eliberate and formal doctrine is
undoubtedly the latter; but he constantly employs expressions which
imply the former, as when he speaks of God as _causa sui_. The higher
idea inspires him, though his consciousness only embraces the lower
idea.

Spinoza's ethical system.

The ethical philosophy of Spinoza is determined by the same principles
and embarrassed by the same difficulties as his metaphysics. In it
also we find the same imperfect conception of the relation of the
positive to the negative elements, and, as a consequence, the same
confusion of the highest unity of thought, the affirmation that
subordinates and transcends all negation with mere abstract
affirmation. Or, to put the same thing in ethical language, Spinoza
teaches a morality which is in every point the opposite of asceticism,
a morality of self-assertion or self-seeking, and not of self-denial.
The _conatus sese conservandi_ is to him the supreme principle of
virtue;[48] yet this self-seeking is supposed, under the guidance of
reason, to identify itself with the love of man and the love of God,
and to find blessedness not in the reward of virtue, but in virtue
itself. It is only confusion of thought and false mysticism that could
object to this result on the ground of the element of self still
preserved in the _amor Dei intellectualis_. For it is just the power
of identifyihg himself with that which is wider and higher than his
individual being that makes morality possible to man. But the
difficulty lies in this, that Spinoza will not admit the negative
element, the element of mortification or sacrifice, into morality at
all, even as a moment of transition. For him there is no dead self, by
which we may rise to higher things, no losing of life that we may find
it. For the negative is nothing, it is evil in the only sense in which
evil exists, and cannot be the source of good. The higher affirmation
of our own being, the higher seeking of ourselves which is identical
with the love of God, must therefore be regarded as nothing distinct
in kind from that first seeking of our natural self which in Spinoza's
view belongs to us in common with the animals, and indeed in common
with all beings whatever. It must be regarded merely as a direct
development and extension of the same thing. The main interest of the
Spinozistic ethics therefore lies in observing by what steps he
accomp