examples given and to what follows.
[61a] (1) Though I seem to deduce this from experience, some
    may deny its cogency because I have given no formal proof.
    (2) I therefore append the following for those who may
    desire it.  (3) As there can be nothing in nature contrary
    to nature's laws, since all things come to pass by fixed
    laws, so that each thing must irrefragably produce its own
    proper effect, it follows that the soul, as soon as it
    possesses the true conception of a thing, proceeds to
    reproduce in thought that thing's effects.  (4) See below,
    where I speak of the false idea.
[64b] (1) Observe that fiction regarded in itself, only differs
    from dreams in that in the latter we do not perceive the
    external causes which we perceive through the senses while
    awake.  (2) It has hence been inferred that representations
    occurring in sleep have no connection with objects external
    to us.  (3) We shall presently see that error is the dreaming
    of a waking man: if it reaches a certain pitch it becomes delirium.
[76z] These are not attributes of God displaying His essence,
    as I will show in my philosophy.
[76a] (1) This has been shown already.  (2) For if such a being
    did not exist it would never be produced; therefore the mind
    would be able to understand more than nature could furnish;
    and this has been shown above to be false.
[78a] (1) That is, it is known that the senses sometimes deceive us.
    (2) But it is only known confusedly, for it is not known how
    they deceive us.
[83d] (1) If the duration be indefinite, the recollection is
    imperfect; this everyone seems to have learnt from nature.
    (2) For we often ask, to strengthen our belief in something
    we hear of, when and where it happened; though ideas
    themselves have their own duration in the mind, yet, as we
    are wont to determine duration by the aid of some measure
    of motion which, again, takes place by aid of imagination,
    we preserve no memory connected with pure intellect.
[91e] The chief rule of this part is, as appears from the first
    part, to review all the ideas coming to us through pure
    intellect, so as to distinguish them from such as we imagine:
    the distinction will be shown through the properties of each,
    namely, of the imagination and of the understanding.
[92f] Observe that it is thereby manifest that we cannot understand
    anything of nature without at the same time increasing our
    knowledge of the first cause, or God.

End of "On the Improvement of the Understanding."

Notes by Volunteer.

1. Used, in part, with kind permission from:
   http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/Spinoza/TIE/

2. The text is that of the translation of the Tractatus de Intellectus
   Emendatione by R. H. M. Elwes, as printed by Dover Publications
   (NY):1955), ISBN 0-486-20250-X.  This text is "an unabridged and
   unaltered republication of the Bohn Library edition originally
   published by George Bell and Sons in 1883."

3. Paragraph Numbers, shown thus [1], are from Edwin Curley's
   translation in his "The Collected Works of Spinoza", Volume 1, 1985,
   Princeton University Press; ISBN 0-691-07222-1.

4. Sentence Numbers, shown thus (1), have been added by volunteer.

5. Spinoza's endnotes are shown thus [a]. The letter is taken from
   Curley, see Note 3.

6. Search strings are enclosed in square brackets; include brackets.

7. HTML versions of "On the Improvement of the Understanding" are
   published in the Books On-Line Web Pages;
   ttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/books.html and they include:
       http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/Spinoza/TIE/
       http://www.erols.com/jyselman/teielwes.htm

End of Project Gutenberg's Etext On the Improvement of the Understanding
(Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect), by Baruch Spinoza