[826] If twenty men exist, neither more nor less, an extrinsic reason must be given for this precise number, since the definition of a man does not involve it. Prop. viii., Schol. ii.
75. There can be no substance but God. Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be conceived without God.[827] For he is the sole substance, and modes cannot be conceived without a substance; but besides substance and mode nothing exists. God is not corporeal, but body is a mode of God, and therefore uncreated. God is the permanent, but not the transient cause of all things.[828] He is the efficient cause of their essence, as well as their existence, since otherwise their essence might be conceived without God, which has been shown to be absurd. Thus, particular things are but the affections of God’s attributes, or modes in which they are determinately expressed.[829]
[827] Prop. xiv.
[828] Deus est omnium rerum causa immanens, sed non transiens. Prop. xviii.
[829] Prop. xxv. and Coroll.
76. This pantheistic scheme is the fruitful mother of many paradoxes, upon which Spinosa proceeds to dwell. There is no contingency, but everything is determined by the necessity of the divine nature, both as to its existence and operation; nor could anything be produced by God otherwise than as it is.[830] His power is the same as his essence; for he is the necessary cause both of himself and of all things, and it is as impossible for us to conceive him not to act as not to exist.[831] God, considered in the attributes of his infinite substance, is the same as nature, that is, natura naturans; but nature, in another sense, or natura naturata, expresses but the modes under which the divine attributes appear.[832] And intelligence, considered in act, even though infinite, should be referred to natura naturata; for intelligence, in this sense, is but a mode of thinking, which can only be conceived by means of our conception of thinking in the abstract, that is, by an attribute of God.[833] The faculty of thinking, as distinguished from the act, as also those of desiring, loving, and the rest, Spinosa explicitly denies to exist at all.
[830] Prop. xxix.-xxxiii.
[831] Prop. xxxix. and part ii. prop. iii. Schol.
[832] Schol. in prop. xxix.
[833] Prop. xxxi. The atheism of Spinosa is manifest from this single proposition.