Spinoza and Logic

For Spinoza, an Adequate Idea is one that God thinks, and, since such an idea entails antecedents and consequences, it is not a singular occurrence, but part of a sequence of thoughts. Hence, when an individual Mind thinks an Adequate Idea, it is functioning as perfectly rationally as God does. But, doing so is not accidental, but of the essence of any Mind, because, it is only in functioning in this manner that a Mode can persist in its own being. For, otherwise, it is no more than a component of some external chain of events, in which it does not truly persist in its own being. Hence, because a Mode is only itself insofar as it thinks adequate ideas, Spinoza occasionally characterizes it as a rational "automaton". In other words, Logic, for him, is not, as it most prevalently is currently, a merely normative discipline, but is, rather, a description of the essential nature of Mind, from which deviation occurs only because of the susceptibility of a finite Mode to external influences, not because of an internal 'irrational' dimension of its being.