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Being and Reason
Being and Reason
An Essay on Spinoza’s Metaphysics
Martin Lin
1
1
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Preface
I started writing this book while living in Venice, California in the fall of 2011, on a
sabbatical leave from Rutgers University. At the time, I had been considering turning
my research attention away from Spinoza and focusing instead on Leibniz. This is not
to say that I didn’t still find Spinoza’s philosophy worth studying, but I had been read-
ing and thinking about Spinoza for a long time, since I was an undergraduate at NYU,
and I felt that it was time to start something new. Nevertheless, I began to think that
despite my long association with Spinoza or, perhaps, because of it, we still had more
to say to each other. I had, after all, started forming opinions about Spinoza almost
as soon as I started learning about philosophy, and, as a result, I had a lot of opinions
about his thought that bore the marks of what now seemed to me like intellectual
immaturity. In light of this, I decided to start over and try to rethink Spinoza from the
ground up. The result is this book.
In some ways, my thoughts about Spinoza wound up in pretty much the same place.
For example, my understanding of the nature of substance and mode, and his argu-
ments for the conatus doctrine, although hopefully deeper and more refined, mostly
agrees with what I thought before I started writing this book. But on many other topics,
my thinking shifted dramatically. Perhaps the most significant of these shifts con-
cerns Spinoza’s Principle of Sufficient Reason. Whereas I had previously assumed
that its scope was very nearly universal and that it played a significant role in his system,
I have now come around to the view that it is restricted to facts about existence and
nonexistence and plays no role in his system other than in one of his arguments for the
necessary existence of God. For me, at least, this deepening of old thoughts and, most
of all, these new thoughts have made this book worthwhile.
This progress, such as it is, would not have been possible without the teachers,
colleagues, students, and other interlocutors from whom I’ve learned. My graduate
school teachers Ian Mueller, Martha Nussbaum, Howard Stein, Jean-Luc Marion and,
especially, my advisor Dan Garber all gave me my first taste of what doing the history
of philosophy seriously could be. As much as I learned from them, I learned perhaps
even more, as one generally does, from my classmates. I still benefit from philosophical
conversations I had back then with Jim Kreines, Rachel Zuckert, Timothy Rosenkoetter,
John Kulviki, Anne Eaton, Eric Brown, Eric Wiland, Neil Kennedy, George Streeter,
Eric Schliesser, Joe Schear, James Gedes, Ted Quinn, and many others.
Upon leaving graduate school, I had the good fortune to wind up teaching at the
University of Toronto where my education in philosophy continued. I spent many
happy hours in conversation with Phil Kramer, Bill Seager, Donald Ainslie, Marleen
Rozemond, Sergio Tenebaum, Gurpreet Rattan, Gopal Sreenivasan, Jennifer Nagel,
Tom Hurka, Martin Pickavé, and many others from whom I learned a great deal.
viii Preface
I’ve also benefited tremendously from the community of Spinoza scholars who have
always been generous to me with their time, comments, criticism, and friendship. On
one occasion, Michael Della Rocca, when I was still a complete stranger to him, picked
me up at the New Haven train station, drove me to his house, and sat with me in his
living room where we discussed, in great detail, a paper I had sent him. That was only
the first of many times that I have benefited in this way from his kindness. Don Garrett
was also incredibly generous to me when I was first starting out and I’ve learned a lot from
him too over the years. Ed Curley, Yitzhak Melamed, Karolina Hübner, John Carriero,
Steve Nadler, John Morrison, Tad Schmaltz, Alex Douglas, Lisa Shapiro and many
other scholars have also significantly shaped my understanding of Spinoza’s thought.
I’ve taught the manuscript in whole or in part to a number of graduate seminars and
I’ve learned tremendously from comments from graduate students, including Chris
Hauser, Eddy Chen, Carolina Flores, Ezra Rubenstein, Chris Frugé, Jack Stetter, and
Veronica Gomez. Savanah Kinkaid, Dee Payton, and Chris Willard-Kyle read the
whole thing over the course a very enjoyable semester and gave me comments on every
chapter. Simon Goldstein also read and commented on nearly the whole thing. Their
feedback allowed me to make the book significantly better.
I would also like to thank audiences at Princeton University, the University of
Toronto, the Quebec Seminar on Early Modern Philosophy, the Dutch Seminar in
Groningen, Lingnan University, L’École normale supérieure, the Scottish Seminar on
Early Modern Philosophy in Aberdeen, and Birkbeck College to whom I’ve presented
material that has found its way into this book. Additionally, a workshop on the manu-
script at Humboldt University afforded me valuable feedback from Sebastian Bender,
Julia Borcherding, Dominik Perler, and Catherine Wilson.
John Morrison, John Carriero, Don Garrett, Alex Douglas, Uriah Kriegel, Stephan
Schmid, and Jonathan Schaffer have all read portions of this manuscript and generously
given me comments. I owe each of them a great deal for helping me improve the book.
I am also grateful to Michael Della Rocca and two anonymous readers for Oxford
University Press for invaluable feedback and to Peter Momtchiloff for his encouragement
and editorial guidance.
Part of Chapter 4 is adapted from my “Spinoza and the Mark of the Mental,” in Yitzhak
Melamed, ed., Spinoza’s Ethics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2017), pp. 82–101. Part of Chapter 6 is adapted from my paper “Teleology and
Human Action in Spinoza,” Philosophical Review 115 (3) (2006): 317–54.
Finally, I’m grateful to Sophia Powers who has helped me in many ways at every
stage of writing this book. Not only has she always pushed me to write better and
more clearly, but the hours I’ve spent discussing the ideas contained here with her have
shaped my understanding of them in more ways than I can count. This book is dedi-
cated to her.
Goa,
January 3, 2018
Abbreviations and Conventions
Works by Spinoza:
CM Cogitata Metaphysica (an appendix to Spinoza’s DPP)

DPP Renati des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I & II [Descartes’ Principles of
Philosophy]
Ep. Spinoza’s Letters
KV Korte Verhandeling van God de Mensch en deszelfs Welstand [Short Treatise on God,
Man, and his Well-Being]
TIE Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione
TP Tractatus Politicus
Passages of the Ethics are cited in the following way:
app appendix
a axiom
c corollary
d demonstration or definition depending on context
p proposition
s scholium
References to Gebhardt (ed.), Opera are by volume number and page number. Thus, II/12
refers to Gebhardt volume 2, p. 12. Translations into English are taken from Curley’s translations
in Spinoza, The Collected Works, 2 vols., with occasional modifications.
Works by other authors:
A Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, ed. Deutsche Akademie
der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag). References include series,
volume, and page. For example, “A 6.4.1394” is series 6, volume 4, p. 1394.
AG Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Essays, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew and
Daniel Garber.
AT Descartes, René. Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. 11 vols.
CSM Cottingham, Stoothoof, and Murdoch (eds. and trans.). The Philosophical Writings of
Descartes.
DM Suárez, Francisco. Disputationes Metaphysicae [Opera omnia, ed. M. André and
C. Berton. 28 vols. Paris: Ludovicus Vivès, 1856–78]. Citations refer by disputation,
section, and subsection within that section. For example, “DM I 1.26” refers to the
26th subsection of first section of the first disputation.
x Abbreviations and Conventions
G Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt. 7 vols.

LC Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. The Leibniz Clarke Correspondence.
PP Descartes, René. Principles of Philosophy.
ST Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae.
Introduction
Spinoza is a metaphysician. He wishes to describe the basic categories that structure

the world in the broadest and most fundamental terms. He is also a psychologist, an
ethicist, a political philosopher, and much more, but all of his efforts in these fields are
rooted in his metaphysics. This is not to say that metaphysics is, in the end, the most
important topic for Spinoza. Indeed, I think it would be fair to say that, in many ways,
ethics and politics are more important to him and his metaphysical project is under-
taken in service to them. This is why the principal source of his metaphysical views is
called the Ethics. Nonetheless, he sees metaphysics as a foundational discipline on
which all other branches of learning ultimately rest. What is more, Spinoza’s ethical
philosophy posits knowledge of nature and our place in it as our highest good. These are
manifestly metaphysical topics, and thus, in addition to being rooted in metaphysics,
ethics, for Spinoza, aims at it as well. For this reason, if we want to understand the rich
array of Spinoza’s philosophical interests, we must first understand his metaphysics.
In Spinoza’s metaphysics, we encounter many puzzling doctrines that appear to
entangle metaphysical notions with cognitive, logical, and epistemic ones. According
to him, a substance is that which can be conceived through itself and a mode is that
which is conceived through another. Thus, metaphysical notions, substance and mode,
are defined through a notion that is either cognitive or logical, being conceived through.
He defines an attribute as that which an intellect perceives as constituting the essence
of a substance. Intellectual perception, something cognitive, is used to define an attribute,
something metaphysical. And he claims that if something exists there is a reason why
it exists and if something doesn’t exist there is also a reason why it doesn’t. Thus, a
reason, something cognitive or epistemic, is necessary for existence or nonexistence.
Furthermore, Spinoza thinks that x causes y only if y is conceived through or under-
stood through x and thus appears to place a cognitive or epistemic condition on
something metaphysical. He also often compares causal to logical relations. In 1p17s
he says that things of which God is the efficient cause follow from his nature with the
same necessity as that it follows from the nature of a triangle that its interior angles
equal one hundred and eighty degrees. And in numerous texts he says that what causes
what depends on how things are conceived or explained.1
1 2p6d, 2p7s, 3 and p2d.
Being and Reason: An Essay on Spinoza’s Metaphysics. Martin Lin, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198834151.003.0009
2 introduction
What are we to make of the intimate connections that Spinoza sees between
metaphysical, cognitive, logical, and epistemic notions? Between being and reason?
Part of the explanation is that Spinoza is, in some sense, a rationalist. He believes that
we can discover rich and substantive metaphysical truths through the use of reason
without input from the senses. What is more, he believes that the constitution and
structure of the world is such that there are objective explanations for many phenomena
and that these explanations are graspable by rational thought. This is metaphysics in
the grand style and as such it has many virtues. It is ambitious, systematic, and proudly
independent of any unphilosophical authority such as tradition or supernatural reve-
lation. But it also has vices, many of which have led some philosophers to see such
rationalism as a vain and empty enterprise. It is overly reliant on a priori reasoning,
uncritically ignoring the natural limits of such reasoning, and hubristically claiming to
know things that are beyond the scope of reason properly understood. The world is full
of the contingent and the inexplicable. Without the input of experiment and observa-
tion, surely reason can tell us very little about how the world actually is with respect to
contingent matters of fact. Indeed, how can we know for sure that human reason even
applies to the mind-independent world at all?
There are at least two main attitudes toward this last question. The first is an attitude
of uncritical self-confidence. This attitude can be expressed dogmatically: What the
natural light of reason reveals, we ought not to question. But it can just as easily
be joined to a humble realism. Philosophy has to start somewhere. Is there a better
place to start than what seems true to us? There is no guarantee that these things are
true, but, if they are not too far away from the truth, philosophical reflection can serve
to correct them and bring us closer to the truth. If they are too far from the truth for
this to be possible, then our efforts will have been for naught. But in that case, nothing
we could have done would have yielded better results.
The second attitude is a critical one, exemplified by philosophers such as Locke and
Kant, which seeks to delineate the bounds of what reason can do and which cautions us
not to exceed them. This second attitude, however, can also lead to metaphysics, as it
arguably does in the case of Kant, who develops a form of idealism that claims that
the world itself is, in some sense, a creature of human reason and thus subject to its
dictates. This too is a bold metaphysical claim the justification of which depends upon
the reliability of philosophical reason.
Spinoza has been interpreted as both a realist and an idealist. On the realist
interpretation, he is attempting to describe a mind-independent world that is, never-
theless, knowable through the application of reason. On various idealist i nterpretations,
the world as it is cognized by us is either in part a creature of our own rational projections
or is, in some sense, rooted in conceptual or mental foundations. In this book, I argue
for what might be called a realist interpretation. This is not to say that all aspects of
the idealist interpretation are without merit. For example, I will argue in Chapter 4,
that an old idealist interpretation of the attributes is closer to the truth than is some-
times supposed. Nevertheless, throughout this book, I will argue that, although
introduction 3
Spinoza is confident that the order of being mirrors the order of reason, he believes
that they are two orders, not one. There is inherence over and above conceptual
dependence; there is causation in addition to causal explanation; the world has a
nature that we can grasp and that our way of grasping it does not interpose an impene-
trable conceptual veil between it and us.
Although the principal theme of this book is the relation between metaphysics on
the one hand and epistemic and cognitive notions on the other, that is, being and reason,
I have not confined myself to discussing only issues that bear directly on it. Spinoza’s
metaphysics is too rich to be encapsulated by a single theme, even one as broad as
being and reason, and too interesting for me to resist commenting on aspects of it that
may not bear directly on this issue. Moreover, it would be impossible to understand
those issues that do bear directly on my theme without placing them in their proper
philosophical context, which requires discussing in detail many arguments that are, in
some respects, orthogonal to the issue of being and reason.
That said, the present book is certainly not comprehensive. There are many aspects
of Spinoza’s metaphysics that I make no attempt to treat: personal identity, the nature
of time, and the eternity of the mind to name only a few. The conclusions that I reach
here must, therefore, be regarded as tentative ones that await further confirmation by
showing that they can cohere with the correct interpretation of those aspects of
Spinoza’s thought as well. Indeed, given the uncommon systematicity of Spinoza’s
thought, nothing short of a complete interpretation of all of Spinoza could serve as
such confirmation. But that task is clearly too great for a single book or even, perhaps,
a single scholar.
My aims and methods in this book are philosophical. I would like to know what
Spinoza said, what he meant by it, and why he said it. I would also like to know whether
or not he was right. Truth is, however, elusive in philosophy. Very little that has been
said or written on the subject over its brief history is beyond controversy. For example,
as unfashionable as they may currently be, Plato’s theory of the forms, Leibniz’s theory
of monads, and Marx’s theory of history have not been decisively refuted. This means
that although philosophy might make progress, whatever progress it makes is slow
and, consequently, when measured according to the glacial pace of philosophical time,
eras that by other measures are dead and gone are part of the living breathing present.
For this reason, I approach Spinoza with what has been called “the collegial method.”
I treat Spinoza like a colleague from whom I would like to learn. This does not require
actually agreeing with him. (I’ve learned a lot of philosophy from certain living
colleagues with whom I seldom agree.) But it does require taking him and the issues he
discusses seriously.
Although my approach in this book is philosophical, I am acutely aware of the
dangers that the misapplication of such a method presents. For example, I do not think
that it is acceptable to consider only some of the relevant texts, nor do I think that there
is any excuse for reading into Spinoza or any other historical figure recently popular
theories that he didn’t believe or even consider. Careful attention to a historical figure’s
4 introduction
own words and assiduously attempting to recover exactly what the philosopher in
question meant to communicate by them is absolutely necessary. But of course, in this
regard, the history of philosophy is no different than any other philosophical research.
It doesn’t matter if your interlocutors are down the corridor or four hundred years
dead, misrepresenting their views is an intellectual sin. Although we must never mis-
represent what a historical figure said and thought, comments concerning what they
could have said, for example, to extend the scope of their theory to cover nearby issues
or respond to an objection that they never considered, or concerning what they should
have said, for example, to remain consistent with their most important or interesting
commitments, can be illuminating and there is no methodological reason to avoid
them so long as we are clear about what we are doing. Indeed, so long as it isn’t passed
off as exegesis, there is no reason to avoid doing philosophy alongside a historical
figure as a part of a historical study. That said, the exegetical portion of the historian’s
task is generally large and difficult and, in the case of the present study, it has consumed
the greater part of my efforts.
1
Spinoza’s Starting Points
Spinoza’s great masterpiece and the principal source of his mature views on metaphysics,
the Ethics, is hard to read. There are many reasons for this but perhaps the most imme-
diately apparent is its geometrical style of exposition. By contrast, accessibly written
works of philosophy often resemble a story more than a proof. An author might begin
by introducing a problem and explaining why previous attempts to solve it failed. Then,
intuitions are primed, thought experiments performed, and a new solution proposed.
Spinoza does not proceed this way. Instead of easing us along with informal prose
exposition, he immediately plunges us into the ice-cold waters of d efinition and axiom.
Many of them are strange: “Whatever is, is in itself or in another.” “By attribute I mean
what the intellect perceives of a substance as constituting its essence.” We are not exactly
sure what these dark sayings are supposed to mean and Spinoza does not wait for us to
catch up. Rather, he immediately goes to work trying to draw out their consequences,
many of which are bizarre or counterintuitive: there is only one substance and all else is
a mode of this substance; there is no contingency in nature; mind and body are the
same thing conceived in two different ways. We wonder, “Where are we and how did
we get here?”
In this chapter, I will try to do two things. First, I will explain how Spinoza under-
stands the nature of definitions and axioms, which will tell us something about his
method and how he thinks about philosophy in general. Second, I will give a character-
ization of the content of the definitions and axioms as a first-time seventeenth-century
reader would have likely understood them. I am not, therefore, developing an-all-things-
considered interpretation of them that I would defend as a reading of Spinoza. Rather,
I am seeking to show how they would have been received by a contemporary who was
not necessarily familiar with what is to follow. This will tell us what Spinoza thinks or
hopes his readers will grant him from the outset or, at least, what he could reasonably
hope for in this regard. Part of the reason that some of Spinoza’s d efinitions and axioms
can appear odd or opaque to us is that philosophy has changed since Spinoza composed
the Ethics in the late seventeenth century. Various philosophical traditions have faded
from prominence, terminology has shifted, and questions have gone in and out of focus.
By providing some context, I hope to show that they would not have appeared quite as
strange to Spinoza’s contemporaries as they do to us. And by making it clear what a
contemporary would have taken Spinoza to be assuming at the outset with his defin-
itions and axioms, we will be in a better position to understand both the philosophy he
6 Spinoza’s Starting Points
develops out of them and the persuasive force of the arguments he offers for it. Thus,
the goal of this chapter is mainly propaedeutic. Its goal is to put us in a position to
interpret and evaluate the metaphysical doctrines that Spinoza arrives at from these
starting points.
Why the Geometrical Method?

