ples whereby men may
guide themselves aright in all the affairs of life--the lowest as well
as the highest. His philosophy, as a result, is at once the most exalted
and the most matter of fact. There is no high sentiment or glorious
ideal to which Spinoza does not give proper attention and a proper
place. And yet he propounds nothing in his ethical theory that cannot
be clearly seen by reason and that cannot be fully substantiated by the
history of man. Spinoza's ethics is perfectly balanced, eminently sane.
And there is, pervading it all, a stately sustained resolution of mind,
a royal, often religious spirit and calm.

And Spinoza's thought, if not all of his terminology, is refreshingly
modern and contemporary. We find in him, as in contemporaries, an utter
reliance upon the powers of the human mind. All dogmatism, in the
pristine connotation of unexamined adherence to the doctrines of
tradition, is absent from his thought. Spinoza is thoroughly critical,
for only modern philosophic arrogance, in first full bloom in Kant, can
justly monopolize the term "critical" for itself. Naturally, though,
Spinoza is unfamiliar with the whole apparatus and style of philosophic
thinking which the last two centuries of excessively disputatious and
remarkably inconclusive philosophy have created. Spinoza has his own
technical philosophic style, inherited to some extent, but to a much
larger extent transformed by him for original use. But technical as his
style may be, it is simplicity itself when compared with the horrific
styles which were, until the last few decades, alone thought adequate to
express the profound and esoteric mysteries of modern philosophy. The
philosophic jargon of the 18th. and 19th. centuries is now almost
universally discarded, and with it preternaturally recondite and
ineffectual modes of thought. Those who have achieved at least some of
the new simplicity in thought and expression are better able than any
others to enter into the heart of Spinoza's philosophy, into the open
secret of his thought. For apart from the mere stylistic difficulties
of the _Ethics_ and some detail of his metaphysical doctrine, the few
great and simple ideas which dominate his philosophy are quite easy to
understand--especially if one uses the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_
as an introduction to them. It was an unexpressed maxim with Spinoza
that even at the risk of keeping our heads empty it is necessary we keep
our minds simple