Will, Parallelism, Disembodiment

Spinoza seems to distinguish the process of intuiting that a circle is 'the figure described by the line whereof one end is fixed and the other free' from the process of drawing a circle in accordance with that intuition. It is perhaps such a distinction that informs his speculation that a Mind can survive the death of the Body, i. e. because the contrast exhibits the possibility of a disembodied mental act. However, the relation between such possible disembodiment and his Parallelism thesis--that a mental sequence and a physical sequence are two aspects of one and the same process--is unclear. One interpretation of the apparent inconsistency is that it demonstrates that the parallel of the two sequences is happenstance, and not necessary. For example, here, as has been previously discussed, Will and Comprehension, the two principles of Experience, occasionally coincide, but often do not. Thus, on that model, the drawing of a Circle in accordance with the idea of a Circle, combines two fundamentally distinct processes, one of which can produce an idea of a Circle without its necessarily being implicated with the Motility of drawing one.