The Philosophy of Spinoza

hosts. But when they returned from a visit that same afternoon (Sunday, Feb. 21, 1677) they learned the sad, surprising news that Spinoza had gently passed away, the only one by...

Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favored by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits...

When people declare, as all are ready to do, that the Bible is the Word of God teaching men true blessedness and the way of salvation, they evidently do not mean what they say;...

Prophecy, or revelation, is sure knowledge revealed by God to man. A prophet is one who interprets the revelations of God to those who are unable to attain to sure knowledge of...

Moses, also, was not sufficiently aware that God is omniscient, and directs human actions by His sole decree, for although God himself says that the Israelites should hearken to...

Every man's true happiness and blessedness consist solely in the enjoyment of what is good, not in the pride that he alone is enjoying it, to the exclusion of others. He who thi...

The word law, taken in the abstract means that by which an individual, or all things, or as many things as belong to a particular species, act in one and the same fixed and defi...

and happy, and gives him true peace of mind. "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding," for "Wisdom gives length of days, and riches and hon...

In the foregoing chapter we have shown that the Divine law, which renders men truly blessed, and teaches them the true life, is universal to all men; nay, we have so intimately...

the Divine law as he delivers it, and first excluding all kinds of sacrifices and all feasts, he at length sums up the law in these few words: "Cease to do evil, learn to do wel...

As men are accustomed to call Divine the knowledge which transcends human understanding, so also do they style Divine, or the work of God, anything of which the cause is not gen...

surrounded with fire; or, again, that Elijah ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire, with horses of fire; all these things were assuredly merely symbols adapted to the opinio...

Hence we must believe that when the Bible says that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, it only means that Pharaoh was obstinate; when it says that God opened the windows of heav...

II. That thing is called finite in its own kind (_in suo genere_) which can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, a body is called finite, because we alwa...

I pass on now to explain those things which must necessarily follow from the essence of God or the Being eternal and infinite; not indeed to explain all these things, for we hav...

All the ideas which are in God always agree with those things of which they are the ideas. Therefore, all ideas, in so far as they are related to God, are true.

The mind is a certain and determinate mode of thought, and therefore it cannot be the free cause of its own actions, or have an absolute faculty of willing or not willing, but m...

Most persons who have written about the emotions and man's conduct of life seem to discuss, not the natural things which follow the common laws of Nature, but things which are o...

If the human body has at any time been simultaneously affected by two bodies, whenever the mind afterwards imagines one of them, it will immediately remember the other. But the...

The impotence of man to govern or restrain the emotions I call bondage, for a man who is under their control is not his own master, but is mastered by fortune, in whose power he...

I have briefly explained the causes of human impotence and want of stability, and why men do not obey the dictates of reason. It remains for me now to show what it is which reas...

By the right and ordinance of Nature, I merely mean those natural laws wherewith we conceive every individual to be conditioned by Nature, so as to live and act in a given way....

Under every dominion the state is said to be Civil; but the entire body subject to a dominion is called a Commonwealth, and the general business of the dominion, subject to the...

If men's minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would cease; for every subject would shape his...

I pass at length to the other part of ethics which concerns the method or way which leads to liberty. In [the following], therefore, I shall treat of the power of reason, showin...

The third kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things; and the more we understand things in t...

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Notes | | | | Page vii: "affectiones" _sic_ | | Page xxvi: "villified" amended to "vilified" | |...