lutely under their influence, and then quickly discards
them. At the same time he is less able to observe facts, because they
are too much magnified by the glasses through which they are seen.
The common logic says 'the greater the extension, the less the
comprehension,' and we may put the same thought in another way and say
of abstract or general ideas, that the greater the abstraction of them,
the less are they capable of being applied to particular and concrete
natures.

Not very different from Descartes in his relation to ancient philosophy
is his successor Spinoza, who lived in the following generation. The
system of Spinoza is less personal and also less dualistic than that
of Descartes. In this respect the difference between them is like that
between Xenophanes and Parmenides. The teaching of Spinoza might be
described generally as the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction
and taking the form of the Eleatic philosophy. Like Parmenides, he is
overpowered and intoxicated with the idea of Being or God. The greatness
of both philosophies consists in the immensity of a thought which
excludes all other thoughts; their weakness is the necessary separation
of this thought from actual existence and from practical life. In
neither of them is there any clear opposition between the inward and
outward world. The substance of Spinoza has two attributes, which alone
are cognizable by man, thought and extension; these are in extreme
opposition to one another, and also in inseparable identity. They may be
regarded as the two aspects or expressions under which God or substance
is unfolded to man. Here a step is made beyond the limits of the Eleatic
philosophy. The famous theorem of Spinoza, 'Omnis determinatio est
negatio,' is already contained in the 'negation is relation' of Plato's
Sophist. The grand description of the philosopher in Republic VI, as the
spectator of all time and all existence, may be paralleled with
another famous expression of Spinoza, 'Contemplatio rerum sub specie
eternitatis.' According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, for they
are conditioned by what is alien to them, and by one another. Human
beings are included in the number of them. Hence there is no reality
in human action and no place for right and wrong. Individuality is
accident. The boasted freedom of the will is only a consciousness of
necessity. Truth, he says, is the direction of the reason towards the
infinite, in which all things repo