Note 2 — Chapter XVIII

See Spinoza, Cogitata Metaph., Pars II. cap. 8: 'Nec fugit nos vocabulum (Personalitatis scilicet) quod theologi passim usurpant ad rem explicandam: verum quamvis vocabulum non ignoremus eius tamen significationem ignoramus: quamvis constanter credamus, in visione Dei beatissima Deum hoc suis revelaturum.' For Hegel, it may be noted, Person, so far as he uses the term at all, bears its restricted legal and juridical sense. A person is a free intelligence, which realises that independence by appropriating an external thing as its sign and property. It probably belongs therefore to a world in which people count rather by what they have than by what they are; the world of law where rights and duties tend to oppose each other. This is not the highest kind of world for human beings.