necessarily caused and determined by the divine volition. There is no life but his, no thought but his, no efficiency but his. He is the soul of the world. Spinosa never represented himself as an atheist, and according to the following representation appears rather as a pantheist. "He held that God is the _cause_ of all things; but that he acts, not from choice, but from necessity; and, of consequence, that he is the involuntary author of all the good and evil, virtue and vice, which are exhibited in human life." (Dugald Stewart, vol. 6. p. 276, note.) Cousin remarks, too, that Spinosa deserves rather the reproach of pantheism than of atheism. His pantheism was fairly deduced from the doctrine of necessary determination, which he advocated. XVIII. Spinosa, however, is generally considered an atheist. "It will not be disputed," says Stewart, "by those who comprehend the drift of his reasonings, that in point of practical tendency atheism and Spinosism are one and the same." The following is Cousin's view of his system. It apparently differs from the preceding in some respects, but really tends to the same conclusions. "Instead of accusing Spinosa of atheism, he ought to be reproached for an error in the other direction. Spinosa starts from the perfect and infinite being of Descartes's system, and easily demonstrates that such a being is alone a being in itself; but that a being, finite, imperfect, and relative, only participates of being, without possessing it, in itself: that a being in itself is one necessarily: that there is but one substance; and that all that remains has only a phenomenal existence: that to call phenomena, finite substances, is affirming and denying, at the same time; whereas, there being, but one substance which possesses being in itself, and the finite being that which participates of existence without possessing it in itself, a substance finite implies two contradictory notions. Thus, in the philosophy of Spinosa, man and nature are pure phenomena; simple attributes of that one and absolute substance, but attributes which are co-eternal with their substance: for as phenomena cannot exist without a subject, the imperfect without the perfect, the finite without the infinite, and man and nature suppose God; so likewise, the substance cannot exist without phenomena, the perfect without the imperfect, the infinite without the finite, and God on his part supposes man and nature. The error of his system lies in the predominance of the relation of phenomenon to being, of attribute to substance, over the relation of effect to cause. When man has been represented, not as a cause, voluntary and free, but as necessary and uncontrollable desire, and as an imperfect and finite thought; God, or the supreme pattern of humanity, can be only a substance, and not a cause--a being, perfect, infinite, necessary--the immutable substance of the universe, and not its producing and creating cause. In Cartesianism,