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However that may be, the deeper we go into the Spinozistic conception of the "inadequate," as related to the "adequate," the more we feel ourselves moving in the direction of Aristotelianism just as the Leibnizian monads, in proportion as they mark themselves out the more clearly, tend to approximate to the Intelligibles of Plotinus.
That Spinoza did not always take such care but considerably over-estimated the self-evidence of his definitions and axioms and the simplicity of many of his important propositions, is an unhappy fact conclusively established by the increasing volume of Spinozistic literature.
When Schleiermacher, further, equates the activity of God and the causality of nature he ranges himself on the pantheistic side in regard to the question of the "immanence or transcendence of God," without being willing to acknowledge it. It sounds Spinozistic enough when he says: God never was without the world, he exists neither before nor outside it, we know him only in us and in things.
God is Nature, if we understand by Nature not merely infinite matter and infinite thought, the two attributes of Nature specifically known to us but infinite other attributes the precise character of which we can never, because of our finitude, comprehend. Whatever is, is one. And it is, in the special Spinozistic sense, supremely perfect because absolutely real.
The fundamental ideas of the Spinozistic system, and those which render it important, are rationalism, pantheism, the essential identity of the material and spiritual worlds, and the uninterrupted mechanism of becoming. Besides the twisting of ethical concepts just mentioned, we may briefly note the most striking of the other difficulties and contradictions which Spinoza left unexplained.
The Spinozistic conclusion that, according to the strict meaning of this definition, there is but one substance, God, who, as causa sui, has absolutely no need of any other thing in order to his existence, was announced by Descartes himself.
Emerson states the case in his "Over-Soul" and "Spiritual Laws" in the true, calm Spinozistic style as if the gentle Jew had come back to earth and dictated his thought, refined, polished and smooth as one of his own little lenses, to the man of Concord. Benedictus Concordia, blessing and peace be with thee! It was really of some importance.
Side by side with ideas from Kant, Fichte, and Schelling we meet Platonic, Spinozistic, and Leibnitzian elements; even Jacobi and the Romanticists have contributed their mite. Schleiermacher is an eclectic, but one who, amid the fusion of the most diverse ideas, knows how to make his own individuality felt.
Socratic liberality, on the contrary, is consistent with itself, as Spinozistic naturalism is also; for it exercises that right of private judgment which it concedes to others, and avowedly builds up the idea of the good on that natural inner foundation on which everybody who has it at all must inevitably build it.
To speak of an equivalence between the two is simply to curtail, and make almost unintelligible, the Spinozistic or Leibnizian metaphysic. It is to accept this philosophy, such as it is, on the side of Extension, but to mutilate it on the side of Thought.
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