Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one take from the other the _thing_, while they disguised the _name_? It is very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war, over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods, as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that particular country. But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber? Among the first Romans, it was _Jov_, _Jovis_; among the Greeks, _Zeus_; among the Phœnicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, _Jehovah_. Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition that every people had the knowledge of the Supreme Being?--a knowledge confused, it is true; but what man can have it _distinct_? SECTION III. _Examination of Spinoza._ Spinoza cannot help admitting an intelligence acting in matter, and forming a whole with it. "I must conclude," he says, "that the absolute being is neither thought nor extent, exclusively of each other; but that extent and thought are necessary attributes of the absolute being." Herein he appears to differ from all the atheists of antiquity; from Ocellus, Lucanus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Strato, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Diagoras, Zeno of Elis, Anaximander, and so many others. He differs from them, above all, in his method, which he took entirely from the reading of Descartes, whose very style he has imitated. The multitude of those who cry out against Spinoza, without ever having read him, will especially be astonished by his following declaration. He does not make it to dazzle mankind, nor to appease theologians, nor to obtain protectors, nor to disarm a party; he speaks as a philosopher, without naming himself, without advertising himself; and expresses himself in Latin, so as to be understood by a very small number. Here is his profession of faith. _Spinoza's Profession of Faith._ "If I also concluded that the idea of God, comprised in that of the infinity of the universe, excused me from obedience, love, and worship, I should make a still more pernicious use of my reason; for it is evident to me that the laws which I _have_ received, not by the relation or intervention of other men, but immediately from Him, are those which the light of nature points out to me as the true guides of rational conduct. If I failed of obedience, in this particular, I should sin, not only against the principle of my being and the society of my kind, but also against myself, in depriving myself of the most solid advantage of my existence. This obedience does, it is true, bind me only to the duties of my state, and makes me look on all besides as frivolous practices, invented in superstition to serve the purposes of their inventors.