  With the collapse of the divide between created substances and the infinite substance, attributes play a new role for Spinoza; traditional divine attributes are eliminated while attributes traditionally associated with created substances (Extension in particular) are attributed to the infinite substance. Furthermore, with the elimination of this divide and the establishment of the infinite substance as the only substance, Spinoza hopes that attributes account for variety in the substance without jeopardizing its unity. All interpreters and readers of Spinoza are forced to wrestle with making sense of this double role since it sits at the very core of his metaphysics. It is vital to realize that this endeavor is necessarily and beautifully linked to other fundamental aspects of Spinoza’s metaphysics such as the “real distinction” between the attributes, the proclaimed identity of the substance and its attributes, the nature of the conceiving intellect in the definition of ‘attribute’, the nature of this intellect’s conceptions (illusory or not), the number of attributes, the structure of 2P7 and its scholium, and finally the nature of the union of mind and body. These inter-connections are a reflection of the fully systematic nature of Spinoza’s metaphysics.