Benedictus de Spinoza

The etymological connection between “mode” and “mood” may illuminate this metaphysical point: a human life is to God what one of my moods is to me—ephemeral, substanceless, and impossible to conceive as separate from or independent of my existence. More metaphorically still, we are to God as waves are to the ocean.

This new account of ontological difference has a clear religious significance: it indicates that we are at once closer to God, and more different from God, than we may have imagined. Since we are in God, we are inseparable from this divine source of our being; yet since God is substance while we are modes, the nature of our existence is different in kind from God’s existence.

. In this way his “panentheism” opposed not just atheism, but also deism, which became widespread in the eighteenth century, propounding the idea that God is merely the architect of the universe, like a watchmaker who designs his creation, sets it in motion, then leaves it to function on its own.

each finite human consciousness is part of God’s infinite consciousness, and each finite human body is part of the physical universe, interconnected with countless other beings.

Arguing that “the laws of nature according to which all things come into existence and pass from one form to another, are every where and always the same,” Spinoza shows that human actions and passions “follow from the same necessity and power of nature as other phenomena” (E3, Preface). He argues that we are mistaken to believe ourselves or others to act from free will: “men believe themselves free solely because they are conscious of their actions and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined”

“for those who read the very words Spinoza wrote there is the same sort of interest in his style as in the conversation of a person of great capacity who has led a solitary life, and who says from his own soul what all the world is saying by rote.”

Two or more distinct things are distinguishable from each other either by the difference of the attributes of substances, or by the difference of their affections