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I M DE VELOPMRNT OF CARTESIANISM. existence, not coldly and abstractly exalted above it, as by the ancient Eleatics. Substance is the being in (not above) things, that in them which constitutes their reality, which supports and produces them. As the cause of all things Spinoza calls it God, although he is conscious that he understands by the term something quite different from the Christians. God does not mean for him a transcendent, personal spirit, but only the ens absolute infinitum {def. sexto), the essential heart of things : Deus sive substantia. How do things proceed from God ? Neither by creation nor by emanation. He does not put them forth from him- self, they do not tear themselves free from him, but they follow out of the necessary nature of God, as it follows from the nature of the triangle that the sum of its angles is equal to two right angles (I. prop, 17, schoL). They do not come out from him, but remain in him ; just this fact that they are in another, in God, constitutes their lack of self-dependence (I. prop. 18, dent.: nulla res, quce e xtra Deum in se sit). God is their inner, indwelling cause {causa immanens, non vera transiens. — 1. prop. 18), is not a transcendent creator, but natura naturans, over against the sum of finite beings, natura naturata {i. prop. 2g, schol.): Deus sive Jiatura. Since nothing exists out of God, his actions do not follow from external necessity, are not constrained, but he is free cause, free in the sense that he does nothing except that toward which his own nature impels him, that he acts in accordance with the laws of his being {def. septima : ea res libera dicitur, qucB ex sola sucb natures necessitate existit et a se sola ad agendum dcterminatur ; Epist. 26). This inner necessitation is so little a defect that its direct opposite, iy undetermined choice and inconstancy, must rather be ex- cluded from God as an imperfection. Freedom and (inner) necessity are identical; and antithetical, on the one side, to undetermined choice and, on the other, to (external) com- / pulsion. Action in view of ends must also be denied of the infinite ; to think of God as acting in order to the good is to make him dependent on something external to him (an aim) and lacking in that which is to be attained by the action. With God the ground of his action is the same as