...For natural science he [Otto von Bismarck] shewed little interest, and indeed at that time it scarcely could be reckoned among the ordinary subjec… - Benedictus de Spinoza

Surely, Spinoza's parallelism of attributes expressing differently but equivalently one and the same substance was a feat of genius and far superior to all other treatments of the problem at the time. Without interposing a synchronizing deity, as did others, it overcame Descartes' dualistic rift by a monistic reduction, yet retained the full severity of the disjunctions which that dualism had been designed to ensure.

في صموئيل (الأول، ١١: ٧) للتعبير عن الرعب الشديد: «فوقع رُعب الربِّ على الشعب.» وبهذا المعنى تَعوَّد اليهود أن يَنسِبوا إلى الله ما كان يتعدَّى فهْمَهم ويجهلون أسبابه الطبيعية في ذلك العصر، فالعاصفة «غضب الله»، والرعد والصاعقة سهام الله. ويعتقد أنَّ الله يحبِس الرياح في كهوفٍ يُسمُّونها غرفة كنز الله، ويختلفون في هذا الصَّدَد عن الوثنِيِّين؛ لأنهم يجعلون الله وليس أيول مُسيِّر الرياح، وللسبب نفسه سُمِّيت المُعجزات أفعال الله أي أفعالًا تُثير الدهشة

...In a few words, we can define the true relation of Spinozist teaching on passions to explanatory and descriptive psychology of emotions, saying that, practically speaking, this teaching on solving the one and only problem, the problem of a deterministic, causal explanation of what is higher in the life of human passions, also partially contains explanatory psychology, retaining the idea of causal explanation but rejecting the problem of the higher in human passions, and descriptive psychology, rejecting the idea of a causal explanation and retaining the problem of the higher in the life of human passions. Thus, forming its deepest and most internal nucleus, Spinoza's teaching contains specifically what is in neither of the two parts into which contemporary psychology of emotions has disintegrated: the unity of the causal explanation and the problem of the vital significance of human passions, the unity of descriptive and explanatory psychology of feelings. For this reason, Spinoza is closely connected with the most vital, the most critical news of the day for contemporary psychology of emotions, news of the day which prevails in it, determining the paroxysm of crisis that envelops it. The problems of Spinoza await their solution, without which tomorrow’s day in our psychology is impossible.