In beginning his Ethics with definitions and axioms and then proceeding to derive
propositions from them, Spinoza imitates the presentational form of Euclid’s Elements.
That work is a work of mathematics, a discipline that is often thought to have a special
place in human knowledge because its truths are necessary and known a priori.
Moreover, mathematics, in Spinoza’s day as well as our own, is one of the best developed,
most sophisticated, and most well-grounded bodies of knowledge that we possess. By
seeking to emulate its presentational form, does Spinoza mean to claim similar virtues
for his own theory? If so, does the geometrical method, in Spinoza’s hands, succeed in
conferring them?
Some have thought that Spinoza’s choice of the geometrical style reflects a certain
kind of foundationalism about knowledge.1 We begin, according to this foundationalist
interpretation, with certain and unshakable foundations (the definitions and a xioms)
and we deduce a body of propositions from them by means of certainty-preserving
inferences. These propositions constitute a body of knowledge because we know the
foundations and the propositions are linked to them in such a way that their knowledge
is transmitted upward. The propositions are known because the definitions and axioms
are known.
This raises the question, with respect to axiomatic systems in general, on what basis
are the foundations, the definitions and axioms, themselves known. One possible
answer is that the definitions are known because they are nominal (that is, of words
and not things) and stipulative (that is, stipulated by the author). The only constraint
on nominal stipulative definitions is that they be consistent because you can use words
however you like so long as you are explicit about it and do so coherently. Thus,
knowledge of definitions can be had cheaply and, indeed, one might say that knowledge
of them is free. The axioms, on the other hand, are substantive, but they are thought to
be self-evident or intuitively obvious. They are, perhaps, known by means of a rational
faculty that provides insight into the nature of reality, although different sources of a
priori knowledge could be postulated as well. Many philosophers have found this pic-
ture attractive both as an account of the structure of knowledge in general and as an
interpretation of Spinoza. Its philosophical virtues notwithstanding, there are, unfor-
tunately, significant problems for it as an interpretation of Spinoza. Or so I will argue.
1 R. J. Delahunty, Spinoza (New York: Routledge, 1985), 94.

the nature of the definitions 7
The Nature of the Definitions

Let us begin by looking at the evidence for the view that Spinoza’s definitions are stipu-
lative and nominal. The first bit of evidence comes from Lodewijk Meyer’s preface to
Spinoza’s exposition of Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy in geometric form. In the
preface Meyer writes, “[. . .] Definitions are nothing but the clearest explanations of
the words and terms by which the things to be discussed are designated.”2 Because
definitions are of words and terms and not things, on Meyer’s view, they are nominal.
But does Meyer speak for Spinoza? There are two reasons to think that he does. First,
Meyer was a friend and philosophical confidant of Spinoza’s and was, therefore, in a
good position to know Spinoza’s own intentions with respect to his method. Secondly,
Spinoza consented to including Meyer’s preface in the publication of his work and he
had the opportunity to suggest changes and did so. This suggests that Spinoza approved
of Meyer’s characterization of definitions.
Another source of evidence for the interpretation on which Spinoza’s definitions are
nominal comes from the way he states his definitions. Consider three locutions that
Spinoza most commonly uses to introduce them: (1) “by x I understand y”; (2) “x is
said to be y which z”; and (3) “x is called y which z.” All three have natural readings on
which they pertain to the meanings of words and not the nature of things. This is most
clear in the latter two cases, which specify the conditions under which something is
“called” or “said to be” a certain way. Calling and saying are linguistic acts and such
definitions seem to be specifying conditions for applying linguistic items. The first
can be also be read linguistically because understanding may be construed as grasping
linguistic meaning.
Despite the appeal of the foundationalist interpretation on which Spinoza’s
definitions are stipulative and nominal, for both textual and philosophical reasons, I do
not think it accurately represents Spinoza’s view. But because the Ethics itself says almost
nothing on the subject of definition or method more generally, we will have to look at
other works where Spinoza treats the question of methodology more fully in order to
obtain textual evidence that bears on the question.
In the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, Spinoza gives us criteria for good
definitions of both uncreated and created things. If a thing is uncreated then its d
efinition
must (1) exclude all external causes; (2) avoid substantives that can be expressed as
adjectives; (3) answer the question, “does it exist?”; and (4) allow us to infer all of its
properties. But if a thing is created it must (1) include its proximate causes; and
(2) allow us to deduce all of its properties. It is important to note that the definitions
under discussion in the TIE are clearly definitions of things and not words. What is
more, Spinoza speaks of discovering definitions. He also uses the expressions “the
nature of ” and “the definition of ” as equivalent to each other. Clearly then, definitions
in the TIE are real and not nominal.
2 DPP, preface, I/27.

After laying down the conditions for good definitions, Spinoza promises to tell us the
method or rules for discovering such definitions.3 Frustratingly, the unfinished work
breaks off before such rules are given but Spinoza does say that in order to discover
such rules, we must first know the nature and power of the intellect. In other words, we
must have a real definition of the intellect. Spinoza begins his search for this real defin-
ition by enumerating eight positive properties that we clearly and distinctly perceive
pertain to the intellect. He then writes: “we must now establish something common
from which these properties necessarily follow, or such that when it is given, they are
necessarily given, and when it is taken away, they are taken away.” With these words,
the treatise abruptly ends. But, by drawing upon what we have already learned about
Spinoza’s views about definition, we can see what Spinoza is up to.
Spinoza believes that good definitions both specify a thing’s proximate causes and
allow all of a thing’s properties to be deduced from it. These conditions combined with
Spinoza’s preliminary attempts to discover the definition of the intellect suggest the fol-
lowing procedure: first assemble a set of properties known to be possessed by the thing
to be defined and then look for causal factors capable of bringing about something
with all of those features. A definition is thus like a theory of the thing defined. It explains
where the thing defined comes from and why it has the properties that it does.4
Does the account of definition extracted from the TIE apply to the Ethics as well? If
Spinoza still holds at the time of the composition of the Ethics that the correct method
involves starting with real definitions and deducing truths from it, then we would expect
it to start with real definitions. I think that there are compelling reasons to suppose that
it does. First of all, as noted earlier, Spinoza retains many of the opinions stated in the
TIE until the end of his life and he never retracts this particular doctrine. What is more,
if he had changed his mind and decided instead that the correct method starts with
stipulative nominal definitions rather than real definitions, it would be quite surprising
that he never explicitly addresses this change in view because such a momentous shift
would surely merit some discussion.
There is, moreover, some textual evidence from the Ethics itself: in 1p8s where, in
describing the “nature” of substance, he says that substances are in themselves and
conceived through themselves, the very properties in terms of which he defines sub-
stance in 1d3. Evidently, he takes 1d3 to describe the “nature” of substance and not
merely to stipulate the meaning of the word ‘substance’. It is not unreasonable to sup-
pose that this is generally true of the definitions that begin part 1 of the Ethics. These
considerations lead me to conclude that the definitions in the Ethics are intended as
real definitions.5
3 TIE §107/II/39.
4 See Edwin Curley, “Spinoza’s Geometric Method,” Studia Spinozana: An International and Interdisciplinary
Series 2, no. 151 (1986): 163–4, to which my account is significantly indebted; Jonathan Bennett, A Study
of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1984), 266.
5 Aaron V. Garrett, Meaning in Spinoza’s Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), ch. 6.
Garrett argues that, when first stated, the definitions are nominal and when they are constrained by subsequent
theorizing as the Ethics develops, they become real.
the nature of the axioms 9
The Nature of the Axioms

Let us now turn our attention to the question of the axioms. Any deductive system,
such as that presented in the Ethics, needs axioms on account of the structure of such a
system. The derived statements of a deductive system follow from earlier statements.
These statements too are often derived from earlier statements. But this process must
stop somewhere, otherwise the derivations would either extend infinitely backwards
or form a circle. Thus, the derivations must terminate with basic underived premises,
which are termed ‘the axioms’. They are the basic statements from which, together with
the definitions, the propositions are derived.
What, in general, makes a statement suitable to play the role of an axiom? There is no
fixed agreement on this matter, but an influential view can be found in Aristotle, who
thought that axioms were both self-evident and indemonstrable.6 This view informs
many subsequent discussions of axiomatic systems and was still influential among
Spinoza’s contemporaries. Once again, we turn to Meyer’s preface to Spinoza’s Descartes’s
“Principles of Philosophy,” where he writes:
Postulates and Axioms, or common notions of the mind, are propositions so clear and evident
that no one can deny his assent to them, provided only that he has rightly understood the terms
themselves.
This passage says that one does not need to know more than the meaning of the words
in which the axioms are expressed in order to rationally assent to them. In this, Meyer,
repeats half of the Aristotelian doctrine that axioms are self-evident and i ndemonstrable.
He does not, however, mention indemonstrability, either to affirm or deny that it char-
acterizes axioms. This leaves open the possibility that he thinks that axioms are indeed
indemonstrable by nature, although the passage is naturally read as implicating by
omission that axioms are not indemonstrable. Once again, due to Meyer’s relationship
to Spinoza and Spinoza’s approval of his preface, this passage provides some evidence
that Spinoza himself holds a similar view of axioms. But, naturally, this hypothesis
awaits further confirmation from Spinoza’s own writings.
Does Spinoza himself think that axioms are self-evident and indemonstrable?
The first difficulty that we face in attempting to answer this question concerns self-
evidence, for it appears that Spinoza regards all truths as self-evident. For example, in
the TIE he writes:
In order to know, there is no need to know that we know; still less is there need to know that
we know that we know [. . .] It is evident that, for the certitude of truth, no further sign is neces-
sary beyond the possession of a true idea [. . .] the truth needs no sign.7
Spinoza rejects, in this passage, the idea that knowledge requires certification by
reference to some standard or criterion. We need appeal to no sign that indicates that a
6 Posterior Analytics, 71b19–25. 7 TIE §34/II 15.

true belief is knowledge and indeed, we can rationally believe any truth with certainty.
In other words, all knowledge is self-evident. Spinoza expands upon these ideas in the
Ethics where he writes:
He who has a true idea knows at the same time that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt its
truth. [. . .] So he who knows a thing truly must at the same time have an adequate idea, that
is, true knowledge of his knowledge; that is, (as is self-evident) he is bound at the same time to
be certain.
This passage says that it is impossible to both have a true idea and yet not know that the
idea is true or not be certain of it. This is a surprising doctrine and there are many
interpretative questions that must be addressed before we can claim to fully understand
it. Nevertheless, I think that, however these interpretative issues are settled, it is clear
that there is little prospect for distinguishing axioms from other true ideas on the basis
of self-evidence.
It is not implausible that Spinoza thinks that all of the axioms of part I of the Ethics
are self-evident because they are the kind of abstract metaphysical claims that some
philosophers have thought that we know on the basis of some kind of intellectual
perception or intuition. But many axioms elsewhere in the Ethics do not have that
character. Consider the following:
2a4: We feel that a certain body is affected in many ways.
2a5: We neither feel nor perceive any singular things except bodies and modes of
thinking.
a2’: Each body moves now more slowly, now more quickly.
5a2: The power of an effect is defined by the power of its cause, insofar as its
essence is explained or defined by the essence of its cause. This axiom is evident
from 3p7.
The first axiom in this list means that our perceptions or feelings relate to a specific
body (our own). The second says that all of our perceptions or feelings are either of
bodies or of modes of thought. The third says that bodies accelerate and decelerate. All
three are, arguably, obviously true in the sense that any reasonable person with m
inimal
knowledge of the world knows them to be so. But it would be reasonable to doubt that
any of them is self-evident in the sense that absolutely no experience of the world is
required to justify our knowledge of them.8
And neither is it possible to interpret Spinoza as holding the view that axioms are
indemonstrable. He says, by way of explicating 5a2, that it is evident from 3p7, which
says that “the striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing
but the actual essence of the thing.” Thus, it would appear that he does not think that
axioms are by their very nature indemonstrable.
8 Curley, “Spinoza’s Geometrical Method,” 154.

approaching the proto-philosophy 11
This interpretation is also confirmed by 1p8s2:

[. . .] if men would attend to the nature of substance, they would have no doubt as at all of the
truth of 1p7. Indeed, this proposition would be an axiom for everyone, and would be numbered
among the common notions.
In this passage, Spinoza says that a proposition that he has just taken himself to have
demonstrated would be regarded by everyone as an axiom if they attended to the
nature of substance. Clearly then, axioms are not, for Spinoza, indemonstrable.
If axioms are not self-evident (or at least no more self-evident than any other true
propositions) and if they are not indemonstrable, what distinguishes them from any
other truth? What makes them suitable to play the foundational role that Spinoza
assigns them in his system? One clue can be found in a passage that directly precedes
Spinoza’s claim that 1p7 would be regarded as an axiom if people thought about it in
the right way. He writes:
I have no doubt that the demonstration of 1p7 will be difficult to conceive for all who judge
things confusedly, and have not been accustomed to know things through their first causes—
because they do not distinguish between the modifications of substances and the substances
themselves, nor do they know how things are produced.
It seems that Spinoza thinks that he must argue for 1p7 because most of his readers are
confused and do not distinguish substances from their modes. Thus, his reasons for
not including 1p7 among the axioms are dialectical. Before his readers will accept 1p7,
he must clear away certain confusions that he predicts on their part and thus Spinoza
appears to treat statements as axioms only if he anticipates that his readers will readily
grant their truth.
This dialectical interpretation of the axioms helps to explain why the above quoted
texts from parts 2 and 5 are introduced as axioms even though they would not be
regarded as self-evident by any philosopher who didn’t think that every truth is self-
evident. They are obviously true and will command nearly universal assent from his
readers. As we shall see when we look more closely at some of the axioms of part 1,
Spinoza’s assessment of the uncontroversial nature of his axioms is sometimes wildly
optimistic. Nevertheless, his criterion for treating something as an axiom seems clear
and reasonable, if not always correctly applied.
Approaching the Proto-Philosophy

Having looked at the definitions and axioms from the point of view of method, let us
now consider them in terms of their substantive content. In beginning his work with a
set of definitions and axioms, Spinoza openly states a number of assumptions for which
he will not argue and that will shape his subsequent philosophizing. The definitions
and axioms are substantive and philosophically interesting, and, as their uses in subse-
quent demonstrations show, Spinoza often understands them in a more controversial
sense then their initial presentations suggest. In a sense, they collectively constitute a
kind of proto-philosophy out of which the full theory evolves. To the extent to which
the propositions of the Ethics are successfully derived from it, the plausibility of
Spinoza’s philosophical system depends directly upon the initial appeal of that proto-
philosophy. For this reason, it will be worthwhile to spend some time exploring Spinoza’s
unargued-for starting points.
Before turning our attention to the content of the proto-philosophy, however, it will
be useful to say a word about how the full-fledged philosophy is derived from it. It is
almost inevitable that the modern reader will assume that Spinoza’s geometrical method
involves logically deducing the propositions from the definitions and axioms. But, if
this were so, then the definitions and axioms would be more than a proto-philosophy.
They would be his philosophical system itself, albeit in a non-explicit and involuted
form. The Ethics would then be nothing more than the teasing out and combining the
contents of the definitions and axioms. It is, however, anachronistic to assume that the
geometrical method relies upon deducing all the propositions from the definitions
and axioms because the modern conception of a proof is a comparatively recent devel-
opment.9 For example, Euclid’s arguments, while no doubt cogent, are not proofs in
the modern mathematical sense and they awaited Hilbert in the twentieth century to
reformulate them as such.10 Spinoza’s arguments are no more proofs than Euclid’s, but,
despite not being proofs, they may still be cogent or rationally persuasive.
The starting points most relevant to the subject of this book are the eight definitions
and seven axioms that begin part I of the Ethics. I will divide the definitions and axioms
into two classes: metaphysical and theological. The metaphysical definitions deal with
Spinoza’s basic ontological categories and the metaphysical axioms concern the charac-
teristic relations that obtain between the categories. The theological definitions concern
God and the concepts relevant to specifying his nature (causa sui, infinity, eternity, and
freedom). By contrast, the axioms mainly concern what I am calling metaphysical
topics: the relationships that obtain between the ontological categories, although one
could be classified as theological (its relevance is mainly to the notion of causa sui).
Naturally, not too much ought to be made of this division between the metaphysical and
theological starting points. There is no clean line between them and it is principally an
expository convenience.
Historical Context
Some of the most important of Spinoza’s definitions and axioms concern his basic
ontological categories: substance, attribute, and mode. Despite the fact that Spinoza
undertakes to explicitly define them, many readers have found them mysterious.
The reason for this is, in part, that Spinoza is assuming familiarity with a long philo-
9 I’m indebted to conversation with John Carriero on this point.

