ABSTRACT
In other words: there are endless chains of things or events – or possibly one single, endless chain – which determine each other’s action and existence. Leaving aside any problems about the individuation of events, this looks a fairly commonplace thought. Presumably most of us think that things or events are influenced or affected by each other and that the network of influences extends indefinitely, and we do not think that we can see more than a small part of it. Spinoza put this in matter-of-fact terms:
Again, stressing the epistemological point of view:
But how did Spinoza fit God into this unremarkable picture? God was supposed to be eternal, indivisible and infinite. How could any being with those properties be related, causally or otherwise, to the existence and action of individual things? (Existence and action, not essences: an important distinction.) The difficulty was an obvious one, to which Spinoza declined to give the most obvious traditional reply: God was the first cause in all causal series, the ultimate initiator of all causal activity.
