man was more many-sided than the thinker would have allowed himself to be.

To begin with the formal side of Spinozism: the rationalism of Descartes
is heightened by Spinoza into the imposing confidence that absolutely
everything is cognizable by the reason, that the intellect is able by its
pure concepts and intuitions entirely to exhaust the multiform world of
reality, to follow it with its light into its last refuge.[1] Spinoza is
just as much in earnest in regard to the typical character of mathematics.
Descartes (with the exception of an example asked for in the second of the
Objections, and given as an appendix to the _Meditations_, in which he
endeavors to demonstrate the existence of God and the distinction of body
and spirit on the synthetic Euclidean method), had availed himself of the
analytic form of presentation, on the ground that, though less cogent, it
is more suited for instruction since it shows the way by which the matter
has been discovered. Spinoza, on the other hand, rigorously carried out the
geometrical method, even in externals. He begins with definitions, adds to
these axioms (or postulates), follows with propositions or theorems as the
chief thing, finally with demonstrations or proofs, which derive the later
propositions from the earlier, and these in turn from the self-evident
axioms. To these four principal parts are further added as less essential,
deductions or corollaries immediately resulting from the theorems, and the
more detailed expositions of the demonstrations or scholia. Besides these,
some longer discussions are given in the form of remarks, introductions,
and appendices.

[Footnote 1: Heussler's objections (_Der Rationalismus des_ 17
_Jahrhunderts_, 1885, pp. 82-85) to this characterization of Kuno Fischer's
are not convincing. The question is not so much about a principle
demonstrable by definite citations as about an unconscious motive in
Spinoza's thinking. Fischer's views on this point seem to us correct.
Spinoza's mode of thinking is, in fact, saturated with this strong
confidence in the omnipotence of the reason and the rational constitution
of true reality.]

If everything is to be cognizable through mathematics, then everything must
take place necessarily; even the thoughts, resolutions, and actions of man
cannot be free in the sense that they might have happened otherwise. Thus
there is an evident methodological motive at work for the extension
of mechanism to all bec