e to fall back on the facts of
experience, on the obscure and unscientific certainty that the thing
which we call the world, and the personalities which we call ourselves,
are a real substantial something, before we find ground of any kind to
stand upon. Conscious of the infirmity of his demonstration, Spinoza
winds round it and round it, adding proof to proof, but never escaping
the same vicious circle: substance exists because it exists, and the
ultimate experience of existence, so far from being of that clear kind
which can be accepted as an axiom, is the most confused of all our
sensations. What is existence? and what is that something which we say
exists? Things--essences--existences! these are but the vague names with
which faculties, constructed only to deal with conditional phenomena,
disguise their incapacity. The world in the Hindoo legend was supported
upon the back of the tortoise. It was a step between the world and
nothingness, and served to cheat the imagination with ideas of a
fictitious resting-place.

If any one affirms (says Spinoza) that he has a clear,
distinct--that is to say, a true--idea of substance, but that
nevertheless he is uncertain whether any such substance exist, it is
the same as if he were to affirm that he had a true idea, but yet
was uncertain whether it was not false. Or if he says that
substance can be created, it is like saying that a false idea can
become a true idea--as absurd a thing as it is possible to conceive;
and therefore the existence of substance, as well as the essence of
it, must be acknowledged as an eternal verity.

It is again the same story. Spinoza speaks of a clear idea of substance;
but he has not proved that such an idea is within the compass of the
mind. A man's own notion that he sees clearly, is no proof that he
really sees clearly; and the distinctness of a definition in itself is
no evidence that it corresponds adequately with the object of it. No
doubt a man who professes to have an idea of substance as an existing
thing, cannot doubt, as long as he has it, that substance so exists.
This is merely to say that as long as a man is certain of this or that
fact, he has no doubt of it. But neither his certainty nor Spinoza's
will be of any use to a man who has no such idea, and who cannot
recognise the lawfulness of the method by which it is arrived at.

From the self-existing substance it is a short step to the existence