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.