Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find. - Benedictus de Spinoza

Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.

Because of the specific epistemological interests of English philosophy and the dominance of Cartesianism in French thought, Spinoza's philosophical influence was centered in Germany. Of the great German figures Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was the first to come under the spell of Spinoza. He was a man of broad vision, with a hundred cultural interests and a critical disposition of mind, and would not accept any philosophical system in its totality. While he did not accept Spinozism in its entirety, he subscribed to its pantheistic doctrines. But more than he admired Spinoza's philosophy, he was attracted to him by his great earnestness of purpose, his strength of character, and his moral courage.

LIBERTAD Y NECESIDAD (libertas-necessitas) La libertad es la afirmación de la necesidad de una naturaleza particular, esto es, de su ser; por eso se habla de la «libre necesidad» (Ep 58), sea en la forma plena e incondicionada de lo absoluto o en la mucho más restringida de los seres finitos, donde hay determinación entre ellos que coacciona (E1Def7). Ser libre, en cualquier caso, es hacer valer la propia esencia-potencia frente a otras, en el marco de las relaciones causales que a todos conciernen,

It is to the highest credit of the philosophy of the time that it did not let itself be led astray by the restricted state of contemporary natural knowledge, and that — from Spinoza down to the great French materialists — it insisted on explaining the world from the world itself and left the justification in detail to the natural science of the future.