No disciple of Leibnitz will maintain, that unless he had found this belief in an eternity of penal retribution an article of the popular creed, such a doctrine would have formed a natural appendage of his system; and if M. de Careil desires to know why the influence of Spinoza, whose genius he considers so insignificant, has been so deep and so enduring, while Leibnitz has only secured for himself a mere admiration of his talents, it is because Spinoza was not afraid to be consistent, even at the price of the world’s reprobation, and refused to purchase the applause of his own age at the sacrifice of the singleness of his heart. ____

“Deus,” according to Spinoza’s definition, “est ens constans infinitis attributis quorum unumquodque aeternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit.”  Under each of these attributes infinita sequuntur, and everything which an infinite intelligence can conceive, and an infinite power can produce,—­everything which follows as a possibility out of the divine nature,—­all things which have been, and are, and will be,—­find expression and actual existence, not under one attribute only, but under each and every attribute.  Language is so ill adapted to such a system, that even to state it accurately is all but impossible, and analogies can only remotely suggest what such expressions mean.  But it is as if it were said that the same thought might be expressed in an infinite variety of languages; and not in words only, but in action, in painting, in sculpture, in music, in any form of any kind which can be employed as a means of spiritual embodiment.  Of all these infinite attributes two only, as we said, are known to us,—­extension and thought.  Material phenomena are phenomena of extension; and to every modification of extension an idea corresponds under the attribute of thought.  Out of such a compound as this is formed man, composed of body and mind; two parallel and correspondent modifications eternally answering one another.  And not man only, but all other beings and things are similarly formed and similarly animated; the anima or mind of each varying according to the complicity of the organism of its material counterpart.  Although body does not think, nor affect the mind’s power of thinking; and mind does not control body, nor communicate to it either motion or rest or any influence from itself, yet body with all its properties is the object or ideate of mind; whatsoever body does mind perceives, and the greater the energizing power of the first, the greater the perceiving power of the second.  And this is not because they are adapted one to the other by some inconceivable preordinating power, but because mind and body are una et eatlent res, the one absolute being affected in one and the same manner, but expressed under several attributes; the modes and affections of each attribute having that being for their cause, as he exists under that attribute of which they are modes and no other; idea being caused by idea, and body affected by body; the image on the retina being produced by the object reflected upon it, the idea or image in our minds by the idea of that object, &c. &c.