Here ends the first book of Spinoza's Ethics--the book which contains, as we said, the _notiones simplicissimas_, and the primary and rudimental deductions from them. _His Dei naturam_, he says, in his lofty confidence, _ejusque proprietates explicui_. But, as if conscious that his method will never convince, he concludes this portion of his subject with an analytical appendix; not to explain or apologise, but to show us clearly, in practical detail, the position into which he has led us. The root, we are told, of all philosophical errors lies in our notion of final causes; we invert the order of nature, and interpret God's action through our own; we speak of his intentions, as if he were a man; we assume that we are capable of measuring them, and finally erect ourselves, and our own interests, into the centre and criterion of all things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If the universe be what this philosophy has described it, the perfection which it assigns to God is extended to everything, and evil is of course impossible; there is no shortcoming either in nature or in man; each person and each thing is exactly what it has the power to be, and nothing more. But men imagining that all things exist on their account, and perceiving their own interests, bodily and spiritual, capable of being variously affected, have conceived these opposite influences to result from opposite and contradictory powers, and call what contributes to their advantage good, and whatever obstructs it, evil. For our convenience we form generic conceptions of human excellence, as archetypes after which to strive; and such of us as approach nearest to such archetypes are supposed to be virtuous, and those who are most remote from them to be wicked. But such generic abstractions are but _entia imaginationis_, and have no real existence. In the eyes of God each thing is what it has the means of being. There is no rebellion against him, and no resistance of his will; in truth, therefore, there neither is nor can be such a thing as a bad action in the common sense of the word. Actions are good or bad, not in themselves, but as compared with the nature of the agent; what we censure in men, we tolerate and even admire in animals; and as soon as we are aware of our mistake in assigning to man a power of free volition, our notion of evil as a positive thing will cease to exist. If I am asked (concludes Spinoza) why then all mankind were not created by God, so as to be governed solely by reason? it was because, I reply, there was to God no lack of matter to create all things from the highest to the lowest grade of perfection; or, to speak more properly, because the laws of God's nature were ample enough to suffice for the production of all things which can be conceived by an Infinite Intelligence.