Can any one doubt that if the noblest saint among the Buddhists, the best Mahometan, the highest Stoic of Athens, the purest and wisest Christian, — … - Benedictus de Spinoza

that the foundation of all good and evil is love falling on a certain object. For whenever we do not love that object which alone is worthy of being loved, i.e. God, there follow necessarily from that hate and sadness.

...Those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with a truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect, and susceptible through the rational striving for knowledge. If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one, and if those searching for knowledgehad not been inspired by Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements.

...For millennia, wrongdoers overtaken by punishment have felt no different than Spinoza with regard to their 'offence': 'something has gone unexpectedly wrong here', not 'I ought not to have done that'–, they submitted to punishment as you submit to illness or misfortune or death, with that brave, unrebellious fatalism that still gives the Russians...