De Piscibus Libri V et De Cetis Liber Unus

of pure extension anywhere. But having forgotten the origin from which he drew it, he was persuaded that he beheld those two attributes in God or the Infinite with a clear idea. Furthermore, if he had set before himself with deliberate study that same contemplation of the mind or of himself as the first thing from which the work must begin and proceed, he would undoubtedly have been compelled to distinguish also τὸ Velle the Will or the spontaneity of willing as a faculty that is clearly unique and, in a being that is something to itself, equally primitive as τὸ Cogitare Thinking. Once this was done, his entire Ethics—which now refers everything to thinking and therefore necessarily excludes moral freedom—could not have been formed otherwise than it was regarding what pertains to humans. But if, in the theological principles he posited, he had felt compelled to consider τὸ perfecte (h. e. sancte) velle willing perfectly (that is, holily) no less than τὸ cogitare thinking or knowing as a primitive πνευματικὴν spiritual faculty, and thus to count it among the attributes of God of which we can have a clear idea, he would not have thought that the notion of infinite spontaneity or pure volition should be excluded from the clear idea of the most perfect being.

But another factor, which seems to touch the head of the Spinozistic system, must also be indicated. Indeed, that doctrine recommends itself marvelously by its simplest unity, embracing absolutely everything through its ἓν καὶ πᾶν One and All. Everything seems to be reduced to its one source, from which they do not even emanate, but in which they truly remain, so that this Pantheism can be called a system of immanent emanations.