While it is patently not the case that key figures such as d'Holbach and Condorcet delved deeply into Spinoza's thought, or cited him often or in som… - Benedictus de Spinoza

The great Voltaire once accused Spinoza of ‘abusing metaphysics’. Is not the uncompromising nature of metaphysics more important today than ever? Has not liberated thinking become the most valued freedom at a time when political systems, social constraints, moral codes and political correctness often control our thinking?

Hence it inevitably follows logically, as Engels said, ‘that matter remains eternally the same in all its transformations, that none of its attributes can ever be lost, and therefore, also, that with the same iron necessity that it will exterminate on the earth its highest creation, the thinking mind, it must somewhere else and at another time again produce it.’ That was Spinoza's standpoint, a circumstance that seemingly gave Engels grounds for replying categorically and unambiguously to Plekhanov when he asked: ‘So in your opinion old Spinoza was right in saying that thought and extension were nothing but two attributes of one and the same substance?’ "Of course," answered Engels, "old Spinoza was quite right".’ Spinoza's definition means the following: in man, as in any other possible thinking creature, the same matter thinks as in other cases (other modi) only ‘extends’ in the form of stones or any other ‘unthinking body’; that thought in fact cannot be separated from world matter and counterposed to it itself as a special, incorporeal ‘soul’, and it (thought) is matter’s own perfection. That is how Herder and Goethe, La Mettrie and Diderot, Marx and Plekhanov (all great ‘Spinozists’) and even the young Schelling, understood Spinoza. [...] Spinoza said more than once that it was impermissible to represent thought as attribute in the image and likeness of human thought; it was only the universal property of substance that was the basis of any ‘finite thought’, including human thought, but in no case was it identical with it. To represent thought in general in the image and likeness of existing human thought, of its modus, or ‘particular case’, meant simply to represent it incorrectly, in ‘an incomplete way’, by a ‘model’, so to say, of its far from most perfected image (although the most perfected known to us).

Jacobi's book On Divine Things does me no good. How could I welcome the book of a dearly beloved friend in which I found the proposition that 'nature conceals God'. Is it not natural that according to my pure, and deep, and inborn, and expert conception which has taught me unfalteringly to see God in nature and nature in God, so that this conception constitutes the foundation of my entire existence, is it not natural that such a strange and onesided and limited exposition must alienate me from the noble man whose heart I dearly love? However, I did not indulge my painful disappointment, but sought refuge in my old asylum, making Spinoza's Ethics for several weeks my daily entertainment. [Original in German: Jacobi »Von den göttlichen Dingen«, machte mir nicht wohl; wie konnte mir das Buch eines so herzlich geliebten Freundes willkommen sein, worin ich die These durchgeführt sehen sollte: die Natur verberge Gott. Müßte, bei meiner reinen, tiefen, angebornen und geübten Anschauungsweise, die mich Gott in der Natur, die Natur in Gott zu sehen unverbrüchlich gelehrt hatte, so daß diese Vorstellungsart den Grund meiner ganzen Existenz machte, mußte nicht ein so seltsamer, einseitigbeschränkter Ausspruch mich dem Geiste nach von dem edelsten Manne, dessen Herz ich verehrend liebte, für ewig entfernen? Doch ich hing meinem schmerzlichen Verdrusse nicht nach, ich rettete mich vielmehr zu meinem alten Asyl und fand in Spinozas »Ethik« auf mehrere Wochen meine tägliche Unterhaltung, und da sich indes meine Bildung gesteigert hatte, ward ich im schon Bekannten gar manches, das sich neu und anders hervortat, auch ganz eigen frisch auf mich einwirkte, zu meiner Verwunderung gewahr.]