te necessity, and could not have been other than it is. God
is free, because no causes external to himself have power over him; and
as good men are most free when most a law to themselves, so it is no
infringement on God's freedom to say that he _must_ have acted as he has
acted, but rather he is absolutely free because absolutely a law himself
to himself.

Here ends the first book of Spinoza's Ethics--the book which contains,
as we said, the _notiones simplicissimas_, and the primary and
rudimental deductions from them. _His Dei naturam_, he says, in his
lofty confidence, _ejusque proprietates explicui_. But, as if conscious
that his method will never convince, he concludes this portion of his
subject with an analytical appendix; not to explain or apologise, but to
show us clearly, in practical detail, the position into which he has led
us. The root, we are told, of all philosophical errors lies in our
notion of final causes; we invert the order of nature, and interpret
God's action through our own; we speak of his intentions, as if he were
a man; we assume that we are capable of measuring them, and finally
erect ourselves, and our own interests, into the centre and criterion of
all things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If the universe be what
this philosophy has described it, the perfection which it assigns to
God is extended to everything, and evil is of course impossible; there
is no shortcoming either in nature or in man; each person and each thing
is exactly what it has the power to be, and nothing more. But men
imagining that all things exist on their account, and perceiving their
own interests, bodily and spiritual, capable of being variously
affected, have conceived these opposite influences to result from
opposite and contradictory powers, and call what contributes to their
advantage good, and whatever obstructs it, evil. For our convenience we
form generic conceptions of human excellence, as archetypes after which
to strive; and such of us as approach nearest to such archetypes are
supposed to be virtuous, and those who are most remote from them to be
wicked. But such generic abstractions are but _entia imaginationis_, and
have no real existence. In the eyes of God each thing is what it has the
means of being. There is no rebellion against him, and no resistance of
his will; in truth, therefore, there neither is nor can be such a thing
as a bad action in the common sense of the word. Actions are good or
ba