[The Ethics by Benedict de Spinoza]@TWC D-Link bookThe Ethics PREFACE 66/106
As for their saying that human actions depend on the will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond thereto.
What the will is, and how it moves the body, they none of them know; those who boast of such knowledge, and feign dwellings and habitations for the soul, are wont to provoke either laughter or disgust.
So, again, when we look at the sun, we imagine that it is distant from us about two hundred feet; this error does not lie solely in this fancy, but in the fact that, while we thus imagine, we do not know the sun's true distance or the cause of the fancy.
For although we afterwards learn, that the sun is distant from us more than six hundred of the earth's diameters, we none the less shall fancy it to be near; for we do not imagine the sun as near us, because we are ignorant of its true distance, but because the modification of our body involves the essence of the sun, in so far as our said body is affected thereby. PROP.XXXVI.
Inadequate and confused ideas follow by the same necessity, as adequate or clear and distinct ideas. Proof .-- All ideas are in God (I.xv.), and in so far as they are referred to God are true (II.
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