10 See Ian Mueller, “Euclid’s Elements and the Axiomatic Method,” British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science 20, no. 4 (1969): 289–309.
historical context 13
sophical tradition with which many contemporary readers have lost touch. For this
reason, it will be a good idea to first set those definitions and axioms in their proper
historical context.
Here are the definitions that outline Spinoza’s basic ontological categories and two
axioms that indicate how those categories relate to each other:
1d3: By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; in
other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other
conception.
1d4: By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives of substance as
constituting its essence.
1d5: By mode, I mean the affections of substance, or that which is in and c onceived
through, something other than itself.
1a1: Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else.
1a2: That which cannot be conceived through anything else must be conceived
through itself.
Spinoza’s basic metaphysical categories, substance, attribute, and mode, evoke the
categories substance, essence, and accident that were widely accepted by Spinoza’s
scholastic predecessors and which have their roots in Plato and Aristotle.
Let us begin with substance. ‘Substantia’ is Latin for the Greek ‘ousia’, which simply
means being and occurs in a wide variety of contexts in ancient Greek philosophy.
In Plato’s dialogue the Euthyphro, Socrates enquires about the ousia of piety.11 In that
context, he appears to mean nature, essence, or definition. In Aristotle, the notion of
substance or ousia plays a number of disparate roles. It is called upon to be the ultimate
subject of predication,12 independent existence,13 essence,14 and to account for unity,15
persistence through change,16 and the causal powers of things.17
Among scholastic Aristotelians, substance is normally defined with respect to
two criteria, which Pasnau, following Eustachius, calls subsisting and substanding.18
Subsisting refers to independent existence, which means that substances subsist in that
they exist in their own right and do not require a substance in which they inhere in order
to do so. As in Aristotle,19 the scholastics did not require that substances be independ-
ent of other substances in all respects.20 For example, they might very well depend
on other substances causally for their coming into existence or depend upon God’s
concurrence for their continued existence. What Aristotle and the scholastics mean
when they say that substances are independent of other substances is that they don’t
inhere in them.
11 Euthyphro 11a–b. 12 Categories 2b8–22.

13 Categories, 3a8; Metaphysics Z, 1028a10–30. 14 Metaphysics Z, 1031a28.
15 Categories, 3b10. 16 Categories, 4a10. 17 Metaphysics Z, 17: 41a6–10
18 Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 1274–1671 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 102–3.
Eustachius, Summa I.1.3b.1.2, I:51.
19 Cat. 3a. 20 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I.25.236; Summa I.1.3b.1.1, I:50.
What is inherence? This question brings us to the criterion of substanding. Something

is a substance only if it stands under non-substantial elements such as qualities, proper-
ties, attributes, or modes by providing a subject of inherence for these non-substantial
features of reality. Inherence then is the relation in virtue of which some features
characterize one subject rather than another. This is, of course, vague, but we will have
occasion to revisit the question of the nature of inherence in Chapter 5.
Descartes, for whom substance is also the most basic ontological category, retains
something like the medieval scholastic conception with an important alteration.
He too thinks that substances are independent beings21 and provide non-substantial
features with a subject of inherence22 but for him only God is a substance strictly speaking
because only God is absolutely independent of every other being.23 Bodies and finite
minds are only second-class substances because they rely upon God’s concurrence for
their continued existence.24 That is, he enlarges the conception of independence to
include not just independence understood in terms of inherence but to include causal
independence as well.
‘Attribute’ (attributum), as Spinoza uses it, also has Cartesian roots. For Descartes,
‘attribute’ can just mean quality or property but when he speaks of the “principal attribute”
of a substance, he means to indicate its essence. Not infrequently, he leaves off the
‘principal’ and just uses ‘attribute’ to mean principal attribute or essence. In these
contexts, Descartes uses the term ‘mode’ to denote nonessential qualities or features.
Every substance, according to Descartes, has one and only one principal a ttribute or
essence: either extension or thought. Thus, extended substance and thinking substance
are the two basic kinds of substances. What is more, all other qualities or properties of
a substance are modes of the substance’s principal attribute. For example, something is
extended just in case it has size, shape, and motion (or rest). But everything that has size,
shape, and motion also has determinate size, shape, and motion. These determinate
qualities fully characterize extended substances and must be understood through the
generic notion of extension.
This brings us to the notion of a mode or accident, which are simply characteristics
or properties. The color and size of an apple, for example, are accidents of the apple.
According to the influential view espoused by Aristotle, being is equivocal: many dif-
ferent kinds of entities exist but not all in the same sense.25 Substances exist in the
strongest and fullest sense. Accidents also exist but not in the same way as substances.
Substances exist in their own right as free-standing items in the world. Accidents only
exist in a dependent way by characterizing substances. They have no being or existence
except in virtue of inhering in substances.
Although prevalent throughout the history of philosophy, talk of different “degrees”
of existence or different “ways” of existing has also puzzled many philosophers. Indeed,
one might plausibly object that accidents exist in a different way because they must
21 PP I:151, AT VIIIA:25. Anat Schechtman, “Substance and Independence in Descartes,” The Philosophical
Review 125, no. 2 (2016): 155–204.
22 Second Set of Replies, AT VII:161. 23 PP I:55, AT VIIIA:25/CSM 210.
24 Cf. Schechtman, “Substance and Independence.” 25 Meta. Γ.2.
historical context 15
inhere in a substance only in the same sense that electrons exist in a different way than
protons because they must be negatively charged. What differs in the two cases are the
essential properties of accidents and substances on the one hand and electrons and
protons on the other. They don’t differ with respect to existence as such. In the early
fourteenth century, Duns Scotus argues for such a thesis.26 His way of putting the point
is to say that being is “univocal.” There are not many different senses of ‘exists’, but
rather, everything that exists, exists in exactly the same sense. So, accidents exist in the
same sense as substances: they exist in their own right and not simply in virtue of
inhering in substances. Accidents, on this view, are fully real (in the sense that they are
free-standing) and thus are termed “real accidents.” Scotus’s view eventually became
the mainstream view and the majority of philosophers in the Latin West accepted
the doctrine of real accidents.
Perhaps the best-known application of the doctrine is providing an explanation of
the Eucharist. According to the doctrine of transubstantiation that became Church
orthodoxy in the thirteenth century, the substance of the sacramental element, the bread
and wine given to congregants, is changed in the course of the ritual into the body and
blood of Christ. The flesh and blood appear to be bread and wine because, although the
substance has changed, the accidents remain: the taste, texture, color and so on remain
although the substance in which they previously inhered is no longer present. If accidents
are capable of such independence from the substances in which they inhere, they are
“real accidents.”
It is in contrast to real accidents that we can best appreciate the category of mode as
the early moderns understood it. There was debate among scholastic philosophers over
whether or not all accidents were real or whether some accidents were inseparable from
their substances. Suárez, for example, uses ‘mode’ as a term for such qualities or accidents
that are not real and distinct beings in their own right but are instead merely aspects of
a real and distinct being.27 Although they exist only insofar as a real and distinct being
has a feature or quality, they are, according to Suárez, mind-independent and are caus-
ally efficacious. Nevertheless, their reality is fully dependent upon the being in which
they inhere and cannot exist independently of that substance.28
Among progressive anti-scholastic early moderns, the notion of a mode is enthusi-
astically adopted and entirely replaces the notion of a real accident. This perhaps
expresses a rebellion against the perceived metaphysical extravagances of the scholas-
tic tradition and the belief that modes are more suitable for mechanical explanations.
It also marks a shift away from hylomorphic metaphysics and its commitment to exotic
metaphysical notions such as prime matter, substantial form, and the reification of the
non-substantial Aristotelian categories.29
26 Ordinatio IV.12.1.
27 DM VII §17; Francisco Suárez, On the Various Kinds of Distinctions, trans. Cyril O. Vollert
(Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1947), 28.
28 Suárez’s paradigmatic example of a mode is inherence which is said to be a mode of a real accident.
But he clearly believes that substances too have modes. Nevertheless, he is far from the progressive early
modern view that all accidents are mere modes.
29 See Ch. 5 for a fuller discussion of these issues.
The Content of the Metaphysical Definitions

With these historical precedents in mind, let’s begin by looking at how Spinoza defines
his basic ontological categories: substance, attribute, and mode. A substance is defined
as “what is in itself and conceived through itself, i.e., that whose concept does not
require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed.”30 A mode is
defined as “that which is in another through which it is also conceived.”31 In some
respects, these definitions recall typical scholastic ways of characterizing substances
and accidents insofar as accidents are usually said to be in another and substances are
not. The phrase “in alio est” occurs frequently in scholastic discussions of accidents.
Accidents are in another in the sense that accidents inhere in a subject. And scholastic
authors sometimes describe substances as “in themselves.”32 But there are important
differences between Spinoza’s characterization of substance and mode and those of his
predecessors. The first oddity is that, although scholastic authors sometimes say that
substances are in themselves, this is not the standard way that they are defined. More
characteristic is to describe them as “not in another” or as existing “per se.” Moreover,
the cases that I’m familiar with where a scholastic author describes a substance as “in
itself,” it is fairly clear that they mean this to be synonymous with “existing per se,”
which does not have any implication of self-inherence. That is, something inheres in
itself just in case it doesn’t inhere in another.
This scholastic understanding of what it is for something to “be in itself ” might not
be Spinoza’s. We can see this by noting the inferences that the definition licenses. First
of all, there is a conceptual condition on inherence. That is, if x inheres in y then x is
conceived through y and he is prepared to infer from x inheres in itself to x is conceived
through itself.33 This shows that he does not understand ‘is in itself ’ to mean ‘is not in
another’ but rather that it actually inheres in itself. It is not, however, clear that actual
full blown self-inherence is an intelligible notion. For example, as the scholastics
use the term, inherence is essentially a cross-categorical relation. It is the relation that
accidents stand to substances in virtue of which the accident characterizes the substance.
What would it mean for a substance to stand in this relation to itself? I fear that Spinoza
assumes his readers will interpret it loosely (as meaning “not in another”) but then
treats it literally when he wishes to draw certain inferences from it.34
The inclusion of a conceptual condition is also a noteworthy feature of Spinoza’s
definitions of substance and mode. What does it mean for one concept to be formed
30 1d3. 31 1d5.
32 See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, trans. John Patrick
Rowan, rev. edn. (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1995), 1254.
33 See the inference that Spinoza makes from 1a1, which says that everything is in itself or in another, to
the conclusion that everything is a substance or a mode in 1p15d. He is clearly ignoring the possibility that
something is in itself but not conceived through itself or in another but not conceived through another and
so accepts that inherence implies conception.
34 Garrett, Meaning in Spinoza’s Method, ch. 6. According to an interesting interpretation of Garrett’s,
this sort of ambiguity is a feature, not a bug, of Spinoza’s definitions and axioms.
the content of the metaphysical definitions 17
from another? One natural reading of this is that a concept x requires a concept y through
which it is formed just in case x is complex and y is a constituent of x. For example, the
concept bachelor requires the concept man through which it is formed because bachelor
is a complex concept that has man as a constituent.
How would scholastic Aristotelians have received Spinoza’s claim that substances
are conceived through themselves and modes are conceived through another? In
general, it would depend on whether conception is interpreted as psychological or
logical. If conception is interpreted as a logical notion, then nearly all scholastic
Aristotelians would accept that substances are conceived through themselves and some
would accept that modes are conceived through another. On the logical interpretation,
to conceive of something is to define it where a definition is understood as explicating
the essence of the thing defined. Substances, for all scholastics of whom I am aware, are
not defined by their accidents because accidents are not part of the essence of a thing.
In contrast, accidents, in the words of Aquinas, have “an incomplete definition, since
they cannot be defined unless the subject is posited in their definition.”35 That is, they
must be conceived through (i.e., defined through) another.
However, if conception is interpreted as a psychological rather than logical notion,
then Spinoza’s definitions of substance and mode are highly tendentious and would
have been rejected by all or nearly all scholastic Aristotelians. According to a dominant
tradition within scholastic metaphysics, what is directly grasped by the mind are the
sensible qualities of concrete substances (hylomorphic composites). We perceive, for
example, the temperature, color, and shape of the kettle and not its substance. Substances
are what underlie such qualities and are not directly perceived.36
There is something to be said for this scholastic view. Our cognitive grasp of things
is often by means of descriptions derived from sense experience. We know Socrates
through his shortness, snub-nosededness, ugliness, and so on. We do not know him
through the direct apprehension of a substratum in which those qualities inhere. But
the scholastics had other, more metaphysical reasons, for being pessimistic about
knowledge of substances.
In order to understand these metaphysical reasons, we have to know something
about the internal structure that they impute to substances. According to them, reality
divides into distinct parts at a more fundamental level than that of ordinary objects
and thus a particular man or horse has structure beyond what common sense depicts.
In the first instance, it is a composite of substantial form and prime matter. Prime matter
is pure potentiality and as such it is totally unknowable by us. It has no “actuality” and
35 Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, trans. Armand A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1983), 6.
36 Ockham writes, “we can naturally cognize no external corporeal substance in itself ” (Ordinatio I.3.2
[William of Ockham, Opera Theologica, 10 vols. (St. Bonaventure, NY: Editiones Instituti Franciscani
Universitatis S. Bonaventurae, 1967), 2:412.]). Scotus writes, “for substance does not immediately move
our intellect to know the substance itself, but only the sensible accident does so” (John Duns Scotus,
Philosophical Writings: A Selection, trans. Allan B. Wolter (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987), 5.) See also
Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 119–21.
must be informed by form, the principle of actuality, to be determinate in any respect.

Form is either substantial form (form that subsists or subtends) or accidental form
(which neither subsists nor subtends). Sensible qualities, what we can know concerning
substances, are accidental forms. Thus, what we can know concerning substances
belongs not to the category of substance but to one of the accidental categories.
The scholastics thought we know substances through their accidents because they
were empiricists. As empiricists, they thought that all knowledge begins with sense
experience, so only sensible qualities and not substantial form is in itself directly
knowable. This entails, for them, that substances are not directly knowable because a
complete substance is the combination of prime matter and substantial form. For
complete substances to be directly knowable, at least one of their parts must be directly
knowable, but neither prime matter nor substantial form is knowable in itself.37 Aquinas
even goes so far as to say that God himself cannot cognize prime matter or substantial
form in and of itself.38 And even if, as most scholastics apart from Aquinas held, God
can cognize prime matter and substantial form, it is impossible for us to do so. And so,
we cannot know complete substances directly. We can only grasp the s ensible qualities
that, as it were, clothe the substance.39
Spinoza’s definitions suggest both the psychological and logical interpretations of
conception. This can be partially discerned in his choice of mode as a category of being
as opposed to accident. As we have seen, for scholastic Aristotelians, some accidents
are real and some are mere modes. Modes are not real independent beings that can
exist separately from the substances in which they inhere but rather they are merely a
substance insofar as it is some way. For this reason, the modes do not constitute a veil
of qualities that separate us epistemically from substances. Rather, they are the substance
itself, albeit only insofar as that substance is some way.40 If there are no real accidents
and only modes, it is more plausible that nonsubstantial beings are known through
and partially defined by the substances in which they inhere.
How would readers of a Cartesian bent receive Spinoza’s definition of substance and
mode? As we have seen, Descartes himself defines substance in terms of ontological
37 Aquinas: “substantial forms, which are unknown to us in their own right, become known through
their accidents” (ST 1A 77.1 ad 7); Scotus: “If matter does not impress upon intellect any actuality with
regard to itself, and neither does substantial form, then what simple concept will intellect have of matter or
form?” (Ordinatio I.3.1.3 n. 146).
38 Aquinas: “Hence, properly speaking, there is no idea corresponding merely to matter or merely to
form; but one idea corresponds to the entire composite—an idea that causes the whole, both its form and
its matter. On the other hand, if we take idea in its broader sense as meaning an intelligible character or
likeness, then both matter and form of themselves can be said to have an idea by which they can be known
distinctly, even though they cannot exist separately. In this sense, there is no reason why there cannot
be an idea of first matter, even taken in itself ” (De veritate 3.5c/Thomas Aquinas, Truth, trans.
Robert W. Mulligan, James V. McGlynn, and Robert William Schmidt, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
1994), 1:160). Here Aquinas appears to say that they can be ideas, loosely speaking, of prime matter and
substantial form. But this is only because they are like God as a result of being his creatures. So, there can
be an idea of them by analogy.
39 The preceding discussion is indebted to Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, ch. 7.
40 See Ch. 5 for further discussion of this point.
the content of the theological definitions 19
independence which has clear affinities to Spinoza’s claim that substances are “in
themselves.” And Descartes often speaks of modes as “being in” substances, which is
consistent with Spinoza’s definition of them.41 What is more, Spinoza’s conceptual
conditions would have been congenial to a Cartesian as well. Descartes implies that
two things are really distinct, that is, distinct substances, if “I can clearly and distinctly
conceive of [x] apart from [y].”42 Descartes also says that “we can clearly perceive the
substance apart from the mode that we say differs from it, whereas we cannot, con-
versely, understand the mode apart from the substance.” Thus, it appears that Descartes
would endorse both Spinoza’s definition of substance and mode.
Let’s look now at the definition of an attribute: “By attribute I understand what the
intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence.” There are many puzzling
things about this definition. First of all, why does the intellect come in to it? By defining
attributes in terms of a relation to the intellect, does Spinoza mean to say that attributes
are mind-dependent? That is, does Spinoza mean to say that the attributes are products
of our way of thinking of them and, apart from our thinking about them, have no reality
in themselves? Many interpreters have answered yes to this question and consequently
interpreted Spinoza as an idealist who subjects reality to thought.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from the idealist interpretation is the one
according to which attributes are substances. Spinoza says, in 1p10s, that attributes
are conceived through themselves. This together with his assertion that everything
that exists is either a substance or a mode has led some commentators to conclude that
attributes are substances.43 There is a sense in which this is correct. Attributes are
nothing over and above the substance that they characterize. But this does not mean
that each attribute of a substance is itself a separate substance. Spinoza thinks that
there is an infinity of attributes but only one substance. Defenders of the interpretation
of attributes as substances typically say that the one substance is the bundle of all the
attributes and that when Spinoza says that there is only one substance he means that
there is only one substance that isn’t part of any bundle. I think this is mistaken and will
return to this issue in Chapter 4.
The Content of the Theological Definitions

Having looked at Spinoza’s metaphysical definitions, let us turn our attention to the
theological definitions: 1d1, 1d2, and 1d6–1d8. The first definition says:
41 For example, at PP I:57/AT IXB 27. 42 AT VII:78; CSM 54.

