A Treatise on Politics: Translated From the Latin (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Treatise on Politics: Translated From the LatinTo it as to a miracle when we encounter it in Spinoza. Compare this if not the most persecuted yet the most calumniated of those who have endeavoured to serve mankind by their ideas and their sufferings, with Leibnitz the vigorous and original thinker, the almost unrivalled in the universality of his knowledge, studies and faculties, but the somewhat fawning courtier, the irascible, the gross huge feeder, the hun ter for pensions by the dozen, the niggard, the slo ven, and how radiant and lofty as an archangel does Spinoza show by the comparison! And, after all, what is the value of a philosophy without the phi losopher? In a religion it matters little whether or not we have the good example or even the name of its founder. Indeed its empire is generally wide and deep and enduring in proportion as it abounds in the mythical element. The indefiniteness of its origin has a consonance with that which it aims to unfold, a higher heaven of the spiritual than has yet been revealed to the eyes of our race. Every religion is fer tile in moral results but it was not to produce those results that it arose. Except however where a system directly seeks moral results, the character and the history of its author are of no importance in rela tion to its influence. But, unlike a religion, 11 philosophy, unless it be that vague theorizing to which the name philosophy is totally misapplied, endeavours to generate moral results. It was with eminent propriety that Spinoza called his great metaphysical work Ethics. Now if moral results are what all philosophy has chiefly in view, there is a link between the teacher and the.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.