manner, through all the conditions of
life, Spinoza pursues the advantages which will accrue
to man from the knowledge of God, God and man
being what his philosophy has described them. It
cannot be denied that it is most beautiful; although
much of its beauty is perhaps due to associations which
have arisen out of Christianity, and which in the
system of pantheism have no proper abiding place.
Retaining, indeed, all that is beautiful in Christianity,
he even seems to have relieved himself of the more
fearful features of the general creed. He acknowledges
no hell, no devil, no positive and active agency
at enmity with God; but sees in all things infinite
gradations of beings, all in their way obedient, and all
fulfilling the part allotted to them. Doubtless a pleasant
exchange and a grateful deliverance, if only we
could persuade ourselves that a hundred pages of
judiciously arranged demonstrations could really and
indeed have worked it for us. If we could indeed
believe that we could have the year without its winter,
day without night, sunlight without shadow. Evil is
unhappily too real a thing to be so disposed of.

Yet if we cannot believe Spinoza's system taken in
its entire completeness, yet we may not blind ourselves
to the beauty of his practical rule of life, or the
disinterestedness and calm nobility which pervades it. He
will not hear of a virtue which desires to be rewarded.
Virtue is the power of God in the human soul, and that
is the exhaustive end of all human desire. "Beatitudo
non est virtutis pretium, sed ipsa virtus. Nihil aliud
est quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, quae ex Dei intuitiva
cognitione oritur." And the same spirit of generosity
exhibits itself in all his conclusions. The ordinary
objects of desire, he says, are of such a kind that for
one man to obtain them is for another to lose them;
and this alone would suffice to prove that they are not
what any man should labour after. But the fullness of
God suffices for us all, and he who possesses this good
desires only to communicate it to every one, and to
make all mankind as happy as himself. And again:--
"The wise man will not speak in society of his neighbour's
faults, and sparingly of the infirmity of human
nature; but he will speak largely of human virtue and
human power, and of the means by which that nature
can best be perfected, so to lead men to put away that
fear and aversion with which they look on goodness,
and learn with relie