Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/578

562 this, however, they are eminently sound and enlightening. The chapters which deal with ethical topics seem to me particularly valuable, and bring out in a striking manner the essentially modern character of Spinoza's conceptions. Mr. Duff says in his preface: "This exposition of Spinoza may seem to borrow from later idealistic philosophy, and put to his credit principles which were developed only at a much later time. Of this I would only say that I have conscientiously tried to avoid doing this, and have, as far as space permitted, furnished the reader with the passages on which my interpretation of his thought is based." In the ethical chapters at least, it seems to me that, in the light of the passages which he has thus reproduced from Spinoza's writings, Mr. Duff must be acquitted of the charge of 'modernizing' his author. One of the most interesting points in the exposition of Spinoza's political ideas is the clear distinction that is drawn between his theory and that of Hobbes, from whom some elements were certainly borrowed. Some of these differences had been already noted by Sir Frederick Pollock in his book on Spinoza. But the fundamental difference in spirit is more adequately brought out in Mr. Duff's more extended discussions. The difference is not merely that Spinoza maintains that there are certain limits to sovereignty, certain rights that the individual cannot give up, but rather that the purpose of the State is conceived differently by the two writers. For Hobbes the preservation of order, the peace and security of the individual, is the end of the state. For Spinoza the state is an instrument for the perfection of the nature of the individual. "Hence the only validity, or force, that any law ever has, or can have, comes ... from the measure in which it recognizes and helps men to attain those satisfactions and ends of human desire in which God has ordained that they can alone find their happiness" (p. 332). This distinction in the conception of the end of the State is thus seen to involve a view of its relation to the individual which is fundamentally different from the Absolutism of Hobbes. For, on Spinoza's view, it is only as embodying right, and as leading the individual to a knowledge of the good, that the State can claim absolute authority. Apart from this moral sanction, it cannot command the obedience and allegiance of men, who by the very law of their nature can be governed only by that which their reason can learn to recognize as their own interest and good. Both of these books are to be heartily welcomed as notable additions to the literature of Spinoza, and both, I think, deserve to rank with Pollock's work, so long a classic in this field.