De Piscibus Libri V et De Cetis Liber Unus

through the reality of its own nature that it becomes identifiable. However, whether this is the case or not is the very knot, the very cliff, which cannot be removed or moved from the middle by the conceived formal unity and by that ideal identity of the subject with the object.

But it is nevertheless very tempting to take the unity of the ideal object with the subject, which is true while one is thinking, for a real unity and one that is also necessary outside the form of thinking. It is furthermore tempting for those who are primarily occupied with thinking, namely philosophers, to apply that reduction of diverse things to unity, which is necessary in the act of thinking or ενθυμήσει in-mind-ness/in-thought, as well as the elevation of special reasons and laws to one principal reason, which they call the supreme principle, to things insofar as they are compelled to conceive of them as existing, that is, insofar as something is attributed to them by the very act of thinking by which they are posited as existing outside of thought. If anyone makes this application fully and purely, they will reduce τὸ πᾶν the all in existence to τὸ ἕν the one. For one has become accustomed in thinking to always consider two diverse things as one by a certain intuition; and thus, while thinking, one proceeds to infinity. Now, therefore, one transfers (just as things that are very similar can be confused for a time even by the most sagacious) the formal method of thinking beyond its own boundaries, that is, to the connection of existing things. One takes the law of thinking for the law of existing. Once this is obtained or granted, no system could be imagined that is more consistent with itself than that of Spinoza.