The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

...that felt that it "could be nourished solely by the love for an eternal and infinite thing," and who "by assiduous meditation arrived at the point where he saw that by omitting the desire for wealth, lust, and honors, he would omit nothing but certain evils," and in the investigation of the true good itself, even if he were perhaps not going to attain it, he foresaw that a certain good would nevertheless be obtained. Incited at last by this zeal, he seriously, and as much as possible, continuously placed before his meditations the "knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole of nature." A divine plan, surely, which could not but make the seeker's mind a participant in the true good, however much, through his own investigation of truth (as is the common lot of mortals!), he may seem not always to have attained his proposed goal with equal success.

Although there are two things in Benedictus that I never cease to admire and love, namely first that noble integrity of spirit by which he pursued the true good, a purity from any superstition whether by hope or fear, superior through an internal strength, and secondly the wonderful simplicity of the system he devised and the unbroken connection in his entire line of thought, nevertheless, two things, as far as I can grasp, seem to have hindered this architect of a most brilliantly coherent system from sufficiently guarding himself against the human tendency toward error when laying his foundations.