“If you will but reflect,” Spinoza tells Boxel, “that indifference is nothing but ignorance or doubt, and that a will always constant and in all things determinate is a virtue and a necessary property of the intellect, you will see that my words are entirely in accord with the truth.” {40c} To the same effect is a passage in a letter to Blyenbergh, “Our liberty does not consist in a certain contingency nor in a certain indifference, but in the manner of affirming or denying, so that in proportion as we affirm or deny anything with less indifference, are we the more free.” {41a} So also to Schuller, “I call that thing free which exists and acts solely from the necessity of its own nature: I call that thing coerced which is determined to exist and to act in a certain and determinate manner by another.” {41b} With regard to this definition it might be objected that the necessity does not lie solely in the person who wills but is also in the object. The triangle as well as the nature of man contains the necessity. What Spinoza means is that the free man by the necessity of his nature is bound to assert the truth of what follows from the definition of a triangle and that the stronger he feels the necessity the more free he is. Hence it follows that the wider the range of the intellect and the more imperative the necessity which binds it, the larger is its freedom. In genuine freedom Spinoza rejoices. “The doctrine is of service in so far as it teaches us that we do everything by the will of God alone, and that we are partakers of the divine nature in proportion as our actions become more and more perfect and we more and more understand God. This doctrine, therefore, besides giving repose in every way to the soul, has also this advantage, that it teaches us in what our highest happiness or blessedness consists, namely, in the knowledge of God alone, by which we are drawn to do those things only which love and piety persuade.” {42a} In other words, being part of the whole, the grandeur and office of the whole are ours. We are anxious about what we call “personality,” but in truth there is nothing in it of any worth, and the less we care for it the more “blessed” we are. “By the desire which springs from reason we follow good directly and avoid evil indirectly” {42b}: our aim should be the good; in obtaining that we are delivered from evil. To the same purpose is the conclusion of the fifth book of the _Ethic_ that “No one delights in blessedness because he has restrained his affects, but, on the contrary, the power of restraining his lusts springs from blessedness itself.” {43a} This is exactly what the Gospel says to the Law.