43 Martial Guéroult, Spinoza, 2 vols. (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1968), 1:232; Edwin Curley, “Donagan’s
Spinoza,” Ethics 104, no. 1 (1993): 115–29 and Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza’s Ethics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 29–30; Louis E. Loeb, From Descartes to Hume:
Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1981), 161.
1d1: By cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence, or that
whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing.
The notion of self-causation has Cartesian roots and first arises in the First Set of
Replies, where Descartes says that it is legitimate to ask about anything that exists, what
is the efficient cause of its existence, and if it doesn’t have one, why it doesn’t need one.
In the case of God, he concludes that God is his own cause. Some have interpreted
Descartes to mean that God is his own efficient cause.44 In response to such readings,
however, Descartes insists that by this he does not mean that God is an efficient cause
of himself but merely that he is something like an Aristotelian formal cause of his
existence. That is, God’s existence is explained by his own nature or essence.45
Spinoza evidently means something similar to Descartes by causa sui. This is clear
from the fact that he explicates self-causation in terms of essence involving existence.
This suggests that self-causation, for Spinoza, as for Descartes, is not a relation of efficient
causation. Rather, something is self-caused just in case it has an essence that involves
existence. (Here I am simplifying a bit. Spinoza says that God is the efficient cause of
the modes46 and that he is the cause of the modes in the same sense that he is the cause
of himself.47 How this is compatible with God not being his own efficient cause is far
from obvious. We will return to the issue of God’s causal relation to himself in Chapter 3.)
The second theological definition explains Spinoza’s understanding of the finite.
He writes:
1d2: That thing is said to be finite in its own kind that can be limited by another of
the same nature.
For example, a body is called finite because we always conceive another that is
greater. Thus, a thought is limited by another thought. But a body is not limited by
a thought nor a thought by a body.
I have included this among the theological definitions because Spinoza defines God as
an infinite substance and, while he never offers a definition of the infinite, this definition
of the finite might be intended to do duty for one. And, indeed, Spinoza appeals to 1d2,
in 1p8d, in order to make the case that every substance is infinite.
In this definition, Spinoza explains the finite in terms of limitation by another of the
same nature. It is common among Spinoza’s predecessors to explain the finite by refer-
ence to limitation. It is unusual, however, to insist that the limitations must be of the same
nature. Spinoza clarifies the restriction by saying that bodies are limited by bodies and
thoughts are limited by thoughts. To a late seventeenth-century reader, this clarification
is likely to suggest post-Cartesian hostility to mind–body interaction. This impression is
reinforced by the fact that, in the seventeenth century, it was common for philosophers to
44 For example, Arnauld in the Fourth Set of Objections, AT VII 230/CSM II 146.
45 First Set of Replies, AT VII:108–12/CSM II 78–80; Fourth Set of Replies, AT VII235–40/CSM II 164–8.
46 1p16c1. 47 1p25s.
the content of the theological definitions 21
think that the notion of limitation relevant to the notion of finitude is causal limitation.
For example, in the First Set of Replies, Caterus quotes Suárez as saying that:
Every limitation proceeds from some cause; therefore, if something is limited and finite this is
because its cause was either unable or unwilling to endow it with more greatness or perfection.
(AT VII 95/CSM II 69)
Although the claim that finite things are limited due to a causal limitation is common
in the seventeenth century, it is by no means universally accepted. Descartes, for
example, denies it in his replies to Caterus,48 and Spinoza does not make the connec-
tion explicit here.
The next definition that we will consider concerns God. Spinoza writes:
1d6: By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of
an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.
Exp.: I say absolutely infinite, not infinite in its own kind; for if something is only
infinite in its own kind, we can deny infinite attributes of it; but if something is
absolutely infinite, whatever expresses essence and involves no negation pertains to
its essence.
This definition has two parts. First it says that God is absolutely infinite and second that
God is a substance. It is entirely orthodox to describe God as infinite but it is, however,
controversial to define God as a substance. On the one hand, many p hilosophers in the
scholastic tradition are ambivalent about calling God as substance for a variety of
reasons. Augustine is uncomfortable with it because it suggests that God has accidents.49
Aquinas denies that God is a substance in any sense that implies that he falls under a
genus.50 Scotus vacillates on the issue and is generally reluctant to call God a substance,
but he is willing to concede that if ‘substance’ is understood as denoting self-subsisting
being, then God is a substance.51
On the other hand, Descartes not only calls God a substance without hesitation but
even goes so far as to say that God is the paradigmatic substance. Thus, we see that, in
this definition, Spinoza aligns himself with Descartes against the misgivings of many
scholastics with respect to the question of whether or not God is a substance.
But in other respects, Spinoza’s definition of God may be unacceptable for Descartes
because he says that God has infinitely many attributes. If by divine attribute Spinoza
meant things like simplicity, omniscience, and omnipotence, Descartes would have no
reason to disagree. But Spinoza’s definition of attribute, as we have seen, is suggestive of
Descartes’s notion of a principal attribute. Understood in this way, Descartes would
reject 1d6 because Cartesian attributes are essences and no substance can have more than
one essence. And certainly, no orthodox Cartesian could accept that a substance could
48 AT VII:111/CSM II:80. 49 Augustine, De Trinitate, VII.5.10.

50 ST I.3.5. 51 Ordinatio I.8.1.3, n. 134.
be both thinking and extended, to name the two attributes that Descartes recognizes
and that Spinoza will eventually reveal as the two attributes of God known by us.
The next definition concerns freedom and necessity. Spinoza writes:
1d7: That thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its nature alone,
and is determined to act by itself alone. But a thing is called necessary, or rather
compelled, which is determined by another to exist and to produce an effect in a
certain and determinate manner.
This definition first defines freedom in terms of necessity and then provides a definition
of necessity. Let us consider the definition of freedom first. According to 1d7, some-
thing is free just in case it acts and exists from the necessity of its nature alone. This is
surprising because it sets the bar for freedom so high that it seems unlikely that any-
thing but God himself could clear it. Acting from self-determination alone is difficult
enough but it is only one conjunct of the definition. In order to be called free a thing
must also exist from the necessity of its nature alone. This calls to mind Spinoza’s
definition of self-causation as having an essence that involves existence. If only a being
that is perfectly autonomous in its action and self-caused with respect to its existence is
free, then is any being other than God free?
Let us now consider the definition of necessity. Given its relation to the definition of
freedom, we would expect Spinoza to be defining a notion of necessity that is relevant to
freedom. Indeed, he offers ‘compelled’ as a synonym for ‘necessary,’ which might suggest
forced or coerced action, and the definition that he gives appears to make necessity the
mirror image of freedom. Whereas something is free just in case its existence and
action is self-determined, something is necessary just in case its existence and action is
not self-determined. This appears to be a definition not of metaphysical necessity but
of causal or hypothetical necessity and as such it is compatible with metaphysical con-
tingency. For example, in a deterministic universe it might be contingently true that
the baseball shattered the window and yet fully determined by antecedent causes.
The last definition of part I of the Ethics concerns eternity. Spinoza writes:
1d8: By eternity I understand existence itself, insofar as it is conceived to follow
necessarily from the definition alone of the eternal thing.
Exp.: For such existence, like the essence of a thing, is conceived as an eternal truth,
and on that account cannot be explained by duration or time, even if the duration is
conceived to be without beginning or end.
The definition of eternity is remarkable for the complete absence of temporal notions
in the definiens and it would appear that eternity is equivalent to self-causation as defined
in 1d1. Why does Spinoza think that ‘eternity’ and ‘self-causation’ are synonymous?
A partial answer can be found in the explanation that he appends to the d efinition:
the existence of a self-caused being is an eternal truth and so cannot be explained by
anything existing in time. This has, of course, the disadvantage of using the definiendum
the axioms 23
to explain the definiens. (A self-caused being is eternal because its existence is an

eternal truth.)
The explanation, however, invokes a well-known Cartesian conception according to
which an eternal truth is a truth about essences, which allows us to eliminate the circu-
larity in the explanation by reformulating it as: A self-caused being is eternal because
that it exists is a truth entailed by essential truths. It is not surprising to be told that
such abstracta are outside of time, that is, “cannot be explained by duration or time”
and thus are, in the sense defined, eternal.
How does Spinoza’s definition of eternity relate to those of his predecessors and
contemporaries? Perhaps the most important definition of eternity among Spinoza’s
predecessors and many of his contemporaries is Boethius’s characterization of eternity
as an unchanging present in which all things exist and happen simultaneously, which
was more or less the standard view until the seventeenth century. Early modern anti-
scholastics, however, often derided the view as unintelligible, usually opting instead for
a view of eternity as everlastingness or existence in time without beginning or end.
It is of particular interest to contrast the definition of eternity given in 1p8 with that
of Descartes in the fifth Meditation. He writes:
Apart from God, there is nothing else of which I am capable of thinking such that existence
belongs to its essence . . . and after supposing that one God exists, I plainly see that it is necessary
that he has existed from eternity and will abide for eternity.52
Spinoza’s and Descartes’s conceptions of eternity are similar in that they relate it to
essence involving existence (or “existence belongs to its essence” as Descartes puts it).
But they are different in that Descartes appears to associate eternity with everlasting
duration and not timelessness, as is indicated by the tensed phrases “he has existed
from eternity and will abide for eternity” (ab aeterno extiterit, et in aeternum sit mansurus)
(my italics). God has always existed in the past and will always exist in the future.
On Spinoza’s definition, however, past and future do not pertain to anything eternal
because something is eternal just in case it cannot be explained in terms of duration
or time.
The Axioms
Having completed our discussion of the definitions, let’s turn now to the axioms. The
first two axioms say that: (1) everything that exists is either in itself or in another and
(2) everything that exists is either conceived through itself or conceived through
another. The two axioms together with 1d3 and 1d4 imply that everything is either a
substance or a mode.
52 AT VII:68.
Next come a trio of axioms concerning causation. Although Spinoza’s statement of

each of them makes them seem relatively untendentious and bland, together they form
the launching pad for some of Spinoza’s most controversial and distinctive theses. The
first causal axiom says: “From a given determinant cause the effect follows necessarily;
and conversely, if there is no determinant cause, it is impossible for an effect to follow.”
We can divide this axiom into two parts, the first which says that causes necessitate
their effects. This is a very common belief in the seventeenth century. Hobbes,53 Locke,54
and Malebranche,55 for example, all believe it. But it is worth noting that almost no
scholastics did because they believed that the natural action of any created thing can be
defeated by the miraculous intervention of God. For example, fire causes the kettle to
become hot, but it wouldn’t have if God had miraculously intervened. For this reason,
the scholastics deny that the fire necessitates the kettle becoming hot. The second part
of the axiom says that, necessarily, everything has some cause, which is something like
a Principle of Sufficient Reason, which we will discuss it at length in Chapters 3 and 7.
The next axiom says: “The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the
knowledge of its cause.” This axiom appears to state that old Aristotelian truism that
knowledge is knowledge of causes—that is, inquiry aims at learning the causes of things—
and, surely, most of Spinoza’s contemporaries would have taken it as such. There is,
however, reason to be circumspect. First of all, the word translated as “knowledge” is
cognitio, which is not the most straightforward Latin analog for the English word
‘knowledge’, which is ‘scientia’. Now, ‘cognitio’ can be used as a synonym for ‘scientia’
but it can also mean cognition or acquaintance. Neither of these other meanings are
natural interpretations in the context of 1a4. It would be a surprising axiom indeed if it
said that acquaintance with the effect involves and depends upon acquaintance with
the cause, or that cognition of the effect involves or depends upon cognition of the
cause. And yet there is evidence for both interpretations. 1a4 plays a crucial role in
Spinoza’s account of sense perception, which is arguably a form of acquaintance. So,
this use of 1a4 strongly suggests reading cognitio as acquaintance.
Evidence for interpreting cognitio as cognition comes from 1a5, which says: “Things
that have nothing in common with one another also cannot be understood through
one another, or the concept of the one does not involve the concept of the other.” The
reason why 1a5 might suggest that ‘congnitio’ in 1a4 means cognition rather than
knowledge is that such an interpretation is necessary for making sense of Spinoza’s
argument for the claim that if two things have nothing in common with each other,
then one cannot be the cause of the other.
That argument proceeds as follows. First, he reasons that if they have nothing in
common with one another then they cannot be understood through one another.
He then infers from this together with 1a4 (cognitio of the effect depends on and involves
53 Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore, II 9.3.

54 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford
University Press, 1990), iv.iii.25:556.
55 Nicolas Malebranche, Oeuvres (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958), 2:316 and The Search after Truth, trans.
Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 450.
the axioms 25
cognitione of the cause) that one cannot be the cause of the other. This strongly suggests
that, in general, if cognitio of x depends on and involves cognitione of y, then x is under-
stood through y. We also know from 1a5 that x is understood through y just in case the
concept of x involves the concept of y. Therefore, if cognitio of x depends on and
involves cognitione of y, then the concept of x depends on and involves the concept of y.
It’s very easy to see why this would be true if ‘cognitio’ meant cognition, that is,
thought. If thought about x depends on thought about y, then, it is very plausible, the
concept of x depends upon and involves the concept of y. You can’t think about x
without thinking about y if the concept of x includes the concept of y. But it is less clear
why the concept of x must depend upon the concept of y in order for knowledge of x to
depend upon and involve knowledge of y unless Spinoza were assuming that all
knowledge was analytic.
But if the first-time reader of Spinoza’s Ethics accepts 1a4 because it sounds like the
innocuous Aristotelian doctrine that knowledge is knowledge of causes and then learns
during Spinoza’s argument for no causal interaction between things with nothing in
common that Spinoza assumes that they have committed themselves to the claim that
all knowledge is analytic (a decidedly non-Aristotelian claim), they are likely to feel
tricked. In other words, the suspicion is that Spinoza is trading on an ambiguity in
‘cognitio’. When ‘cognitio’ is read as knowledge, 1a4 is acceptable to a broad audience
but unless it is read as cognition the derivation of the claim that things with nothing in
common cannot cause each other will force us to have an understanding of knowledge
unappealing to that same audience. If, however, ‘cognitio’ is read as cognition in 1a4,
then that axiom doesn’t state the attractive claim that inquiry aims at discovering causes.
Rather it states the highly controversial thesis that there is a conceptual condition on
causation. That is, if x is caused by y, then the concept of x involves the concept of y.
Let us now turn from the axioms concerning causation and consider the axiom
concerning truth. That axiom says:
1a6: A true idea must agree with its object.

Spinoza’s views on truth are complex, fascinating, and difficult. This axiom, however,
gives the reader no indication of such complexities. It appears, rather, to be something
of a truism. Moreover, it seems perfectly in line with the characterization of truth given
by a diverse collection of his predecessors. Here is, for example, a prominent scholastic:
Truth is the adequation of thing and understanding.56
And here is an anti-Aristotelian proponent of the mechanical philosophy:

One can certainly explain, to those who don’t understand the language, what the word truth
means by telling them that in its proper signification it denotes the conformity of thought with
the object.57
56 Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Truth, Q. I, art. 1.

