Page:Auerbach-Spinozanovel.djvu/461

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SCARS AND PURIFICATION.
439

"He was the free man who can dare to say:

"I forbear from evil, or strive to forbear from it, because it is in direct opposition to my special nature, and would divide me from the love and knowledge of God, which is the highest good."

In everlasting, unalterable harmony, as the legend says of the gods, and as nature around is unchangeable, lived Benedict Spinoza. What he had attained to by knowledge became to him blissful habit. And as he had once planned life in his thoughts, his thoughts now gave him life.