 This is one way to make sense of “perceiv[ing] the ideas of the affections of the Body.” Edwin Curley presents such an interpretation of this passage (Curley 1969, 128). The benefit of this theory of consciousness is that it is thoroughly representational, and so it is consistent with Spinoza’s general project of developing a representational theory of mind. Further, this theory would seem to entail that not all minds are conscious (or that not all thoughts are conscious)—Spinoza suggests that infants are not conscious in 5p6s and 5p35s