Selection from – Ethics – Part V. On the Power of the Intellect; or of Human Freedom (Page 7)
Spinoza's Words: (the mind endures)
Proposition XXI. The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.
Proposition XXII. Nevertheless in (Deus sive Natura) there is necessarily an idea, which expresses the essence of this or that human body under the form of eternity.
(Deus sive Natura) is the cause, not only of the existence of this or that human body, but also of its essence. This essence, therefore, must necessarily be conceived through the very essence of (Deus sive Natura), and be thus conceived by a certain eternal necessity and this conception must necessarily exist.
Proposition XXIII. The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something which is eternal.
Comment:
I must be honest with you, the reader, I personally must leave Spinoza here. Although he says that "the mind can only work while the body endures." In Proposition XXIII he holds the opposite.
I admire the man and honor his thought to this point but as an atheist I cannot agree with Proposition XXIII. I do not believe that something of the human mind continues after the body dies. You can make up your own mind.
I feel I must keep presenting his ideas in the order that he wrote them and I will proceed with his writing about these three propositions on the next page.