impossibility of creation, even when he admits the existence of an Infinite and Eternal Being. 5. The system of Spinoza is vicious, because it involves erroneous conclusions respecting both the _body_ and the _soul_. He denies that they are "substances." And why? Because, _by the definition_, "a substance" is that which is self-existent, and may be conceived without reference to any other being. Be it so. What does this argument amount to? Why, simply to this, that they are not gods. What, then, are they? Created beings? No. And why? Because creation is impossible, and, also, because whatever exists must be either a "substance," or an "attribute," or a "mode." What then? Clearly not an "attribute," for the only attributes known to us are extension and thought, and these attributes are as infinite as "the substance" to which they belong; they must therefore be "modes" or "affections" of that "substance." But in what sense? In the sense of being created, and therefore dependent, existences, whose nature and origin cannot be conceived of or accounted for without reference to the Being who produced them at first, and still continues to maintain them? No; for in that sense all Theists admit the derivation and dependence of every finite being; but they must be "modes" or "affections" of the one uncreated essence, mere phenomenal manifestations of it. The soul, whose essence is thought, is a mere succession of ideas. The body is a mere "mode" of the Divine "attribute" of extension; and neither the one nor the other can be described as a _distinct being_. They are affections, and nothing more, of the one infinite "substance."