I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be … - Benedictus de Spinoza

Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused

It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that pantheism was exhibited in its purest form by the great Baruch Spinoza; he gave for the totality of things a definition of substance in which God and the world are inseparably united. The clearness, confidence, and consistency of Spinoza's monistic system are the more remarkable when we remember that this gifted thinker of two hundred and fifty years ago was without the support of all those sound empirical bases which have been obtained in the second half of the nineteenth century. We have already spoken, in the first chapter, of Spinoza's relation to the materialism of the eighteenth and the monism of the nineteenth century. The propagation of his views, especially in Germany, is due, above all, to the immortal works of our greatest poet and thinker, Wolfgang Goethe. [Original in German: Erst in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts wurde durch den großen Baruch Spinoza das System des Pantheismus in reinster Form ausgebildet; er stellte für die Gesamtheit der Dinge den reinen Substanzbegriff auf, in welchem »Gott und Welt« untrennbar vereinigt sind. Wir müssen die Klarheit, Sicherheit und Folgerichtigkeit des monistischen Systems von Spinoza heute um so mehr bewundern, als diesem gewaltigen Denker vor 250 Jahren noch alle die sicheren empirischen Fundamente fehlten, die wir erst in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts gewonnen haben. Das Verhältnis von Spinoza zum späteren Materialismus im 18. und zu unserem heutigen Monismus im 19. Jahrhundert haben wir bereits im ersten Kapitel besprochen. Zur weiteren Verbreitung desselben, besonders im deutschen Geistesleben, haben vor allem die unsterblichen Werke unseres größten Dichters und Denkers beigetragen, Wolfgang Goethe.]

...We must mention the providential man who, at the same time as Locke and Leibnitz, had educated himself in the school of Descartes, had for a long time been viewed only with scorn and hatred, and who nevertheless today is rising to exclusive supremacy in the world of intellect. I am speaking about Benedict Spinoza. One great genius shapes himself by means of another, less through assimilation than through friction. One diamond polishes the other. Thus Descartes' philosophy did not originate, but merely furthered, Spinoza's. Hence we find in the pupil, first of all, the method of the master; this is a great gain. We also find in Spinoza, as in Descartes, a method of demonstration borrowed from mathematics. This is a great defect. The mathematical form gives Spinoza's work a harsh exterior. But this is like the hard shell of the almond; the kernel is all the more delightful. On reading Spinoza we are seized by an emotion similar to that which we feel at the sight of great Nature in her most animated composure. A forest of heaven‑aspiring thoughts whose blossoming treetops are tossing like waves, while the immovable trunks are rooted in the eternal earth. There is a certain mysterious aura about Spinoza's writings. The air of the future seems to flow over us. Perhaps the spirit of the Hebrew prophets still hovered over their late‑born descendant. There is, withal, a seriousness in him, a confident pride, a solemn dignity of thought, which also seem to be a part of his inheritance; for Spinoza belonged to one of those martyr families exiled from Spain by the most Catholic of kings. Added to this is the patience of the Hollander, which was always revealed in the life of the man as well as in his writings. It is a fact that Spinoza's life was beyond reproach and pure and spotless as the life of his divine cousin, Jesus Christ. Like Him, he too suffered for his teachings; like Him he wore the crown of thorns. Wherever a great mind expresses its thought, there is Golgotha.

Reason cannot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.