On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient...

Although Spinoza's philosophy mainly consists in the negation of the double dualism between God and the world and between soul and body, which his teacher, Descartes, had set up, he nevertheless remained true to his master in confounding and interchanging the relation between reason and consequence with that between cause and effect; he even endeavoured to draw from it a still greater advantage for his own metaphysics than Descartes for his, for he made this confusion the foundation of his whole Pantheism.

A conception contains implicite all its essential predicates, so that they may be developed out of it explicite by means of mere analytical judgments: the sum total of them being its definition. This definition therefore differs from the conception itself merely in form and not in content; for it consists of judgments which are all contained within that conception, and therefore have their reason in it, in as far as they show its essence. We may accordingly look upon these judgments as the consequences of that conception, considered as their reason. Now this relation between a conception and the judgments founded upon it and susceptible of being developed out of it by analysis, is precisely the relation between Spinoza's so-called God and the world, or rather between the one and only substance and its numberless accidents (Deus, sive substantia constans infinitis attributis[28]—Deus, sive omnia Dei attributa). It is therefore the relation in knowledge of the reason to its consequent; whereas true Theism (Spinoza's Theism is merely nominal) assumes the relation of the cause to its effect, in which the cause remains different and separate from the consequence, not only in the way in which we consider them, but really and essentially, therefore in themselves to all eternity. For the word God, honestly used, means a cause such as this of the world, with the addition of personality. An impersonal God is, on the contrary, a contradictio in adjecto.

Now as nevertheless, even in the case as stated by him, Spinoza desired to retain the word God to express substance, and explicitly called this the cause of the world, he could find no other way to do it than by completely intermingling the two relations, and confounding the principle of the reason of knowledge with the principle of causality. I call attention to the following passages in corroboration of this statement. Notandum, dari necessario unius cujusque rei existentis certam aliquam CAUSAM, propter quam existit. Et notandum, hanc causam, propter quart aliqua res existit, vel debere contineri in ipsa natura et DEFINITIONE rei existentis (nimirum quod ad ipsius naturam pertinet existere), vel debere EXTRA ipsam dari.[29] In the last case he means an efficient cause, as appears from what follows, whereas in the first he means a mere reason of knowledge; yet he identifies both, and by this means prepares the way for identifying God with the world, which is his intention. This is the artifice of which he always makes use, and which he has learnt from Descartes. He substitutes a cause acting from without, for a reason of knowledge lying within, a given conception. Ex necessitate divinæ naturæ omnia, quæ sub intellectum infinitum cadere possunt, sequi debent.[30] At the same time he calls God everywhere the cause of the world.

Quidquid existit Dei potentiam, quæ omnium rerum CAUSA est, exprimit.[31]—Deus est omnium rerum CAUSA immanens, non vero transiens.[32]—Deus non tantam est CAUSA EFFICIENS rerum existentiæ, sed etiam essentiæ.[33]—Ex data quacunque IDEA aliquis EFFECTUS necessario sequi debat.[34]—And: Nulla res nisi a causa externa potest destrui.[35]—Demonstr. Definitio cujuscunque rei, ipsius essentiam (essence, nature, as differing from existentia, existence), affirmat, sed non negat; sive rei essentiam ponit, sed non tollit. Dum itaque ad rem ipsam tantum, non autem ad causas externas attendimus, nihil in eadem poterimus invenire, quod ipsam possit destruere. This means, that as no conception can contain anything which contradicts its definition, i.e., the sum total of its predicates, neither can an existence contain anything which might become a cause of its destruction. This view, however, is brought to a climax in the somewhat lengthy second demonstration of the 11th Proposition, in which he confounds a cause capable of destroying or annihilating a being, with a contradiction contained in its definition and therefore destroying that definition. His need of confounding cause with reason here becomes so urgent, that he can never say causa or ratio alone, but always finds it necessary to put ratio seu causa. Accordingly, this occurs as many as eight times in the same page, in order to conceal the subterfuge. Descartes had done the same in the above-mentioned axiom.

Thus, properly speaking, Spinoza's Pantheism is merely the realisation of Descartes' Ontological Proof. First, he adopts Descartes' ontotheological proposition, to which we have alluded above, ipsa naturæ Dei immensitas est CAUSA SIVE RATIO, propter quam nulla causa indiget ad existendum, always saying substantia instead of Deus (in the beginning); and then he finishes by substantiæ essentia necessario involvit existentiam, ergo erit substantia CAUSA SUI.[36] Therefore the very same argument which Descartes had used to prove the existence of God, is used by Spinoza to prove the existence of the world,—which consequently needs no God. He does this still more distinctly in the 2nd Scholium to the 8th Proposition: Quoniam ad naturam substantia pertinet existere, debet ejus definitio necessariam existentiam involvere, et consequenter ex sola ejus definitione debet ipsius existentia concludi. But this substance is, as we know, the world. The demonstration to Proposition 24 says in the same sense: Id, cujus natura in se considerata (i.e., in its definition) involvit existentiam, est CAUSA SUI.

