The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

He had perceived that the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole of nature was necessary for him to understand the true good. If only the philosopher had begun his science from the obtaining of the knowledge of this mind itself, by separating those things which he discovered to be subject to variations in his own mind from the necessary and universal ideas, which shine like an immovable star for a man investigating the true good—that is, for one who is about to follow the absolute dictates of practical reason and, as the Apostle says (1 John 2:17), to most gladly embrace a holiness that is not to be changed forever, not that prudence accommodated to vain and fleeting circumstances. But the method of that age was different. It was an inveterate custom, as if transfused into Spinoza by Descartes, that a start must always be made from constructing metaphysics, and that the "Being of things" must always be explained before all else. The knowledge of our mind leads to God through necessary arguments. But those mortals who are able to ascend from the former to the latter do not descend with equal success from the infinite to the finite. Indeed, they make a beginning from that which, because it is more remote from our knowledge, human imagination believes it can grasp more easily than reason can. Once this is done, if an error has been admitted into the metaphysical treatment of the Infinite, it is both detected with great difficulty and yet insinuates itself subtly into all the remaining articles of the system. Therefore, having been made more cautious by the dangers of earlier philosophers, they have taught more correctly and more successfully that all moral doctrine should be deduced from that which is absolute in the human mind, independent of metaphysical dogmas.