Abstract
The student of Spinoza is faced by a peculiar difficulty. On opening the Ethics—Spinoza's chief work, completed for publication shortly before his death in 1674—he finds a system of metaphysics set forth in geometrical form, starting from definitions, axioms, and postulates, and advancing synthetically from first principles to a detailed interpretation of the universe. The difficulty lies not in the language— Spinoza's Latin is easy to construe, and there are translations—nor in the lack of literary graces; his style indeed is singularly impressive in its austere dignity. It lies rather in this, that the method of exposition conveys a misleading suggestion of dogmatism and finality, and conceals almost all traces of the patient inquiries that issued in the finished structure. If once the principles of the system are admitted, the rest appears to follow by logical necessity. But by what processes of thought was Spinoza led to those principles? This is the problem that besets the reader: in order to understand the Ethics, he must penetrate behind the text of the propositions to their significance as answers to the questions that were stirring in Spinoza's mind.
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