For what Descartes had stated in an exclusively ideal and subjective sense, i.e., only for us, for cognitive purposes—in this instance for the sake of proving the existence of God—Spinoza took in a real and objective sense, as the actual relation of God to the world. According to Descartes, the existence of God is contained in the conception of God, therefore it becomes an argument for his actual being: according to Spinoza, God is himself contained in the world. Thus what, with Descartes, was only reason of knowledge, becomes, with Spinoza, reason of fact. If the former, in his Ontological Proof, taught that the existentia of God is a consequence of the essentia of God, the latter turns this into causa sui, and boldly opens his Ethics with: per causam sui intelligo id, cujus essentia (conception) involvit existentiam, remaining deaf to Aristotle's warning cry, τὸ δ' εἶναι οὐκ οὐσία οὐδενί! Now, this is the most palpable confusion of reason and cause. And if Neo-Spinozans (Schellingites, Hegelians, &c.), with whom words are wont to pass for thoughts, often indulge in pompous, solemn admiration for this causa sui, for my own part I see nothing but a contradictio in adjecto in this same causa sui, a before that is after, an audacious command to us, to sever arbitrarily the eternal causal chain—something, in short, very like the proceeding of that Austrian, who finding himself unable to reach high enough to fasten the clasp on his tightly-strapped shako, got upon a chair.

Let us finally cast a look at the 16th proposition of the 1st book of the Ethics. Here we find Spinoza concluding from the proposition, ex data cujuscunque rei definitione plures proprietates intellectus concludit, quæ revera ex eadem necessario sequuntur, that ex necessitate divinæ, naturæ (i.e., taken as a reality), infinita infinitis modis sequi debent: this God therefore unquestionably stands in the same relation to the world as a conception to its definition. The corollary, Deum omnium rerum esse CAUSAM EFFICIENTEM, is nevertheless immediately connected with it. It is impossible to carry the confusion between reason and cause farther, nor could it lead to graver consequences than here. But this shows the importance of the subject of the present treatise.

In endeavouring to add a third step to the climax in question, Herr von Schelling has contributed a small afterpiece to these errors, into which two mighty intellects of the past had fallen owing to insufficient clearness in thinking. If Descartes met the demands of the inexorable law of causality, which reduced his God to the last straits, by substituting a reason instead of the cause required, in order thus to set the matter at rest; and if Spinoza made a real cause out of this reason, i.e., causa sui, his God thereby becoming the world itself: Schelling now made reason and consequent separate in God himself.[37] He thus gave the thing still greater consistency by elevating it to a real, substantial hypostasis of reason and consequent, and introducing us to something "in God, which is not himself, but his reason, as a primary reason, or rather reason beyond reason (abyss)." Hoc quidem vere palmarium est.—It is now known that Schelling had taken the whole fable from Jacob Böhme's "Full account of the terrestrial and celestial mystery;" but what appears to me to be less well known, is the source from which Jacob Böhme himself had taken it, and the real birth-place of this so-called abyss, wherefore I now take the liberty to mention it.

It is the βυθός, i.e. abyssus, vorago, bottomless pit, reason beyond reason of the Valentinians (a heretical sect of the second century) which, in silence—co-essential with itself—engendered intelligence and the world, as Irenæus[38] relates in the following terms: λέγουσι γάρ τινα εἶναι ἐν ἀοράτοις, καὶ ἀκατονομάστοις ὑψώμασι τέλειον Αἰῶνα προόντα· τοῦτον δὲ καὶ προαρχήν, καὶ προπάτορα, καὶ βυθὸν καλοῦσιν.—Ὑπάρχοντα δὲ αὐτὸν ἀχώρητον καὶ ἀόρατον, ἀΐδιόν τε καὶ ἀγέννητον, ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καὶ ἠρεμίᾳ πολλῇ γεγονέναι ἐν ἀπείροις αἰῶσι χρόνων. Συνυπάρχειν δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ Ἔννοιαν, ἣν δὲ καὶ Χάριν, καὶ Σιγὴν ὀνομάζουσι· καὶ ἐννοηθῆναί ποτε ἀφ' ἑαυτοῦ προβαλέσθαι τὸν βυθὸν τοῦτον ἀρχὴν τῶν πάντων, καὶ καθάπερ σπέρμα τὴν προβολὴν ταύτην (ἣν προβαλέσθαι ἐνενοήθη) καθέσθαι, ὡς ἐν μήτρᾳ, τῇ συνυπαρχούσῃ, ἑαυτῷ Σιγῇ. Ταύτην δὲ, ὑποδηξαμένην τὸ σπέρμα τοῦτο, καὶ ἐγκύμονα γενομένην, ἀποκυῆσαι Νοῦν, ὅμοιόν τε καὶ ἴσον τῷ προβαλόντι, καὶ μόνον χωροῦντα τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ Πατρός. Τὸν δὲ νοῦν τοῦτον καὶ μονογενῆ καλοῦσι, καὶ ἀρχὴν τῶν πάντων.[39] (Dicunt enim esse quendam in sublimitatibus illis, quæ nec oculis cerni, nec nominari possunt, perfectum Æonem præexistentem, quem et proarchen, et propatorem, et Bythum vocant. Eum autem, quum incomprehensibilis et invisibilis, sempiternus idem, et ingenitus esset, infinitis temporum seculis in summa quiete ac tranquillitate fuisse. Unâ etiam cum eo Cogitationem exstitisse, quam et Gratiam et Silentium (Sigen) nuncupant.

Hunc porro Bythum in animum, aliquando induxisse, rerum omnium initium proferre, atque hanc, quam in animum induxerat, productionem, in Sigen (silentium) quæ unâ cum eo erat, non secus atque in vulvam demisisse. Hanc vero, suscepto hoc semine, prægnantem effectam peperisse Intellectum, parenti suo parem et æqualem, atque ita comparatum, ut solus paternæ magnitudinis capax esset. Atque hunc Intellectum et Monogenem et Patrem et principum omnium rerum appellant.)