Opus IV, Hypogram XX.

               HYPOGRAM XX

               Spinoza defines the first cause as God or Nature,

               As the infinite Substance with infinite Attributes

               (Of which we as humans know only two, Extension

               And Thought) and creatures and things and ideas

5            As Modes. Spinoza destroyed the authority of

              The Church of Rome and any other theologian

              Who was pretending to preach that God was outside

              Of Nature, that we as humans have an immortal soul

              And will leave in Paradise after our own death.

10          It is monism in ontology and naturalism in psychology.

              Matter is active, matter thinks, and matter evolves.

              There is no teleology (no final purpose) and no free will.

              Problem was evil, the evil we all humans see in the world.

              If God-Nature is perfect and divine and should be loved,

15          How Spinoza accounts for evil? He says that good and bad

              Do not exist, for they are relations, not things. But good

              And bad is the same as pain and pleasure, those are ideas,

              Feelings, not relations, but ideas in the mind. In his Ethics

              He changed that defence, and said that good and bad

20         Are relative, and therefore we should not account them as

              Absolute, hence God-Nature was absolved of it all.

              God-Nature is the source of all, but not pains and sufferings!

              God-Nature should be loved because God-Nature is

              All powerful, all active, the source of all things-ideas.

25          Absolving the first cause of pain in the world is not

              A good strategy for a philosopher with a mininum

              Decency in his mind (great Epicurus). The immense pain 

              (Evil) we see around us cannot be accounted to a perfect

              “Artificer.” Santayana was a naturalist, but he did not

30         Deified Nature. Matter is brute, blind, in flux, irrational.

              Amid that field of forces, there comes some stability,

              And then animals appear. But the end is close, and there

              Is no way you can defend a divinity for all the pain in

              This world by saying that it is not a thing or an idea but

35          A relation, or that it is relative, not absolute. Precisely.

              From the relative point of view of the observer and

              Sufferer, that pain is absolute. No authority will ever

              Convince him that pain is divine, perfect, just! Unless you

              Are a Pantheist, a Buddhist, a Christian, or a Hypocrite.

40         A Naturalist can see the point of their defence, but not its

              Justice. Spinoza and theologians bow to Power, as slaves,

              Not as Philosophers. Schopenhauer was much more

              Humane. There is no perfection in the irrationality of

              Matter, there is no reason for so much pain and suffering.

45          So, forget God-Nature, and leave it as nature, monism

              Without worship. Kant cut that metaphysical knot, only
              To write that in practice one should believe in God and 
              Free will and the immortality of the soul, why? Because.
              Marx is much more correct here, but his Communism-

50         Paradise on Earth is another delusion with terrible results.

              Popper was much better here. An Open Society amid

              Its Enemies. That I can believe in as politics. And Mozart!

              As Einstein said: ʻAnd yet, as always, the springtime sun brings

              Forth new life, and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender

55          As he always was and always will be.ʼ The joy of contemplation
              Of essences: a detached, calmed, happy spirituality springing 
              Forth from the irrational and brutal force-source of matter in flux.