anthropomorphic characters given
to the First Cause as they have long since dropped the lower.

Those, however, who think that science is dissipating religious beliefs
and sentiments seem unaware that whatever of mystery is taken from the
old interpretation is added to the new. Or rather we may say that
transference from one to the other is accompanied by increase; since for
an explanation which has a seeming feasibility, science substitutes an
explanation which, carrying us back only a certain distance, then leaves
us in the presence of the avowedly inexplicable. The truth must grow
ever clearer--the truth that there is an inscrutable existence
everywhere manifested to which the man of science can neither find nor
conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries which become the
more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the
one absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence of _AN INFINITE
AND ETERNAL ENERGY_, from which all things proceed.

BENEDICT DE SPINOZA

Ethics

Baruch (_Lat._ Benedict) Spinoza, or de Spinoza, as he afterwards
signed himself, son of a wealthy Portuguese Jew, was born at
Amsterdam, November 24, 1632, and died at the early age of
forty-four, on February 21, 1677. He was educated to the highest
pitch of attainment in Hebrew and Talmudist learning, and through
delicacy of physical constitution devoted himself entirely to
study, cultivating assiduously philosophy as well as theology,
while not neglecting the physical sciences. Imbibing unorthodox
views he was formally excommunicated from the synagogue, and
philosophy henceforth became the sole pursuit of his mind. He was
able, however, through his great scientific accomplishments and
mechanical skill, to gain a sufficiency for his subsistence by
polishing lenses. This accomplished man was also no mean artist,
especially in designing. He was one of the finest Latinists of his
time. He was filled with the spirit of religion, and lived the
simplest life, on a few pence a day, in a period of voluptuous
epicureanism. The philosophical system of Spinoza was evolved from
that of Descartes, who had sought to inaugurate a new era in
thought. But he sought more clearly to demonstrate the existence of
God than did his great French master. No philosopher has been more
maligned on the one hand, or more adulated on t