P7: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

Dem.: This is clear from IA4. For the idea of each thing caused depends on the knowledge of the cause of which it is the effect.

Cor.: From this it follows that God/Nature’s {NS: actual} power of thinking is equal to his actual power of acting. I.e., whatever follows formally from God/Nature’s infinite nature follows objectively in God/Nature from his idea in the same order and with the same connection.

Schol.: Before we proceed further, we must recall here what we showed {NS: in the First Part}, viz. that whatever can be perceived by an infinite intellect as constituting an essence of substance pertains to one substance only, and consequently that the thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute, now under that. So also a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways. Some of the Hebrews seem to have seen this, as if through a cloud, when they maintained that God/Nature, God/Nature’s intellect, and the things understood by him are one and the same. For example, a circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God/Nature, are one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes. Therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of Extension, or under the attribute of Thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes, i.e., that the same things follow one another. When I said {NS: before} that God/Nature is the cause of the idea, say of a circle, only insofar as he is a thinking thing, and {the cause} of the circle, only insofar as he is an extended thing, this was for no other reason than because the formal being of the idea of the circle can be perceived only through another mode of thinking, as its proximate cause, and that mode again through another, and so on, to infinity. Hence, so long as things are considered as modes of thinking, we must explain the order of the whole of nature, or the connection of causes, through the attribute of Thought alone. And insofar as they are considered as modes of Extension, the order of the whole of nature must be explained through the attribute of Extension alone. I understand the same concerning the other attributes. So of things as they are in themselves, God/Nature is really the cause insofar as he consists of infinite attributes. For the present, I cannot explain these matters more clearly.