little
moral firmness, or very great moral insensibility, to declare such a
consequence with the unflinching audacity which marks its enunciation by
Spinoza. He repeatedly declares, in various modes of expression, that "the
soul is a spiritual automaton," and possesses no such liberty as is
usually ascribed to it. All is necessary, and the very notion of a
free-will is a vulgar prejudice. "All I have to say," he coolly remarks,
"to those who believe that they can speak or keep silence--in one word, can
act--by virtue of a free decision of the soul, is, that they dream with
their eyes open."(14) Though he thus boldly denies all free-will,
according to the common notion of mankind; yet, no less than Hobbes and
Collins, he allows that the soul possesses "a sort of liberty." "It is
free," says he, in the act of affirming that "two and two are equal to
four;" thus finding the freedom of the soul which he is pleased to allow
the world to possess in the most perfect type of necessity it is possible
to conceive.

But Spinoza does not employ this idea of liberty, nor any other, to show
that man is a responsible being. This is not at all strange; the wonder
is, that after having _demonstrated_ that "the prejudice of men concerning
_good_ and _evil_, merit and demerit, praise and blame, order and
confusion, beauty and deformity," are nothing but dreams, he should have
felt bound to defend the position, that we may be justly punished for our
offences by the Supreme Ruler of the world. His defence of this doctrine
we shall lay before the reader without a word of comment. "Will you say,"
he replies to Oldenburg, "that God cannot be angry with the wicked, or
that all men are worthy of beatitude? In regard to the first point, I
perfectly agree that God cannot be angry at anything which happens
according to his decree, but I deny that it results that all men ought to
be happy; for men can be excusable, and at the same time be deprived of
beatification, and made to suffer a thousand ways. A horse is excusable
for being a horse, and not a man; but that prevents not that he ought to
be a horse, and not a man. He who is rendered mad by the bite of a dog, is
surely excusable, and yet we ought to constrain him. In like manner, the
man who cannot govern his passions, nor restrain them by the fear of the
laws, though excusable on account of the infirmity of his nature, can
nevertheless not enjoy peace, nor the knowledge and the love of God; and