Benedictus de Spinoza "Ethics"

Ethics (Penguin Classics)

Ⅰ．OF GOD

D6: By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one express an eternal and infinite essense.—p. 1

D7: That thing is called free which exist from the necessity of its nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone. But a thing is called necessary, or rather compelled, which is determined by another to exist and to produce an effect in a certain and determined manner.—p. 2

P18: God is the immanent, not the transitive, cause of all things.—p. 16

P28: Every singular thing, or any thing which is finite and has a determinate existence, can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined to exist and produced an effect by another cause , which is finite and has a determinate existence; and again, this cause also can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined to exist and produce an effect by another, which is also finite and has a determinate existence, and so on, to infinity.—p. 19

P29: In nature, there is nothing contingent, but all the things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produced an effect in a certain way.—p. 20

P32: The will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary one.—p. 21

P36: Nothing exist from whose nature some effect does not follow.—p. 25

Ⅱ．OF THE MIND

D3: By idea I understand a concept of the mind which the mind forms because it is a thinking thing.
Exp.:I say concept rather than perception, because the word perception seems to indicate that the mind is acted on by the object. But concept seems to express an action of the mind.—p. 32

L2: all bodies agree in certain things.—p. 41

L3: A body which moves or is at rest must be determined in motion or rest by another body, which has also been determined to motion or rest by another, and that again by another, and so on, to infinity.—p. 41

P35: Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge which inadequate, or mutilated and confused, ideas involve.—p. 53

P37: What is common to all things (on this see L2, above) and is equally in the part and in the whole, does not constitute the essense of any singular thing.—p. 54

Those notions they call Universal, like Man, Horse, Dog, and the like, have arisen from similar cause, namely, because so many images (e.g., of men) are formed at one time in the human body that they surpass the power of imagining—not entirely, of course, but still to the point where the mind can imagine neither slight differences of the singular [men] (such as the color and size of the each one, etc.) nor their determinate number, and imagines distinctly only what they all agree in, insofar affect the body. For the body has been affected most [NS: forcefully] by [what is common], since each singular has affected it [by this property]. And [NS: the mind] expresses this by the word man, and predicates it of infinitely many singulars. For as we have said, it cannot imagine a determinate number of singulars. —p. 56

Ⅰ．from singular things which have been represented to us through the senses in a way which is mutilated, confused, and without order for the intellect (see P29C); forthat reason I have been accustomed to call such perceptions knowledge from random experience;
Ⅱ．from signs, for example, from the fact that, having heard or read certain words, we recollect things, and form certain ideas of them, like those through which we imagine the things (P18S); these two ways of regarding things I shall henceforth call knowledge of the first kind.Ⅲ．finally from the fact that we have common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things (see P38C, P39, P39C, and P40). This I shall call reason and the second kind of knowledge.
[Ⅳ.] In addition to these two kinds of knowledge, there is (as I shall show in what follows) another, third kind, which we shall call intuitive knowledge. And this kind of knowing proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the [NS: formal] essence of things.—p. 57

P41: Knowledge of the first kind is the only cause of falsity, whereas knowledge of the second and of the third is necessarily true.—p. 57

P48: In the mind there is no absolute, or free, will, but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause which is also determined by another, and this again by another, and so to infinity.—p. 62

[B]y the privation of certainty, we understand falsity.—p. 64

Ⅲ．OF THE AFFECTS

D2: I say that we act when something happens, in us or outside us,of which we are the adequate cause, that is (by D1), when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly understood through it alone. On the other hand, I say that we are acted on when something happens in us, or something follows from our nature, of which we are only a partial cause.—p. 70

D3: By affect I understand affections of the body by which the body's power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections.
Therefore, if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the affect an action; otherwise, a passion.—p. 70

P2: The body cannot determine the mind to thinking, and the mind cannot determine the body to motion, to rest, or to anything else (if there is anything else).—p. 71

P6: Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to preserve in its being.—p. 75

By joy, therefore, I shall understand [...] passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection.—p. 77

Love is nothing but joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause, and hate is nothing but sadness with the accompanying idea of an external cause.—p. 78

P46: If someone has been affected with joy or sadness by someone of a class, or nation, different from his own, and this joy or sadness is accompanied by the idea of that person as its cause, under the universal name of the class or nation, he will love or hate, not only that person, but everybody of the same class or nation.—p. 94

P51: Different men can be affected differently by one and the same object; and one and the same men can be affected differently at different times by one and the same object.—p. 96

Ⅳ．OF HUMAN BONDAGE

men are accustomed to call natural things perfect or imperfect more from prejudice than from true knowledge of those things.—p. 114

D1: Bu good I shall understand what we certainly know to be useful to us.
D2: By evil, however, I shall understand what we certainly know prevents us from being masters of some good.—p. 116

P2: We are acted on, insofar as we are a part of Nature, which cannot be conceived through itself, without the others.—p. 118

P8: The knowledge of good and evil is nothing but an affect of joy or sadness, insofar as we are conscious of it.—p. 120

P24: Acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our being (these three signify the same thing) by the guidance of reason, from the foundation of seeking one's own advantage.—p. 128

P28: Knowledge of God is the mind's greatest good; its greatest virtue is to know God.—p. 129

P32: Insofar as men are subject to passions, they cannot be said to agree in nature.—p. 130

P38: Whatever so disposes the human body that it can be affected in a great many ways, or renders it capable of affecting external bodies in a great many ways, is useful to man; the more it renders the body capable of being affected in a great many ways, or of affecting other bodies, the more useful it is; on the other hand, what renders the body less capable of these things is harmful.—p. 137

P46: He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives, as far as he can, to repay the other's hate, anger, and disdain toward him, with love, or nobility.—p. 141

P50: Pity, in a man who lives according to the guidance of reason, is evil of itself and useless.—p. 142

P54: Repentance is not a virtue, or does not arise from reason; instead, he who repents what he has done is twice wretched, or lacking in power.—p. 144

P71: Only free men are very thankful to one another.—p. 153

blessedness is nothing but that satisfaction of mind which stems from the intuitive knowledge of God.—p. 155

Those who know how to find fault with men, to castigate vices rather than teach virtues, and break men's minds rather than strengthen them—they are burdensome to themselves and to others.—p. 157

ⅩⅩⅢ．Shame, moreover, contributes to harmony only in those things which cannot be hidden. Again, because shame itself is a species of sadness, it does not belong to the exercise of reason.—p. 158

Ⅴ．OF HUMAN FREEDOM

P3: An affect which is a passion cease to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.—p. 163

P13: The more an image is joined with other images, the more often it flourishes.—p. 168