57 Descartes, Letter to Mersenne, October 16, 1639.
Given how widespread such similar characterizations of truth appear to be, we can
presume that Spinoza’s seventeenth-century readers would have little to dispute con-
cerning 1a6. Two remarks, however, seem worth making before we move on. The first
is that ideas are said to be bearers of truth. This serves to distinguish Spinoza from
philosophers such as Descartes who maintain that judgments, rather than ideas, are
true or false. Ideas by themselves, on the Cartesian picture, don’t commit us to the
truth or falsity of what they represent. Only when we affirm them do they become
subject to evaluation with respect to truth.
The second is that the relation in question is between the representation and what is
represented. For this reason, many commentators have taken 1a6 to be a statement
that aligns him with the correspondence theory of truth. I will not comment on that
line of interpretation here as it would push me out of the procedure that I have adopted
(and occasionally honored in the breach) in this chapter of looking at the definitions
and axioms naively, that is, from the perspective of a reader who has no knowledge of
how this material will be used by Spinoza later in the Ethics.
The final axiom concerns conceivability, existence, and essence, and it says:
1a7: If a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not involve
existence.
A philosophically sophisticated reader is likely to take this axiom as an indication that
Spinoza will be offering an ontological argument for the existence of God because it
connects the notions of conceiving and existing essentially. This would not sit well with
typical scholastic Aristotelian’s who follow Aquinas in thinking that ontological argu-
ments fail because we have no idea of God’s nature,58 but it would serve to align him
with Descartes, who thinks that we have a clear and distinct idea of God as a perfect
being, which allows us to make an ontological argument for his existence.59 That said,
it is worth noting that what separates Aquinas and Descartes on the question of onto-
logical arguments is not any principle such as 1a7 but the issue of whether or not we
have any idea of God’s nature sufficient to warrant such an argument and 1a7 makes no
representation one way or another on that issue. We will have opportunity to return to
the topic of the ontological argument in Chapter 3.
The Proto-Philosophy
We are now in a position to see what regions of logical space are excluded by Spinoza’s
definitions and axioms. That is, we can see what philosophical positions are excluded
from the outset by Spinoza’s starting points. I’ve argued that Spinoza’s definitions are
meant to be real definitions and hence mark out substantive positions. As such, they
are possible items of disagreement. You won’t accept Spinoza’s definition of substance,
for example, if you think that substances are not directly cognizable but are instead
58 ST I, Q, Art. 2.1. 59 AT VII:65–6/CSM II 45.

the proto-philosophy 27
grasped by means of something else, for example, their sensible qualities, and you
interpret conceived through psychologically. And if you think that all accidents are
modes, as philosophers like Aquinas do, you might not like Spinoza’s definition of mode
on the psychological interpretation of conceived through. For example, if you think
substances are conceived through (in the psychological sense) their sensible qualities
and not vice versa you won’t agree that modes are conceived through the substances in
which they inhere. We do not cognize sensible qualities by cognizing substances. Rather,
for philosophers such as Aquinas, we first cognize accidents (or modes) and, on that
basis, infer knowledge of substance.
Turning to the axioms, you won’t accept 1a1 if you think that there are things other
than substances and modes. For example, if you are a scholastic Aristotelian of the late
fourteenth century or later, you probably believe in real accidents, accidental forms,
and prime matter. Such things are neither substances nor modes. Another reason you
might think that there are things that aren’t substances or modes is that you are a realist
about properties who, like David Armstrong, thinks that properties are universals.
Modes are not universals (we will return to this point in Chapter 5) and universals are
not (primary) substances, so you would believe that there are things that are neither
substances nor modes.
This brings us to 1a2: What cannot be conceived through another, must be con-
ceived through itself. You reject this if you think that there are things that cannot be
conceived at all, in other words, you believe that there are ineffable mysteries. Aquinas
believes that not even God can understand prime matter, so he is committed to
rejecting 1a2. If you are an externalist about mental content and you think that it is
possible that we are in a global brain-in-a-vat situation—every mind stands to the
world as brains in vats stand to their world—then you would also reject 1a2.60 Just as
brains in vats don’t even have the concept of brain or vat and so can’t entertain the
possibility that they are brains in vats, so too we would lack the relevant concepts to
cognize our own circumstances and hence 1a2 (assuming that the axioms are meant to
be necessary truths) is false.
You will reject 1a3 if you think that causation is not a relation of necessitation. For
example, if you think that causes don’t necessitate because God could miraculously
defeat the natural powers of things, as every scholastic that I’m aware of believed, then
you reject 1a3. Also, philosophers who think that causation is merely a relation of
dependence because of the reliance of causes on background conditions will reject 1a3.
Additionally, if you think the laws of nature are merely probabilistic, as mainstream
interpretations of quantum mechanics hold, then you too reject 1a3. Or if you think
that the laws of nature are merely contingent as the Humeans do, then you reject 1a3.
1a4 is likely to be the axiom that produces the least dissent but only because it’s the
hardest to properly interpret. Its most natural interpretation, without looking at the
60 It must be emphasized that such a scenario only falsifies 1a2 if every mind, including God’s is in such
a predicament.
broader context, is the appealing Aristotelian dictum that knowledge is knowledge of

causes, that is, that inquiry aims at discovering causes. Few of Spinoza’s contemporaries
would have disagreed with that. It can be denied, however, without absurdity. For
example, if you believe that efficient causation is the only form of causation and that
there are objects of knowledge that don’t stand in efficient causal relations (for example,
abstract objects), then you would reject 1a4 even on its least tendentious Aristotelian
reading. We saw earlier that right off the bat in 1p3d Spinoza uses 1a4 as if it means that
there is a conceptual condition on causation. That is, if x is caused by y, then the concept
of x involves the concept of y. This claim should be denied by anyone who doesn’t think
that causation is a necessary connection. As we saw already, this includes medieval
scholastics, counterfactual dependence theorists, those who believe that the laws of
nature are probabilistic, and those who think that the laws of nature are contingent.
This brings us to 1a5, which says, “Things that have nothing in common with
one another also cannot be understood through one another, or the concept of the one
does not involve the concept of the other.” Part of this axiom seems relatively unobjec-
tionable. If two things have nothing in common with each other, then the concept of
the one doesn’t involve the concept of the other. This places a similarity requirement on
concept involvement. The concept of one thing doesn’t involve the concept of another
thing unless they are similar. One reason that this might be unobjectionable is that the
similarity requirement is relatively trivial. Every two things resemble each other in
some respects. But that is not what Spinoza is thinking. He believes that there are
things with nothing in common, for example any body and any mind. But even on the
assumption that the similarity condition is not trivial, it is hard to see this as objectionable.
If the concept of one thing involves the concept of another, then this is because they
both satisfy at least one concept in common. If concept satisfaction is a matter of how
things are, then two things that satisfy at least one concept in common are alike in at
least one way.
Where the axiom might meet some resistance is in its identification of understanding
with something conceptual. For example, someone might object that x can be under-
stood through y if x is caused by y. If there is no conceptual condition on causation,
then there is no obvious reason why x can only be caused by y if x and y have something
in common. Descartes, for example, believes that the mind can cause the body (in, for
example, voluntary action) but does not believe that the mind and the body have
anything in common.
Turning now to the theological definitions, you might resist 1d6 if you think that it is
impossible to have knowledge of God in this life, as most orthodox Christian and
Jewish thinkers do. Thus, you would think that defining God is impossible. Another
reason for thinking that defining God is impossible is that he is not, contrary to 1d6, a
substance. Because God is neither a substance nor a member of any non-substantial
category, he resists definition on the Aristotelian conception of definition. And if you
are a Cartesian, although you would concede that God is a substance, you would balk
at the suggestion that any substance would have more than one attribute.
conclusion 29
The definition of freedom, 1d7, is also highly controversial. Scholastic Aristotelians

generally think that the actions of substances divide into those that are coerced and
those that are spontaneous. The spontaneous actions further divide into the natural
and the voluntary. The natural actions spring from the necessity of the substance’s
nature whereas voluntary actions are rooted in what they call a “power of opposites,”
which is possessed only by rational agents choosing between actions where none is
necessary for attaining the telos of the substance. For a scholastic Aristotelian, Spinoza’s
definition appears to get things backwards. He calls something free under precisely
those circumstances where the scholastics would withhold that designation, namely,
when it acts from natural necessity. They might read him thus as defining ‘free’ as what
they would term ‘spontaneous’ and implicitly denying that there is a further distinction
between the free and the natural.
If you are a libertarian about free will, then you too will deny Spinoza’s definition of
freedom because that definition is clearly compatibilist in that says that the actions of a
free agent are “determined,” albeit determined by itself. Relatedly, if you hold that free-
dom requires indifference in the sense that a free agent must possess the ability to have
done otherwise, then Spinoza’s definition of freedom, while not explicitly ruling out a
compatibilist notion of the ability to do otherwise, appears to leave out a necessary
condition on freedom.
Conclusion
Thus, we see that Spinoza’s starting points are not a neutral and uncontroversial basis
for developing his philosophy; rather, they amount to a substantive picture of the world
that will receive further development in what follows. A noteworthy feature of these
starting points is that, while many if not all of them would be rejected by a scholastic
Aristotelian, nearly all of them would be unobjectionable to an orthodox Cartesian,
at least at first blush. But Descartes thinks that mind and body are substances with
different principal attributes which nonetheless causally interact and hence transat-
tribute explanation is possible. Once 1a4 and 1a5 are more fully explicated by Spinoza’s
use of them in his argument for the necessary existence of substance, it will become
clear that they entail that substances of with different attributes cannot causally explain
each other. Only at that point will the Cartesians realize that they didn’t accept 1a4 and
1a5 as Spinoza intended them. As stated, however, their connection to transattribute
explanation is far from obvious and 1a4 and 1a5 would likely be passed over without
comment. In this way, Spinoza has armed himself with assumptions that will largely go
unchallenged by the Cartesian and from which he will u ltimately derive conclusions
that stray far from the confines of orthodox Cartesianism.
2
Substance
“What is there?” asks the ontologist. “Whatever is, is a substance or a mode,” replies
Spinoza.1 This answer places him within a tradition that goes back to Aristotle according
to which substance is a category of being. Such categories are answers to certain sorts
of questions. When we ask of a given thing, “What is it?” our answers can be more or
less specific. The most general answers possible are the ones that specify the category to
which the thing in question belongs. For a certain kind of being, the most general
answer is that it is a substance. Many of Spinoza’s most distinctive claims concern sub-
stance: it pertains to the nature of a substance to exist and thus they are both self-caused
and exist necessarily; there is only one substance, God or nature, which possesses
infinite attributes; and every singular thing is a mode of this substance.
As we saw in the previous chapter, Spinoza’s definition of substance commits him
only to the claim that something is a substance just in case it is in itself and conceived
through itself. On the face of it, this definition does not differ significantly from that
of Descartes, and if its second clause is interpreted logically and not psychologically,
then it would be accepted by Aristotelians as well. If Spinoza’s conception of substance
is so similar to those of his predecessors, how does he reach conclusions about it
that diverge so sharply from theirs? In this chapter, I will begin to answer this question
by looking at Spinoza’s argument for the claim that it pertains to the nature of sub-
stance to exist.
Of particular interest to us in the argument for the necessary existence of substance
is Spinoza’s assumption that causes and effects must be similar to one another because
things that are dissimilar to one another cannot be understood through one another,
that is, the concept of the one does not require the concept of the other. Why does
Spinoza link causal dependence, understanding, and conceptual dependence in this way?
Historical Precedents: Aristotle

We already looked briefly at the history of the concept of substance in Chapter 1, but it
will be worth our while to now go into bit more detail. An influential tradition begins
with Aristotle’s treatment of the topic, which can be found throughout his corpus but
especially in the Categories, the Physics, and the Metaphysics. Each of these works
1 1a1.
historical precedents: aristotle 31
highlights different aspects of substance, many of which persist as guiding assumptions

about the topic for future generations.
In the Categories, Aristotle develops a notion of substance according to which
something is a substance just in case (1) it exists independently and (2) is a subject of
inherence. What sort of independence is relevant to substance? Dependence can come
in at least two varieties. There is causal dependence, in which some thing or event
depends upon a cause for its existence or occurrence. In this way, the trajectory of the
cue ball depends upon the motion of the stick and the existence of the child depends
upon the action of the parents. There is also non-causal ontological dependence, in
which one thing inheres in another. In this way, a property depends upon the substance
in which it inheres (or so the Aristotelians contend). Aristotle and his scholastic
followers only insist upon the second form of independence with respect to substance.
Substances do not require a subject of inherence in order to exist. They don’t inhere in
anything. It is an innovation of Descartes’s to claim that substances are independent in
every sense, including causally independent (with the caveat that we may call a created
thing a substance if it is independent from everything but God).
The other feature of Aristotle’s account of substance in the Categories is that sub-
stances are subjects of inherence. In this way, substances provide for the existence
of nonsubstantial or accidental aspects of reality.2 Nonsubstantial beings such as
qualities, quantities, and other features exist but they don’t exist in their own right.
Rather, their existence ultimately depends upon the existence of things that do exist in
their own right. Substances substand accidents in the sense that they ground the
existence of accidents. In this way, substances are fundamental entities.
Let us illustrate this with an example. Imagine a world populated by a single thing,
Tibbles the cat. The idea behind this picture of substance is that Tibbles, a concrete
particular, is what exists in its own right. There are many truths concerning Tibbles.
She is a cat. She has four paws. She has fur. We stipulated that Tibbles was the only thing
in this world, but, in some sense, some of these truths suggest that she is not completely
alone. There is cat-hood. There is paw-hood and furriness. But, according to this
conception of substance, cat-hood, paw-hood, and furriness are not free-standing
elements of this world. If Tibbles didn’t exist, none of these abstract entities would
exist.3 They exist only in virtue of their relationship to Tibbles. Cat-hood exists in virtue
of what Tibbles is. Paw-hood and furriness exist in virtue of what Tibbles has. In other
words, Tibbles substands these abstract beings. What primarily exists is Tibbles.
Tibbles and Tibbles alone subsists. Tibbles, on the view articulated in the Categories,
is a substance.4
2 Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 105–8.

3 Of course, it is not Tibbles tout court that is the ground of paw-hood and furriness, but rather Tibbles
having paws and Tibbles having fur. It is possible that Tibbles has neither fur nor paws. Since the grounds
must be sufficient for what is grounded, it is only Tibbles being certain ways that ground the existence of
such accidents as paw-hood and furriness.
4 Cat. 2b5–6.
32 Substance
This picture of reality can be contrasted with at least two main alternatives. The
first alternative says that what Tibbles is and has can exist independently of Tibbles.
Tibbles, cat-hood, and furriness are all independent existences. Platonists, real accident
theorists like Scotus, and certain bundle theorists all subscribe to views such as these.
The second alternative says that only Tibbles exists. Tibbles is furry but there is no such
thing as furriness. Tibbles is a cat but there is no such thing as cat-hood. Modern day
nominalists (not to be confused with their scholastic namesakes) hold such views.
The Aristotelian view splits the difference. It tries to acknowledge that being a cat
and being furry requires additional ontological complexity over and above Tibbles
herself while acknowledging that the additional complexity cannot be said to exist in
the full-blown robust sense in which Tibbles the particular cat exists.
In the Categories, Aristotle does not have much to say about the inner constitution
or structure of the primary substances. They are concrete particulars, like Socrates or
Tibbles the cat, but what are concrete particulars? Aristotle’s theorizing about sub-
stance, however, does not end with the Categories and in his Physics Aristotle answers
this question in terms of hylomorphism. This account of substance analyzes concrete
particulars, the primary substances of the Categories, as composites of matter (hyle) and
form (morphē). Matter, for Aristotle, is defined in terms of potentiality and the matter
of a hylomorphic composite is that which has the potential to be the composite. Form
is characterized in terms of actuality; it is that in virtue of which the potentiality of the
matter becomes actual. Take a bronze statue. Aristotle says that the matter is bronze
and the form is the statue’s shape. It is also in virtue of the matter that the statue has
the potential to receive new forms. For example, the statue might become dented.
In this case, the statue would have received an additional accidental form, the form of
the dent. It had the potential to receive this form on account of its matter. It is actually
dented on account of the form of the dent.
I do not want to create the impression by offering these examples that the doctrine of
hylomorphism is clearly developed by Aristotle and well-understood by his followers.
Certainly, the mechanical philosophers of the seventeenth century were deeply
skeptical that the hylomorphic framework really made any sense at all. Nevertheless,
despite their lack of clarity, the notions of form and matter play a central role in the
metaphysical thinking of a large number of Spinoza’s predecessors, even those, like
Descartes, who reject them. A great deal of seventeenth-century metaphysics makes
sense only in the context of an explicit and pointed reaction against the form and mat-
ter of the schoolmen.
Historical Precedents: Descartes

Early moderns of a corpuscularian or mechanistic bent, for all their differences to one
another, are generally united in their rejection of many aspects of Aristotelian meta-
physics. Hylomorphism, real accidents, and irreducible sensible qualities, for example,
are all emphatically rejected by most, if not all, of the mechanical philosophers. This
historical precedents: descartes 33
does not mean, however, that they completely reject the Aristotelian conception of
substance. In general, they retain the conception of substance articulated in the
Categories as the logical subject of predication and its associated criteria of subsisting
and substanding.
The mechanical philosophy was, first and foremost, a new way of conceiving body,
that is, corporeal substance. The qualitative diversity observed in the world is the product
of rearrangements of the parts of corporeal substance. There are no real qualities but
rather only modes of matter: size, shape, motion, and so on. This creates interesting
problems for the theory of corporeal substances with respect to their individuation,
generation and corruption, and causal powers.
According to Descartes, corporeal substance just is extension.5 He sometimes
expresses this view by saying that extension is the principal attribute or essence of
corporeal substance. Extension is the property of being extended in the three spatial
dimensions.6 Thus, bodies or extended substances are just the objects of geometry
made real. That the essence of body is extension and nothing more is a curious
doctrine because there seems to be more to bodies than their extension. And yet many
seventeenth-century philosophers enthusiastically embraced Descartes’s doctrine
concerning the nature of body. What attracted them to it?
Part of the appeal seems to be that it makes the nature of body something knowable
and something we can reason about. In this respect, contrast Cartesian extension with
one of its main competitors, the Aristotelian conception of matter. For the scholastics,
prime matter is something entirely or almost entirely potential and it has no actuality
of its own.7 As such, it is, in itself, featureless. There is (almost) no way that it actually is.
Because of this, it is only knowable indirectly through inference and then only slightly.
Of course, prime matter is not the main subject of Aristotelian natural philosophy.
Scholastic natural philosophers study such things as the elements (earth, air, fire, and
water), corporeal substances, and the natural changes they undergo. But because so
very little can be known about the matter that makes up corporeal substances, natural
philosophy must turn to substantial and accidental form to find explanations of n atural
phenomena. But this too is problematic because, as we touched upon in Chapter 1,
substantial form is not very well known either.8 By contrast, the nature of corporeal
substance, according to Descartes, is merely three-dimensional extension. That is
something that we can know well. Indeed, in the seventeenth century, geometry was
one of the best-developed areas of human knowledge. It must have been exciting for
5 PP I:63, AT VIIIA:30–1/CSM I 215; Fifth Meditation, AT VII:63–5/CSM II 44–5.

