No man can be fully understood without an adequate knowledge of his background; and if Spinoza seems to be an enigmatic figure, so were his epoch and his environment.

Spinoza was the descendant of a Jewish family which had been driven from Spain by the Inquisition, first to Portugal, then to Holland. The latter country offered only a partial refuge, for in the seventeenth century Holland had its own brands of religious and political persecution. Young Spinoza found little happiness in his step-mother’s house in Amsterdam, and we hear of him as an adolescent frequently wandering away from the Spanish-speaking “ghetto,” to mingle with his Christian neighbors. Amsterdam was at that time seething with Socinians, Quakers and other reformist sects, a situation which helped the young student of the Torah and the Talmud to approach scripture with an amazingly analytical and objective eye.

By his detached viewpoint, the young Spinoza brought to light indisputable discrepancies between various sections of the Canon, and confronted scholars with disturbing evidence that some of the traditionally ancient writings had been composed only a few hundred years B.C., and by entirely different hands than the orthodoxy alleged. This was the beginning of modern theological exegetics or Biblical criticism. The Jewish community of Amsterdam, most of whose members had suffered harrowing tortures at the hands of the Catholic Church, made desperate efforts to stop Spinoza from proselytizing among their people. What they especially feared was Spinoza’s thesis that the laws of the Torah were state laws designed for the tribes of Israel, and therefore had no validity for Jews living in other states. If this interpretation was accepted, it would mean the dissolution of those religious ties by which the Torah had for thousands of years held together Jews scattered to the four corners of the earth. When pleas and threats proved to be of no avail, the twenty-four-year-old Spinoza was officially expelled from the Jewish community of Amsterdam. He spent the remainder of his life in other Dutch towns, mostly in and around The Hague.

Immediately after his excommunication, Spinoza had published in Spanish a pamphlet entitled Apologia, which explained his position. Until this day not one copy of the pamphlet has been discovered, though many years later, in the only book published during his lifetime, The Theological Political Treatise, he expounded his point of view in great detail. His main thesis is an appeal to reason, with the recommendation that the secular powers of the Church be curbed, so that every man might be granted full liberty of thought and speech.

In his philosophic method, Spinoza is a student of Déscartes, but in his findings he ranges far afield from the French mathematician. In his Ethics, which is designed after Euclid’s Geometry, he begins with a number of what he considers irrefutable premises, on which he builds a system analyzing the nature of God and man in a purely scientific manner. He identifies God with creative nature, and with Substance. Mortal man knows only two attributes, the world of the body and the world of the mind; but God (or Substance) lives through infinite attributes, each of which in turn necessarily expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.

This majestic concept of our mind-body universe, as, so to speak, only a splinter in eternity, has had profound effect upon physicists and scholars from Leibniz to Einstein. Man himself, Spinoza reasons, is, like all things, a part, a mode, of created nature and must be taken as such and no more. Like other things, he is constantly in motion and has no free will of his own. He is filled with contradictory emotions of fear and hope, love and hate, pity and remorse. The only path to freedom from such an embattled existence is to be overwhelmed by an even greater emotion: the love of God, which is, indeed, the same as the love of man. Love of God is born out of deep understanding of the nature of the universe, and it is given only to those who perceive intellectually the self-identical order of ideas and things as attributes of the all-pervading One. Whoever gains this high intuition will become imbued with amor dei intellectualis, the rational love of God.

Thus the man who understands the order of creative nature, through his feeling of inner blessedness, sloughs off the disturbing passions of ambition, greed and lust, to enjoy the constant pleasure of fulfillment in having reached the life of adequate cognition. The highest good is therefore knowledge of God, and to know God is to enjoy the most nearly perfect happiness; while to entertain inadequate ideas is to give oneself over to the passions. The pleasure of blessedness so far exceeds the pleasure offered by the passions, that the truly self-seeking person will strive toward the understanding of God and cling to it. Only the emotion born of intuition and reason can conquer the petty appetites of daily life and keep those few who attain it, free and wise and secure.

Spinoza, the moralist, attacks the problems of human conduct with the same weapon he uses in theological matters, namely, pure reason. Experience teaches, he maintains, that man is subject to three basic passions: the passion for gold, the passion for honor, and the sex passion. As long as man is beset by any of these three, he is not his own master, but resembles rather a rudderless ship floundering in a sea of greeds. It is interesting to note that Spinoza does not speak of the libidinous nature of man as “immoral.” By his standard, there is nothing in nature good or bad, evil or virtuous of itself. Things become good or bad only in relation to a third value. This value is Spinoza’s concept of the quietude of the soul. Since he considers this quietude the greatest blessing and summum bonum of being, whatever keeps man from attaining it is negative, or bad, while whatever helps him reach this state of supreme happiness is positive, or good. Since reason is the only means by which man can master his raging passions, Spinoza considers their conquest an intellectual process.

