will, or perhaps it is more correct to say he denies that it is
intelligible. The will is determined by the intellect. The idea of the
triangle involves the affirmation or volition that its three angles are
equal to two right angles. If we understand what a triangle is we are
not "free" to believe that it contains more or less than two right
angles, nor to act as if it contained more or less than two. The only
real freedom of the mind is obedience to the reason, and the mind is
enslaved when it is under the dominion of the passions. "God does not
act from freedom of the will," {40a} and consequently "things could have
been produced by God in no other manner and in no other order than that
in which they have been produced." {40b}

"If you will but reflect," Spinoza tells Boxel, "that indifference is
nothing but ignorance or doubt, and that a will always constant and in
all things determinate is a virtue and a necessary property of the
intellect, you will see that my words are entirely in accord with the
truth." {40c} To the same effect is a passage in a letter to
Blyenbergh, "Our liberty does not consist in a certain contingency nor
in a certain indifference, but in the manner of affirming or denying, so
that in proportion as we affirm or deny anything with less indifference,
are we the more free." {41a} So also to Schuller, "I call that thing
free which exists and acts solely from the necessity of its own nature:
I call that thing coerced which is determined to exist and to act in a
certain and determinate manner by another." {41b} With regard to this
definition it might be objected that the necessity does not lie solely
in the person who wills but is also in the object. The triangle as well
as the nature of man contains the necessity. What Spinoza means is that
the free man by the necessity of his nature is bound to assert the truth
of what follows from the definition of a triangle and that the stronger
he feels the necessity the more free he is. Hence it follows that the