6 PP II:16, AT VIIIA:149/CSM I 239–40.
7 To what extent prime matter is purely potential is a controversial issue among scholastics. Aquinas
appears to hold the most extreme position according to which prime matter is entirely potential and not
actual in any respect. Others held more moderate positions according to which prime matter had some
minimal set of actual properties. In what follows I characterize it in the most extreme terms to emphasize
what the mechanical philosophers found objectionable about it.
8 For more on the difficulty of knowing substantial form on the scholastic conception of it, see Pasnau,
Metaphysical Themes, 119–24.
34 Substance
the ambitious seventeenth-century natural philosopher to be told that the nature of

matter was not only knowable but also completely scrutable to reason.
This view of corporeal substance entails that the physical world is a plenum: there
is no empty space. How could there be given that body just is extension and space
is extended? Space and body are, for Descartes, one and the same.9 How then is this
plenum carved up into individual bodies? How are bodies individuated? Descartes’s
answer to this question is murky and his philosophy suggests at least two different
answers that are not obviously compatible with each other: (1) substances are distinct
when there is a real distinction between them; and (2) corporeal substances are indi-
viduated by their motions. Let us consider both briefly in turn.
A real distinction obtains when two things can exist independently of one another.
Consider Tibbles and Socrates. It would not be incoherent to imagine a world in which
Tibbles exists but Socrates does not or vice versa. But now suppose Tibbles is pouncing.
Tibbles and her pounce are not really distinct. Tibbles can exist without pouncing but
the pounce cannot exist without Tibbles. Tibbles and her pounce are what Descartes
calls modally distinct. The pounce is a mere mode of Tibbles because it cannot exist
without Tibbles although she can exist without pouncing.
Descartes says that if two things are really distinct, then they are both substances.10 He
also says that every part of extension is really distinct from every other part.11 This means
that any arbitrary region of extension is a substance. As Martha Bolton has pointed out,
this is incompatible with the idea that two things are really distinct if they can exist
independently of one another.12 If one region of extension is part of another region then
the second cannot exist without the first. One way out of this problem is to say that any
arbitrary region is a substance relative to some decomposition of extension into non-
overlapping substances.13 This makes being a substance a relation to a decomposition, a
consequence that seems in tension with both the idea that substances are res or things
and not properties or relations and the idea that substances are among the fundamental
building blocks of reality and not logically posterior to some decomposition.
Descartes also says that bodies, the special subset of extended substances most
relevant to natural philosophy, are individuated by their motions.14 This idea has
been subject to two trenchant criticisms. The first comes from Cordemoy, who objects
that it has as a consequence that there are no two bodies that are at rest relative to
one another.15 The second comes from Leibniz who notes that, on the Cartesian con-
ception, motion is nothing other than change of place over time. Thus, there is no such
thing as instantaneous motion or any mark of motion at an instant. For reasons similar
to Cordemoy’s, Leibniz concludes that, for Descartes, there can be no bodies at an
9 PP II:16; AT VIIIA:149/CSM I:239–40. 10 PP I:60/AT VIIIA:28.

11 PP I:6/AT VIII:28; CSM I:213.
12 Martha Bolton (ms.), “Descartes on the Multiplicity of Extended Substance.”
13 Ibid. 14 PP II:25/AT VIIIA:53–4.
15 Géraud de Cordemoy, Six Discourses on the Distinction between the Body and the Soul and Treatises
on Metaphysics, trans. Steven M. Nadler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 63–4.
the argument for the necessary existence of substance 35
instant.16 If there are no bodies at an instant, then bodies do not have different locations
at different instants. Thus, there can be no motions. If bodies are individuated by
motions, then there are no bodies. This is a very problematic result given the importance
of bodies to Descartes’s physics.
Considerations such as these may have led some of Descartes’s followers to hold that
there is only one extended substance and that bodies are modes of that substance.17
They have certainly led some recent commentators to attribute such a view to Descartes
himself.18 It is not my concern to determine what Descartes’s own view on the number
of extended substances. But it should be clear that tensions internal to Cartesianism
set the table for Spinoza’s own substance monism, which we will discuss in more detail
in Chapter 3.
The Argument for the Necessary Existence of Substance

With this historical background in mind, we are now in a position to approach
Spinoza’s argument for the claim that every possible substance necessarily exists. In
1p7, Spinoza writes: “It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist.” The official state-
ment of the argument for the necessary existence of substance is very simple:
1. A substance cannot be produced by any other substance. (1p6)
2. Therefore, a substance is self-caused. (1)
3. Therefore, it pertains to the nature of a substance to exist. (2)
This is Spinoza’s explicit reasoning in the demonstration of 1p7, but the inferences as
stated are clearly invalid. We can, however, fill in the gaps with other doctrines held by
Spinoza and reconstruct a more persuasive argument for his conclusion. Such a recon-
struction of the argument for necessary existence (NE) could go as follows:
1. In order for two things to causally interact, they must have something in common
with each other. (1p3)
2. If two substances have something in common, then they share an attribute.
(1p2)
3. No two substances share an attribute. (1p5)
4. Therefore, no substance can causally interact with another substance. (1, 2, 3)
5. If a substance is produced by another substance, then they causally interact.
(premise)
16 G IV:512–13/AG 163–4.
17 Thomas M. Lennon, “The Problem of Individuation among the Cartesians,” in Individuation and
Identity in Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant, ed. Kenneth Barber and J. J. E. Gracia (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1994), 14–39.
18 R. S. Woolhouse, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The Concept of Substance in Seventeenth-Century
Metaphysics (New York: Routledge, 1993); Alice Sowaal, “Cartesian Bodies,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34,
no. 2 (2004): 217–40; Thomas M. Lennon, “The Eleatic Descartes,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 45,
no. 1 (2007): 29–45.
36 Substance
6. Therefore, no substance is produced by another substance. (4, 5)

7. Substances cannot be produced by modes. (premise (suggested by 1p6c))
8. If substances are not caused by substances or modes, then they are self-caused.
(premise)
9. Therefore, substances are self-caused. (6, 7, 8)
10. Therefore, the essence of a substance involves existence. (9, 1d1)
As we will see in the next chapter, Spinoza takes NE-10 to be equivalent to saying
that every possible substance necessarily exists. He will then try to show that God is a
possible substance and no other substance is possible.
Causation and Similarity

How strong is Spinoza’s case for his conclusion? Let us begin by considering the first
premise, NE-1, which says that in order to causally interact, two things must have
something in common. First of all, it is worth noting that a principle that is similar to
NE-1 can be found both in scholastic writers and in Descartes. Here is Suárez:
[A]n effect cannot exceed in perfection all of its causes taken together. It is proved that nothing
of perfection is in the effect that it does not have from its cause; therefore the effect can have
nothing of perfection that does not pre-exist in any of its causes, either formally or eminently,
because causes cannot give what they in no way contain. (DM XXVI.1, ¶2, 1:916*)
Descartes, in the Third Meditation, says something strikingly similar:

[T]here must be at least as much in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause. For
I ask, where could the effect receive its reality, unless from the cause? And how could the
cause give this to it, unless it also has [this]. For thus it follows that something cannot come
from nothing, nor that what is less perfect, that is, what contains more reality in itself, comes from
what has less. [. . .] That is, in no way can some stone, for example, which was not before, now
come into existence, unless it is produced by another thing in which there is all that is in the
stone, either formally or eminently; nor can heat be produced that was not previously in
a subject, unless from a thing that is of at least the same order of perfection as heat, and so for
the rest. (AT 7:40–1)
Both Suárez and Descartes insist that the cause of an effect must contain all the perfec-
tion possessed by the effect. Their reasons for believing this also appear similar. Suárez
says that something cannot give what it does not have and Descartes says that nothing
comes from nothing. Therefore, if something happens or comes into existence, the
source of this change must have the internal resources necessary to produce it. For
example, if a something heats a kettle, then it must either be hot or contain heat emi-
nently. Thus, both Suárez and Descartes are committed to a version of NE-1, the claim
that causes and effects must have something in common. They differ from Spinoza,
however, in that they both appeal to the mysterious idea of containing reality or perfection
eminently. What is it to contain a perfection eminently? The terminology suggests that
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PREMIÈRE RENCONTRE AVEC LE TIGRE
Ce qu’il y a de plus extraordinaire dans une forêt, c’est la

