and pure.

III

The central controlling idea of Spinoza's philosophy is that all things
are necessarily determined in Nature, which he conceives to be an
absolutely infinite unified and uniform order. Instead of maintaining
that God is like man magnified to infinity, who has absolute,
irresponsible control of a universe which is external to him--the rather
rude anthropomorphic account of the ultimate nature of the universe
contained in the Bible--Spinoza maintains that God is identical with the
universe and must be and act according to eternal and necessary laws.
God is Nature, if we understand by Nature not merely infinite matter and
infinite thought,--the two attributes of Nature specifically known to
us--but infinite other attributes the precise character of which we can
never, because of our finitude, comprehend. Within this Being--God,
Nature or Substance (the more technical, philosophic term)--there is no
dichotomy; and there is outside of it no regulative or coercive
intelligence such as the Biblical God is conceived to be. Whatever is,
is one. And it is, in the special Spinozistic sense, supremely perfect
because absolutely real. There is, considered in its totality, no lack
or defect in Nature. There can be, therefore, no cosmic purposes, for
such purposes would imply that Nature is yet unfinished, or unperfected,
that is, not completely real. Something that cannot possibly be true of
an absolutely infinite Being.

Spinoza's conception of an absolutely infinite universe is a vast
improvement upon the pent-in, finite medieval universe inherited from
Aristotle. It exceeds by infinity, in breadth of vision, even our
contemporary notion of an infinite physical cosmos. And his conception
of universal necessity is as great an advance upon the view that
transformed natural occurrences into miraculous events. Miracles,
according to the Bible, most clearly exemplify God's omnipotence; for
omnipotence in the popular mind consists in nothing so much as in the
ability to satisfy any purpose or whim no matter how transitory it is,
or how incompatible with what has been antecedently desired or done.
Miracles may be extraordinary occurrences with reference to the order of
Nature, but they are, with reference to God, commonplace exhibitions of
His Almighty power. For Spinoza, however, miracles, did they actually
occur, would exhibit not God's power, but His impotence. The omnipotence
of the one absolutely infinite Being i