ditione deducenda sunt' (cap. i. ad fin.). Spinoza has no enthusiasm about the State. Some kind of State there must be, and we have to make it the best we can with the given materials. I submit that any view which would make out Spinoza to be a progressive social reformer is clearly ruled out by Spinoza himself. He would probably have said, if asked, that the chances of a citizen becoming a philosopher are better under a good government than under a bad one; but that is not his main object. Salvation in the higher sense, the attainment of wisdom and tranquillity, is an affair of the individual, as indeed all the great moralists have said. Government is versed in that which is external and manifest; the working standard of the law can only be that of the average good citizen, as indeed all the great publicists have said or assumed. There is not even anything to show that Spinoza hoped for any appreciable improvement of the general standard. He certainly did not expect any discoveries in the field of political institutions, and had no suspicion of the constructive work, partly conscious and partly unconscious, that was beginning in England. There is no prophetic strain in his politics; Locke was already looking farther forward. Montesquieu may have been inspired later by Spinoza, though he was bound to disclaim it; but the inspiration was somewhat indirect, and in any case through the Tractatus Theologico-politicus, not the Politicus. Grotius had sent forth the law of nations conquering and to conquer; Spinoza has no word to say of this great enterprise, and I doubt whether he knew or cared at all about it. Paradox may be ingenious and even brilliant, but paradox it remains. It is true that on the practical points of legislation and administration Spinoza was far more enlightened than the accepted authorities of his time; but that is not enough to justify Mr. Duff's position.
As a matter of minute criticism, I should like to know why Mr. Duff constantly speaks of conatus sese conservandi, a form of words unfamiliar to me, and, so far as I am aware, never used by Spinoza himself. His phrase is 'suum esse conservare'.
Perhaps I may be allowed to call attention here, though it is not strictly relevant, to a scholarly Latin tract containing some certain and many probable emendations of Spinoza's text (Ad Spinozæ opera posthuma: scripsit Dr. J. H. Leopold: Hag. Com., 1902), which I have not seen noticed in this country.
