tions and passions of our body is simultaneous in nature with the
order of the actions and passions of the mind" (III. _prop. 2, schol_.).

The attempt to solve the problem of the relation between the material and
the mental worlds by asserting their thoroughgoing correspondence and
substantial identity, was philosophically justifiable and important,
though many evident objections obtrude themselves upon us. The required
assumption, that there is a mental event corresponding to _every_ bodily
one, and _vice versa_, meets with involuntary and easily supported
opposition, which Spinoza did nothing to remove. Similarly he omitted
to explain how body is related to motion, mind to ideas, and both to
actuality. The ascription of a materialistic tendency to Spinoza is not
without foundation. Corporeality and reality appear well-nigh identical for
him,--the expressions _corpora_ and _res_ are used synonymously,--so that
there remains for minds and ideas only an existence as reflections of
the real in the sphere of [an] ideality (whose degree of actuality it is
difficult to determine). Moreover, individualistic impulses have been
pointed out, which, in part, conflict with the monism which he consciously
follows, and, in part, subserve its interests. An example of this is given
in the relation of mind and idea: Spinoza treats the soul as a sum of
ideas, as consisting in them. An (at least apparently substantial) bond
among ideas, an ego, which possesses them, does not exist for him: the
Cartesian _cogito_ has become an impersonal _cogitatur_ or a _Deus
cogitat_. In order to the unique substantiality of the infinite, the
substantiality of individual spirits must disappear. That which argues for
the latter is their I-ness (_Ichheit_), the unity of self-consciousness;
it is destroyed, if the mind is a congeries of ideas, a composite of them.
Thus in order to relieve itself from the self-dependence of the individual
mind, monism allies itself with a spiritual atomism, the most extreme which
can be conceived. The mind is resolved into a mass of individual ideas.

Mention may be made in passing, also, of a strange conception, which
is somewhat out of harmony with the rest of the system, and of which,
moreover, little use is made. This is the conception of _infinite modes_.
As such are cited, _facies totius mundi, motus et quies, intellectus
absolute infinitus_. Kuno Fischer's interpretation of this difficult
conception may be accepted.