Will, Persistence, Reason

For Spinoza, the actual essence of an individual entity is its endeavor to "persist" in its being. Now, persistence entails an ongoing unity of effort, but, as has been previously discussed, effort is Will, a discrescent process, thereby requiring a separate source to integrate it. Here, that source is Comprehension, while for Spinoza, it is Reason. It would seem, therefore, to follow, that, for him, only rational behavior expresses the actual essence of an individual. Nevertheless, he recognizes irrational behavior as also expressing that essence, thereby leaving unexplained how persistence obtains in the event of the intrusion into experience of an unanticipated, and perhaps, hostile, external influence. The implications of this apparent equivocation for his concept of Democracy, i. e. via the correlation between Essence and Natural Right, has been previously discussed.