of men, and needing scarcely any assistance from fortune. Those whom he
conquers yield gladly, not from defect of strength, but from an increase
of it." {45a}

"Joy is the passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection:
sorrow, on the other hand, is the passion by which it passes to a less
perfection." {45b} "No God and no human being, except an envious one,
is delighted by my impotence or my trouble, or esteems as any virtue in
us tears, sighs, fears, and other things of this kind, which are signs
of mental impotence; on the contrary, the greater the joy with which we
are affected, the greater the perfection to which we pass thereby; that
is to say, the more do we necessarily partake of the divine nature."
{46} It would be difficult to find an account of joy and sorrow which
is closer to the facts than that which Spinoza gives. He lived amongst
people Roman Catholic and Protestant who worshipped sorrow. Sorrow was
the divinely decreed law of life and joy was merely a permitted
exception. He reversed this order and his claim to be considered in
this respect as one of the great revolutionary religious and moral
reformers has not been sufficiently recognised. It is remarkable that,
unlike other reformers, he has not contradicted error by an
exaggeration, which itself very soon stands in need of contradiction,
but by simple sanity which requires no correction. One reason for this
peculiarity is that the Ethic was the result of long meditation. It was
published posthumously and was discussed in draft for many years before
his death. Usually what we call our convictions are propositions which
we have not thoroughly examined in quietude, but notions which have just
come into our heads and are irreversible to us solely because we are
committed to them. Much may be urged against the Ethic and on behalf of
hatred, contempt, and sorrow. The "other side" may be produced
mechanically to almost every truth; the more easily, the more divine