De Animalibus Insectis Libri Septem

whether he shrinks from it or abstains, he will nevertheless not be able to avoid loving that spirit which felt that "it could feed itself solely on love for an eternal and infinite thing," and which "by assiduous meditation reached the point of seeing that it" would not be omitting anything but certain evils by omitting the desire for riches, lust, and honors; but in the very investigation of the true good, even if he were perhaps not to attain it, he nevertheless foresaw that a certain good would be obtained. Fired by this study, he finally set before his meditations, seriously and as continuously as possible, "the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of nature." A divine plan, indeed, which could not but make the mind of the seeker a participant in the true good, even if it seems that he did not always hit the proposed mark as happily by his own investigation of truth (as that is, perhaps, common to mortals!).

Indeed, although there are two things in Benedict Referring to Benedict de Spinoza in particular that I shall never cease to admire and love—first, that ingenuous purity of spirit with which he pursued the true good, superior to any superstition, whether by hope or fear, through internal strength; and second, the marvelous simplicity of the system he devised and the unbroken chain of thought—nevertheless, as far as I can grasp, two things seem to have hindered this architect of a most brilliantly coherent system from sufficiently guarding himself against the human proclivity for error in laying his foundations.