Thinking is my sport – as tennis once was. The writer serves, I return. I want to play hard, work up a sweat, get to know the player behind the strokes, see if I like the guy, play well enough, if we’ve had a good match, to be invited back. I dislike players who preen or cheat, even if they play well. Too easy a contest bores me, too hard’s no fun either.

            Spinoza was out of my league for fifty years. His prose seemed a briar patch – who could hack through all those abstractions? Writing, I insisted, should be fun, not a groaning ordeal. Life should be fun, for pity’s sake!

            Turns out, now in the seniors’ bracket, Spinoza’s a happy playmate. He’s still way smarter than I, but tolerant, with twinkle in his eyes, inviting me back, grateful for my zest. How many these days encounter Spinoza because they’re keen to, not just because he’s been assigned? There’s a sweet spirit behind that prickly diction – who knew! I smile after my shower, eager for a rematch.

            I read – Spinoza or anybody – as much to know myself as to know them. Judgment grows with practice. Spinoza thought because he had to – to quiet his roaring doubts. We know about his doubts not because he tells us – his style is private, not confessional – but because you don’t work so hard at anything unless you have to. Spinoza’s calm is his accomplishment, “as excellent” – he almost boasts at the end of his big book – “as it is rare.” He found his way to serenity, and you can too, his words promise, if you work at it. It’s hard being human – because our brains bewilder us – but mastery of our mystery is available if you give it your all. His is a self-help book, it turns out, but no ten easy steps.

            Again and again, he warns in different ways how our brains mess us up. “When man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.” “There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.” “Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition.” “Sadness diminishes a man’s powers.” “Fear breeds superstition.”

            The rocky road to gladness – and what prize more precious? – is by using our heads, thinking carefully, understanding how we mislead ourselves into gloom, fury, cruelty, self-loathing, self-importance. Earth’s smartest creature is the stupidest, q.e.d., but it needn’t be that way, not if we try. “The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.” Consider yourself as an aspect of eternity – what joy! – you were meant to be – everything was meant to be! Right thinking leads to right action. “The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men.”

            Spinoza achieved the serenity of a saint without the assistance of superstition. No soul was more alone or less lonely, for eternity makes kinsmen of us all. His achievement astounds and inspires. What a player in the game of life.

            “Do not weep,” he wrote. “Do not wax indignant. Understand.”

This is the last of seven reflections on my new pal. Keepsakes from our time together follow.

Shavings

I found Bento in his sentences, not his paragraphs.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure.... you are above everything distressing.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.

No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.

When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.

What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.

Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.

In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.

Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another.

Minds… are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.

Hatred is increased by being reciprocated and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it.

The greatest secret of monarchic rule...is to keep men deceived and to cloak in the specious name of religion the fear by which they must be checked, so that they will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting.

The superstitious know how to reproach people for their vices better than they know how to teach them virtues, and they strive, not to guide men by reason, but to restrain them by fear, so that they flee the evil rather than love virtue. Such people aim only to make others as wretched as they themselves are, so it is no wonder that they are generally burdensome and hateful to men.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.

Everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates... This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking...

The mind of God is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world.

He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune.

Nothing in Nature is random. A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge.

Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.

Reason is no match for passion.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.

Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage : for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune : so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition.

Blessed are the weak who think they are good because they have no claws.

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden.

He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.

After experience had taught me that all things which frequently take place in ordinary life are vain and futile, and when I saw that all the things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them; I determined at last to inquire whether there was anything which might be truly good, and able to communicate its goodness, and by which the mind might be affected to the exclusion of all other things; I determined, I say, to inquire whether I might discover and attain the faculty of enjoying throughout eternity continual supreme happiness. I could see the many advantages acquired from honor and riches, and that I should be debarred from acquiring these things if I wished seriously to investigate a new matter…But the more one possesses of either of them, the more the pleasure is increased, and the more one is in consequence encouraged to increase them; whereas if at any time our hope is frustrated, there arises in us the deepest pain. Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it we must direct our lives in such a way as to please the fancy of men, avoiding what they dislike and seeking what pleases them. . .. But the love towards a thing eternal and infinite alone feeds the mind with a pleasure secure from all pain… The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole of nature….The more the mind knows, the better it understands its forces and the order of nature; the more it understands its forces or strength, the better it will be able to direct itself and lay down the rules for itself; and the more it understands the order of nature, the more easily it will be able to liberate itself from useless things; this is the whole method.

I saw that all the things I feared and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them.

Things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind.

Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice.

The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or to others. No, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty.

People find—both in themselves and outside themselves—many means that are very helpful in seeking their own advantage, e.g., eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants and animals for food, the sun for light, the sea for supporting fish … Hence, they consider all natural things as means to their own advantage. And knowing that they had found these means, not provided them for themselves, they had reason to believe that there was someone else who had prepared those means for their use. For after they considered things as means, they could not believe that the things had made themselves; but from the means they were accustomed to prepare for themselves, they had to infer that there was a ruler, or a number of rulers of nature, endowed with human freedom, who had taken care of all things for them, and made all things for their use. And since they had never heard anything about the temperament of these rulers, they had to judge it from their own. Hence, they maintained that the Gods direct all things for the use of men in order to bind men to them and be held by men in the highest honor. So it has happened that each of them has thought up from his own temperament different ways of worshipping God, so that God might love them above all the rest, and direct the whole of Nature according to the needs of their blind desire and insatiable greed. Thus this prejudice was changed into superstition, and struck deep roots in their minds.

