142 DEVELOPMENT OF CARTESIANISM. the dislocation of concepts, which is perceptible in Spinoza's ethics, repeats itself in his politics. First, virtue is based on the impulse of self-preservation and the good is equated with that which is useful to the individual ; then, with a transformation of mere utility into "true" utility, the rational moment is brought in (first as practical pru- dence, next as the impulse after knowledge, and then, with a gradual change of meaning, as moral wisdom), until, finally, in strange contrast to the naturalistic beginning, the Christian idea of virtue as purity, self-denial, love to our neighbors and love to God, is reached. In a similar way "Spinoza conceives the starting point of the state naturalistically, its culmination idealistically." * The fundamental ideas of the Spinozistic system, and those which render it important, are rationalism, pantheism, the essential identity of the material and spiritual worlds, and the uninterrupted mechanism of becoming. Besides the twisting of ethical concepts just mentioned, we may briefly note the most striking of the other dif!iculties and contra- dictions which Spinoza left unexplained. There is a break between his endeavor to exalt the absolute high above the phenomenal world of individual existence, and, at the same time, to bring the former into the closest possible conjunc- tion with the latter, to make it dwell therein — a break between the transcendent and immanent conceptions of the idea of God. No light is vouchsafed on the relation between primary and secondary causes, between the imme- diate divine causality and the divine causality mediated through finite causes. The infinity of God is in conflict with his complete cognizability on the part of man ; for how is a finite, transitory spirit able to conceive the Infinite and Eternal ? How does the human intellect rise above modal limitations to become capable and worthy of the mystical union with God? Reference has been already made to the twofold nature of the attributes (as forms of intellectual apprehension and as real properties of sub- stance) which invites contradictory interpretations.
- C. Schindler in his dissertation Ueber den Begriff des Guten und Niitzlichtn
bei Spinoza, Jena, 1885, p. 42. a work, however, which does not penetrate to the full depth of the matter. Cf. Eucken, Lebensanschauungen, p. 406.
