Mention may be made in passing, also, of a strange conception, which is somewhat out of harmony with the rest of the system, and of which, moreover, little use is made.  This is the conception of infinite modes.  As such are cited, facies totius mundi, motus et quies, intellectus absolute infinitus.  Kuno Fischer’s interpretation of this difficult conception may be accepted.  It denotes, according to him, the connected sum of the modes, the itself non-finite sum total of the finite—­the universe meaning the totality of individual things in general (without reference to their nature as extended or cogitative); rest and motion, the totality of material being; the absolutely infinite understanding, the totality of spiritual being or the ideas.  Individual spirits together constitute, as it were, the infinite intellect; our mind is a part of the divine understanding, yet not in such a sense that the whole consists of the parts, but that the part exists only through the whole.  When we say, the human mind perceives this or that, it is equivalent to saying that God—­not in so far as he is infinite, but as he expresses himself in this human mind and constitutes its essence—­has this or that idea (II. prop.  II, coroll).

The discussion of these three fundamental concepts exhausts all the chief points in Spinoza’s doctrine of God.  Passing over his doctrine of body (II. between prop. 13 and prop. 14) we turn at once to his discussion of mind and man.

%(b) Anthropology:  Cognition and the Passions.%—­Each thing is at once mind and body, representation and that which is represented, idea and ideate (object).  Body and soul are the same being, only considered under different attributes.  The human mind is the idea of the human body; it cognizes itself in perceiving the affections of its body; it represents all that takes place in the body, though not all adequately.  As man’s body is composed of very many bodies, so his soul is composed of very many ideas.  To judge of the relation of the human mind to the mind of lower beings, we must consider the superiority of man’s body to other bodies; the more complex a body is, and the greater the variety of the affections of which it is capable, the better and more adapted for adequate cognition, the accompanying mind.—­A result of the identity of soul and body is that the acts of our will are not free (Epist. 62):  they are, in fact, determinations of our body, only considered under the attribute of thought, and no more free than this from the constraint of the causal law (III. prop. 2, schol.).—­Since the mind does nothing without at the same time knowing that it does it—­since, in other words, its activity is a conscious activity, it is not merely idea corporis humani, but also idea ideae corporis or idea mentis.