 In Ip7, Spinoza equates “pertaining to its nature to exist” with “essence necessarily involving existence” and “causing itself.” Self-causation in turn is explained in Id1 as a “nature that cannot be conceived except as existing.” That is, what explains the necessity of God’s existence is the fact that the very concept of God involves the concept of existence. He repeats these connections in Ip24d, “For that whose nature involves existence (considered in itself) is its own cause, and exists only from the necessity of its nature.” In other words, Spinoza explains necessity in terms of conceptual connections. Although Spinoza does not develop a richer account of conceptual relations that Leibniz will later achieve, his general idea seems to be that conceptual relations are the relations that explain and ground necessary connections.