God is the Only Independent Substance

⁵¹ What is substance?

“Substance” is not applicable to God and the creatures in the same sense.

The things and the modes of things should be examined each of them by itself.

“Substance” is a thing which exists in such a way that it needs nothing beyond itself in order to exist.

In truth, there is only one substance which is absolutely independent – God.

• All other things can exist only by help of the concourse of God.

Accordingly, “substance” applies to God and created things differently.

• The word “substance” does not have any meaning which is common to God and them.

⁵² Substance is applicable univocally:

• to the mind and the body, and
• to how substance itself is known.

Created substances, however, whether corporeal or thinking, rely on the concourse of God.

But yet substance cannot be first discovered merely from its being a thing which exists independently, for existence by itself is not observed by us.

We easily discover substance from any of its attributes.

A nothing has no attributes, properties, or qualities.

Whenever we perceive some attribute to be present, we infer that its thing or substance also necessarily exists.

⁵³ Every substance has one principal attribute.

• Mind-substances have thinking as their one principal attribute.
• Body-substances have extension as their one principal attribute.

A thing’s principal attribute constitutes its nature or essence. Any attribute is sufficient to lead us to the knowledge of substance. Thus:

• extension in length, width, and depth, constitutes the nature of corporeal substance.
• thought is the nature of thinking substance.

For every other thing that can be attributed to body, presupposes extension, and is only some mode of an extended thing; as all the properties we discover in the mind are only diverse modes of thinking.

Thus, for example, we cannot conceive figure unless in something extended, nor motion unless in extended space, nor imagination, sensation, or will, unless in a thinking thing.

But, on the other hand, we can conceive extension without figure or motion, and thought without imagination or sensation, and so of the others; as is clear to any one who attends to these matters.

⁵⁴ How we may have clear and distinct notions of the substance which thinks, of that which is corporeal, and of God.

Thus we may easily have 2 clear and distinct notions or ideas:

1. The one of created substance, which thinks

2. The other of corporeal substance, provided we carefully distinguish all the attributes of thought from those of extension.

We may also have a clear and distinct idea of an uncreated and independent thinking substance, that is, of God, provided:

• we do not suppose that this idea adequately represents to us all that is in God
• we do not mix up with it anything fictitious
• we attend simply to the characters that are comprised in the notion we have of him, and which we clearly know to belong to the nature of an absolutely perfect Being.

No one can deny that there is in us such an idea of God, without groundlessly supposing that there is no knowledge of God at all in the human mind.

⁵⁵ How duration, order, and number may be also distinctly conceived.

We will also have most distinct conceptions of duration, order, and number, if, in place of mixing up with our notions of them that which properly belongs to the concept of substance, we merely think that the duration of a thing is a mode under which we conceive this thing, in so far as it continues to exist.

Similarly, order and number are not in reality different from things disposed in order and numbered, but only modes under which we diversely consider these things.

⁵⁶ What are modes, qualities, attributes?

“Modes” are the same as attributes or qualities.

• But when we consider substance as affected or varied by them, we use the term “modes”.

We call mode a “quality” when this variation makes it of a different kind from other modes.

We call mode an “attribute” when this variation is just part of the substance.

God is conceived as superior to change.

• Therefore it is not proper to say that there are modes or qualities in him, but simply attributes.

• Similarly, the existence and duration in the thing which exists and endures should be called “attribute” and not “mode” or “quality” [because it is an independent mode].