The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fea… - Benedictus de Spinoza

يُسلِّم موسى بوجود موجودات تحلُّ محلَّ الله (ويحدُث ذلك بلا شكٍّ بأمرٍ من الله وبتفويضٍ منه) أي بموجودات أعطاها الله السُّلطة والحقَّ والقدرة لإرشاد الأُمَم ولحِمايتها والمُحافظة عليها. ولكنه نادى بأنَّ هذا الموجود الذي وجب على اليهود عبادَتُه هوَ الإله المُهيمِن الأعلى. وبعبارةٍ أُخرى، (أي بتعبيرٍ عبري) فهو إله الآلهة؛ لذلك يقول في نشيد الخروج (١٥: ١١): «من مثلك في الآلهة يا رب.» ويقول يترو (١٨: ١١): «الآن علمت أن الرب عظيم فوق جميع الآلهة.» أي أنَّني يجِب أن أُسَلِّم مع موسى بأن يَهوه أكبر الآلهة جميعًا، وله قُدرة لا نظير لها، ومع ذلك، فهل اعتقد موسى أنَّ الله خلق هذه الموجودات التي تقوم مكانه؟ يحقُّ لنا أن نَشُكَّ في ذلك لأنه — على ما نعلم — لم يَقُل شيئًا يتعلَّق بخلقِها ونشأتها

Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious. And so they think they are doing something wonderful, and reaching the pinnacle of learning, when they are clever enough to bestow manifold praise on such human nature, as is nowhere to be found, and to make verbal attacks on that which, in fact, exists. For they conceive of men, not as they are, but as they themselves would like them to be. Whence it has come to pass that, instead of ethics, they have generally written satire, and that they have never conceived a theory of politics, which could be turned to use, but such as might be taken for a chimera, or might have been formed in Utopia, or in that golden age of the poets when, to be sure, there was least need of it. Accordingly, as in all sciences, which have a useful application, so especially in that of politics, theory is supposed to be at variance with practice ; and no men are esteemed less fit to direct public affairs than theorists or philosophers.

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.