table of contents. One thing, indeed, does occur to me as significant, but I am far from sure that it is the real clue. Mr. Duff has very little to say of the fifth Part of the Ethics or of the difference, already set forth in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus, between the two ways of salvation or happiness, the way of obedience which is for the many and the way of the higher reason which is for the few. This difference was for Spinoza, whether we like it or not, a capital fact. On that point his mind was Eastern and not Western. Very hard is the way of true wisdom, and to the multitude it is foolishness.
On the road to Lailá's mansion, the which is full perilous,
The condition of taking the first step is that thou be mad as Majrún.
The wise man is not governed by rule; if his actions outwardly conform to rule, it is because he freely judges it reasonable so to act. But for the rest obedience is good and needful.
Now Mr. Duff appears, though I speak with diffidence, to hold that Spinoza desired and expected to lead men into the path of wisdom by providing them with improved political institutions. Not that he says so in terms, but I cannot explain his general attitude otherwise. Let us go back to the text of the second chapter of the Tractatus Politicus.
'I understand by the law of nature the statutes or rules of nature according to which all things happen, that is, merely the power of nature. And thus the natural right of the whole of nature, and by consequence of each several individual, doth extend so far forth as its power; consequently whatever every man does by the rules of his own nature, that he does by perfect natural right, and hath right over nature so far as by his power he may.
'If human nature were so constituted that men lived wholly after the precepts of reason, and aimed at naught else, then natural right, so far as we consider it as belonging to mankind in special [for every species has its proper ius naturae according to its faculties] would be defined wholly by the power of reason. But men are led by blind appetite rather than reason, and accordingly men's natural power or right must be limited not by reason but by whatsoever motive determines them to act and to maintain themselves in being.'
Men increase their 'natural right' (a term from which, in Spinoza's sense, all ethical implications are carefully excluded) by co-operation, and this is the necessary foundation of society and government. For what sort of men, then, are political institutions framed? Not for the wise man but for the Naturmensch, the ordinary man acting upon ordinary motives of desire and passion; and the business of political science is to design the machinery which will best regulate the effects of those motives, taking them as they are, and subdue them to the purposes of a stable commonwealth. 'Imperii causas [l. causæ] et fundamenta naturalia non ex Rationis documentis petenda sed ex hominum communi natura seu con-
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