of the event of which we have some doubt. Despair is pain arising from a thing present or past, regarding which cause for doubt has been removed; and so on. In general, "an emotion, which is called a passion of the soul, is a confused idea, through which the mind affirms the energy of existence possessed by its body, or any part of it, to be greater or less than it was before, and through the presence of which the mind itself is determined to this thought rather than to that." 1

The attainment of freedom, then, has two sides. It is an escape from the emotions, and it is an escape from inadequate and false ideas: and these two things are one. True blessedness is thus the blessedness of knowledge. "Hence it is of the utmost service in life to perfect the understanding or reason, as far as we can; and in this one thing consists man's highest felicity. Indeed, blessedness is nothing but that very satisfaction of the soul which arises from an intuitive knowledge of God. But to perfect the understanding is only to comprehend God, his attributes, and the actions that follow from the necessity of his nature. Wherefore the ultimate aim of the man who is controlled by reason, that is, the highest desire, with which he strives to restrain all the others, is that which impels him to conceive adequately himself and everything that can fall within the scope of his understanding."2 That only is good which is conducive to knowledge; that which hinders and diminishes it is bad. We are virtuous in so far as we are strong, as the understanding is active; to be weak, or passive, is to be vicious. Thus not only hatred and envy are vices, but also pity, shame, humility, and repentance. All of these are accompanied by a feeling of pain; they concentrate attention on our weakness, and make us blind to our true strength. Compassion, by putting an undue emphasis on the mere external signs of suffering, diverts us from a study of causes, and often leads us to acts of blind impulse that afterward we regret. Repentance is

1 Pt. III (Fullerton, p. 152). 2 Pt. IV, Appendix IV.

doubly bad; for he who regrets is weak, and is conscious of his weakness. The man who lives according to reasor will, therefore, strive to rise above pity and vain regrets He will help his neighbor, but he will do it from reason, not from impulse. He will consider nothing worthy of hatred, mockery, or contempt. He will look at life dispassionately and fearlessly, obeying no one but himself, doing that only which he knows to be best, conquered neither by human miseries nor his own mistakes.

2. Human Freedom. - This, in general terms, is the outcome of Spinoza's philosophy; it may be well, however, to consider the process a little more closely. And at first sight it might seem that freedom is impossible in Spinoza's system, since necessity rules in this from first to last. It has been seen that all things follow necessarily from the nature of God; an event is called contingent only in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge. And of course man's life does not fall outside this necessity. Is it said that we know by experience that it is within the power of the mind alone to do many things solely by its own decree; to speak, for example, or to be silent, as it chooses? "But surely the condition of human affairs would be much more satisfactory if it were as much within man's power to be silent as to speak. But experience gives sufficient, and more than sufficient proof of the fact that there is nothing less under a man's control than his tongue, nor is there anything of which a man is less capable than of restraining his impulse. This is the reason most persons believe that we are free only in doing those things to which we are impelled by slight desires, for the impulse to do such things can be easily checked by the memory of some other thing of which we often think; but that we are by no means free in doing those things to which we are impelled by strong emotion, which cannot be checked by the memory of some other thing. But, had they not had experience of the fact that we do many things which we afterward regret, and that we often, when we are harassed by conflicting emotions, see the better and

follow the worse, nothing would prevent them from believ ing that we are always free in our actions. Thus the infant believes that it desires milk of its own free will; the angry child that it is free in seeking revenge, and the timid that it is free in taking to flight. Again, a drunken man believes that he says of his own free will things he afterward, when sober, wishes he had left unsaid; so also an insane man, a garrulous woman, a child, and very many others of the sort, believe they speak of their own free will, while, nevertheless, they are unable to control their impulse to talk. Thus experience itself shows, no less clearly than reason, that men think themselves free only because they are conscious of their actions, and ignorant of the causes which determine them. It shows, moreover, that the mind's decisions are nothing but its impulses, which vary with the varying condition of the body." 1

We cannot, therefore, escape from the necessary facts of existence. Reality is as it is, and we cannot make it different. But this is bondage only when we rebel against it, and set up in its stead purely individual ends. We shall find freedom- the only true freedom-in knowing the truth and accepting it. We are not under constraint because we are subject to law, but because we are subject to our own ignorance and passions. God is perfect freedom, not because he can act arbitrarily, but because he acts solely from the laws of his own nature and under no compulsion; there is nothing external to him that can determine him to act.

