AN IMPORTANT REMARK, AND SUMMARY.
105. When we say, that a substance is a being subsisting by itself, we do not mean that it is a being which has absolutely no need of another for its existence. To confound these two things would produce a frightful confusion of ideas, and is itself produced by a not less frightful confusion of the relation of cause and effect with the relation of substance and accidents.
106. The relation of cause and effect consists in the cause giving the effect its being; the relation of substance and accident consists in the substance serving as subject to the accident. So great is the difference between these two relations that not only does reason show them to be distinct, but at every moment experience presents them as separate. Our soul is the subject of many accidents in the production of which it has no part, but on the contrary opposed to their production as far as it is able. Such are all painful sensations, all disagreeable impressions, all troublesome thoughts which present themselves in spite of us, and when we wish to think of something else. In these cases the soul is the subject, and not the cause: it has the relation of substance to things of which it is not the cause, and with respect to which it is entirely passive. If I am not greatly mistaken, this example is conclusive, and marks the line which divides causality from substance, effect from accident.
107. To be subsistent by itself expresses an exclusion; if this exclusion is referred to causality, to be subsistent by itself is to be not caused; if referred to inherence,it means to be not inherent in another as accidents are in their substance. When substance is defined a being subsistent in itself, it is understood in the second sense, not in the first, and this distinction is sufficient to overthrow the whole system of Spinoza, and all the pantheists, whatever be the aspect under which they present their error.
108. In order to enter on the question of pantheism free from all confusion, let us sum up in a few words all that reason and experience teach concerning substance.
I. Within us there is a being, one, simple, identical, permanent, the subject of the phenomena which we experience.
II. Outside of us there are objects which preserve something constant through the variety of this phenomena.
III. In the idea of substance are contained the ideas of permanence and non-inherence in another as a modification.
IV. The relation of a subject to its modifications, is found in all finite substances.
V. Relation to modifications is not inseparable from the ideas of being, permanence, and non-inherence in another.
VI. An immutable substance implies no contradiction.
VII. To subsist by itself is not the same as to be independent of all other beings. The relation of cause and effect ought not to be confounded with the relation of substance and accident.
VIII.Non-inherencein another is characteristic of substance; but this negative idea must be founded on something positive; on theforceto subsist by itself without the necessity of adhering to another.