Evolution and Tools

In Improvement of the Understanding, Spinoza likens mental operations to tool-manufacturing, the pattern of each of which is a development of increasing complexity.  Thus, each exemplifies an Evolutionary pattern.  But, the relation between this work and the Ethics is unclear, leaving unaddressed at least five issues: 1. The relation between this Evolutionary pattern and the Persistence conatus of the Ethics; 2. The relation between the analogy and the Mind-Body Parallelism of the Ethics; 3. Whether the distinction between Axiom and Proposition in the Ethics is one of degree of complexity, or one of kind; 4. The place of Method in the sequence of mental tool-development ; and, perhaps most important, 5. Whether or not God/Nature, and not merely Human Modes, develops according to an Evolutionary pattern.  If it does, then insofar as the pattern is Emanationist, as it is sometimes classified as, then it is both Emanationist and Evolutionist.  Accordingly, if the distinction in #3 is one of kind, and #4 locates Method as different in kind from the specific actions that guides, then while the Human thumb is evidence of an Evolutionary pattern from less complex to more complex organisms, the Human invention of Method is evidence of a different kind of Evolutionary pattern.  The standard focus on Spinoza's Epistemological Parallelism has left examination of these wider implications of his works usually unexplored.