ny finite object, must at
once discern its relation to other finite objects and to the
whole,--must discern, in Spinozistic language, that it is "modal" and
not "real." But though it is not possible to _think_ the part as a
whole it is possible to picture it as a whole. The limited image that
fills the mind's eye seems to need nothing else for its reality. We
cannot think a house clearly and distinctly in all the connexion of
its parts with each other without seeing its necessary relation to the
earth on which it stands, to the pressure of the atmosphere, &c. The
very circumstances by which the possibility of such an existence is
explained make it impossible to conceive it apart from other things.
But nothing hinders me from resting on a house as a complete picture
by itself. Imagination represents things in the externality of space
and time, and is subjected to no other conditions but those of space
and time. Hence it can begin anywhere and stop anywhere. For the same
cause it can mingle and confuse together all manner of inconsistent
forms--can imagine a man with a horse's head, a candle blazing in
vacuo, a speaking tree, a man changed into an animal. There may be
elements in the nature of these things that would prevent such
combinations; but these elements are not necessarily present to the
ordinary consciousness, the abstractness of whose conceptions leaves
it absolutely at the mercy of imagination or accidental association.
To thought in this stage anything is possible that can be pictured.
On the other hand, as knowledge advances, this freedom of combination
becomes limited, "the less the mind understands and the more it
perceives the greater is its power of fiction, and the more it
understands the narrower is the limitation of that power. For just as
in the moment of consciousness we cannot imagine that we do not think,
so after we have apprehended the nature of body we cannot conceive of
a fly of infinite size, and after we know the nature of a soul we
cannot think of it as a square, though we may use the words that
express these ideas."[34] Thus, according to Spinoza, the range of
possibility narrows as knowledge widens, until to perfected knowledge
posibility is lost in necessity.

Insufficiency of the individual.

From these considerations it follows that all thought is imperfect
that stops short of the absolute unity of all things.