KNOWLEDGE connections to each other, forming a system of necessary truths This is the province of reason (ratio) and constitutes knowledge of the second kind (Eth, 57) Both the second and third kind of knowledge, then, can give us true and adequate ideas Knowledge of the third kind is called by Spinoza ‘intuitive knowledge’, and it is clearly the form of knowledge that is most to be valued We are oVered little help, however, in understanding its nature It is clear that reason operates step by step; intuition is an immediate mental vision More importantly, intuition grasps the essences of things; that is to say, it understands their universal features and their place in the general causal order of the universe Reason may tell us that the sun is larger than it looks; only intuition can give us a full grasp of why this is so But Spinoza’s formal deWnition of intuitive knowledge raises as many questions as it solves: ‘This kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things’ (Eth, 57) Perhaps only a complete mastery of the whole philosophical system of the Ethics would provide us with such knowledge Spinoza twice attempts to illustrate the three degrees of knowledge by inviting us to consider the problem of Wnding the number x which has to a given number c the same proportion as a given a has to a given b Merchants, he says, will have no diYculty in applying the rule of three that they have gathered from experience or learnt by rote Mathematicians will apply the nineteenth proposition of the seventh book of Euclid This illustration distinguishes the Wrst and second degree clearly enough; but we are left in the dark about the intuitive method of solving the problem Perhaps Spinoza has in mind something like the achievements of Indian mathematicians who can solve such problems instantaneously without calculation Spinoza’s epistemology has to answer one Wnal question In the content of any idea, he maintains, there is no positive element other than truth (Eth, 53) But if there is no positive element in ideas on account of which they can be called false, how is error possible at all? Descartes had explained error in the following manner: error is wrong judgement, and judgement is an act of the will, not of the intellect; error occurs when the will makes a judgement in the absence of enlightenment from the intellect Spinoza cannot oVer this explanation, since for him the will and the intellect are not distinct; he cannot, therefore, give the advice that in order to avoid 141