The third part of the Ethics, treating on the affections and the emotions, as usual opens with definitions. By affections and emotions, he meant states of the body, whereby its power to act is increased or diminished, aided or controlled, together with the mental ideas of these affections. Opposing natures which would destroy each other cannot exist in the same individual; and each individual thing as far as it can strives to conserve its life. The idea of anything which increases or diminishes the power of the body to act, in an equal degree increases or diminishes the thinking power of the mind; hence the mind. strives to imagine such things as increase the power of the body to act. Desire is conscious appetite, and appetite is the very essence of man, in so far as he is determined to those actions that subserve his own preservation.

Spinoza gave a wide meaning to the word desire, including under it efforts, impulses, appetites, and volitions of every kind. Still this part of his work is the most valuable portion of his philosophy.

He recognises only three primary affections, namely, joy, sorrow, and desire. Joy is explained as the transition from a less to a higher state of perfection, while a change in the opposite sense causes sorrow. Love is joy associated with the idea of an external object. Hate is sorrow accompanied by the idea of an external cause. Liking is joy accompanied by the idea of an object which is accidentally the cause of joy. Devotion is love of that which we admire.

Scorn is pleasure sprung

is imagined in the thing

from this that something we despise we hate. Hope is wavering joy sprung from an idea of something past or to come, of the issue of which we are more or less in doubt. Fear is unstable sorrow arising from the idea of something past or future, of the issue of which we are to some degree doubtful. Security is joy derived from the idea of something past or future in connection with which all cause of doubt is removed. Despair is sorrow sprung from the idea of a future or past thing combined with no cause of doubt. Thus it appears,

security may be associated with hope, and despair with fear. Sympathy is love so affecting man that he rejoices in another's weal, and on the other side, grieves over another's woe.

Thus his descriptions of the affections are generally brief, but careful and well stated. His general description of the affections is to this effect: "The affection which is characterised as a passion of the mind is a confused idea, whereby the mind affirms a stronger or weaker power of existing than was before experienced in its body, or some parts of its body, and which being affirmed, the mind itself is determined to think of this thing rather than of that.". He also states that all our ideas of bodies rather proclaim the actual constitution of our own body than the nature of any external body, and that those ideas which constitute emotional forms must indicate or express the constitution of the body, or some of its parts, increasing or diminishing its power of acting.

The fourth part of the Ethics treats on the strength of the affections, or human slavery, by which he means that man is impotent in the direction and the restraint of his own passions. In his introduction to this part, he says: "I call man's inability to moderate and to control the affective and emotional element in his nature, Slavery. For man under the dominion of his affections is not master of himself, but is controlled by fate, as it were, so that in seeing and even in approving the better course, he, nevertheless, feels himself constrained to follow the He repeats his view that there is no final causes or free-will, and then states: " We have shown that nature does not act with a purpose, for the eternal and infinite Being whom we call God, or Nature, as he exists of necessity, so does he act of necessity; we have shown that by the same necessity that God exists, by the same necessity does he act. The reason, therefore, why God exists and why he acts, is one and the same, and as he does not exist for any end or purpose, so he does not act for any end or purpose; for as he is without beginning or end, as regards his existence, so is he infinite and eternal as

worse."

regards his acts. Now a final cause, as it is called, is nothing but a human appetite or desire, considered as the cause of anything."

In this part his moral views are mainly founded on the following definitions of good and evil :-" By good I understand that which we know to be useful to us. By evil I understand that which we know prevents us from enjoying something good." The knowledge of good and evil is nothing more than an emotion of joy or of sorrow, so far as we are conscious of this; hence we call that good or evil which favours or opposes the continuance of our life, or anything which assists or hinders our power of action. To act virtuously is merely to act for our own life, and to preserve ourselves by the dictates of reason. Man always seeks to preserve his life for the sake of nothing but that which he thinks useful to him. The mind in so far as it reasons, desires nothing but to understand; nor does it judge. anything to be useful to it save that which leads to understanding-and therefore we know nothing certainly as good save that which leads truly to understanding; and on the other hand, nothing is evil save that which prevents us from understanding. "The supreme good of the mind is the knowledge of God, and the highest virtue is to know God." This is the highest knowledge that the human mind can attain. "Therefore that which is supremely useful or good to the mind is the knowledge of God . . . the absolute virtue or power of the mind is, therefore, to understand. But the height of the mind's understanding is God; consequently, the supreme power of the mind is to know God."

