ness of self is
marred by a false abstraction, above which he must rise ere he can
know himself as he really is.

"Let us imagine," says Spinoza in his fifteenth letter, "a little worm
living in blood which has vision enough to discern the particles of
blood, lymph, &c., and reason enough to observe how one particle is
repelled by another with which it comes into contact, or communicates
a part of its motion to it. Such a worm would live in the blood as we
do in this part of the universe, and would regard each particle of it,
not as a part, but as a whole, nor could it know how all the parts are
influenced by the universal nature of the blood, and are obliged to
accommodate themselves to each other as is required by that nature, so
that they co-operate together according to a fixed law. For if we
suppose that there are no causes outside of the blood which could
communicate new motions to it, and no space beyond the blood, nor any
other bodies to which its particles could transfer their motion, it is
certain that the blood as a whole would always maintain its present
state, and its particles would suffer no other variations than those
which may be inferred from the given relation of the motion of the
blood to lymph, chyle, &c. And thus in that case the blood would
require to be considered always as a whole and not as a part. But
since there are many other causes which influence the laws of the
nature of blood, and are in turn influenced thereby, other motions and
other variations must arise in the blood which are not due to the
proportion of motion in its constituents but also to the relation
between that motion and external causes. And therefore we cannot
consider the blood as a whole, but only as a part of a greater whole."

"Now we can think, and indeed ought to think, of all natural bodies in
the same manner in which we have thought of this blood, for all bodies
are surrounded by other bodies, and reciprocally determine and are
determined by them, to exist and operate in a fixed and definite way,
so as to preserve the same ratio of motion and rest in the whole
universe. Hence it follows that every body, in so far as it exists
under a certain definite modification, ought to be considered as
merely a part of the whole universe which agrees with its whole, and
thereby is in intimate union with all the other parts; and since the
nature of the univer