BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
47 were never peculiar to any one nation but were always common to the
entire human race, unless we want to delude ourselves that once upon a
time nature created di¡erent species of men.The factors conducing to safe
livingandconservingthebody,on the otherhand,lie chie£yinexternalthings
andare consequentlycalledgifts offortune because theydependmostlyupon
the direction of external causes of which we are ignorant. Hence, in this
respect,a foolish person is almost as happy or unhappy as awise person.
Even so, human intervention and vigilance can do much to help us live
in safety and to avoid injury from other people and from animals. For this
purpose, reason and experience have taught us no surer means than to
establish a society with ¢xed laws, to occupy a determinate region of our
earth and to bring everyone’s resources into one body, ifwe may call it that,
the body of a society. But to establish and conserve a society, much intelligence
and vigilance is required. Therefore that society will be safer, more
stable and less vulnerable to fortune, which is for the most part founded
and directed by wise and vigilant men. On the other hand, a society that
consists of men of limited intelligence depends for the most part on fortune
and is less stable. If in spite of this it has proved to be lasting, this will
be due, not to its own policies, but to someone else’s. Indeed, if it has
overcome great dangers and its a¡airs have prospered, it can do no other
than admire and adore God’s government (that is, in so far as God acts
through hidden external causes and not as He acts through human nature
and the human mind). For everything that happened to that society was
beyond expectation and beyond belief and this can truly be considered a
miracle.
[6] Hence, nations are distinguished one from another only by the [form
of ] society and laws in which they live and under which they are governed.
The Hebrew people, accordingly, was chosen by God above others not for
its understanding or for its qualities of mind, but owing to the form of its
society and the good fortune, over so many years, withwhich it shaped and
preserved its state.This is also fully evident from the Bible itself. Anyone
who peruses it even super¢cially will clearly see that the Hebrews excelled
other peoples in merely one thing: they conducted the a¡airs that a¡ected
their security of life successfully and overcame great dangers, and did so,
on the whole, solely through God’s external assistance. In other respects,
48 they were on the same footing as the rest of the nations, and God favoured
all equally.
46