puissance de la pourriture.
Des détritus végétaux amoncelés, des feuillages qui se
décomposent, de l’entassement des humus, sous l’influence d’une
transpiration éternelle du sol et des arbres, d’une native humidité
chargée de germes, jaillissent des couches toujours renouvelées de
plantes vivantes.
Une forêt est comme un gigantesque creuset de la nature où les
formes mortes bouillonnent sans cesse et deviennent animées et
celui qui s’y promène enfonce ses pieds dans un amas de
désagrégations intermédiaire entre la vie et la mort.
Aussi la forêt me remplit de gravité et donne à mon esprit une
certaine tristesse sereine.
Ce jour-là, j’avais traversé seul les cultures et la jungle qui
s’étendent sur plusieurs milles autour de la maison et par un chemin
bordé de poivriers sauvages j’avais gagné la voûte prodigieuse de la
forêt.
J’avais été saisi brusquement de cette envie de tuer des bêtes,
de ce génie de la chasse qui s’empare de moi, certains jours. J’avais
besoin aussi de recueillement. J’avais éprouvé un vif
mécontentement. Je venais d’apprendre que Djath composait des
poésies dans sa langue javanaise et qu’il les lisait parfois à Eva.
Or, les gens qui s’adonnent à de tels passe-temps m’ont toujours
été odieux et il m’avait été pénible de penser qu’Eva pouvait
s’intéresser à ces sottises.
J’avais mis en bandoulière un fusil de monsieur Varoga, un fusil
que je connaissais mal — hélas ! je n’avais pas emporté les miens
en voyage — et j’étais parti.
A l’orée de la forêt il y a une rivière que l’on passe sur un tronc
d’arbre. J’avais aperçu, près de l’eau, un marabout sur une patte,
avec sa tête chauve qui semblait lourde de pensées et son plumage
noir vert qu’il lissait négligemment de son bec énorme.
Je lui avais fait grâce, sans savoir pourquoi. Mais dès que j’eus
franchi la ligne des hauts ébéniers qui se dressaient au seuil de la
forêt, comme s’ils en étaient les gardiens, je me mis à tirer sur tous
les êtres animés qu’il me fut donné d’apercevoir. Je tirais au petit
bonheur, sans m’occuper du résultat de mes coups, pour mon
soulagement personnel, pour le plaisir désintéressé de tuer des
bêtes.
Un homme inexpérimenté qui marche dans une forêt peut croire
qu’elle est dépeuplée. Un grand silence rayonne autour de ses pas,
toutes les créatures, dans l’herbe et dans les branches,
s’immobilisent comme si elles savaient, par un sûr instinct millénaire,
que cette forme mince à deux jambes et qui porte un tube de métal
dans ses mains, est la propagatrice de la mort, l’éternel assassin de
toutes les espèces.
Mais l’homme qui connaît le monde sauvage distingue de confus
rampements, voit des figures rusées d’oiseaux, des mufles béants
de terreur à cause de misérables progénitures animales, et il tue en
se réjouissant de sa perspicacité et de son adresse.
Il y eut d’abord un perroquet qui tomba avec un grand bruit
d’ailes en faisant une tache jaune et rouge le long des troncs noirs.
J’en avais aperçu deux qui se balançaient innocemment sur une
branche.
Les perroquets sont monogames. Quand ils se sont réunis en
couple, ils ne se quittent plus et se chérissent tendrement pendant
leur longue vie.
Or, rien ne peut m’irriter davantage que de penser que les bêtes
connaissent le noble sentiment de l’amour, comme l’homme, et sont
souvent plus fidèles que lui.
J’eus donc un âpre plaisir à entendre le second perroquet
jacasser désespérément sur sa branche. Sa douleur fut plus forte
que l’effroi de mon coup de fusil, car il ne s’enfuit pas, et je l’entendis
longtemps se lamenter avec des syllabes presque humaines.
Puis ce fut un singe qui dégringola d’un manguier avec le fruit
qu’il tenait. C’était un cercopithèque de petite espèce. Je n’avais fait
que le blesser, car je l’aperçus qui tournait en rond sur le sol sans
lâcher sa mangue, comme si sa blessure lui avait fait perdre la
raison. Je dédaignai de revenir sur mes pas pour l’achever.
Il me semble qu’un paon fut tué un peu plus loin. J’eus la bonne
fortune d’écraser d’un coup de crosse la tête d’un assez gros
serpent qui dormait. Je tirai au juger, sur quelque chose qui remuait
dans les broussailles et je poussai presque un cri de joie en voyant
que c’était un midaus, énorme rat à tête de porc, à queue en
éventail, qui dégage une odeur infecte.
Puis, successivement, j’abattis un kalender, espèce de renard qui
porte ses petits sur son dos, et un de ces étranges cuscus des
arbres qui vous regardent fixement avec des prunelles effarantes.
C’était un jour de facilité heureuse. J’avais à peine besoin de
viser. Tous mes coups portaient.
J’avais marché droit devant moi, conduit par l’aveugle désir de
tuer. J’avais pénétré assez loin dans la forêt par une piste étroite qui
aboutissait parfois à une clairière, s’élargissait et se rétrécissait de
façon uniforme.
Je songeais combien il serait aisé de se perdre dans cet océan
de troncs et de lianes et une sorte de lourdeur de l’air qui filtrait
malgré l’opacité du ténébreux plafond des branches enlacées me fit
penser que l’après-midi devait être à son déclin.
Je m’arrêtai brusquement. Je me sentis soudain très las et il me
fallut un grand effort pour recharger mon fusil.
J’avais chaud. Dans l’endroit où je me trouvais, le sentier était
particulièrement resserré et la mer flottante des bois ondulait tout à
fait basse et touchait presque ma tête. J’eus une sensation
inaccoutumée de découragement. Des milliers d’adversaires
m’entouraient. Derrière tous les troncs je croyais voir des faces
simiesques grimacer. Des formes recouvertes de poils remuaient
dans les feuilles. Des ailes bruissaient. Des écailles de lézard
craquaient sous l’humus. Comment vaincrais-je jamais ces légions
éternelles d’animaux ?
J’avais rebroussé chemin et je me hâtais. Les clairières
succédaient aux clairières, les sentiers à peine dessinés s’y
croisaient et j’étais saisi d’une vague crainte de m’égarer dans ce
dédale où je m’étais enfoncé si imprudemment.
Une nuance d’un bleu saphir qui se répandit dans l’air annonça la
venue prochaine du soir et comme si ce signal silencieux était
attendu par un peuple jusqu’alors muet, des tressaillements, des
chuchotements remplirent les massifs inextricables qui
m’entouraient, une plus intense vie ailée battit dans l’air et de
singuliers appels d’oiseaux et de singes se répondirent par-dessus
ma tête.
Mais je n’avais plus envie de faire du bruit en tirant des coups de
fusil et même j’évitais de frapper trop fortement le sol en marchant.
Je glissais comme une ombre rapide qu’épouvantent les
mystérieuses armées de la solitude.
Je m’arrêtai à nouveau à une cinquantaine de mètres d’une
clairière que je devais traverser. Un groupe de singes gibbons,
d’assez grande espèce, la traversait en sens inverse. Je crus
d’abord avoir affaire à des hommes de petite taille et je faillis les
appeler. Tous les singes me virent, mais ils me regardèrent sans
effroi et ils continuèrent à marcher en se contentant de pousser un
sourd grondement.
Je compris alors que j’étais le témoin d’un rare spectacle.
Au milieu de leur groupe, quatre singes tenaient par les bras et
les jambes un singe mort. En tête, plus grand que les autres par la
taille, était un singe qui était le guide et le chef. Le cortège que je
voyais passer était un cortège funèbre.
J’avais entendu dire que les singes gibbons avaient coutume
d’enterrer leurs morts et qu’ils le faisaient dans des lieux secrets et
au commencement de la nuit. Je n’y avais pas ajouté foi. Je savais
aussi qu’il ne fallait pas les troubler pendant l’accomplissement de
ce rite, parce qu’ils devenaient alors redoutables. Je restai immobile
jusqu’à ce que ces étranges fossoyeurs eussent disparu dans les
broussailles.
Mais quand j’eus repris ma route d’un pas plus allongé, des
pensées nouvelles m’assaillirent, des paroles entendues autrefois et
auxquelles je n’avais pas attaché d’importance me revinrent.
Je me rappelai qu’un voyageur, qui avait accompli un voyage
dans des régions inconnues de la Birmanie, me racontait qu’il avait
été appelé à faire un traité d’alliance avec une tribu d’orangs-
outangs, et qu’il avait, par signes, établi certaines conventions avec
un orang qui semblait exercer une sorte de royauté sur ses
congénères.
Il disait que dans la Birmanie du Nord se trouvait une montagne
inexplorée où était un immense cimetière d’éléphants et que certains
de ces animaux allaient, à certaines époques de l’année, dans ce
cimetière et y poussaient des cris, s’y livraient à des gesticulations
dont l’ensemble formait une sorte de cérémonie mortuaire.
Si les animaux étaient susceptibles d’obéir à des chefs, à des
rois, s’ils avaient même des prêtres pour invoquer les puissances de
la mort, ne pouvait-il y avoir une organisation, inconnue pour les
hommes et plus vaste, permettant aux espèces différentes
d’animaux de communiquer entre elles, de se faire part de leurs
terreurs et de leurs malheurs.
Tous les appels dont le soir se remplissait composaient peut-être
un langage. Il y avait eu, par le jacassement des singes, le cri
stupide des paons, des communications d’arbre à arbre, des
informations qui étaient allées très loin dans la forêt. Et ces
informations devaient dire qu’un tueur de bêtes, un redoutable
ennemi de l’espèce animale, avait eu la folie de se laisser
surprendre par la nuit dans la forêt et courait maintenant, éperdu, en
quête de la région des hommes.
A qui ces informations pouvaient-elles s’adresser, si ce n’est au
plus redoutable des animaux, à ce tigre de grandeur phénoménale
qui devait être un roi parmi les siens ?
Oui, le sage monsieur Muhcin, de Singapour, n’avait pas tort
quand il me disait qu’il y avait des hiérarchies dans les animaux et
que les uns possédaient des secrets de la nature que ne
possédaient pas les autres et que les hommes eux-mêmes
ignoraient.
C’était un crapaud sorcier, un crapaud magicien qui avait tué ma
mère par la vertu de son regard haineux et moi, je risquais à toute
seconde de périr sous les griffes du tigre vengeur, du souverain de
la forêt de Mérapi.
Il me semblait entendre derrière moi un pas feutré, une haleine
puissante. Jamais les cocotiers avec leurs troncs uniformément
droits ne m’avaient donné cette sensation de monotonie
désespérée.
Et tout à coup je butai sur quelque chose de mou. C’était un
perroquet mort, celui que j’avais tué lorsque j’étais entré dans la
forêt. Je jetai un regard circulaire autour de moi. Je reconnus le
sentier où je me trouvais. J’étais à l’orée du pays des arbres. J’étais
sauvé.
Le calme me revint avec une certaine honte de moi-même. Ce fut
à tous petits pas que j’atteignis la lisière de la forêt.
Je poussai un soupir en franchissant la muraille des sombres
ébéniers. Devant moi, éclairé par la lune, s’étendait l’horizon de la
jungle. D’innombrables mouches à feu, comme des étincelles
vivantes, volaient dans tous les sens. Au loin, je voyais de grandes
lignes noires, bienveillantes et infinies qui étaient des avenues
bordées de hauts banians plantés par la main des hommes et je
savais que là il y avait des villages et une belle demeure européenne
où les serviteurs devaient, à cette heure, allumer les lampes.
Devant moi, au bas d’une pente, dans un enfoncement assez
profond, je vis scintiller l’eau bleuâtre de la rivière qu’encadraient
d’épais tamariniers.
Je descendis, non sans regarder à plusieurs reprises la forêt par-
dessus mon épaule, je passai le tronc d’arbre qui servait de pont et
je remontai l’autre côté de la pente. Il y eut un petit clapotis d’eau et
je vis le marabout chauve, toujours immobile sur sa patte.
Et tout d’un coup un regret me vint. J’avais été favorisé par la
chance, puisqu’à chaque coup que j’avais tiré un animal était tombé.
Pourquoi ne pas mettre encore cette chance à profit ?
Je savais que pendant plusieurs kilomètres le lit de la rivière était
encaissé et que les bêtes qui voulaient boire n’en pouvaient
atteindre l’eau que très difficilement.
L’endroit où je me trouvais était un abreuvoir naturel et plusieurs
pistes y aboutissaient. Je ne pouvais pas trouver une meilleure
embuscade pour guetter le tigre. Puis, j’avais encore une heure de
marche à faire pour atteindre la maison de monsieur Varoga. Je
décidai de me reposer un peu en me mettant à l’affût, face à la forêt.
Je m’assis donc auprès d’un petit tamarinier, non loin de l’eau, mon
chapeau et mon fusil posés devant moi.
La nature m’a accordé, dès ma naissance, un don précieux,
parmi d’autres dons, qu’elle ne m’a jamais ôté. Quelles que soient
mes préoccupations ou mes chagrins, j’ai la faculté de m’endormir
avec une extrême facilité. A peine étais-je installé qu’un sommeil
profond s’empara de moi.
Je ne sais combien de temps il dura. Sans doute assez
longtemps. Ma première sensation en m’éveillant fut que mon
chapeau en paille de Manille n’était plus à l’endroit où je l’avais
placé. Le vent l’avait entraîné dans le creux de la rivière. Ce vent
avait ensuite changé de direction, car la deuxième sensation que
j’éprouvai en sortant de mon sommeil fut une odeur infecte de
viande décomposée. Je n’ai jamais pu, malgré ma profession,
m’accoutumer à cet abominable relent que dégagent les bêtes
dévoratrices de chair crue.
J’eus un haut-le-cœur. Mais aussitôt mille voix crièrent en moi : la
cause ! Quelle est la cause de cette affreuse odeur ? Toutes mes
facultés d’attention s’éveillaient et une lucidité parfaite s’emparait de
mon cerveau, pendant que mes mains se tendaient machinalement
et silencieusement vers la crosse de mon fusil.
Le tigre était en face de moi à l’orée de la forêt. Il venait de sortir
des arbres et il regardait ou plutôt il respirait, car sa tête était
baissée vers le sol et se balançait de droite et de gauche, d’un
mouvement atrocement régulier.
Il était prodigieux, fantastique. Je n’en avais jamais vu d’aussi
grand et surtout d’aussi long. La lune blanchissait ses rayures qui
avaient l’air peintes. Sa queue battait d’une façon mécanique. Mais
ce qui était le plus impressionnant dans cette silhouette démoniaque
était l’allongement démesuré, disproportionné de son mufle.
Je crus, une seconde, avoir reculé dans le temps jusqu’à
l’époque des monstres fabuleux. La forêt se dressa plus haute, la
petite rivière roula avec impétuosité, la patte du marabout s’allongea
comme celle d’un oiseau de rêve. Les paroles de monsieur Muhcin
me revinrent à nouveau à la mémoire. Le tigre que je voyais était
plus qu’un animal roi, c’était un bourreau de l’enfer des bêtes, c’était
une sorte de tigre dieu.
Je calculai qu’il ne m’avait pas encore senti, puisque le vent
soufflait de mon côté et que c’était moi qui percevais son odeur.
Enfin mes mains se posèrent sur le bois de mon fusil que j’attirai
doucement à moi.
Je me rappelai avec netteté qu’il y avait du plomb dans le canon
droit et des chevrotines dans le canon gauche. Si je ne faisais que le
blesser avec mon premier coup, je pouvais encore l’aveugler à bout
portant avec la décharge du plomb. L’essentiel était qu’il découvrît le
défaut de son épaule d’une façon favorable, pour qu’il pût être atteint
en plein cœur. Les choses ne se présentaient en somme pas mal.
Mais alors il se passa une chose surprenante. Je m’aperçus que
mon fusil avait un petit mouvement de droite et de gauche comme la
tête du tigre. Je tremblais. Le saisissement causé par mon brusque
réveil et l’apparition inattendue de l’ennemi avaient secoué mes
nerfs et étaient la cause de ce tremblement.
Et dans le même moment où j’eus cette perception, l’immensité
du danger se découvrit à moi et j’éprouvai cette sensation d’espace,
de vide absolu que j’ai toujours dans de semblables occasions.
Je savais bien qu’il y avait tout près de moi un arbre dont les
branches n’étaient pas très élevées et que j’aurais pu gravir
aisément. Au moment où je m’étais assis pour l’affût j’avais aperçu
dans un champ de canne à sucre une dépression de terrain, une
sorte d’excavation encadrée de pierres qui m’avait parue excellente
pour m’abriter et d’où j’aurais pu tirer presque sans être vu.
C’était par paresse que je m’étais laissé tomber auprès d’un petit
tamarinier qui ne pouvait m’être d’aucun secours. Où était l’arbre
aux branches propices ? Où était le champ de canne à sucre ?
Le paysage avait reculé, s’était anéanti. Je ne voyais plus rien
qu’une étendue illimitée, un vide plus grand que celui des espaces
planétaires où j’étais seul avec un tigre formidable.
Et dans ce néant, d’un pas lent, en soufflant d’une façon rauque
et en regardant toujours la terre, le tigre s’avança vers moi.
Il ne faisait pas plus de bruit que s’il s’était mû dans l’espace. Il
descendit la pente de la rivière pendant que je me levais dans
l’espérance que la position droite calmerait mes nerfs, arrêterait mon
tremblement, me donnerait la possibilité de tirer avec certitude.
Arrivé près de l’eau le tigre se balança quelques secondes, il
souffla encore, il souleva un peu de sable avec sa patte et il but
paisiblement. Puis il leva la tête, satisfait, et il m’aperçut.
Il ne bougea pas. En trois bonds il pouvait être sur moi. La
sagesse était de profiter de son immobilité pour tirer. Mais je me
rendais compte que mes mains n’avaient pas la sûreté suffisante. Le
calme me revenait peu à peu à cause du caractère professionnel
que comporte l’échange de regard d’un dompteur et d’un tigre et le
monde, la forêt, la rivière et le champ de canne à sucre se
replaçaient peu à peu autour de nous, mais je ne cessais pas de
trembler et mes mains étaient tellement glacées que je n’avais
presque plus conscience de leur présence au bout de mes bras.
La lune était montée à l’horizon et elle éclairait lumineusement la
scène. Les rayures du tigre étaient en argent mat, bordées de noir.
Sa queue avait l’air d’un serpent qui aurait été aussi un éventail. Je
voyais dans la rivière l’image renversée et déformée de la bête. Un
bruit d’eau sur les pierres, que je n’avais pas remarqué jusqu’alors,
me parut formidable. Je me souviens que malgré l’imminence du
danger, une pensée dominait en moi stupidement, que je n’arrivais
pas à chasser.
— Comment se fait-il que le marabout n’est pas effrayé par le
tigre et qu’il ne quitte pas sa place ? Il veut voir comment je serai
dévoré.
Que se passa-t-il dans l’esprit de la créature sanguinaire dont je
voyais les bizarres yeux phosphorescents, sans expression, sans
flamme, démesurément ouverts et fixés sur moi ?
Savait-elle par tradition orale qu’un homme debout et tenant dans
ses mains un objet étincelant sous la lune pouvait transmettre la
mort avant qu’on l’eût atteint ? Vit-elle dans mes yeux l’ordre muet
d’une volonté supérieure ? Cette hypothèse est la moins
vraisemblable, car je ne sentais pas ma puissance habituelle
rayonner de moi et même j’éprouvais une singulière diminution de
mon être comme si j’étais tout d’un coup devenu d’une toute petite
taille, comme si j’étais une sorte de nain ridicule et incapable de tirer
un coup de fusil. Mais le tigre venait peut-être de dévorer un animal
à l’instant même et s’il avait soif, il n’avait sans doute pas faim.
Brusquement il se détourna de moi. Il glissa plutôt qu’il ne
marcha le long de la pente. Il hésita encore une seconde lorsqu’il
l’eut gravie. Pas un regard en arrière pour regarder la silhouette de
l’homme debout avec ses mains frémissantes et son engin de mort
que le manque de courage rendait inutile !
Il respira encore avec force. Un grand coup de son éventail blanc
et noir qui me sembla déplacer l’atmosphère jusqu’à la lune et
jusqu’aux froides étoiles et le roi solitaire aux pas feutrés rentra dans
le royaume ténébreux des arbres.
Alors seulement, comme si le spectacle qu’il s’était promis n’avait
pas eu lieu, le marabout se souleva, déploya ses ailes et avec un
claquement de bec, où il exprimait sa déception, il s’éleva au-dessus
des tamariniers de la rivière. Le vol de cet oiseau philosophe me
parut infiniment mélancolique, lourd comme l’ignorance des choses
et de soi-même que l’homme porte en lui.
J’étais triste. Mon chapeau à quelques pas de moi, près de l’eau,
me parut très loin, à une distance infranchissable, car il fallait pour
aller le chercher se rapprocher un peu de la forêt. On est très bien,
nu tête, la nuit. J’abandonnai mon chapeau.
Une heure de marche me séparait de la maison de M. Varoga. A
peine si je mis dix minutes pour franchir cette distance. Les
aboîments des chiens frappèrent délicieusement mes oreilles et je
me retins pour ne pas embrasser tous les êtres humains qui
formaient un groupe inquiet sur le perron.
LE JEUNE HOMME A L’ÉCHELLE
Ici se place l’incident de la seconde échelle.

