Note 2 — Chapter V

Descartes, Princip. Phil. I. 15: Magis hoc (ens summe perfectum existere) credet, si attendat, nullius alterius rei ideam apud se inveniri, in qua eodem modo necessariam existentiam contineri animadveriat;—intelliget illam ideam exhibere veram et immutabilem naturam, quaeque non potest non existere, cum necessaria existentia in ea contineatur. (The reader will be more disposed to believe that there exists a being supremely perfect, if he notes that in the case of nothing else is there found in him an idea, in which he notices necessary existence to be contained in the same way. He will see that that idea exhibits a true and unchangeable nature,—a nature which cannot but exist, since necessary existence is contained in it.) A remark which immediately follows, and which sounds like mediation or demonstration, does not really prejudice the original principle.

In Spinoza we come upon the same statement that the essence or abstract conception of God implies existence. The first of Spinoza's definitions, that of the Causa Sui (or Self-Cause), explains it to be cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id cujus natura non potest concipi nisi existens (that of which the essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing). The inseparability of the notion from being is the main point and fundamental hypothesis in his system. But what notion is thus inseparable from being? Not the notion of finite things, for they are so constituted as to have a contingent and a created existence. Spinoza's 11th proposition, which follows with a proof that God exists necessarily, and his 20th, showing that God's existence and his essence are one and the same, are really superfluous, and the proof is more in form than in reality. To say, that God is Substance, the only Substance, and that, as Substance is Causa Sui, God therefore exists necessarily, is merely stating that God is that of which the notion and the being are inseparable.