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292 to feel and to find agreement with self and with the universe, and to be raised to, and sustained in, serenity by it. Our consciousness of harmony or discord with our assigned nature; the belief that this consciousness is given us, which man as a mere instinct calls conscience—"

"Conscience is a stocking that fits any foot. The savage strikes his father dead when he is old and infirm, and thinks it his conscientious duty; the Jew's conscience reproaches him when he eats the flesh of swine, and the Catholic beats his breast when he has neglected mass."

So spoke old Van den Ende, who then suddenly entered. Spinoza quietly replied that no man could reason away conscience. That pure conscience which merely exists in the feelings, and which men have dressed in all manner of external shapes, must often be liable to deception; but that inner voice which enters our consciousness, which tells us so plainly when we have acted in opposition to the laws of our nature and the universal order, is as undeniable and reliable as our knowledge of our own existence."

"Yes, my dear father," said Olympia; "shall always be grateful to Herr von Spinoza for the many great ideas which he has imparted to us."

She then explained to her father the leading ideas of what had just been said. Spinoza had now and then to add something, but on the whole he saw