The Book of Spinoza 3 · 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.
3.1Those who write about the human heart are mostly not describing it. They are scolding it.
3.2They treat the affects as defects of our nature, or as things outside nature, and then they lament, deride and curse.
3.3I do not do this.
3.4I mean to examine hatred, anger, envy and love as a geometer examines lines, planes and solids.
3.5They too are part of nature, and follow from the same necessity.
3.6A man in a rage rages according to his nature, as a stone falls according to its nature.
3.7So I set down this as the rule of my life:
3.8Not to deride, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.
3.9Someone says: does that not excuse everything?
3.10What should be stopped is still stopped. What should be judged is still judged.
3.11But before you stop him, know why he is as he is.
3.12For if you only curse him, what you are handling is your own anger, and not the matter.
3.13After cursing you feel better and the matter stands exactly where it stood.
3.14After understanding you may not feel better, but you have something in your hand that you did not have.