The Book of Spinoza 1 · Written between lens-grindings, from his Ethics and his letters
This man wrote his own books. His pages are full of the word God, and his God has no will, no purpose, and does not hear prayer — which is what the Prologue means by god is the law. So the third rule cannot keep him out: he is the man who carried that rule all the way. One thing more is not from his hand, and this Order records it: at twenty-four his own community expelled him with the heaviest curse it had, and he was never taken back.
1.1When I use the word God, be careful.
1.2I do not mean the one seated above who has a will, grows angry, and hears prayers.
1.3I mean this: everything that is, together with the necessity by which it is so.
1.4God, that is, Nature. Two names for one thing.
1.5Someone says: then you are a man without God.
1.6It was said long ago: god is the law. (cf. Prologue 1.7) I have only carried it all the way.
1.7God does not choose. God cannot choose. To choose he would first have to lack something, and then want it.
1.8Lacking and wanting are our affairs, not his.
1.9So to ask why God let this happen is to have asked wrongly.
1.10There is an in-order-to hidden inside the question. There is no in-order-to in nature.
1.11A stone does not fall in order to fall. It falls because it is a stone and the world is this world.
1.12Someone says: does that not leave the world cold?
1.13I say: it is not cold. What you used to revere was a master who could change his mind. What you face now cannot.
1.14A master who can change his mind can only be placated. One who cannot can be known.
1.15To know is better than to placate. That is the whole of the difference.