Spinoza's maintenance of extension as one of the two infinite divine attributes cognizable by us has, with a certain amount of plausibility, been urged as a note of materialism. And this reproach has been supported by reference to his insistence that in man the body and the soul are only two different aspects of the same thing; for to him the Notwithstanding his Attribution of "Extension" to God. body is a finite Mode of God's infinite attribute of extension and the soul a finite Mode of God's infinite attribute of thought, while both are manifestations of the one eternal divine Substance. Still, if in any way we are to regard God as extended, it seems impossible to avoid the inference that we regard Him as identified with matter, or at least the Criticism by Sir F. Pollock.possibility of matter. Sir Frederick Pollock has admitted that this is a weak point in Spinoza's philosophy,[[16]] and mars its symmetry. But, being more concerned with, his religion, I am content to point out that such an objection was much more effective in Spinoza's time than it is Changes In Theories of Matter since Spinoza's time. to-day. For the whole trend of philosophy during the nineteenth century was towards a view of Extension itself as a mode of Thought, and therefore toward the absorption of one of Spinoza's theoretical divine attributes in the other.
Their Effect on his System.
Now if this should prove to be the permanent tendency of the most influential thinkers—as indeed seems most likely—it will probably be held that Spinoza was wrong in attributing extension to the Eternal as one of the qualities of His substance, except in so far as extension is, if not a necessary, at any rate an actual, and so far as we know, a universal mode of thought. But though, as Sir Frederick Pollock has pointed out, Spinoza has in a manner "counted thought twice over" while treating of the only two infinite attributes cognizable to us, we need not, on that account, surrender his luminous idea of God as a Being absolutely infinite, that is, "Substance consisting of infinite Attributes, whereof each one expresses eternal and infinite being." Nor need we abandon his supplementary but essential idea of "Modes" or "modifications" which mould the attributes into the varieties of finite worlds, known and unknown. Thus it may be that, in Spinoza's sense of the word "Attribute," we shall have to confess that only one comes within our human ken, that of Thought in a sense which includes feeling. But if the late Herbert Spencer, apart from his synthetic philosophy of phenomena, has left any permanent mark on the religions consciousness, it has been by a consecration of the mystery of the ultimate Unknowable.[[17]] And in the spirit of reverence thus taught by him we may still hold with Spinoza that the Eternal has an infinity of other attributes with their infinite modifications not within our cognizance. This would only be an enlarged application of Hamlet's words:
"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Or, to put it in another way, the Universe perceptible to us is only one of an infinity of Universes. By which is not meant an infinite extension of galaxies in space, but the co-existence and, so to speak, interpenetration of an infinity of modes of existence imperceptible to us.
God Is Identical with the Whole of Being.
To Spinoza, then, God is the totality of Being. But it is not to be inferred that he identified God with the visible, or with any conceivable Universe. For either of these must fall far short of infinity, and the Being of God is infinite. All I mean, when I say that Spinoza identifies God with the totality of existence, is that he regards the deity as that Perfect Being without beginning or end, whose essence it is to be, and of whom all that exists, whether known to us or not, is separately a partial, and comprehensively a perfect expression.
His Doctrine of Man.
Of more practical interest to us perhaps is Spinoza's doctrine of man, though it would have been impossible to explain that without first indicating his idea of God. In his view, then, man is a finite mode of the two divine attributes, extension and thought. Thus both the extended body and the conscious mind have their substance and reality in God.[[18]] But the essence of man does not necessarily involve his separate existence as the essence of God implies Being. Of course the substance of man is imperishable because it is of God's substance. Nay, there is a sense in which each man, being an eternal thought of God, has an aspect towards eternity or exists "sub specie eternitatis." But that is a truth transcending the finite practical world with which we have to do.