That this is a real, legitimate, and useful conception, we have no disposition to deny; we cannot divest ourselves of it; it springs up spontaneously from the innermost fountain of thought.

But we cannot accept the account which Spinoza has given of its nature and origin, and still less can we assent to the application which he has made of it.

He describes it as the idea of absolute, necessary, self-existent, eternal Being; and he traces its origin, not to the combined influence of experience and abstraction, acting under the great primitive law of _causality_, but to an immediate perception, or direct _intuition, of reason_.

Now, we submit that the concept of _being_, and the concept of absolute _self-existent being_, are perfectly distinct from each other, and that they spring from different laws of thought.
The concept of _being_ applies to everything that exists, without reference to the cause or manner of its existence; and this springs simply from experience and abstraction.

The concept of _self-existent being_, which is equally suggested by the laws of our mental constitution, does not apply to everything that exists, but only to that whose existence is not originated or determined by any other being; and this concept springs also from experience and abstraction, combined, however, with the law or principle of _causality_, which teaches us that no change can occur in Nature, and that nothing can ever come into being, _without a cause_, and prompts us to infer from _the fact of existence now_, the conclusion that _something must have existed from all eternity_.