 Spinoza rejects this reasoning. In the quotation from Ip28 above, Spinoza explicitly denies that the series of finite modes has an initial starting point. Spinoza thinks that the series of finite objects extends backwards in time in an infinitely long causal chain that contains no initial state. For every finite cause of the desk, there will always be a temporally prior finite cause of that cause. And a prior cause of the cause of that cause. And so on, ad infinitum.