A Selection from The Ethics
Part I - Concerning God
DEFINITIONS.
- VI. By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.
PROP. XIV. Besides God no substance can be granted or conceived.
- Proof.—As God is a being absolutely infinite, of whom no attribute that expresses the essence of substance can be denied (by Def. vi.), and he necessarily exists (by Prop. xi.); if any substance besides God were granted, it would have to be explained by some attribute of God, and thus two substances with the same attribute would exist, which (by Prop. v.) is absurd; therefore, besides God no substance can be granted, or, consequently, be conceived. If it could be conceived, it would necessarily have to be conceived as existent; but this (by the first part of this proof) is absurd. Therefore, besides God no substance can be granted or conceived. Q.E.D.
- Corollary I.—Clearly, therefore: 1. God is one, that is (by Def. vi.) only one substance can be granted in the universe, and that substance is absolutely infinite, as we have already indicated (in the note to Prop. x.).
- Corollary II.—It follows: 2. That extension and thought are either attributes of God or (by Ax. i.) accidents (affectiones) of the attributes of God.
PROP. XV. Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
- Note.—Some assert that God, like a man, consists of body and mind, and is susceptible of passions. How far such persons have strayed from the truth is sufficiently evident from what has been said. But these I pass over. For all who have in anywise reflected on the divine nature deny that God has a body. Of this they find excellent proof in the fact that we understand by body a definite quantity, so long, so broad, so deep, bounded by a certain shape, and it is the height of absurdity to predicate such a thing of God, a being absolutely infinite...
Appendix
Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also.
Part 4 - Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions
Preface. As for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things one with another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that mourns; for him that is deaf, it is neither good nor bad.
PROP. LXIII. He who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason.
- Proof.—All the emotions which are attributable to the mind as active, or in other words to reason, are emotions of pleasure and desire (III. lix.); therefore, he who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason.
Note.—Superstitions persons, who know better how to rail at vice than how to teach virtue, and who strive not to guide men by reason, but so to restrain them that they would rather escape evil than love virtue, have no other aim but to make others as wretched as themselves; wherefore it is nothing wonderful, if they be generally troublesome and odious to their fellow—men.
PROP. XXVIII. The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue is to know God.
A Selection from Theological-Political Treatise
Chapter 4
On Divine Law
[4]...Again, since nothing can exist or be conceived without God, it is certain that every single thing in nature involves and expresses the conception of God as far as its essence and perfection allows, and accordingly the more we come to understand natural things, the greater and more perfect the knowledge of God we acquire. Further (since knowledge of an effect through a cause is simply to know some property of the cause) the more we learn about natural things, the more perfectly we come to know the essence of God (which is the cause of all things); and thus all our knowledge, that is, our highest good, not only depends on a knowledge of God but consists in it altogether.
Chapter 12
On the true original text of the divine law, and why Holy Scripture is so called, and why it is called the word of God, and a demonstration that, in so far as it contains the word of God, it has come down to us uncorrupted
[1] Those who consider the Bible in its current state a letter from God, sent from heaven to men, will undoubtedly protest that I have sinned ‘against the Holy Ghost’1 by claiming the word of God is erroneous, mutilated, corrupt and inconsistent, that we have only fragments of it, and that the original text of the covenant which God made with the Jews has perished. However, if they re£ect upon the facts, I have no doubt that they will soon cease to protest. For both reason and the beliefs of the prophets and Apostles evidently proclaim that God’s eternal word and covenant and true religion are divinely inscribed upon the hearts of men, that is, upon the human mind. This is God’s true original text, which he himself has sealed with his own seal, that is, with the idea of himself as the image of his divinity
[3] But they [i.e. my adversaries] will insist that, even though the divine law is written on our hearts, the Bible is still the word of God, and therefore we may not say that it is mutilated and corrupt any more than we may say this of the word of God.Truly, though, I fear that they, on the contrary, try too hard to be pious.They are converting religion into superstition, indeed verge, unfortunately, on adoring images and pictures, i.e. paper and ink, as the word of God. I know I have said nothing unworthy of Scripture or of the word of God, since I have said nothing that I have not demonstrated to be true by the clearest reasoning.
CHAPTER 13
Where it is shown that the teachings of Scripture are very simple, and aim only to promote obedience, and tell us nothing about the divine nature beyond what men may emulate by a certain manner of life
[9]...that the sacred books express themselves so inappropriately about God throughout, attributing hands and feet to him, and eyes and ears, and movement in space, as well as mental emotions, such as being jealous, merciful, etc., and depicting him as a judge and as sitting on a royal throne in heaven with Christ at his right hand.
CHAPTER 14
What faith is, who the faithful are, the foundations of faith defined, and faith definitively distinguished from philosophy
[1] For a true knowledge of faith it is above all necessary to acknowledge that the Bible is adapted to the understanding not only of the prophets but also of the fickle and capricious common people among the Jews. No one who studies this point even casually can miss this. Anyone who accepts everything in Scripture indifferently as God’s universal and absolute doctrine and cannot correctly identify what is adapted to the notions of the common people, will be incapable of separating their opinions from divine doctrine. He will put forward human beliefs and fabrications as God’s teaching and thereby abuse the authority of the Bible. Who does not see that this is the principal reason why sectaries teach so many mutually contradictory beliefs as doctrines of faith, and support them with many examples from Scripture, so much so that the Dutch long ago produced a saying about it: ‘every heretic has his text’? For the sacred books were not written by one man alone, nor for the common people of a single period, but by a large number of men, of different temperaments and at different times, and if we calculate the period from the earliest to the latest, it will be found to be around two thousand years and possibly much longer.
One of the greatest pantheists of all time, Baruch Spinoza argued that God and the universe are of one and the same substance. Free will is a human illusion. In reality, everything flows by necessity from the order of the universe. Determinism teaches us to take the world as it is. We are at peace with ourselves when we know our place in the universe and accept it. Our goal is to know God.
Rifat Sonsino & Daniel B. Syme, Finding God