BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
had been prescribed to all men. Their miracles would not display the
power of God any less, if they had also been performed for other nations;
nor would the Hebrews be less obliged to worship God, had he equally
bestowed these gifts on all men. God’s remark to Solomon (see 1 Kings
3.12) that no one who came after him would be as wise as he is, seems to
be merely an expression with which to stress his outstanding wisdom. In
any case, one cannot believe that God promised him that he would not
give as much happiness to anyone else after him, in order to make Solomon
happier. For this would not in any way enhance Solomon’s understanding,
and had God said he would give the same wisdom to everybody, that wise
king would not have shown less gratitude to God for so great a gift.
[2] Even so, though we say that Moses in the passages just cited from
the Pentateuch spoke according to the understanding of the Hebrews, we
do not mean to deny that God prescribed the laws of the Pentateuch to
them alone or that he spoke only to them or that the Hebrews saw
wonders that occurred to no other nation. We mean rather that Moses
desired to teach the Hebrews in such a manner and inculcate into them
such principles as would attach them more closely to the worship of
God on the basis of their childish understanding. We also wanted to
show that the Hebrews excelled other nations neither in knowledge nor
piety but in something quite di¡erent, or (to speak in terms of Scripture,
according to their understanding) that the Hebrews were chosen above
others by God not, despite their being frequently admonished, with a
view to the true life and elevated conceptions but rather for something
completely di¡erent. What this was, I will show here directly.
[3] But before I begin, I want to explain in a few words what I mean in
what follows by ‘God’s direction’, by ‘God’s external and internal help’, by
‘divine election’, and ¢nally what I mean by ‘fortune’. By ‘God’s direction’,
I mean the ¢xed and unalterable order of nature or the interconnectedness
46 of [all] natural things.We have shown above, and have previously demonstrated
elsewhere, 1 that the universal laws of nature according to which all
things happen and are determined, are nothing other than the eternal
1 I.e., in the Cogitata metaphysica,the47-page text published by Spinoza, under his own name, as a
supplement to his geometrical exposition of the principles of Descartes’ philosophy, entitled
Renati Des Cartes, Principiorum philosophiae pars I & II, more geometrico demonstrata (Amsterdam,
1663).
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