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 known, though I have known the lines these five-and-twenty years―

and secondly in this statement by Spinoza—" By the help of God, I mean the fixed and unchangeable order of nature, or chain of natural events, for I have said before and shown elsewhere that the universal laws of nature, according to which all things exist and are determined, are only another name for the eternal decrees of God, which always involves eternal truth and necessity, so that to say everything happens according to natural laws, and to say everything is ordained by the decree and ordinance of God, is to say the same thing. Now, since the power in nature is identical with the power of God, by which alone all things happen and are determined, it follows that whatsoever man as a part of nature provides himself with to aid and preserve his existence, or whatsoever nature affords him without his help, is given him solely by the Divine power acting either through human nature or through external circumstances. So whatever human nature can furnish itself with by its own efforts to preserve its existence may be fitly termed the inward aid of God, whereas whatever else accrues to man's profit from outward causes may be called the external aid of God."

Now both these utterances are magnificent Fetish, and