Will, Being, Growth

Spinoza's definition of the actual essence of an entity as the 'endeavor to persist in its being' implies distinctions between 'to endeavor', 'to persist', and 'to be'. Now, as has been previously discussed, though Spinoza does not clearly define the first two, here, they can be adequately distinguished, i. e. endeavor is Will, and persistence is Comprehension, the Material Principle and the Formal Principle, respectively, of Experience in the system. Hence, because, in this system, every entity is sufficiently constituted by some combination of the two principles, there is no 'being' of an actual entity over and above its endeavor to persist. But, the fundamental problem with Spinoza's formulation is not that the term 'being' is superfluous in it. Rather, the perfection of God entails that he does not grow, so the essence of one his Modal instances cannot be that it grows. Hence, the term 'being' in the definition exposes the incapacity of Spinoza's system to recognize that to grow--rendered here as to 'Evolve', a combination of Will and Comprehension--is an essential characteristic of an actual entity.