existence, as eternal truth, is conceived as the essence of the thing." This is not the meaning of the original, if indeed it means anything. Spinoza's words are: Talis enim existentia ut eterna veritas, sicut rei existentia, concipitur; i.e. "For this sort of existence is just as certainly conceived as an eternal truth as is the nature of a thing." What Spinoza means is, that the existence of the "eternal," unlike the existence of the "temporal," follows from its mere idea or definition. It is an "eternal" — i.e. necessary — truth that every man is "rational," but not that Peter or James exists. On the other hand, God must exist because it is his very nature to exist. Thus the "existence" (existentia) as well as the "nature" (essentia) of God is an "eternal truth."
Take another instance. "Proposition 4. Proof. Everything that is, is either in itself or in something else, i.e. besides the understanding there is nothing but substances and their modifications. Besides the understanding, therefore, there is nothing by which a plurality of things could be distinguished from one another, except substances, or, which is the same thing (axiom 4), their attributes and their modifications." If extra intellectum means, as the translator supposes, "besides the understanding," we make Spinoza say that there are three kinds of existence: (1) understanding, (2) substances, (3) modifications; which is absurd, because understanding is itself a "modification." Again, Mr. Fullerton makes Spinoza say that the attributes and modifications of substances are identical with substances, which of course is not the meaning. Translate thus: "Whatever is, has its reality either in itself or in something else; in other words, there is no objective existence but substances and their affections. Hence things themselves, as contrasted with our conception of them, can be distinguished from one another only because they differ as substances — which is the same thing (by definition 4)[1] as saying they differ in their attributes — or because they differ as modifications of substances."
There is only space for another quotation. "Wherefore they held it as certain that the judgments of the gods transcend in the highest degree man's power of comprehension: which would have been an excellent reason for truth's forever escaping the human race, if mathematics, which does not deal with limits, but only with the essences and properties of figures, had not shown men another norm of truth" (p. 60). Here Mathesis, quae non circa fines . . . versatur ("Mathematics, which has nothing to do with final causes") is actually rendered "mathematics, which does not deal with limits." Compare with Mr. Fullerton’s translation the version of Sir Frederick Pollock: "The further assumption
- ↑ Mr. Fullerton, following the reading of the ordinary text, gives axiom 4 as the reference. The correction is made in Van Vloten & Land's edition, which surely he ought to have followed.
