MENO
Page: 21

influence of mathematics both on the form and substance of their philosophy
is discernible in both of them. After making the greatest opposition
between thought and extension, Descartes, like Plato, supposes them to be
reunited for a time, not in their own nature but by a special divine act
(compare Phaedrus), and he also supposes all the parts of the human body to
meet in the pineal gland, that alone affording a principle of unity in the
material frame of man. It is characteristic of the first period of modern
philosophy, that having begun (like the Presocratics) with a few general
notions, Descartes first falls absolutely under their influence, and then
quickly discards them. At the same time he is less able to observe facts,
because they are too much magnified by the glasses through which they are
seen. The common logic says 'the greater the extension, the less the
comprehension,' and we may put the same thought in another way and say of
abstract or general ideas, that the greater the abstraction of them, the
less are they capable of being applied to particular and concrete natures.

Not very different from Descartes in his relation to ancient philosophy is
his successor Spinoza, who lived in the following generation. The system
of Spinoza is less personal and also less dualistic than that of Descartes.
In this respect the difference between them is like that between Xenophanes
and Parmenides. The teaching of Spinoza might be described generally as
the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction and taking the form of the
Eleatic philosophy. Like Parmenides, he is overpowered and intoxicated
with the idea of Being or God. The greatness of both philosophies consists
in the immensity of a thought which excludes all other thoughts; their
weakness is the necessary separation of this thought from actual existence
and from practical life. In neither of them is there any clear opposition
between the inward and outward world. The substance of Spinoza has two
attributes, which alone are cognizable by man, thought and extension; these
are in extreme opposition to one another, and also in inseparable identity.