wider the range of the intellect and the more imperative the necessity
which binds it, the larger is its freedom.

In genuine freedom Spinoza rejoices. "The doctrine is of service in so
far as it teaches us that we do everything by the will of God alone, and
that we are partakers of the divine nature in proportion as our actions
become more and more perfect and we more and more understand God. This
doctrine, therefore, besides giving repose in every way to the soul, has
also this advantage, that it teaches us in what our highest happiness or
blessedness consists, namely, in the knowledge of God alone, by which we
are drawn to do those things only which love and piety persuade." {42a}
In other words, being part of the whole, the grandeur and office of the
whole are ours. We are anxious about what we call "personality," but in
truth there is nothing in it of any worth, and the less we care for it
the more "blessed" we are.

"By the desire which springs from reason we follow good directly and
avoid evil indirectly" {42b}: our aim should be the good; in obtaining
that we are delivered from evil. To the same purpose is the conclusion
of the fifth book of the Ethic that "No one delights in blessedness
because he has restrained his affects, but, on the contrary, the power
of restraining his lusts springs from blessedness itself." {43a} This
is exactly what the Gospel says to the Law.

Fear is not the motive of a free man to do what is good. "A free man
thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is not a meditation
upon death, but upon life." {43b} This is the celebrated sixty-seventh
proposition of the fourth part. If we examine the proof which directly
depends on the sixty-third proposition of the same part--"he who is led
by fear, and does what is good in order that he may avoid what is evil,