We call that evil which is the cause of grief or pain to us. In so far as anything agrees with our nature, so far it is good; hence the more that anything accords with our nature, the more useful it is to us, and the more it is good; and so the more useful anything is to us, the more does it agree with our nature. "Nothing, therefore, save in so far as it accords with our nature, can be good; even as the more a thing accords with our nature, the more useful it is."

The good that the virtuous man desires for himself he also desires for his fellow-men, and this the more ardently as he has a high cognition of God. "Therefore does the votary of virtue desire for all men the good he desires for himself. Thus, therefore, the greater the conception of God involved in the essence of the mind, the greater will be the desire of the disciple of virtue that any good he enjoys himself should also be enjoyed by others." Moreover, "the good which a man desires, he will love and desire more constantly if he see that others love and desire it also; and so he will strive to make others love it; and because this good is common to all, and all may equally share it, he will further strive that all should enjoy it, and this so much the more as he himself enjoys it the more ".

All that conduces to the order of society, and tends to make men live in amity, is good; while whatever brings disorder into the state is evil, as everything that causes men to live amicably together, at the same time causes them to live in conformity with reason, and is therefore good. "The man led by reason is freer when he lives as a member of a community under compact and bond of law, than when he lives in solitude and obeys himself alone. The man, therefore, who is led by reason and desire to live in freedom is careful to observe the common laws of his country."

To make this part of his work more clear and compact, he gives in an appendix an excellent summary of the whole, and concludes with the following:

"Man's power is very limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; and, therefore, we have no absolute power of adapting to our own use things external to ourselves. Still, we should bear with an even mind that which befalls us against the conditions of our advantage, if we are aware that we have fairly done our duty, and that the power we possess could not have gone so far as to avoid those evils, and that we are a part of the whole order of nature, and bound thereby. And understanding this much clearly and distinctly that the part of

us which is called intellect, our better part, will therein be contented, and will seek to persist in that content. For, so far as we understand, we consider only that which is necessary, and can rest in nothing but the truth, and, therefore, so far as we rightly understand these things, the endeavour of our better part accords with the universal order of nature."

The fifth and last part of the Ethics treats on the power of the understanding or human freedom. He repeats his doctrine that the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order of things.25 Spinoza's aim in this part is mainly to expound the relation between emotion and reason, the power of the latter over the energy of the former. A passion itself is a confused idea, but whenever we are able to form a clear and distinct idea of it, it ceases to be a passion; hence it follows that to know the passions is the best way to restrain them; understand the passions that you may be master of them. The more that the mind recognises all things as necessary, the less does it suffer from the passions. He who clearly and distinctly knows himself and his passions, rejoices, because such knowledge is accompanied with the idea of God. The love of God ought chiefly to fill the mind, as it is associated with all the higher emotions. "God is without passions or any emotion of joy or sorrow, because all ideas so far as they are referred to God are true; again, God cannot pass from a greater to a less or from a less to a greater state of perfection. Therefore, as God is not affected by joy nor sorrow, he can neither love nor hate anyone. No one can hate God, because the idea of God within us is adequate and perfect; and so far as we contemplate him, to that extent do we act, and, consequently, there can be no pain associated with the idea of God. He that loves God cannot seek that God should love him in return; because if man looked for this, he would thereby desire that God should not be God. This love towards God is the highest good which man under the dictates of reason can

25 This identity of thought with the order of development in things was adopted by Hegel.