Hi All,

    I have for some time had bits and pieces of a little metaphor "floating around" vaguely in my Imagination that might be useful in at least directing the mind a little toward Understanding what Spinoza means when he writes about such things as our mistaking the modifications of our own body for external bodies [see for example; The Ethics, Appendix to Part 1] and our attempting to use the abstractions of measure, time, and number to explain "substance, eternity, and the like" as he writes here:

===== Letter 29 (12) Spinoza to L. M. (Lewis Meyer), P06-P08:
...there are many things which cannot be conceived through the IMAGINATION but only through the UNDERSTANDING, for instance, substance, eternity, and the like; thus, if anyone tries to explain such things by means of conceptions which are mere aids to the IMAGINATION, he is simply assisting his IMAGINATION to run away with him. Nor can even the modes of substance ever be rightly UNDERSTOOD, if we confuse them with entities of the kind mentioned [measure, time, and number], mere aids of the reason or IMAGINATION. In so doing we separate them from substance, and the mode of their derivation from eternity, without which they can never be rightly UNDERSTOOD....
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    Let us imagine a little "origami man" folded out of a plane sheet of paper. Let us further imagine that the little man is capable of thinking and knowing and "seeing" his own and other folds of paper through his little "origami eyes", but he thus perceives the folds as existing independently of each other and does not conceive the plane sheet of paper. Spinoza asked his readers to think about something perhaps equally as strange and fanciful when he wrote:

===== Letter 62 (58) Spinoza to G. H. Schaller:
...In order that this may be clearly understood, let us conceive a very simple thing. For instance, a stone receives from the impulsion of an external cause, a certain quantity of motion, by virtue of which it continues to move after the impulsion given by the external cause has ceased. The permanence of the stone's motion is constrained, not necessary, because it must be defined by the impulsion of an external cause. What is true of the stone is true of any individual, however complicated its nature, or varied its functions, inasmuch as every individual thing is necessarily determined by some external cause to exist and operate in a fixed and determinate manner.

    Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavouring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavour and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish....
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    Now, imagine telling the little origami man that he and all the other (to him) apparently separate things, which seem to have their own independent existence, are actually not separate things at all but rather are "folds" (Modes) of a single infinite "sheet of paper" (Substance).

    This, to me, is similar to the situation we most likely find ourselves in when we first read Spinoza's words. Just like the origami man trying to understand "sheet of paper" when all he is familiar with is "folds" --and even those "folds" he does not really understand as folds of paper because he has not yet realized the true nature of folds which "exist in and are conceived through paper", --we too have to struggle to separate the images ("foldings" of our body) which we already mistake as independent external things, from the true idea of Substance and of Modes of Substance.

    If the origami man can come to understand himself "unfolded", he will come to know himself truly just as Spinoza shows us that...:

====== E5: PROP. 30:
    Our mind, in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of God, and knows that it is in God, and is conceived through God.

Proof.-- Eternity is the very essence of God, in so far as this involves necessary existence (E1D8). Therefore to conceive things under the form of eternity, is to conceive things in so far as they are conceived through the essence of God as real entities, or in so far as they involve existence through the essence of God; wherefore our mind, in so far as it conceives itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of God, and knows, etc. Q.E.D.
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