he mutual harmony of the whole attributes of His
nature, not one of which clashes with another. So Spinoza's free man is
one in whom all aspirations and energies, converging in one resultant,
the expression of the divine idea, move him in harmony with the
Universe. From such a point of view the quibbles about "free will," in
the sense of causeless action, cease to have any meaning. For if the
good man says "I could have done otherwise if I had liked," the obvious
reply is, "Yes, but you would not have liked." Because the will is not a
separate faculty, but the expression of the whole nature, as that exists
at the moment of "willing." And the only real freedom is the unimpeded
conglomerate impulse to do right. But should it be asked what if the
resultant impulse of the whole nature is toward wrong? the answer is, in
that case there is no freedom, but a slavery to some external influence
or to a disturbed balance of the passions. Or if it be asked what is
right? that is a far reaching question to the solution of which Spinoza
bends all his splendid powers. But limits of space preclude me from
saying more than, that his ideal of right will be found conformable to
the highest standards of the most spiritual religions.

[Sidenote: Purity.]

This ideal I ventured to symbolize rather than define as "purity." For
after all the philosophic reasoning with which it is no less lucidly
than laboriously worked out in the final book of his _Ethica_,
"Concerning Human. Freedom"--the moral result of all this intellectual
effort is that same cleansing of the soul from vain desire and that
subordination of the earthly self to its divine idea which we are taught
in the Sermon on the Mount. And while surely every one but a fanatical
anti-Christian must allow the greater prophetic worth of the Galilean,
who could teach these sublime lessons so that "the common people heard
him gladly," it seems difficult to deny to the heretic Jew of the Hague
the second rank among the teachers given to the world by that strangely
gifted race. For though he could not speak to "the common people," he
left as his legacy to mankind, not so much a system of philosophy, as an
impregnable foundation for morals and religion, available for the time
now coming upon us--such a time as that suggested by the writer of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, when he spoke of "the removing of those things
that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which
cannot be