The able treatise of Prof. E. E. Powell on Spinoza and Religion is open to demur at one point--its reiterated dictum that Spinoza's character was marred by "lack of moral courage" (p. 44). This expression is later in a measure retreated from: after "his habitual attitude of timid caution," we have: "Spinoza's timidity, or, if you will, his peaceable disposition." If the last-cited concession is to stand, the other phrases should be withdrawn. Moral courage, like every other human attribute, is to be estimated comparatively; and the test-question here is: Did any other writer in Spinoza's day venture further than he? Moral courage is not identical with the fanaticism which invites destruction; fanaticism supplies a motive which dispenses with courage, though it operates as courage might. But refusal to challenge destruction gratuitously does not imply lack of courage, though of course it may be thereby motived. A quite brave man, it has been noted, will quietly shun a gratuitous risk where one who is "afraid of being afraid" may face it. When all is said, Spinoza was one of the most daring writers of his day; and his ethic made it no more a dereliction of duty for him to avoid provoking arrest and capital punishment than it is for either a Protestant or a rationalist to refrain from courting death by openly defying Catholic beliefs before a Catholic mob in Spain. It is easy for any of us to-day to be far more explicit than Spinoza was. It is doubtful whether any of us, if we had lived in his day and were capable of going as far in heresy, would have run such risks as he did in publishing the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. For those who have lived much in his society, it should be difficult to doubt that, if allowed, he would have dared death on the night of the mob-murder of the De Witts. The formerly suppressed proof of his very plain speaking on the subject of prayer, and his indications of aversion to the practice of grace before meals (Powell, pp. 323-25) show lack even of prudence on his part. Prof. Powell is certainly entitled to censure those recent writers who have wilfully kept up a mystification as to Spinoza's religiosity; but their lack of courage or candour does not justify an imputation of the same kind upon him. That Spinoza was "no saint" (Powell, p. 43) is true in the remote sense that he was not incapable of anger. But it would be hard to find a Christian who would compare with him in general nobility of character. The proposition that he was not "in any sense religious" (id. ib.) seems open to verbal challenge.