and infinite essence." But, on closer inspection, we find that
the God of whom he speaks is not the Creator and Governor of the world,
not a living, personal Being, distinct from Nature and superior to it,
not the Holy One and the Just, possessing infinite moral perfections,
and exercising a supreme dominion over His works; but, simply, absolute
Being, the necessary self-existent Substance, whose known "Attributes"
are _extension_ and _thought_, and whose affections, or "Modes,"
comprehend all the varieties of finite existence; in short, it is Nature
that is God, for every possible existence may be included under the
twofold expression of _Natura naturans_ and _Natura naturata_.
Accordingly, the principle of _Unisubstancisme_ is broadly avowed, and
the very possibility of creation denied. He affirms, and, indeed,
according to his definition, he is entitled to affirm, that there is not
and cannot be more than _one substance_; for by "Substance" he means a
self-existent, necessary, and eternal Being. And, on the same ground, he
affirms that the creation of _such_ a substance is impossible; for,
having excluded every finite thing--everything that does not exist of
itself--from his definition of Substance, he is warranted in saying that
anything called into being by a creative act of Divine power could not
be a "substance," _in his sense of that term_. He sets himself to prove,
by a series of propositions whose logical correctness, as deductions
from his fundamental assumption, may be freely and most safely admitted,
that the production of a "substance" is absolutely impossible; that
between two "substances," having different "attributes," there is
nothing in common; that where two things have nothing in common, the one
cannot be the cause of the other; that two or more distinct things can
only be discriminated from each other by the difference of the
"attributes" or "affections" of their "substance;" and that, in the
nature of things, there cannot be two or more substances of the same
kind, or possessing the same attributes. He holds, of course, that
Nature is as necessary as God, or, rather, that God and Nature are one;
there being but one Substance, appearing only in different aspects, as
cause and effect, as substance and mode, as infinite and yet finite, as
one and yet many, as ever the same and yet infinitely variable.

It is only necessary to add, that the sole attributes of this Substance
which are capable of being k