...For millennia, wrongdoers overtaken by punishment have felt no different than Spinoza with regard to their 'offence': 'something has gone unexpect… - Benedictus de Spinoza

He [Spinoza] believes in authority. And, of course, he believed in freedom of thought and expression, whereas Hobbes does not. There is a book on Spinoza written by an American ex-Marxist, called Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, on these lines. But Spinoza is not a theorist in whom I am particularly interested, because he is too rationalistic for me. But the Ethics is a wonderful book, and full of deep insights and noble feeling. It is totally unhistorical: the idea of timeless truths about human beings seems suspect to me.

I have thus completed all I wished to set forth touching the mind's power over the emotions and the mind's freedom. Whence it appears how potent is the wise man and how much he surpasses the ignorant man who is driven only by his lusts.
For the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by external causes without ever gaining the true acquiescence of his spirit, but more­ over lives, as it were, unwitting of himself, and of God, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer, ceases also to be:
Whereas the wise man, in as far as he is regarded as such, is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but, being conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit.
If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result, seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as di_fcult as they are rare.

Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than id hatred had not preceded it.