Most controversies have arisen from this, that men do not rightly explain their own mind, or interpret the mind of the other man badly. For really, when they contradict one another most vehemently, they either have the same thoughts, or they are thinking of different things, so that what they think are errors and absurdities in the other are not.

Reason cannot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not desire for the rest of humankind.

Everyone is by absolute natural right the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions.

Human power is considerably limited and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes, and therefore we do not have an absolute power of adapting things which are outside us for our use. But we shall bear with equanimity those things which happen to us contrary to that which a regard for our advantage postulates, if we are conscious that we have done that which we ought, and that we could not have extended the power we have to such an extent as to avoid those things, and moreover, that we are part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow. If we understand this clearly and distinctly, that part of us which is defined by our understanding, that is, the best part of us, will be wholly contented, and will endeavor to persist in that contentment. For in so far as we understand, we can desire nothing save that which is necessary, nor can we absolutely be contented with anything save what is true: and therefore in so far as we understand this rightly, the endeavor of the best part of us agrees with the order of the whole of nature.

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs, which are an inalienable right, are regarded as criminal.

So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God—in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance.

These instances are enough to show, that the body can by the sole laws of its nature do many things which the mind wonders at.

For though men be ignorant, yet they are men.

Citizens are not born but made.

I care not for the girdings of superstition, for superstition is the bitter enemy of knowledge & true morality.

Those, who are believed to be most self-abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious.

In a democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he is not to be consulted; he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is part. In this way all men remain equal, as they were before in a state of nature.

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. Their idea of freedom, therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their actions. As for their saying that human actions depend on the will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond thereto. What the will is, and how it moves the body, they none of them know; those who boast of such knowledge, and feign dwellings and habitations for the soul, are wont to provoke either laughter or disgust.

It is certain that seditions, wars, and contempt or breach of the laws are not so much to be imputed to the wickedness of the subjects, as to the bad state of the dominion.

In a state of nature nothing can be said to be just or unjust; this is so only in a civil state, where it is decided by common agreement what belongs to this or that man.

The formation of society serves not only for defensive purposes, but is also very useful, and, indeed, absolutely necessary, as rendering possible the division of labor. If men did not render mutual assistance to each other, no one would have either the skill or the time to provide for his own sustenance and preservation: for all men are not equally apt for all work, and no one would be capable of preparing all that he individually stood in need of. Strength and time, I repeat, would fail, if every one had in person to plow, to sow, to reap, to grind corn, to cook, to weave, to stitch and perform the other numerous functions required to keep life going; to say nothing of the arts and sciences which are also entirely necessary to the perfection and blessedness of human nature.

The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over.

The right of the individual is co-extensive with its determinate power. ... Nature's bounds are not set by the laws of human reason which aim only at man's true interest and his preservation ... man is but a particle.

Fear breeds superstition.

What can be more calamitous than that men should be regarded as enemies and put to death, not for any crime or misdeed, but for being of independent mind?

He that is strong hates no man, is angry with no man, envies no man, is indignant with no man, despises no man, and least of all things is proud.

After man has persuaded himself that all things which exist are made for him, he must in everything adjudge that to be of the greatest importance which is most useful to him, and he must esteem that to be of surpassing worth by which he is most beneficially affected. In this way he is compelled to form those notions by which he explains nature; such, for instance, as good, evil, order, confusion, heat, cold, beauty, and deformity, etc.; and because he supposes himself to be free, notions like those of praise and blame, sin and merit, have arisen.

No one is bound to live as another pleases but is the guardian of his own liberty.

He who exults in popular esteem has the daily burden of anxiously striving, acting and contriving to preserve his reputation. For the populace is fickle and inconstant, and unless a reputation is preserved it soon withers away.

Experience day by day protested and showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant, and thus to retain their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh. They therefore laid down as an axiom, that God's judgments far transcend human understanding. Such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in considering solely the essence and properties of figures without regard to their final causes.

Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

Desire is the actual essence of man.

That thing is called free, which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. On the other hand, that thing is necessary, or rather constrained, which is determined by something external to itself to a fixed and definite method of existence or action.

Men are by nature are unequal and those who seek equality among unequals seek absurdity.

It is plain from what has been said, that in no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it to be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it.

As for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things one with another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that mourns; for him that is deaf, it is neither good nor bad.

By the right and order of nature I merely mean the rules determining the nature of each individual thing by which we conceive it is determined naturally to exist and to behave in a certain way. For example fish are determined by nature to swim and big fish to eat little ones, and therefore it is by sovereign natural right that fish have possession of the water and that big fish eat small fish. For it is certain that nature, considered wholly in itself, has a sovereign right to do everything that it can do, i.e., the right of nature extends as far as its power extends…Since the universal power of the whole of nature is nothing but the power of all individual things together, it follows that each individual thing has the sovereign right to do everything that it can do, or the right of each thing extends so far as its determined power extends.

The holy word of God is on everyone’s lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.

The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.

Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

Those who know the true use of money and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs live contented with few things.

I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God.

Everyone has as much right as he has might.

In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another.

I have thus completed all I wished to set forth touching the mind's power over the emotions and the mind's freedom. Whence it appears how potent is the wise man and how much he surpasses the ignorant man who is driven only by his lusts. For the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by external causes without ever gaining the true acquiescence of his spirit, but more­ over lives, as it were, unwitting of himself, and of God, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer, ceases also to be: Whereas the wise man, in as far as he is regarded as such, is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but, being conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit. If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result, seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.