Many people, for instance, are accustomed to argue thus:--If all things have followed from the necessity of the most perfect nature of God, how is it that so many imperfections have arisen in Nature--corruption, for instance, of things till they stink; deformity, exciting disgust; confusion, evil, crime, etc.? But, as I have just observed, all this is easily answered. For the perfection of things is to be judged by their nature and power alone; nor are they more or less perfect because they delight or offend the human senses, or because they are beneficial or prejudicial to human nature. But to those who ask why God has not created all men in such a manner that they might be controlled by the dictates of reason alone, I give but this answer: Because to Him material was not wanting for the creation of everything, from the highest down to the very lowest grade of perfection; or, to speak more properly, because the laws of His nature were so ample that they sufficed for the production of everything which can be conceived by an infinite intellect, as I have demonstrated. These are the prejudices which I undertook to notice here. If any others of a similar character remain, they can easily be rectified with a little thought by any one. FOOTNOTES: [12] Pp. 132-135. [13] Beauty, my dear Sir, is not so much a quality of the object beheld, as an effect in him who beholds it. If our sight were longer or shorter, or, if our constitution were different, what now appears beautiful to us would seem misshapen and what we now think misshapen we should regard as beautiful. The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible. Some things are beautiful at a distance, but ugly near; thus things regarded in themselves, and in relation to God, are neither ugly nor beautiful. Therefore, he who says that God has created the world so that it might be beautiful is bound to adopt one of the two alternatives: either that God created the world for the sake of men's pleasure and eyesight, or else that He created men's pleasure and eyesight for the sake of the world. _From a letter to Hugo Boxel_ (1674). SECOND PART ON MAN _The more things the mind knows, the better it understands its own powers and the order of Nature. The better it understands its own powers, so much the more easily can it direct itself and propose rules to itself. The better, also, it understands the order of Nature, the more easily can it restrain itself from what is useless._ SPINOZA. CHAPTER IX THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN MIND _Introductory_ I pass on now to explain those things which must necessarily follow from the essence of God or the Being eternal and infinite; not indeed to explain all these things, for we have demonstrated that an infinitude of things must follow in an infinite number of ways,--but to consider those things only which may conduct us, as it were, by the hand to a knowledge of the human mind and its highest happiness.