In such a manner, through all the conditions of life, Spinoza pursues the advantages which will accrue to man from the knowledge of God, God and man being what his philosophy has described them.  It cannot be denied that it is most beautiful; although much of its beauty is perhaps due to associations which have arisen out of Christianity, and which in the system of pantheism have no proper abiding place.  Retaining, indeed, all that is beautiful in Christianity, he even seems to have relieved himself of the more fearful features of the general creed.  He acknowledges no hell, no devil, no positive and active agency at enmity with God; but sees in all things infinite gradations of beings, all in their way obedient, and all fulfilling the part allotted to them.  Doubtless a pleasant exchange and a grateful deliverance, if only we could persuade ourselves that a hundred pages of judiciously arranged demonstrations could really and indeed have worked it for us.  If we could indeed believe that we could have the year without its winter, day without night, sunlight without shadow.  Evil is unhappily too real a thing to be so disposed of.

Yet if we cannot believe Spinoza’s system taken in its entire completeness, yet we may not blind ourselves to the beauty of his practical rule of life, or the disinterestedness and calm nobility which pervades it.  He will not hear of a virtue which desires to be rewarded.  Virtue is the power of God in the human soul, and that is the exhaustive end of all human desire.  “Beatitudo non est virtutis pretium, sed ipsa virtus.  Nihil aliud est quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, quae ex Dei intuitiva cognitione oritur.”  And the same spirit of generosity exhibits itself in all his conclusions.  The ordinary objects of desire, he says, are of such a kind that for one man to obtain them is for another to lose them; and this alone would suffice to prove that they are not what any man should labour after.  But the fullness of God suffices for us all, and he who possesses this good desires only to communicate it to every one, and to make all mankind as happy as himself.  And again:—­ “The wise man will not speak in society of his neighbour’s faults, and sparingly of the infirmity of human nature; but he will speak largely of human virtue and human power, and of the means by which that nature can best be perfected, so to lead men to put away that fear and aversion with which they look on goodness, and learn with relieved hearts to love and desire it.”  And once more:—­“He who loves God will not desire that God should love him in return with any partial or particular affection, for that is to desire that God for his sake should change his everlasting nature and become lower than himself.”