BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
can, taking no account of another’s circumstances but only of its own, it
follows that each individual thing has a sovereign right to do this, i.e. (as
I said) to exist and to behave as it is naturally determined to behave.
Here we recognize no di¡erence between human beings and other
individual things of nature, nor between those human beings who are
endowed with reason and others who do not know true reason, nor
190 between fools or lunatics and the sane. For whatever each thing does by the
laws of its nature, that it does with sovereign right, since it is acting as it
was determined to by nature and can not do otherwise. Hence as long as
people are deemed to live under the government of nature alone, the person
who does not yet know reason or does not yet have a habit of virtue,
lives by the laws of appetite alone with the same supreme right as he who
directs his life by the laws of reason. That is, just as a wise man has a
sovereign right to do all things that reason dictates, i.e., [he has] the right
of living by the laws of reason, so also the ignorant or intemperate person
possesses the sovereign right to [do] everything that desire suggests, i.e.,
he has the right of living by the laws of appetite.This is precisely what Paul
is saying when he acknowledges that there is no sin before law is established,
1 i.e., as long as men are considered as living under the government
of nature.
[3] Each person’s natural right therefore is determined not by sound
reason but by desire and power. For it is not the case that all men are
naturally determined to behave according to the rules and laws of reason.
On the contrary, all men are born completely ignorant of everything and
before they can learn the true rationale of living and acquire the habit of
virtue, a good part of life has elapsed even if they have been well brought
up, while, in the meantime, they must live and conserve themselves so far
as they can, by the sole impulse of appetite. For nature has given them
nothing else, and has denied them the power of living on the basis of
sound reason, and consequently they are no more obliged to live by the
laws of a sound mind than a cat is by the laws of a lion’s nature. Anyone
therefore deemed to be under the government of nature alone is permitted
by the sovereign right of nature to desire anything that he believes to be
useful to himself, whether brought to this by sound reason or by the
impulse of his passions. He is permitted to take it for himself by any
1 Romans 7.7.
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