SPINOZA : ANTHROPOLOGY. 133
tions. The same is true of the idea of the freedom of the will, which depends on our ignorance of that which constrains us. Apart from the consideration that "the will," the general conception of which comes under the rubric of unreal abstractions, is in fact merely the sum of the particular volitions, the illusion of freedom, e. g., that we will and act without a cause, arises from the fact that we are conscious of our action (and also of its proximate motives), but not of its (remoter) determining causes. Thus the thirsty child believes it desires its milk of its own free will, and the timid one, that it freely chooses to run away (Ethica, III. prop. 2, schol.; I. app.). If the falling stone were conscious, it would, likewise, consider itself free, and its fall the result of an undetermined decision.
Two degrees are to be distinguished in the true or adequate knowledge of the intellect: rational knowledge attained through inference, and intuitive, self-evident knowledge; the latter has principles for its object, the former that which follows from them. Instead of operating with abstract concepts the reason uses common notions, notiones communes. Genera do not exist, but, no doubt, something common to all things. All bodies agree in being extended; all minds and ideas in being modes of thought; all beings whatever in the fact that they are modes of the divine substance and its attributes; "that which is common to all things, and which is equally in the part and in the whole, cannot but be adequately conceived." The ideas of extension, of thought, and of the eternal and infinite essence of God are adequate ideas. The adequate idea of each individual actual object involves the idea of God, since it can neither exist nor be conceived apart from God, and "all ideas, in so far as they are referred to God, are true." The ideas of substance and of the attributes are conceived through themselves, or immediately (intuitively) cognized; they are underivative, original, self-evident ideas.
There are thus three kinds, degrees, or faculties of cognition—sensuous or imaginative representation, reason, and immediate intuition. Knowledge of the second and third degrees is necessarily true, and our only means of distinguishing the true from the false. As light reveals itself
