This definition of "substance" is like the definition of “self-caused” (or I.D1) since it follows that substance might also be described as "cannot be conceived except as existing" due to the challenges of conceiving something which is "in itself" and "conceived through itself" which does actually not exist. Further, Spinoza implies substance as not limited (thus infinite) as defined in I.D2, since it cannot be limited in its own kind if "it is in itself and is conceived through itself."
If these implications are true of substance, as self-caused from I.D1 and not finite from I.D2, then it may follow that nothing exists except substance - and even logically implies only one substance.
Again, the verb is all-important. Spinoza uses “conceive” or concipit as a verb of thinking with the particular sense of having “a view from nowhere” structured by general logic (mathematically delimiting, but non-numerical). He is not using a verb of thinking that is set in a particular time or place. Instead, he is using a verb to describe something which is true for all time.
Another way to understand “a view from nowhere” is the implication here that substance is Knowing. Knowing has a sense of seeing as a whole, while Thinking is a term that we use for more of a process. So it may mean (and I believe it does) that Knowing is intrinsic to substance. The duality from the first two definitions is carried through here as well. The “mind-body” duality identified in the first two definitions unfolds into substance duality as “conceived through itself” or Knowing and “is in itself” or Being.
Per substantiam, intellego id quod in se est et per se concipitur hoc est id cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei a quo formari debeat.
Translated as:
By substance, I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself, that is, that whose concept does not lack the concept of another thing by which it needs to be formed.
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