why every green herb and living thing should not perish; no reason, save a faith which was blind. For aught we _knew_, the ocean-begotten aërial current might forsake the land and it might become a desert. One night grey bars appeared in the western sky, but they had too often deluded us, and we did not believe in them. On this particular evening they were a little heavier, and the window-cords were damp. The air which came across the cliff was cool, and if we had dared to hope we should have said it had a scent of the sea in it. At four o’clock in the morning there was a noise of something beating against the panes—they were streaming! It was impossible to lie still, and I rose and went out of doors. No creature was stirring, there was no sound save that of the rain, but a busier time there had not been for many a long month. Thousands of millions of blades of grass and corn were eagerly drinking. For sixteen hours the downpour continued, and when it was dusk I again went out. The watercourses by the side of the roads had a little water in them, but not a drop had reached those at the edge of the fields, so thirsty was the earth. The drought, thank God, was at an end! SPINOZA NOW that twenty years have passed since I began the study of Spinoza it is good to find that he still holds his ground. Much in him remains obscure, but there is enough which is sufficiently clear to give a direction to thought and to modify action. To the professional metaphysician Spinoza’s work is already surpassed, and is absorbed in subsequent systems. We are told to read him once because he is historically interesting, and then we are supposed to have done with him. But if “Spinozism,” as it is called, is but a stage of development there is something in Spinoza which can be superseded as little as the _Imitation of Christ_ or the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, and it is this which continues to draw men to him. Goethe never cared for set philosophical systems. Very early in life he thought he had found out that they were useless pieces of construction, but to the end of his days he clung to Spinoza, and Philina, of all persons in the world, repeats one of the finest sayings in the _Ethic_. So far as the metaphysicians are carpenters, and there is much carpentering in most of them, Goethe was right, and the larger part of their industry endures wind and weather but for a short time. Spinoza’s object was not to make a scheme of the universe. He felt that the things on which men usually set their hearts give no permanent satisfaction, and he cast about for some means by which to secure “a joy continuous and supreme to all eternity.” I propose now, without attempting to connect or contrast Spinoza with Descartes or the Germans, to name some of those thoughts in his books by which he conceived he had attained his end.