n's highest good.(980) There is no need of any other
reward than this, and there is no greater punishment than to be deprived
of this boon forever.(981)

11. In the face of these two great thinkers, to whom Spinoza owes the
fundamental ideas of his ethics,(982) the question considered by Albo,
whether the eternal duration of the tortures of hell is reconcilable with
the divine mercy,(983) a question which still plays an important role in
Christian theology, and which was probably suggested to Albo through his
disputations with representatives of the Church,--is for us superfluous and
superseded. Our modern conceptions of time and space admit neither a place
or a world-period for the reward and punishment of souls, nor the
intolerable conception of eternal joy without useful action and eternal
agony without any moral purpose. Modern man knows that he bears heaven and
hell within his own bosom. Indeed, so much more difficult is the life of
duty which knows of no other reward than happiness through harmony with
God, the Father of the immortal soul, and of no other punishment than the
soul's distress at its inner discord with the primal Source and the divine
Ideal of all morality. All the more powerfully is modern man controlled by
the thought that the universe permits no stagnation, no barren enjoyment
or barren suffering, but that every death marks the transition to a higher
goal for greater accomplishment. This yearning of the soul finds
expression in the Talmudic maxim, "The righteous find rest neither in this
world, nor in the world to come, as it is said, 'They go from strength to
strength, until they appear before God on Zion.' "(984)

Chapter XLVI. The Individual and the Race

1. In every system of belief the object of divine care and guidance is the
individual. His soul and his conscience raise him up, especially according
to the Jewish doctrine, to the divine image, to Godchildship. His freedom
and moral responsibility are the patent of nobility for his divine nature;
his ego, controlling external forces and carrying out its own designs,
vouches for his immortality. Nevertheless the spirit of the Biblical
language indicates rightly that the individual is only a son of man,--_ben
adam_,--that is, a segment or member of the human race, but not the perfect
typical exemplification of the whole of mankind. From the social organism
he receives what he is, what he has, and what he ought to do, both his
nature an