BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

chapter 16 189
On the foundations of the state, on the natural and
civil right of each person, and on the authority of
sovereign powers
[1] Hitherto our concern has been to separate philosophy from
theology and to establish the freedom to philosophize which this
separation allows to everyone. The time has now come to enquire how
far this freedom to think and to say what one thinks extends in the best
kind of state. To consider this in an orderly fashion, we must ¢rst discuss
the foundations of the state but, before we do that, we must
explain, without reference to the state and religion, the natural right
( jus) which everyone possesses.
[2] By the right and order of nature I merely mean the rules determining
the nature of each individual thing by which we conceive it is determined
naturally to exist and to behave in a certain way. For example ¢sh are
determined by nature to swim and big ¢sh to eat little ones, and therefore
it is by sovereign natural right that ¢sh have possession of the water and
that big ¢sh eat small ¢sh. For it is certain that nature, considered wholly
in itself, has a sovereign right to do everything that it can do, i.e., the right
of nature extends as far as its power extends. For the power of nature is the
very power of Godwho has supreme right to [do] all things. However, since
the universal power of the whole of nature is nothing but the power of all
individual things together, it follows that each individual thing has the
sovereign right to do everything that it can do, or the right of each thing
extends so far as its determined power extends. And since it is the supreme
law of nature that each thing strives to persist in its own state so far as it
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