* * * * * That the world reflects God’s choice, that it might to a perfect understanding reveal God’s purpose, that in it the human being is free in body or mind; these are aspects of irrationality which Spinoza is eager to remove from the fair creation of reason. They represent to him last vestiges of vulgar thought of which the master had after all been unable to rid himself. Spinoza is at his best in exposing the psychology of the multitude with its quaint illusions respecting God and man. In the famous appendix to the first book of the Ethics he summons these prejudices as he calls them before the bar of reason: “They all,” he lays it down, “depend on just this one; that men commonly suppose all things in nature to act as they themselves do with a view to some end, nay, even assume that God himself directs all things to some definite end, saying that God has made all things for man, and man that he might worship God. I shall therefore consider this prejudice. I shall inquire in the first place why most persons assent to it and all are by nature so prone to embrace it. In the second place I shall show that it is false; and lastly I shall show how there have sprung from it prejudices respecting good and evil, merit and sin, praise and blame, beauty and ugliness, and other things of the sort.... “It will here suffice to assume certain facts all must admit, namely, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, and that all men have, and are conscious of having, an impulse to seek their own advantage. From this it follows _first_ that men think themselves free for the reason that they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and, being ignorant of the causes by which they are led to will and desire, they do not so much as dream of these. It follows _second_ that men do everything with some purpose in view; that is, with a view to the advantage they seek. Hence it is they always desire to know the motives of action, and when they have learned these, are satisfied.” Against this background Spinoza sketches in with a few quick, vigorous strokes what we may call his psychology of popular religion.