s not shown by temperamental
interruptions of the course of events; it is manifested in the immutable
and necessary laws by which all things come to pass.

Spinoza's conception of the universe, flawlessly operating under
necessary laws, effectively disposes of miracles. And to dispose of
miracles is one of Spinoza's primary concerns. For as long as miracles
happen, organized knowledge and rational control--the bases of a
rational life--are both impossible for man.

If events were not absolutely conditioned by the determinate nature of
things, instead of science, we should have superstition, and magic
instead of scientific control. When a god governs the universe according
to his transitory and altogether personal whims, or when chance, without
a god, reigns, man is hopelessly at the mercy of the flux of events. In
the conduct of his affairs memory is of no use to him, and forethought
is impossible. In such cases man, as we read in his history, and could
easily conclude from his nature, piteously grasps for salvation at
whatever happens his way. All things are then loaded with ominous powers
the strength of which is directly proportionate to the hope or fear that
enthralls him. If the universe were lawless, the irony of man's fate
would forever be what it was when he lived in abysmal ignorance: when in
bitterest need of sane guidance, he would be most prone to trust to the
feeblest and most irrational of aids. On the other hand, if things are
determined by necessity, nothing happening either miraculously or by
chance, science and a commensurate power of scientific control is
possible for man. No more important argument could Spinoza conceive in
favor of his doctrine.

IV

But the very doctrine which Spinoza placed at the heart of his
philosophy because of the inestimable advantages man could derive from
it, people loudly objected to on the ground that it robbed man's life of
all moral and religious value. Determinism, they exclaimed, reduces man
to the rank of inanimate Nature; without "free-will" man is no better
than a slave, his life doomed by an inexorable fate. True enough,
nothing is more abhorrent or more deadly to the striving soul of man
than to be bound in a fatalistic doctrine. But the anti-determinists
wildly confuse a perverted determinism of ends with a scientific
determinism of means. And only the former determinism is truly
fatalistic. This confusion is to be found equally central in Henry
Oldenbur