ning 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 bad, not in themselves, but as compared
with the nature of the agent; what we censure in men,
we tolerate and even admire in animals, and as soon as
we are aware of our mistake in assigning to the former
a power of free volition, our notion of evil as a positive
thing will cease to exist.

"If I am asked," concludes Spinoza, "why then all mankind
were not created by God, so as to be governed solely
by reason? it was because, I reply, there was to Him no
lack of matter to create all things from the highest to the
lowest grade of perfection; or, to speak more properly,
because the laws of His nature were ample enough to
suffice for the production of all things which can be conceived
by an Infinite Intelligence."

It is possible that readers who have followed us so far
will now turn away with no disposition to learn more
philosophy which issues in such conclusions; and
resentful perhaps that it should have been ever laid
before them at all, in language so little expressive of
aversion and displeasure. We must claim however, in
Spinoza's name, the right which he claims for himself.
His system must be judged as a whole; and whatever we
may think ourselves would be the moral effect of it if it
were generally received, in his hands and in his heart it
is worked into maxims of the purest and loftiest morality.
And at least we are bound to remember that some
account of this great mystery of evil there must be; and
although familiarity with commonly-received explanations
may disguise from us the difficulties with which they too,
a