The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

He had perceived that the cognition of the union that the mind has with the whole of nature was necessary for him to understand the true good. I wish, however, that the philosopher had begun his science from the actual cognition of this mind, indeed by separating those things which he discovered in his own mind to be subject to variations from the necessary and universal ideas, which, for a man investigating the true good—that is, for one who would follow practical reason and its absolute dictates, and who would most willingly embrace not that prudence accommodated to vain and fleeting circumstances, but sanctity forever, as the Apostle says (1 John 2:17)—shine as an immovable star. But the method of that age was different. It was an inveterate custom, as if transfused into Spinoza also by Descartes, that the beginning must always be made from building up metaphysics, and that tò Eînai the Being of things must be explained before all other things. The cognition of our mind leads by necessary arguments to God. But mortals who are able to ascend from the former to the latter do not descend with equal happiness from the infinite to the finite. For they make a beginning from that which, because it is more remote from our cognition, human imagination seems to itself to grasp more easily than reason does. With this done, if an error has been admitted in the metaphysical treatment of the Infinite, it is both detected with the greatest difficulty and yet subtly insinuates itself into all the remaining articles of the system. Hence, having been made more cautious by the dangers of earlier philosophers, [the aim is] that all moral doctrine [should be] independent of metaphysical dogmas, from that which in