that they are in another, in God, constitutes their lack of self-dependence (I. prop. 18, dem.:  nulla res, quae extra Deum in se sit).  God is their inner, indwelling cause (causa immanens, non vero transiens.—­I. prop. 18), is not a transcendent creator, but natura naturans, over against the sum of finite beings, natura naturata (I. prop. 29, schol.):  Deus sive natura.

Since nothing exists out of God, his actions do not follow from external necessity, are not constrained, but he is free cause, free in the sense that he does nothing except that toward which his own nature impels him, that he acts in accordance with the laws of his being (def. septima:  ea res libera dicitur, quae ex sola suae naturae necessitate existit et a se sola ad agendum determinatur; Epist. 26).  This inner necessitation is so little a defect that its direct opposite, undetermined choice and inconstancy, must rather be excluded from God as an imperfection.  Freedom and (inner) necessity are identical; and antithetical, on the one side, to undetermined choice and, on the other, to (external) compulsion.  Action in view of ends must also be denied of the infinite; to think of God as acting in order to the good is to make him dependent on something external to him (an aim) and lacking in that which is to be attained by the action.  With God the ground of his action is the same as the ground of his existence; God’s power and his essence coincide (I. prop. 34:  Dei potentia est ipsa ipsius essentia).  He is the cause of himself (def. prima:  per causam sui intelligo id, cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id, cujus natura non potest concipi nisi existens); it would be a contradiction to hold that being was not, that God, or substance, did not exist; he cannot be thought otherwise than as existing; his concept includes his existence.  To be self-caused means to exist necessarily (I. prop. 7).  The same thing is denoted by the predicate eternal, which, according to the eighth definition, denotes “existence itself, in so far as it is conceived to follow necessarily from the mere definition of the eternal thing.”

The infinite substance stands related to finite, individual things, not only as the independent to the dependent, as the cause to the caused, as the one to the many, and the whole to the parts, but also as the universal to the particular, the indeterminate to the determinate.  From infinite being as pure affirmation (I. prop. 8, schol.  I:  absoluta affirmatio) everything which contains a limitation or negation, and this includes every particular determination, must be kept at a distance:  determinatio negatio est (Epist. 50 and 41:  a determination denotes nothing positive, but a deprivation, a lack of existence; relates not to the being but to the non-being of the thing).  A determination states that which distinguishes