be singularly easy to draw. In moral terminology one can distinguish
between man as free and man as enslaved.

Since man can never be the sole cause of his activity, he can never be
wholly free. The range of human power is extremely limited, and Spinoza
is ever careful to point that out. Spinoza is no incurable optimist, no
Leibnizian Pangloss who believes this is, for man, the best of all
possible worlds. To be humanly idealistic it is by no means necessary to
be super-humanly utopian. But neither is Spinoza a shallow
Schopenhauerian pessimist. Spinoza's realistic appraisal of man's
worldly estate is entirely free from all romantic despair. This world is
no more the worst than it is the best of all possible worlds for man.
Although man cannot completely alter his evil estate, he can better it.
And the wisdom of philosophy consists in recognizing this fact and
discovering what ways and means there are for bringing such betterment
about.

This Spinoza has in mind throughout the devious courses of his
philosophy. It is present to him when he delineates the character of
Nature or God, when he outlines the nature of the mind and its emotions,
no less than when he specifically addresses himself to the task of
describing the way to the highest blessedness of man. Indeed, so intent
is Spinoza upon reaching his ethical goal, and making all his doctrines
contributory to it, he purposely omits to treat of many philosophical
problems because they are, though interesting in themselves, of too
little value for the conduct of man's life. His philosophical system, as
a result, is in many respects merely sketched in massive outline.

VII

The dominant ethics of Christian civilization has made a special point
of disregarding the intimate connection that exists between human nature
and rational conduct. Morality has been identified, not with living a
life according to a rational plan and an adequate conception of an ideal
form of human existence, but with a strained attempt to live in
accordance with an inherited system of coercive social habits. Of this
morality, the Puritan is the popular type. Only in quite recent years
has some advance been made back to the sane naturalistic conception of
morals which is found in the Greeks and also in Spinoza.

It is a fundamental point with Spinoza that the ceremonial law, as he
puts it in the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, can at best secure man
wealth and social position. Man's highest