se is not limited like that of the blood, but
absolutely infinite, it is clear that by this nature, with its
infinite powers, the parts are modified in an infinite number of ways,
and compelled to pass through an infinity of variations. Moreover,
when I think of the universe as a substance, I conceive of a still
closer union of each part with the whole; for, as I have elsewhere
shown, it is the nature of substance to be infinite, and therefore
every single part belongs to the nature of the corporeal substance, so
that apart therefrom it neither can exist nor be conceived. And as to
the human mind, I think of it also as of part of nature, for I think
of nature as having in it an infinite power of thinking, which, as
infinite, contains in itself the idea of all nature, and whose
thoughts run parallel with all existence."

The whole dominates the parts.

From this point of view it is obvious that our knowledge of things
cannot be real and adequate, except in so far as it is determined by
the idea of the whole, and proceeds from the whole to the parts. A
knowledge that proceeds from part to part must always be imperfect; it
must remain external to its object, it must deal in abstractions or
mere _entia rationis_, which it may easily be led to mistake for
realities. Hence Spinoza, like Plato, distinguishes reason whose
movement is regressive (from effect to cause, from variety to unity)
from _scientia intuitiva_, whose movement is progressive, which
"proceeds from the adequate idea of certain of God's attributes to an
adequate knowledge of the nature of things."[37] The latter alone
deserves to be called science in the highest sense of the term. "For
in order that our mind may correspond to the exemplar of nature, it
must develop all its ideas from the idea that represents the origin
and source of nature, so that that idea may appear as the source of
all other ideas."[38] The regressive mode of knowledge has its highest
value in preparing for the progressive. The knowledge of the finite,
ere it can become perfectly adequate, must be absorbed and lost in the
knowledge of the infinite.

Finite things modes of infinite substance.

In a remarkable passage in the _Ethics_, Spinoza declares that the
defect of the common consciousness of men lies not so much in their
ignorance, either of the infinite or of the finite, as in their
incapacity for br