To him, then, the wise man is eo ipso the free man, who no longer is pulled in every direction by greed, lust or ambition, but who, rather, in full consciousness of his inner self and his unity with the All, leads a life of spiritual independence and serenity. To reach such a rarefied state is, admittedly, an arduous task, possible to only a few select minds. But then, Spinoza reminds us, all things of grandeur are as rare as they are difficult.

I therefore debated whether it would not be possible to arrive at the new principle, or at any rate at a certainty concerning its existence, without changing the conduct and usual plan of my life; with this end in view I made many efforts, but in vain. For the ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads—Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good. By sensual pleasure the mind is enthralled to the extent of quiescence, as if the supreme good were actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of thinking of any other object; when such pleasure has been gratified it is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though not enthralled, is disturbed and dulled.

The pursuit of honours and riches is likewise very absorbing, especially if such objects be sought simply for their own sake,¹ inasmuch as they are then supposed to constitute the highest good. In the case of fame the mind is still more absorbed, for fame is conceived as always good for its own sake, and as the ultimate end to which all actions are directed. Further, the attainment of riches and fame is not followed as in the case of sensual pleasures by repentance, but, the more we acquire, the greater is our delight, and, consequently, the more are we incited to increase both the one and the other; on the other hand, if our hopes happen to be frustrated we are plunged into the deepest sadness. Fame has the further drawback that it compels its votaries to order their lives according to the opinions of their fellow-men, shunning what they usually shun, and seeking what they usually seek.

When I saw that all these ordinary objects of desire would be obstacles in the way of a search for something different and new—nay, that they were so opposed thereto, that either they or it would have to be abandoned, I was forced to inquire which would prove the most useful to me: for, as I say, I seemed to be willingly losing hold on a sure good for the sake of something uncertain. However, after I had reflected on the matter, I came in the first place to the conclusion that by abandoning the ordinary objects of pursuit, and betaking myself to a new quest, I should be leaving a good, uncertain by reason of its own nature, as may be gathered from what has been said, for the sake of a good not uncertain in its nature (for I sought for a fixed good), but only in the possibility of its attainment.

Further reflection convinced me, that if I could really get to the root of the matter I should be leaving certain evils for a certain good. I thus perceived that I was in a state of great peril, and I compelled myself to seek with all my strength for a remedy, however uncertain it might be; as a sick man struggling with a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek such a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein. All the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hindrances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them.² There are many examples of men who have suffered persecution even to death for the sake of their riches, and of men who in pursuit of wealth have exposed themselves to so many dangers, that they have paid away their life as a penalty for their folly. Examples are no less numerous of men, who have endured the utmost wretchedness for the sake of gaining or preserving their reputation. Lastly, there are innumerable cases of men, who have hastened their death through over-indulgence in sensual pleasure. All these evils seem to have arisen from the fact, that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly to depend on the quality of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved, no quarrels will arise concerning it—no sadness will be felt if it perishes—no envy if it is possessed by another—no fear, no hatred, in short no disturbances of the mind. All these arise from the love of what is perishable, such as the objects already mentioned. But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our strength. Yet it was not at random that I used the words, “If I could go to the root of the matter,” for, though what I have urged was perfectly clear to my mind, I could not forthwith lay aside all love of riches, sensual enjoyment, and fame. One thing was evident, namely, that while my mind was employed with these thoughts it turned away from its former objects of desire, and seriously considered the search for a new principle; this state of things was a great comfort to me, for I perceived that the evils were not such as to resist all remedies. Although these intervals were at first rare, and of very short duration, yet afterwards, as the true good became more and more discernible to me, they became more frequent and more lasting; especially after I had recognized that the acquisition of wealth, sensual pleasure, or fame, is only a hindrance, so long as they are sought as ends not as means; if they be sought as means, they will be under restraint, and, far from being hindrances, will further not a little the end for which they are sought, as I will show in due time.

I will here only briefly state what I mean by true good, and also what is the nature of the highest good. In order that this may be rightly understood, we must bear in mind that the terms good and evil are only applied relatively, so that the same thing may be called both good and bad, according to the relations in view, in the same way as it may be called perfect or imperfect. Nothing regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or imperfect; especially when we are aware that all things which come to pass, come to pass according to the eternal order and fixed laws of nature. However, human weakness cannot attain to this order in its own thoughts, but meanwhile man conceives a human character much more stable than hi...