares^ is not afree but a compelled cause. The actions of men are to be regardedjust as any other appearance of nature, and their passionslikewise are just as much in agreement with nature as theirvirtues. For the philosopher they are not an object of blameand abhorrence, but of scientific explanation."In all this Spinoza seems to have simply reproduced andcarried out to its furthest consequences a thought which lay atthe root of the oldest Greek philosophy,, and was probably transmittedto it from the Indian ; which formed the core of Stoicism,and which Plotinus also made the centre of his system. Moreover,all modern systems of the infidel philosophy appear to bemerely variations played upon the same thought. ProfessorTyndalPs lecture at Belfast is the last exhibition of it."^rdLIBRARY ST. iVARY'S COLLEGE