BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
did so in order to rouse their hearts to greater devotion, for they had been
accustomed to sacri¢ces from childhood. Everyone had been thoroughly
73 familiar with sacri¢ce from the time of Enoch, which hence stimulated
their devotion more than anything else. Thus the patriarchs sacri¢ced to
God, not because of a divine law commanding them to do so, nor because
they were schooled in the universal foundations of the divine law, but
merely from the custom of the time. If they did it at anyone’s command,
that command was merely the law of the state in which they were living,
which also applied to them (as we have already noted here and in chapter 3
in relation to Melchizedek).
[6] These passages, I think, support my position with the authority of
the Bible. It remains now to show how and why ceremonies served to preserve
and maintain the state of the Hebrews. I shall demonstrate this from
universal principles in as few words as I can.
[7] Society is extremely useful, indeed wholly essential, not only for living
safe from enemies but also for acquiring many other advantages. For
unless human beings were willing to give each other mutual assistance,
each one’s own personal skill and time would be inadequate to sustain and
preserve him as much as would otherwise be possible. For people are not
equally able to do everything, nor would each individual on his own be able
to get what he does not have. He would have neither the capacity nor the
time to plough, sow, reap, grind, cook, weave and sew for himself as well as
doing the many other things that are needed to sustain life ^ not to mention
at this point the arts and sciences, which are also supremely necessary
to the perfection of human nature and its happiness. For we see that those
who lead primitive lives, without any political organization, lead wretched
and brutish lives; yet, even so, they only manage to obtain the few crude
and miserable things that they do have by means of mutual assistance.
[8] Now if human beings were so constituted by nature that they desired
nothing but what true reason points them to, society would surely need no
laws; men would only need to learn true moral doctrine, in order to do
what is truly useful of their own accord with upright and free mind. But
they are not so constituted, far from it. All men do indeed seek their own
interest, but it is not from the dictate of sound reason; for the most part
they pursue things and judge them to be in their interest merely because
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