It is clear that this supreme, necessary, active intelligence is possessed of will, and has arranged all things because it[69] willed them. How can one act, and fashion all things, without willing to fashion them? That would be the action of a mere machine, and this machine would presuppose another first principle, another mover. We should always have to end in a first intelligent being of some kind or other. We wish, we act, we make machines, when we will; hence the great very powerful Demiourgos has done all things because he willed.
Spinoza himself recognises in nature an intelligent, necessary power. But an intelligence without will would be an absurdity, since such an intelligence would be useless; it would do nothing, because it would not will to do anything. Hence the great necessary being has willed everything that it has done.
I said above that it has done all things necessarily because, if its works were not necessary, they would be useless. But does this necessity deprive it of will? Certainly not. I necessarily will to be happy, but I will it none the less on that account; on the contrary, I will it all the more strongly because I will it irresistibly.
Does this necessity deprive it of liberty? Not at all. Liberty can only be the power to act. Since the supreme being is very powerful, it is the freest of beings.
We thus recognise that the great artisan of things is necessary, eternal, intelligent, powerful, possessed of will, and free.
VII
THAT ALL BEINGS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, ARE SUBJECT
TO ETERNAL LAWS
What are the effects of this eternal power that dwells essentially in nature? I see only two classes of them, the insensitive and the sensitive.
The earth, the seas, the planets, the suns, seem admirable but lifeless things, devoid of sensibility. A snail that wills, has some degree of perception, and makes love, seems, to that extent, to have an advantage greater than all the glory of the suns that illumine space.
But all these beings are alike subject to eternal and unvarying laws.
Neither the sun, nor the snail, nor the oyster, nor the dog, nor the ape, nor man, has given himself any one of the things which he has; it is evident that they have received everything.