The Philosophy of Spinoza

by Benedictus de Spinoza

I

The mind does not express the actual existence of its body, nor does it conceive as actual the modifications of the body, except while the body exists, and consequently it conceives no body as actually existing except while its own body exists. It can therefore imagine nothing, nor can it recollect anything that is past, except while the body exists.

An imagination is an idea by which the mind contemplates any object as present. This idea nevertheless indicates the present constitution of the human body rather than the nature of the external object. An emotion, therefore (by the general definition of the Emotions), is an imagination in so far as it indicates the present constitution of the body, and therefore the mind, only so long as the body exists, is subject to emotions which are related to passions.

Hence it follows that no love except intellectual love is eternal.

If we look at the common opinion of men, we shall see that they are indeed conscious of the eternity of their minds, but they confound it with duration, and attribute it to imagination or memory, which they believe remain after death.

God is not only the cause of the existence of this or that human body, but also of its essence, which therefore must necessarily be conceived through the essence of God itself and by a certain eternal necessity. This conception, moreover, must necessarily exist in God. In God there necessarily exists an idea which expresses the essence of this or that human body under the form of eternity.

In God there necessarily exists a conception or idea which expresses the essence of the human body. This conception or idea is therefore necessarily something which pertains to the essence of the human mind. But we ascribe to the human mind no duration which can be limited by time, unless in so far as it expresses the actual existence of the body, which is manifested through duration, and which can be limited by time, that is to say, we cannot ascribe duration to the mind except while the body exists.

But, nevertheless, since this something is that which is conceived by a certain eternal necessity through the essence itself of God, this something which pertains to the essence of the mind will necessarily be eternal.

This idea which expresses the essence of the body under the form of eternity is, as we have said, a certain mode of thought which pertains to the essence of the mind, and is necessarily eternal. It is impossible, nevertheless, that we should recollect that we existed before the body, because there are no traces of any such existence in the body, and also because eternity cannot be defined by time, or have any relationship to it. Nevertheless we feel and know by experience that we are eternal. For the mind is no less sensible of those things which it conceives through intelligence than of those which it remembers, for demonstrations are the eyes of the mind by which it sees and observes things.

Although, therefore, we do not recollect that we existed before the body, we feel that our mind, in so far as it involves the essence of the body under the form of eternity, is eternal, and that this existence of the mind cannot be limited by time nor manifested through duration. Only in so far, therefore, as it involves the actual existence of the body can the mind be said to possess duration, and its existence be limited by a fixed time, and so far only has it the power of determining the existence of things in time, and of conceiving them under the form of duration.