Now emotions, since they are passions rather than actions, represent such an influence of external things. But the road to salvation has already appeared. We can overcome the emotions by understanding them, by ridding ourselves of our confused ideas, and seeing everything in its innermost truth, as a necessary fact. Everyday experi ence will show us how potent an effect the recognition of the necessity of things has upon our attitude toward them. 1 Pt. III, 2, Schol.

"The more the knowledge that these things are necessary is brought to bear upon individual things, which we imagine more distinctly and vividly, the greater is the power of the mind over the emotions. To this fact experience itself bears witness. We see sorrow at the loss of some good thing mitigated, as soon as the man who has lost it perceives that he could not have preserved it in any possible way. Thus we see, also, that no one pities an infant because it cannot speak, walk, or reason, and because, in a word, it lives so many years, as it were, without the consciousness of self. But if most persons were born as adults, and only one here and there as an infant, then every one would pity infants, for then we should regard infancy itself, not as a natural and necessary thing, but as a defect or fault of nature."

Accordingly, Spinoza goes on to show the ways in which the emotions can be controlled by the superior force, permanence, frequency, and harmony of true knowledge, which enable it to hold the mind against false and inadequate ideas. These ways all go back ultimately to that which constitutes the chief power of adequate ideas — their relation to the idea of God. Everything alike can be referred to the idea of God, since he is the truth of all things; and when it is thus referred, we have a means at hand for overcoming the emotions whose force is irresistible. For the philosopher, convinced that all events, including human actions, are the outcome of the necessity of the divine nature, nothing merits contempt, hatred, pity; he has simply to understand them as a part of the whole of things, not judge them. He will lay aside all private and selfish aims, and merge himself in the great life of the whole, to whose will he will bow without repining, and find thereby joy and peace. Once know and accept things as they are in God, and the warring desires and passions which distract us will pass away; the motives which look large to us now in our ignorance will lose their power. "Griefs and misfortunes have their chief source in an excessive love of

that which is subject to many variations, and of which we can never have control. No one is solicitous or anxious about anything unless he love it; nor do injustices, suspicions, enmities, and so forth arise, except from the love of things of which no one can really have control. Thus we easily conceive what power clear and distinct knowledge, and especially that third kind of knowledge, the foundation of which is the knowledge of God and nothing else, has over the emotions; if it does not, in so far as they are passions, absolutely remove them, at all events it brings it about that they constitute the least part of the mind. Furthermore, it begets love toward that which is immutable and eternal, and which we really have within our power—a love which, consequently, is not stained by any of the defects inherent in common love, but can always become greater and greater, and take possession of the greatest part of the mind, and affect it everywhere." 1

This is very different from the love of God which religion ordinarily inculcates. The God of positive religions is a God of the imagination, an individual like ourselves, who loves and hates, is angry and jealous, and acts by an arbitrary will. Accordingly, all the defects

of human love enter into our relations to him, and love may easily pass into hate. But no one can hate the eternal and necessary order of nature. This love toward God cannot be stained either with the emotion of envy or of jealousy, but it is the more intensified the greater the number of men we conceive bound to God by this same bond of love. "We can show in the same way that there is no emotion directly opposed to this love capable of destroying it. Hence we may conclude that this love. toward God is the most unchangeable of all the emotions, and cannot, in so far as it is referred to the body, be destroyed except with the body itself."

In the final stage of this process of emancipation, we have already gone beyond mere practical rules of life, to

1 Pt. V, 20, Schol.