THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
in heavenly rewards: "Those are far astray from a true estimate of
virtue who expect for their virtue, as if it were the greatest slavery, that
God will adorn them with the greatest rewards; as if virtue and the
serving of God were not happiness itself and the greatest liberty." 115
"Blessedness," reads the last proposition of Spinoza's book, "is not the
reward of virtue, but virtue itself." And perhaps in the like manner,
immortality is not the reward of clear thinking, it is clear thought itself,
as it carries up the past into the present and reaches out into the future,
so overcoming the limits and narrowness of time, and catching the
perspective that remains eternally behind the kaleidoscope of change;
such thought is immortal because every truth is a permanent creation,
part of the eternal acquisition of man, influencing him endlessly.
With this solemn and hopeful note the Ethics ends. Seldom has one
book enclosed so much thought, and fathered so much commentary,
while yet remaining so bloody a battleground for hostile interpretations.
Its metaphysic may be faulty, its psychology imperfect, its theology un-
satisfactory and obscure; but of the soul of the book, its spirit and essence,
no man who has read it will speak otherwise than reverently. In the con-
cluding paragraph that essential spirit shines forth in simple eloquence:
Thus I have completed all I wished to show concerning the power of the
mind over emotions, or the freedom of the mind. From which it is clear
how much a wise man is in front of and how stronger he is than an ignorant
one, who is guided by lust alone. For an ignorant man, besides being agitated
in many ways by external causes, never enjoys one true satisfaction of the
mind: he lives, moreover, almost unconscious of himself, God, and things,
and as soon as he ceases to be passive, ceases to be. On the contrary the wise
man, in so far as he is considered as such, is scarcely moved in spirit; he
is conscious of himself, of God, and things by a certain eternal necessity;
he never ceases to be, and always enjoys satisfaction of mind. If the road I
have shown to lead to this is very difficult, it can yet be discovered. And
clearly it must be very hard when it is so seldom found. For how could it be
that it is neglected practically by all, if salvation were close at hand and
could be found without difficulty? But all excellent things are as difficult
as they are rare.
V. THE POLITICAL TREATISE
There remains for our analysis that tragic troso, the Tractatus Politicus,
the work of Spinoza's maturest years, stopped suddenly short by his early
death. It is a brief thing, and yet full of thought; so that one feels again
how much was lost when this gentle life was closed at the very moment
that it was ripening to its fullest powers. In the same generation which
saw Hobbes exalting absolute monarchy and denouncing the uprising
of the English people against their king almost as vigorously as Milton
was defending it, Spinoza, friend of the republican De Witts, formulated
**II, 49, note.