GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

360
ETHICS
in fairness be mentioned that his philosophy has another
side. Spinoza's one ultimate reality or God, of which or
whom all things are different aspects, manifests itself in
two main forms or modes of expression, the first mental,
the second bodily. The body is not just something added
to the mind; it is a parallel expression of the same fundamental
substance. It follows, then, that any and every
aspect of the immortal substance, that is of God, can
express itself in. bodily movements. In so far as it does so,
and in so far as the bodily movements, in their turn,
express themselves in mental events which are determined
by the movements, there is no escape from a naturalistic,
deterministic and egoistic conception of human nature.
Given such a view of human nature, the system of ethics
which I have just outlined necessarily follows, and since
the bodily expressions of God's substance are no less real
than the mental, and since body is in no sense dependent
upon spirit, the naturalistic reading of human life is both
true and ultimate.
But it is not the only reading, for God's substance also
expresses itself in terms of spirit. The distinguishing activity
of spirit, as Spinoza conceives it, is intellectual, and the
purpose of the intellectual activity of the spirit is the quest
for truth. To see things exactly as they are, and to accept
unreservedly
what one sees is to achieve truth. To achieve
truth is to fulfil the spirit whose quest truth is, and to
fulfil the spirit is to realize one's own nature or, as Kant
put it, to obey the law of one's nature. Now, in obeying
the law of our natures, we are free. When we act with the
object of gratifying the desires and passions that derive
their origin from the events taking place in our bodies,
we are, Spinoza agrees with Kant, 1 in bondage to forces
external to ourselves. But when we exercise the activity
of the intellect in the quest for truth, we are determined
only by a law which springs from our own being. Thus
the positive side of Spinoza's ethics consists in an exhortation
to pursue knowledge as the highest goal of man,
1 See Chapter VI, pp. 203, 204*