J’avais raconté, pendant le dîner, ma course dans la forêt et ma
rencontre avec le tigre et je l’avais fait, sans presque aucune
modification, à cause de la force que j’attribue à la sincérité.
Selon son habitude, M. Varoga, toujours préoccupé, nous avait
quittés lorsqu’on s’était levé de table pour aller s’asseoir sous la
vérandah. Il avait trouvé, comme prétexte quotidien, des projets de
canaux à creuser dans le pays et il prétendait dresser dans sa
chambre des cartes hydrographiques.
Je dois dire d’abord que, pendant les deux journées qui avaient
précédé, Eva s’était montrée particulièrement coquette vis-à-vis de
moi. Tantôt elle me fixait avec ses grands yeux terribles et chargés
de volupté, dont elle adoucissait aussitôt l’ardeur par la musicalité de
paroles indifférentes, tantôt, d’un geste familier, elle posait sur mon
bras sa petite main et je croyais sentir comme une légère pression
volontaire. Le matin même, elle m’avait donné une fleur de
champaka en me disant :
— Gardez-la, c’est une fleur que j’ai portée contre moi, et elle a
sur l’âme une étrange action.
Sur l’âme ! Ce n’était pas sur l’âme, mais sur le corps ! La fleur de
champaka éveille la volupté, cela est bien connu. J’aurais attribué un
sens provocant à ces mots si je n’avais pas préféré croire à la pureté
parfaite d’Eva. Et puis, c’était Djath qui avait cueilli cette fleur.
A la clarté des étoiles, assis dans de grands fauteuils d’osier,
nous étions côte à côte, tenant chacun un éventail carré et l’agitant
pour chasser les moustiques. Au loin, les dernières lumières des
villages s’étaient éteintes. Tous les serviteurs avaient dû aller se
coucher, car un grand silence enveloppait les alentours de la
maison.
Eva se taisait. La conversation était morte tout à coup entre
nous, faisant place à ces paroles plus éloquentes qui n’ont pas
besoin de syllabes pour s’exprimer.
Je regardai Eva. Elle était inclinée sur son fauteuil de mon côté et
sa tête était penchée vers moi, assez près de la mienne.
La lune était tombée derrière la ligne des arbres en sorte qu’il n’y
avait pas assez de lumière pour distinguer exactement les traits de
la jeune fille. Mais j’y crus reconnaître une expression d’attente. Je
pensai que le moment était venu. Je lui pris une main qu’elle ne
retira pas et me mettant sur un genou, je lui dis que je l’aimais. Puis
tendrement, mais avec la réserve due à une jeune fille, je portai sa
main à mes lèvres et je l’effleurai.
Cela ne produisit pas sur elle l’effet de confusion et de tendresse
que j’espérais.
J’entendis tomber comme une cascade métallique un rire frais,
sonore, sincère. J’eus la sensation que par toute la vérandah
roulaient de petites perles harmonieuses. Ce fut très court et aussitôt
elle mit son éventail sur son visage.
— Pourquoi riez-vous ? dis-je, croyant à quelque cause
extérieure que je ne percevais pas.
Eva abaissa son éventail. Il y avait sur son visage une
expression de gaîté, et aussi un peu de déception.
— Je ris, parce que vous n’êtes pas un homme très moderne.
Mais cela ne fait rien. Je vous aime bien. Il est très tard. Le récit de
vos dangers pendant cette journée m’a brisée, nous reparlerons de
cela demain, si vous voulez bien ?
Elle s’était levée. Je ne savais que dire. J’avais la crainte confuse
d’avoir laissé passer une occasion. Je me disais que peut-être…
mais non, ce n’était pas possible. Je baisai encore la main qu’Eva
me tendait et elle disparut dans la maison. Elle monta en courant
l’escalier qui menait à l’étage supérieur et il me sembla que les
perles musicales s’égrenaient encore derrière elle.
Je n’avais pas sommeil. Je marchai très longtemps de long en
large sous la vérandah. J’aurais voulu accomplir un exploit étonnant,
voir paraître le tigre devant la maison et lutter corps à corps avec lui.
J’étais mécontent. J’étais perplexe. Puis le silence impressionnant
des nuits trop sereines pesait sur moi.
Ce silence fut troublé par un bizarre sifflement. Je n’y prêtai pas
d’attention sur le moment et je regagnai ma chambre. Elle était
située au premier et elle formait l’angle de la maison sur le devant.
Bien qu’assez éloignée de celle d’Eva on en pouvait apercevoir le
balcon en bois ouvragé.
Une fois dans ma chambre, j’examinai si quelque moustique ne
s’était pas glissé sous la moustiquaire et n’était pas en train de m’y
attendre. Puis, comme la chaleur était suffocante, j’allai respirer
encore une fois sur ma fenêtre.
Instinctivement, je regardai s’il y avait encore une lampe allumée
dans la chambre d’Eva. Il n’y avait pas de lampe allumée, mais il y
avait une échelle posée contre le bois de son balcon, et, par cette
échelle, montait un être que je reconnus immédiatement à son
costume pour le Javanais Djath.
Il montait sans aucune précaution. Il ne regardait pas à droite et
à gauche avec crainte. Arrivé au haut de l’échelle, le mouvement
qu’il fit pour entrer dans la chambre le força à se détourner et ses
yeux furent un instant fixés de mon côté. Je ne sais pas s’il me vit,
car je me rejetai aussitôt en arrière.
Je ne pouvais croire qu’il était attendu par Eva, qu’Eva lui avait
donné rendez-vous dans sa propre chambre au milieu de la nuit.
J’étais intérieurement persuadé qu’Eva m’aimait et il me paraissait
impossible qu’une jeune fille qui portait tant d’ingénuité sur son
visage fût capable, après avoir entendu la déclaration d’amour de
l’homme qu’elle aimait, de siffler mystérieusement pour appeler un
jeune Javanais poète auprès d’elle.
Alors, quel pouvait être le sens de cette visite nocturne ? Djath
avait peut-être une intention criminelle ? Un drame allait se
produire ? J’écoutai si un cri ne retentissait pas. Il n’y eut qu’un
silence plus lourd qu’auparavant.
Je n’osais me précipiter dans la chambre d’Eva. Je songeai que
Djath m’avait peut-être aperçu, qu’il était redescendu pendant que je
délibérais et que je me trouverais en présence d’Eva toute seule.
Quel que soit le prétexte, après l’aveu de mon amour, ma venue
dans sa chambre était indigne d’un galant homme. On n’est que trop
porté à penser qu’un dompteur est une brute ignorante, un être
habitué aux bêtes féroces, inapte à ces délicatesses de procédés
qu’aiment les femmes.
Le temps passait et il fallait faire quelque chose.
Mon père m’a toujours dit que, quand on est incertain entre
plusieurs actions à accomplir, il faut toujours faire celle qui est le plus
conforme à la morale courante, se comporter comme se
comporterait la majorité des hommes. L’hôte d’une maison, qui avait
surpris un événement de cet ordre devait en informer le maître de la
maison, le père de famille.
Je ne réfléchis pas davantage et je m’élançai dans la large
galerie circulaire qui donnait sur la cour intérieure. Cette galerie
n’était éclairée que par la lune déclinante et elle était fort obscure.
J’atteignis une porte et j’y frappai sans être absolument certain
qu’elle donnait sur la chambre de M. Varoga.
Je n’eus pas d’abord de réponse. Peut-être M. Varoga dormait-
il ? Je frappai plus fort, j’attendis et je frappai à nouveau. Après un
temps assez long j’entendis un pas traînant que je reconnus pour
celui de M. Varoga. Ce bruit de pas était accompagné par cette sorte
de murmure que font entendre les gens ennuyés d’être dérangés.
— Qu’est-ce qu’il y a ? dit une voix derrière la porte, voix qui ne
pouvait être celle d’un homme en train de dresser paisiblement des
cartes hydrographiques.
— C’est moi, répondis-je. J’aurais deux mots à vous dire.
Il y eut quelques secondes de silence et alors, nettement,
impérativement, retentit la voix de M. Varoga derrière la porte
toujours close.
— Excusez-moi ! Je ne peux vous ouvrir. Nous causerons
demain.
Et il ajouta, comme s’il répondait à mon insistance muette, d’un
ton péremptoire :
— Il sera grand temps demain. Je termine une carte très
importante.
De nouveau il y eut le bruit de son pas traînant qui s’éloignait. Il
n’avait pas attendu ma réponse. Sans doute avait-il trouvé ma visite
nocturne déplacée. Je n’osai pas insister.
Et comme j’allais m’éloigner je fus frappé en même temps par
l’âcre parfum de l’opium qui semblait sortir de la chambre de M.
Varoga et par un bruit de porte se refermant de l’autre côté de la
galerie.
Une petite cascade de perles légères résonnait au loin, s’égrenait
sur les ombres indécises des palmiers bas de la cour, le rire d’Eva
un peu ironique, mais qui m’assurait qu’elle ne courait aucun danger.
A peine rentré dans ma chambre je me penchai aussitôt au
dehors. L’échelle avait disparu.
J’eus le sentiment confus d’être ridicule et je ne m’en consolai
qu’en me disant que mes actions avaient été durant toute la soirée
celles d’un homme délicat et d’un honnête homme. Je ne
m’endormis que grâce à mon exceptionnelle faculté de sommeil que
j’avais déjà éprouvée quelques heures auparavant.
Mes inquiétudes disparurent le lendemain et firent place à la plus

folle tranquillité.
Eva s’expliqua avec moi de la façon la plus loyale, la plus gaie, la
plus délicieuse. Il paraît que je ne suis pas un homme moderne et
que je ne comprends rien à l’âme d’une jeune fille qui habite Java,
mais qui a passé deux années de sa vie à Paris et à Londres.
Il faut que je me mette bien dans l’esprit qu’il y a des femmes qui
sont cultivées, qui lisent des livres, qui aiment la poésie.
Je fus lâche et je n’osai pas dire ma profonde horreur de telles
choses.
Eva fait partie de ces femmes cultivées. Il se trouve qu’un de ses
serviteurs javanais est un descendant des anciens rois de Java, un
jeune homme extraordinairement versé dans l’histoire et la littérature
de son pays. Eva profite de ses grandes connaissances. Il dépose le
soir sur sa fenêtre certaines poésies qu’il a copiées et qu’elle lit
avant de s’endormir. Comme la fenêtre est haute, il s’aide d’une
échelle. Quel mal y a-t-il à cela ?
Eva ne me cache pas que j’ai été très indiscret en allant frapper,
la nuit, à la porte de son père. Son père fume l’opium et craint par-
dessus tout que cela soit su de quelqu’un. Personne ne l’ignore
parmi les serviteurs de la maison et même parmi leurs relations de
Batavia, mais chacun fait semblant de l’ignorer et de croire à ses
projets de canaux dont on lui demande des nouvelles et dont il fixe
les tracés chimériques. Le mieux est donc pour moi, si j’ai du tact, de
ne faire aucune allusion à ma visite nocturne.
Je me pique d’avoir du tact. Je ne parle de rien à M. Varoga. Il
me serait du reste difficile de lui dire quoi que ce fût, car je ne le vois
que pendant les repas et il disparaît toujours rapidement dès qu’ils
sont terminés. Je remets à plus tard le soin de le détourner de
l’habitude néfaste qui le rend si maigre et si jaune.
Mon père avait raison. Il faut toujours se conduire d’après les
règles de la morale courante. Je suis récompensé de la manière
dont j’ai agi par l’amour d’Eva, un amour qu’elle ne m’a pas dit, mais
que je devine dans tous ses gestes.
LA ROBE DE LA PRINCESSE SEKARTAJI
Mon père avait peut-être tort, et il faut des règles nouvelles pour
des êtres nouveaux. Peut-être y avait-il en moi une profonde et
native perversité qui causa la série des malheurs que je vais dire.
Peut-être ce qui arriva était-il écrit à l’avance et n’ai-je été que
l’acteur d’une pièce déjà jouée dans l’esprit d’un Dieu ?
Le point de départ de tout fut le costume de la princesse
Sekartaji. Quelle est cette princesse, quand a-t-elle vécu ? Il
n’importe. Je crois même que ce ne fut qu’une favorite et que si le
roi Ami Louhour la fit assassiner, il avait de bonnes raisons pour
cela. Mais cette Sekartaji avait porté, sans doute dans quelque fête
ou quelque cérémonie des temps anciens, un costume dont des
peintures, célèbres à Java, avaient immortalisé le souvenir.
— Je veux que vous me voyiez aujourd’hui dans le costume de la
princesse Sekartaji ! me dit Eva après le déjeuner.
C’était le lendemain du jour où j’avais essayé de parler à M.
Varoga de mon amour pour sa fille et de mon intention de la lui
demander en mariage.
Pressé de regagner sa chambre, il m’avait répondu évasivement
et en riant. Il m’avait tapé sur l’épaule et il m’avait dit :
— Je parie que c’est ce dont vous vouliez me parler l’autre nuit.
Demain, il sera grand temps pour traiter ce sujet. Je termine en ce
moment mon projet du grand canal.
Et il se frotta les mains avec la satisfaction d’un homme qui va se
livrer à un travail écrasant mais agréable.
Il avait gravi l’escalier avec légèreté, me laissant confondu
d’étonnement du peu de sérieux que certaines familles accordent
aux choses de l’amour, pourtant si graves.
Donc, je m’étais assis sous la vérandah, essayant de mâcher par
distraction l’affreux siri de Java, quand une servante vint me prévenir
qu’Eva avait revêtu le costume de la princesse Sekartaji et
m’attendait dans sa chambre pour me le montrer.
Je gravis l’escalier, je longeai la galerie et je frappai à la porte
d’Eva.
— Entrez, entrez donc, puisque je vous attends, me cria une voix
joyeuse.
Les mousselines de gaze dorée de la fenêtre étaient tirées et un
crépuscule secret baignait la chambre. Je ne distinguai rien d’abord,
puis un petit rire m’avertit qu’Eva était allongée dans l’angle de droite
sur des tapis de l’Inde, au milieu de coussins épais.
Je la considérai, béant de surprise, d’émotion et d’admiration.
La princesse Sekartaji devait vivre dans des temps où le
sentiment de la pudeur n’était pas encore développé. Peut-être le roi
Ami Louhour ne la fit-il mettre à mort que parce qu’elle donnait un
mauvais exemple à son peuple par l’étonnante légèreté de son
costume.
Eva était devant moi, à peu près nue jusqu’à la ceinture. Une
résille de fine soie pourpre recouvrait seulement ses seins. Ses
cheveux étaient entièrement rejetés en arrière et retenus par un
peigne d’or massif dont le poids semblait l’obliger à tenir sa tête très
haute, ce qui donnait à son profil une autorité inaccoutumée.
Un chelama-chindi azuré de Java s’enroulait autour de ses
hanches, mais il était si souple et si transparent qu’il ne faisait que
rendre plus vivante la ligne du corps. Les jambes étaient nues
comme le torse avec des anneaux en forme de serpent qui firent
quand elle marcha une imperceptible musique métallique.
Eva avait peint ses dents avec des lamelles d’or, selon un
procédé usité encore par certaines bayadères de l’île Madura. Des
sumpings étaient accrochés à ses oreilles. Elle avait frotté ses
épaules, ses seins et ses bras avec une odorante poudre bleuâtre
qui donnait à sa chair une couleur extra-terrestre. Elle était
enveloppée par les spirales que dégageait un brûle-parfum où il y
avait une huile aromatique chauffée. Quelque chose de surnaturel,
plus voluptueux que les odeurs, plus secret que la lumière d’or
tamisée, s’échappait de ce corps précieux.
— Le costume est rigoureusement exact, dit Eva sans ironie.
C’est Djath qui l’a dessiné et reconstitué.
Alors, une ivresse s’empara de moi. J’aurais voulu presser cette
forme délicate entre mes bras, respirer l’haleine de ses dents
peintes, arracher le lourd peigne de la chevelure tressée sur le cou
étroit et bleu.
Je tendis les bras, mais elle m’échappa.
— Vous voyez, j’ai même les noix d’arèque, dit-elle, faisant
allusion à un événement inconnu de la vie lointaine de la princesse
Sekartaji.
Elle tenait des noix dans la main. Sans doute aurais-je dû les
prendre pour obéir à un rite que j’ignorais. Et comme je ne le faisais
pas, elle se mit à rire et me les lança à la figure.
Je la poursuivis dans la chambre. Il me sembla que j’étais un
chasseur qui voulait saisir un papillon. Elle tournait autour de moi
avec un rire qui était devenu bizarre et son parfum, un parfum de
chair mêlé à des essences végétales subtiles, me grisait.
Et c’est alors qu’au fond de moi la terrible pensée naquit, obscure
d’abord, mais montant, se précisant parmi les vases ténébreuses de
l’instinct.
Non, je n’étais pas le chasseur éternel que j’avais toujours été.
J’étais une bête fauve en quête d’une proie. J’étais le tigre de la forêt
de Mérapi, le tigre lui-même et je sentais ma mâchoire s’allonger
démesurément et des longueurs de griffe au bord de mes doigts.
J’étais devenu, dans la chambre parfumée d’huile aromatique, le
tigre qui ne songe qu’à assouvir sa fureur de broyer de la chair.
Peut-être s’échappait-il de moi comme de la bête que j’avais
rencontrée, une insupportable odeur de charnier, car Eva s’élança
soudain vers la porte et l’ouvrit. Il me sembla qu’elle ne riait plus et
elle dit :

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Being and Reason: An Essay on

Spinoza's Metaphysics Martin Lin

Spinoza on Reason, Passions and the Supreme Good 1st

The Fifth Corner of Four: An Essay on Buddhist

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Frege’s detour: an essay on meaning, reference, and

CM Cogitata Metaphysica (an appendix to Spinoza’s DPP)

Passages of the Ethics are cited in the following way:

Works by other authors:

G Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt. 7 vols.

Spinoza is a metaphysician. He wishes to describe the basic categories that structure

1 2p6d, 2p7s, 3 and p2d.

Why the Geometrical Method?

1 R. J. Delahunty, Spinoza (New York: Routledge, 1985), 94.

The Nature of the Definitions

2 DPP, preface, I/27.

The Nature of the Axioms

6 Posterior Analytics, 71b19–25. 7 TIE §34/II 15.

8 Curley, “Spinoza’s Geometrical Method,” 154.

This interpretation is also confirmed by 1p8s2:

Approaching the Proto-Philosophy

9 I’m indebted to conversation with John Carriero on this point.

11 Euthyphro 11a–b. 12 Categories 2b8–22.

What is inherence? This question brings us to the criterion of substanding. Something

The Content of the Metaphysical Definitions

must be informed by form, the principle of actuality, to be determinate in any respect.

The Content of the Theological Definitions

41 For example, at PP I:57/AT IXB 27. 42 AT VII:78; CSM 54.

48 AT VII:111/CSM II:80. 49 Augustine, De Trinitate, VII.5.10.

to explain the definiens. (A self-caused being is eternal because its existence is an

Next come a trio of axioms concerning causation. Although Spinoza’s statement of

53 Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore, II 9.3.

1a6: A true idea must agree with its object.

And here is an anti-Aristotelian proponent of the mechanical philosophy:

56 Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Truth, Q. I, art. 1.

58 ST I, Q, Art. 2.1. 59 AT VII:65–6/CSM II 45.

broader context, is the appealing Aristotelian dictum that knowledge is knowledge of

The definition of freedom, 1d7, is also highly controversial. Scholastic Aristotelians

Historical Precedents: Aristotle

highlights different aspects of substance, many of which persist as guiding assumptions

2 Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, 105–8.

Historical Precedents: Descartes

5 PP I:63, AT VIIIA:30–1/CSM I 215; Fifth Meditation, AT VII:63–5/CSM II 44–5.

the ambitious seventeenth-century natural philosopher to be told that the nature of

9 PP II:16; AT VIIIA:149/CSM I:239–40. 10 PP I:60/AT VIIIA:28.

The Argument for the Necessary Existence of Substance

6. Therefore, no substance is produced by another substance. (4, 5)

Causation and Similarity

Descartes, in the Third Meditation, says something strikingly similar:

Ce qu’il y a de plus extraordinaire dans une forêt, c’est la

Ici se place l’incident de la seconde échelle.

Mes inquiétudes disparurent le lendemain et firent place à la plus

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